A few angry rants and a dented table later, and it finally seemed as if the pilot complement of the Elyandra were starting to come down off their adrenaline high of combat. People were listening, talking, planning. Canaan had even put forward a decent one. Simple, yet effective. But all missing one simple thing. And Thomas Brett felt it would do a disservice to his crewmates if he didn't say so.<br/><br/>"Canaan, as beautiful and simple as that plan might be, it just ain't gonna work. The Children don't want us pilots or our mechs. Killing us is just a bonus to them. What they want is the Elyandra, to kill her properly this time." He shook his head sadly.<br/><br/>"The straight fact is that they won't go for anything unless it leads them to this ship, no matter their fanaticism. The only way to get them to believe and fall for a diversion is to give them that. And I hate to play the Devil's Advocate but, is that kind of risk worth one pilot?" Thomas glanced around at the others, looking for those telltale signs of accord or discord, the small clues that said either "I agree" or "I am going to kill you". Either one was equally possible at this point.<br/><br/>He locked eyes in turn with all the others, one by one. The stare said the same thing. 'Is this worth it? Is this what you want?'. The looks he got in return told him all he needed to know.<br/><br/>"I was only saying. But we need to figure our shit out here before anything else goes haywire. I think we can all agree on that."<br/><br/>______________________________________________________________________________________<br/><br/>They started with thirty-six. One platoon's worth of some of the craziest bastards and bitches humanity had ever coughed up. And now? Seven gone, just like that.<br/><br/>Jacqueline, Jack as she preferred to be known, was no stranger to combat. But to watch friends suffer the fate that had befallen them not an hour before... It was almost too much. The Elyandra's Marine contingent had been found by battle fighting fires and hastily patching hull breaches, working alongside other crew in a desperate attempt to prevent the ship from coming apart under fire. When the fighting intensified, they had been forced to moved to the exterior hull, clipped in place by zee-gee harnesses, firing HAMMER missiles and Plasma Launchers at the passing hostile mechs. Two Marines had been killed by enemy fire. One had been lost to space when his tether broke. But worst of all, was one they could not fight. The cold.<br/><br/>Their MCA armour had never been designed to be exposed to space for that long. The four remaining fatalities had been Marines who froze inside their armour. A long and horrible way to go, almost as bad as being lost to space, except others could see your suffering. Her own pain was impossible, frighteningly bad. But she had survived none the worse for wear. As had most of the others. But it wasn't all sunshine and roses.<br/><br/>The caskets containing the four dead Marines, now thawed, were lined up neatly in the hangar, settled on folding benches. The remainder of them sat and stood around, in solemn silence and vary states of undress. Eventually, they began to filter away, looking for something to occupy their thoughts other than dead friends. For Jack, it was off to the mess hall, "canteen" as the swabbies called it. She needed something to settle her stomach, even if it was just a cup of something hot.<br/><br/>Five minutes later saw her there, a scalding cup of tea and a sullen expression her only companions. This was going to be a long day, a long time to wait before she could show those Children exactly what the Gate's of Hell looked like.