[Galaport Insider] We're here today speaking with Emmett Hubertson, operator of a Galaport Ground Tug at the spaceport, concerning the recent Word of Blake attack on Galatea.
Galaport Insider: Mr. Hubertson, tell us what you saw.
Emmett Hubertson: Well, boys, it was like this. Them Blakies come right out of their DropShips like the bleeding things was on fire. A hot-drop, we called back in '29, when I was with the Third Lyran. Why, back then all we had to worry about was them crazy Snakes, but at least you could count them to be sensible.
GI: What do you mean, sensible? Our viewers know the samurai warriors of the Draconis Combine as some of the strangest and most hidebound fighters in the Inner Sphere. Only the Clans seem more alien to Lyran viewers.
EH: Well, I wouldn't know about them, but your average Snake, well… he didn't go charging through no plasma exhaust and get himself cooked, did he, just to shoot up a port?
GI: Are you saying you saw Word of Blake troops getting burned alive by DropShip exhaust?
EH: No, I'm saying I seen them do suicide-by-DropShip. Couple of those boys, they unassed when the ships was still a few hundred meters up, dropped down, and then turned the wrong way. Like they was chasing something. The damn thrust from the DropShip fried 'em where they stood, with nothing more than a 'Mech to protect like that. I didn't see what was left, but I don't need to. Ain't too many things hotter than a DropShip's drive flare.
GI: Well, that would certainly seem to contradict the way they fight. Combat reports show a fearsome enemy, almost implacable. We haven't seen combat language like that since the heyday of the Clan invasion twenty years ago.
EH: Well, I wouldn't know nothing about that. I tell you, though… them Snakes, they'd stab themselves in the belly when they was through. I don't know nothing about no running under DropShips. I only seen one on the other side.
GI: One made it?
EH: Yeah, a big-assed old Imp came busting through the rainbow and damn near kicked my tug over. Had a bunch of silly cat's eyes painted on it. I don't care if it was a hundred tons… I ain't scared of nothing with kitty cat eyes on it.
