He nodded slightly, letting Megan offer up her opinion about what she was expecting versus reality. Only once she was finished did he speak. "Trust me, the LZ was not hot; Everywhere but the LZ was hot, as you were not being shot at while boarding the Dropship. There was a communication breakdown, and that aspect is being rectified; part of the issue was that the hostile forces seeded a large part of the local area with ECM, which prevented Long-range Communications, which was not expected. Can't plan for every eventuality, can we? After all, if everything had gone perfectly, you'd have spent all day yesterday twiddling your thumbs next to a Dropship and I wouldn't have had two of my Recon lance ambushed by a Pillager, of all things."<br/><br/>Shifting slightly, mostly for comfort's sake, he leaned closer to Megan for a moment. "Field discipline is always going to be an issue here, with that, my Years as a Hauptmann agree with you; but, my Years as a Mercenary have learned to not give a flip about minor discipline issues so long as everyone pulls their weight. Now, this issue about people calling you 'gutter rat'... well, that has no place on this ship. I daresay that Perkins or Walt will be ~very~ happy to tear several large, juicy strips off of the person that decided to be a nationalistic shit; If I can work with former DCMS without calling them Snakes, unless they want to be called that, I expect everyone else to be able to do the same without me glaring holes through them."<br/><br/>He paused, taking a sip from a cup of tepid water that had been left on the table next to the medical bed. "As for the actual ability of the technical crew, and the damage done to my 'mech, well, you can see just how well it works out; I keep them in practice for the 'fun' repairs, such as Gyroscope Housings, Engine Shielding, PPC capacitors, Sensor networks, Life-Support systems, Heat sinks and so on by getting my 'mech savaged in battle, they get to see me walk back aboard with Ninety-percent structural loss, but, this is the important part; I walk back aboard. No other 'mech in the company can take as much abuse as my Awesome can, though your friend's Orion comes damn close; And, as you saw, once all was said and done, the worst anyone else took from weapons fire was damaged armour, and, on occasion, a blown actuator caused by a fall or lucky shot. I'd daresay that when you got a good look at my 'mech after that battle was the first time you saw what a real 'Zombie' Looks like."<br/><br/>Taking another sip, he nodded. "You have valid concerns, Miss Chang; this past operation did not go as well as planned, in part due to unforseen circumstances. However, the next contract will, hopefully, be something a bit less... hectic than facing down a full Battalion of Cataphracts with Assault support, so each and every one of us will be able to learn how to work together. For now, I'll be assigning you to Recon lance; Maho, the pilot of the Sling you saw in the 'mechbay is the Recon commander; feel free to seek her out and appraise her of your 'mech's abilities; Once we're done on Outreach, we'll be reshuffling the lance structures, So you might get wedged into Command Lance to take advantage of all your ElInt capabilities."