Israfil was glad Mike was willing to share information about himself and proceeded to ask more,  "Where are you from?  The Ascendancy core systems, or the border?  I've always lived in the core systems myself."

[hr]
Tera was surprised to hear Blythe's response.  "A headache?  I've felt a slight...loss of coordination today.  I wonder if piloting cogs is safe?  I mean, Lear seems to be fine now, and both the Lieutenants have piloted for a while..."

[hr]
Maya walked to the cafeteria with Claire and got a coffee.  They sat down at a table and Maya began, "I wanted to apologize to you.  I realize that I've probably come off as an incompetent commanding officer.  I'm not trying to make any excuses for myself, but I'm used to leading trained soldiers.  What makes the cog program so difficult, is the supposed correlation between the strength of the pilot's personality and the strength of the cog.  What this means is that our team has people that are not easy to get along with, yet we are in a sense, reliant on those exact people to give our team strength.  Do I force everyone to get along, or would that hurt their performance as pilots?  How do I make things go as smoothly as possible?  In my haste, I took RHS's suggestion and placed you in charge.  I apologize, for myself, and for Lieutenant RHS.  I've discussed with him and we decided that in the next mission, if we need to split up again, he will take charge.  I hope you can forgive him and support him as your leader wholeheartedly."