[color=6ecff6][b]Ximena Huang[/b][/color]


Ximena didn't like the ground plan at all, but unfortunately she didn't have a good argument against it. Any operation that involved her loitering while some jerk with a Strela searched for her signal was a bad one...but that's just how things went. If the ground crew got cut to pieces, the operation was a bust, and stopping the ground crew from getting cut to pieces meant waiting for targets of opportunity to rear their big, ugly heads.

There was something nagging at her about the setup, but unfortunately there was no planning around it. It was probably nothing anyway and yet-

It nagged at her because [i]everything [/i]nagged at her, all the small details presenting themselves as glaring risks. That's what being a spy did; it taught you how to catastrophize. She hated living things undone, every hanging thread a potential problem down the line. She needed them tied down or snipped off, accounted for in some way.

------
She figured it was best to bring the question to Heartbreak privately as opposed to weighing everyone down with heavy details. Instead she caught him on the way out of the locker room, her own helmet tucked under her arm.

[color=6ecff6]"Lieutenant-Colonel, not to make mountains out of molehills, but-"[/color]

She shrugged apologetically, well-aware she was doing just that. 

[color=6ecff6]"I've never seen flown a combat mission with this outfit. I don't have the regulations down pat, and it occurred to me that once we start knocking out their SAMs and blowing up their planes, the OpFor might panic. If they do turn and start beating a hasty retreat to Libya or wherever they came from, how should we handle it-? [/color] 

It had been against protocol in Lucky Dog to let the enemy escape if doing so didn't interfere with the safety of the pilot or the wider flight. If you were scrambled against bandits you returned only once you were out of ammo or targets, whichever came last. Shattered Steel seemed nicer, for lack of a better word. Not pushovers or anything, but she wasn't sure if they adhered to her 'it flies, it dies' mentality or if they still held onto some of that old knights of the air chivalry. Seeing Scott's reaction to Brightspark last night, she thought it wise to check with him before she started chasing retreating targets. 

[@Rhona W]