"It's a pleasure to meet you, Claire," Tera said politely.  "I think it's pretty amazing that both you and your sister were chosen to be pilots, I've heard the selection process was fairly rigorous.  Was joining the military your goal from the beginning, or were you just randomly selected to take a cog-scan?"  The question may come off as odd, but Tera herself was more or less plucked out of civilian life to be a pilot.  Perhaps the program thought that, as a machine, she would be obedient.  The fact that she just went along with it means that perhaps they were right.

"Uh...ummm..." Israfil was having a hard time answering Mike's question, "It's like...I don't want anyone to get mad at me.  I mean, Lieutenant Reese...I think he's not happy right now, and I think it's because of me."  Israfil didn't quite know how to put it into words, but he'd felt judged his whole life.  His desire to please came out of a need to cover some sort of ingrained defect he felt he had.  As far as he was concerned, if he couldn't make everyone around him happy, then there was something wrong with him.

Overhearing Israfil, Solomon chimed in from across the shuttle, "You bet your ass he's angry."  Solomon grinned a little to himself.  Israfil swallowed thickly and looked down at his knees.

Sion decided not to comment; to say he wasn't a bit peeved would be lying, and trying to explain without hurting Israfil's feelings wasn't exactly something he felt he could do, nor even really wanted to.  Israfil was a soldier now, and if this was enough to upset him, then he had no business being in combat.  Sion instead checked the ETA and announced, "We should be arriving at the Incubator momentarily."