Alroy had spent a few hours in the sickbay being treated for his concussion, and being monitored to be certain there wasn't any internal bleeding or bruising, but eventually been given a full bay of health. That didn't improve his mood any, and he'd had to shoot up another full vial of Quick to get his wits back about him, which didn't help either.<br/><br/>"Ranna's right. Putting up with Perkins hasn't been easy, but we've managed to do it. Sure, he was an Aerojock and not a real Mechwarrior, but he knew people who could get us in with contracts, and we had the Old Man, then Walter, actually running the outfit. Perkins was the paymaster, and couldn't do any damage there."<br/><br/>"But what the prick can't seem to figure out now that he's in charge is that Mechs and Mechwarriors are more than numbers of columns on his damn spreadsheets. When he looks at his charts, he sees 'Loss - two pilots, two mechs, damage - multiple mechs', 'gain - one senior tech, one destroyed mech, assorted salvage'. He doesn't see Hiro or Yamina or Erich. The only thing he sees in the Brick or Tanya is the time and money it'll take to fix them, he's never been the one staring down another Assault mech. He doesn't see that when you hire a fifth column of on-field troops, you better well tell your people about it.<br/><br/>This is the second time his beancounter mentality and total disregard for intelligence has screwed us over. In the Combine raid, we had aerial superiority and surveillance and still somehow missed the presence of those Elementals, or the ship that dropped them off and was probably still lurking around in-system to pick them up, or any sign that the base wasn't operating properly. Here, he works up an entire fifth column without so much as mentioning their existence, almost causes a blue-on-blue incident - and somehow manages to arrange those reinforcements without being able to find out the opposition was sporting LosTech, not just guarding it. I've never seen an Atlas that mounted a Gauss Rifle before, and they had at least two of the things, plus that antique Pillager. You make those mistakes in a aerospace fighter, you can just pull up and head for altitude or orbit. You make those mistakes on the ground, 'Mechs break and people die. Buying our feelings off with blood money - and that's what it would be, giving bonuses to make us happy with our losses - isn't going to cut it this time."