The droids were impressive, although Sergeant Adams quickly coined the term 'combot' for them. According to her, they weren't true androids, as they had only a limited ability to move and react on their own, requiring control by a sentient operator. Once we got three combots out of the armory and into an empty cargo bay, Giraud, Adams and Thomson were able to control them without any special gear, simply by having Skippy watch their movements and instruct the combots to follow. In action, we wouldn't be able to rely on Skippy, he cautioned, the asteroid base was heavily shielded and operators needed to be close to their combot, to reduce the time lag. During the raid, operators had to be aboard the dropships in the landing bay. I wasn't happy about that, we'd be exposing more people to risk, even if the risk to them was less than to the people wearing Kristang powered armor suits. We still needed people in suits on the raid, Skippy didn't trust combots with tasks that required fine motor skills, like selecting, picking up and transporting the fragile, ancient Elder gear he needed. Also, with only combots we'd have all our eggs in one basket; according to the Kristang and Thuranin data Skippy had downloaded, the Kristang had designed their defenses specifically to protect against the Thuranin, and Skippy couldn't guarantee the Kristang didn't have some ability to interfere with the telefactoring connection. The Kristang knew all about Thuranin combots, and would have spent a lot of time and effort figuring out how to beat them.

Giraud's revised plan called for six people wearing Kristang suits, and nine telefactor operators in the dropships. Skippy would remotely fly the dropships, which meant we didn't need to dedicate people as pilots, I wanted at least four people trained to fly Thuranin dropships anyway. Six people needed to have Kristang suits adjusted to fit them, then practice using them in combat simulations. Four people needed training to fly Thuranin dropships, and it had to be minimal training because those same people, along with almost everyone else, had to practice telefactoring combots. For the raid, I reluctantly agreed with Giraud, Chang and Simms that I would remain behind aboard the Dutchman along with Skippy, Desai and Private Walorski.