<strong>HEINZ VON OBERAMMERGAU</strong><br/><br/>I smiled almost kindly at our enraged employer. No wonder her company had been reduced to just one of her airships and stripped of all its pilots. There was clearly a thing or two she still hadn't understood about mercenaries and pirates.<br/><br/><strong>"Miss Lamarr?  We urgently need to negotiate this business relationship before you give this fine body of ladies and gentlemen any more frivolous orders. I cannot allow you to address my wingmen and myself like naughty schoolboys being made to run laps around the playing field."</strong><br/><br/><strong>"Do excuse me, but I wish to stress the foolishness of your indignant attitude. First of all, we're pirate mercenaries, not conscripts, or regularly employed aerial security guards. To be blunt, you have yet to pay us, Miss Lamarr. We're air pirates; cash up front is kind of our thing, as it's hard to collect payment from a charred zeppelin wreck if things go undercarriage up. Worse, you have insulted our skill and honour. I believe the plans for today, as you said last night, were to practice our gunnery. We have yet to demonstrate our prowess. How attached are you to the last airship you own? Can you afford another? It would be highly unwise, I should think, to send an entire squadron of disgruntled, unpaid pilots off on a pointless mission. Your zeppelin will be left quite defenseless. From other bandits, but mostly from this very kindergarten squadron. Hmm, I like that name." <br/><br/>"Do bear in mind that we're the only pilots you could get hold of, and you really haven't done badly for yourself. Keep us happy and and compensated, and we will help you take down Mortensen's. Without us, you're a big party balloon simply begging to be popped. And why are you flying a paying passenger northeast, then south again, when he could easily have taken an air taxi from haven and arrived at his destination by now?"<br/><br/>"I'd say we've proven our navigational skills well enough. Furthermore, flying alone will unnecessarily increase the risk to each pilot, and, I cannot stress this enough, leave the Blue Ridge defenseless even if no one decides to pick off her engines one by one and leave her to blow into a mountainside. And you say the jaunt just now was a waste of fuel!"<br/><br/>"I respectfully refuse your mission. Having led 18 night bombing raids over London in the Great War, and flown combat missions over five different American states, I believe that I can plan and organise a successful mission very passably. My esteemed airmen of Kindergarten Squadron, I offer you my services as first among equals, in a strictly advisory role. Miss Lamarr, I've saved your zeppelin. You're welcome. We'll take the reasonable sum of $600 per pilot up front, as the next two weeks' payment."</strong><br/><br/>I chuckled, and shook my head.<strong>"Good to have that bit of unpleasantness out of the way. I'm glad we're able to come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."</strong>