[D3, LA, mess] Oh yeah, lunch. Good idea.

[Dorgan Bruun]

Bruun nods and sighs. "Yep. You two should talk. I ain't fixing things for people." He shakes his head. "I probably shouldn't have said this much, but I'm gonna add just one last thing: I don't know much about where either of you come from, or how things should be in your minds. What needs to be, is we try to keep all of us alive out here. Just like the major said, right?" Bruun takes a heavy breath, self-conscious that he may have seemed to be lecturing, which is not his style.

[Felicity]

"Good. We will."

She has another quick sip of water and a glance toward her meal. The soup was getting cold.

"Yea, I do not need reminding. I don't plan on leaving anyone to die or not fighting hard when needed." She huffed, unable to understand why this needed to be said, let alone repeated. It felt like he was being condescending now. "For your information I'm not from some savage world where we throw each other to the wolves. Got it?" She tapped the table aggressively with her right index finger. "And another thing, I've served in a mercenary command before and a House unit, okay? I'm not some rookie you need to remind not to pay attention or to communicate. The only thing anyone needs to worry about with me is them not being stupid, si? Be smart and I'll play nice." Felicity's upper ears had pulled back, but she made an effort to push her tail down under the table. "The Major wants me to look out for everyone. I will. However, I'm not about to stand around and get killed or charge assault mechs on my own all because someone does something stupidly reckless. Or suicidal. Frankly, it's better for all of us in the long run to lose anyone like that. Combat isn't a game." She studied him for agreement, which she absolutely expected at this point.

[Dorgan Bruun]

Bruun listens to the counter-lecture stoically then looks at the food in front of both of them. "Don't not eat on my account." He takes a small bite to chew as he thinks about his response.

"I'll just make this plain. I ain't your boss and you can be as nice or not as you want, but there's one sure thing here: There ain't enough people in this company right now to let anyone go. You can talk all the good talk about what's better 'in the long run' for all of us -- I won't tell you you're wrong -- but, problem is, there is no long run for us on this rock if we start losing people. Even great pilots end up slagged when they try to do too much alone." The tone had been tough but honest.

[Felicity]

Felicity made a grumbling noise, but she did shift about to get herself comfortable enough to eat. She tried a sip of the soup carefully. It certainly wasn't too hot now. She began to have more as Dorgan continued.

She paused to reply when he was done. "I get what you're saying. We're few in number and we need everything. I get it, but equally we won't have anyone left in this company if there are some that get everyone else killed. The glory seekers and the berserkers need to wise up. I really hoped some of us weren't taking the simulation seriously, because it got me worried." Felicity had a little more soup as something played on her mind. The thing she'd wanted to ask about. It was going to be awkward to now.

[Dorgan Bruun]

Bruun's expression softens.

"Yeah, and I'm working on that too," he admits. "This posse of problem children wasn't my choice, and being the experienced first sergeant wasn't my choice either. Reckon Creed thinks I need to be punished for something," he mutters candidly.

"But that's the job now, and I'll be as nice or not nice as I gotta be to get people out of this hole we're in. I about had a damn heart attack in that ambush yesterday -- more than once, actually -- and it wasn't anything the Slate Eaters were doing. We probably about used up all the luck we're going to get, so next time it's gonna be skill and discipline or someone ain't coming home." He looks at the table for a time, perhaps contemplating who's most likely to be lost.

[Felicity]

"That's what I thought when he put me under Miss Eklund. Then Miss Crossette insisted it wasn't like that, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt."

She spooned more of her soup. A dip of bread and a big bite followed. She sounded quite happy to be eating something if her little murmurs were anything to go by. Her ears were no longer back either. They were trembling slightly...?

Felicity only seemed to be half paying attention to him as she ate while he talked about getting off planet. Her gaze snapped back to him when he mentioned the ambush. Then her expression turned pensive, as if she was chewing something over in her mind and not just her mouth.

She finished her mouthful before commenting. "The Slate Eaters will fold like a deck of cards if we focus them. They're smart for mining and avoiding trouble with the locals so they can do whatever they're doing, but they're not the bloodthirsty crazy killers sort of pirates you hear about in news reports, si? They're more like an organized crime group with some thugs for protection." Felicity leaned back, lifting her arms up over her head and having a stretch. "We just need to fight tactically." She set her hands on the table and grinned. "Snorri and I took out four in just a few minutes yesterday. With a little aerial support, sure, but I knocked out two on my own. I heard they had some heavier machines in the ambush, but they're not soldiers. Hey, you smashed apart a Hetzer, right? That kind of armor worries me more than light mechs. One set up under camo nets in hiding would be bad news. What happened exactly?"

[Dorgan Bruun]

Bruun isn't much for feelings or "warm and fuzzy" stuff, but the twitching ears are... something he'll reflect on. And he smiles unabashedly as Felicity talks strategy. This one knows some things.

"Ambush might be a touch generous, but it was a picket line of hover tanks covering the road that the lumber mech needed to travel down. Enemy reinforcements arriving from east and west suggests an intentional strategy of drawing the net around us once we engaged." Bruun pauses to reflect.

"Arrival of the Hetzer sure put the pressure on our escape route. Good thing I called taking the north fork of the road. Easier to manage the Hetzer than the lance of mechs that arrived from the opposite direction. And yes, I did destroy that damned Hetzer," he says, more grumpy than proud. "Bastard was tough."

[Felicity]

"Andrea described it to me a bit yesterday evening, but she said to check the AAR. I don't think we're doing those however. Certainly, nobody has asked me for a report and First Sergeant Eklund hasn't called a meeting." She points out. "It sounded to me like the vehicles were there to stall you so the mechs could attack, but they didn't pursue because of the damage done. They mustn't have liked their odds."

She shuts up and gets comfy again to listen to the Hetzer tale. She even has some more soup and bread. It was quickly disappearing.

"Yea. I saw an old one used as target practice in a drill once. Took a real pounding before the Officer in charge declared it neutralized. We were all glad the main gun was offline. Autocannon 20s are scary."

[Dorgan Bruun]

Bruun nods, eats a bit when she's talking, and elaborates at the appropriate times:

"I reckon if the major wants reports or any other formal business he better say so. This is a small, flat organization. Don't need a lot of reports that ain't getting read because no one has the time. But I met with my lance, just a little bit ago," he waves vaguely toward the simulator room, "and it went fine. One battle together isn't much experience. Your lance doesn't even have that yet," he observes, just stating the fact.

"I hope I never see another Hetzer. Too close to me, too close to Eklund... It got a shot off at Chow but thankfully missed through the trees." He shakes his head, squeezing his hand into a fist at one point from the memory."

[Felicity]

"True." She concedes that point. "Still..." Either she wanted to go over their separate skirmishes, or maybe she wanted to brag? Or both.

"Well, Andrea said you stayed there to smash it apart. That means we won't likely come across it again anytime soon, si? Well done. Good it missed Miss Chow. What got you so riled up anyway?" She paused to lean forward. "Was it that it hit the Wyvern?"