Erich accepted the mug of tea with a nod of appreciation; while he wasn't much of a drinker of spirits, or teas, he did appreciate some of the finer things in life on occasion. "Eh; I always sound like gravel came out of a losing fight with me, but thanks for the drink."<br/><br/>Taking a long, slow sip, he stifled a cough, the muscle reflex pulling hard against the stitches in his side. "Speaking of that extraction, I have one thing to say between you and I about that." His dark gaze swiveled to Perkins entirely, much like the heavy turret on an Ontos tank before unleashing a Barrage. "You should have told me about the reinforcements, Perkins; I nearly took the head off of that Raven, because I wasn't given the intel that you had hired a Raven Pilot, and an Orion to cover the retreat back to our extraction point."<br/><br/>Taking another sip, he shrugged slightly. "As for the mission itself, some of the crew might blame you for the intel we got not lining up with what we walked into; I won't, because you normally have to go by gut instinct; the fact that you managed to squeeze any intelligence out of a Capellan world is a feat in itself, anyhow. Besides, depending on where or who you got the intel from, it's not your fault that the intel source didn't know that the entire City was seeded with ECM generators, nor that CapCom proved some brainpower hasn't been purged by that bagful of redeye scorpions they call a ruler."<br/><br/>He paused, then smirked, allowing himself the physical discomfort of a dry chuckle. "That's why I took Assault to the Research base; Between pickets, guards on the walls, seismic sensors, and so on, there was no possible way for the Recon Lance to sneak in and extract with the Agromech designed to look like a Cataphract that an Atlas sat on. Sure, I pulled the 'designated idiot' ploy once again, getting all their attention on me as much as I could to make their forces freak out so we defeated them in detail, because they rushed us piecemeal, even if they carved up the Armour a lot."<br/><br/>He took another long, slow sip of the supplied drink, thinking for a moment. "Alroy's Crab managed to avoid the worst of it, but I think the armour batch you got for it was bad; when he faceplanted after getting shot in the back by one of the Atlas we retreated from, almost all of the armour on the front facings had been scraped off; I don't think he took more than a few seconds of weapon fire in the total engagement, but he was stripped down to internal structure almost as much as the Brick. I haven't been able to review the battleROMs yet, so I don't know how Lily did in her Axman, but, from the explosions I saw when she was gallivanting about, I think it's safe to say she knows how to use that Axman pretty well; Graff also did well; Followed orders to the spirit of, instead of the letter; and made sure our extraction squeezing didn't get rocked. Much. Plus, he knows how to wrangle that Marauder like it's his girlfriend."<br/><br/>He shrugged again, moving his left hand to poke at the dressing and bandage on his right side. "Only real unpleasantness was the sheer number of enemy forces; Intel led us to believe that we'd only be facing a Company of Enemy 'mechs, mostly Cataphracts, and a lance of mixed heavies with an Atlas in support. We went up against a full Battalion, with armour support, and a lance of Atlas-K variants, with a Pillager. No idea where the Hell they managed to dig that fucker out, either. The fact that we only lost Hiro and Yamina and most everyone but Myself and Alroy extracted with armour damage, at worst, Says a lot about the crew's individual skills, as well as our ability to give out more punishment than we recieved."<br/><br/>He sighed, rubbing his eyes with his free hand for a moment. "Strategically, the mission was a Success; the target was extracted, the Research base was nearly-completely destroyed, the Lostech museum was raided sucessfully, and the city's primary power station was disabled for at least a month; possibly longer. Tactically, it was a mess; from what I could hear on Recon's channel through the ECM, they were blindsided by that Pillager, and the two 'mechs that were wrecked by that 100-tonner should feel ashamed and embarassed to be ambushed by an assault 'mech, when their walking speed is nearly twice the Pillager's running pace. As for the final result? That techie better be worth it. The Lostech probably is, so it'd be a good idea on getting him to sort through it all."