<strong>Union-Class Dropship, <em>Bastion</em><br/>June 2nd, In-system Burn to Outreach<br/>Officer's 'lounge'</strong><br/><em>Erich, Walt, and Perkins</em><br/><br/>Erich frowned for a moment, then chuckled slightly. "You're seriously considering letting an engineer ride in a light, when he can do a Hell of a lot more good where he's not being shot at? Look; I can call a few favours, get you a good rate on both the Hawk and the Walking scrapyard that'll keep us in the black in regards to the 'mechs. That will, at the least, be one monkey off your back; I'd reccomend sticking the 'tech in a hotseat behind Alroy, or that Orion pilot; then he'll be safe, for the most part, and can enjoy all the fun of a high-risk battle without literally being in said battle. If you do want to stuff him into a 'mech, give him a Locust with three medium lasers, and a decent comms array, because I figure he at least has the common sense god gave a turnip and knows when to run away."<br/><br/>He finished his tea, setting the mug down on the small card table as he placed a deck of cards on the same. Shuffling, then dealing poker hands to the three of them, he continued to speak. "I admit, I don't much wrangle with the Aerospace side of things, so I'll trust your judgement on that regard. In regards to Graff's Marauder, I'll ask that you trust me because I've been doing stuff similar to this for nearly twenty-eight years; I'm pushing fifty, and I started as a mechjock when I was twenty. Now, if Janus' assessment is on the money, and just refitting it to a 3R standard will cost over a million, I'll pay for the refit from my own personal coffers; If you want to let GM use the Highlander as a testbed for a few months in return for them repairing the head, and upgrading the Marauder to a custom standard that I, and Graff, agree with, then I consider that to be a fair trade."<br/><br/>He tossed a pair of red chips into the centre of the table, before leaning over and picking up an unlit cigar, neatly clipping the end before using a strike-anywhere match to light up the stogie. "In regards to getting these boys and girls to play nice on a combat excercise, well, seems Outreach is trying to horn in on Solaris' side of the table. They've been advertising one-on-one fights with a pot of a million C-bills to the winner, and four-on-four with a pot of five million. Might be a good idea to let the money-hungry munchkins to know about it and see how they do once our work with the Dragoons and Legion is done with. Might be fun to kick back in an observation lounge to see how our mad batch of mechjocks do against a similar lot."