>(Tangent: I thought Tremayne's superior was awfully lenient, letting
>him sulk on the Moon like that. If I was Commandant and my subordinate
>had just clusterfucked a blip capture operation in such a grandiose
>manner, I'd dope him up on sleepers, stick him in a small cage and let
>the teep kids poke at him with very sharp sticks. But that's me.)

Maybe the boss is smarter than we take him for. If it was just a flub on a blip smash-and-grab, that would be one thing. But when the opposition includes:

• The CFMF
  
• A highly advanced non-Asimovian robot
  
• Two robots that are either the galaxy's smallest security droids or the galaxy's most overpowered toy bots.
  
• The Crown Princess of Gamilon, and thus Mr. Planet Bomb Himself
  
• The personal off-road sportship of a Benjamin D. Hutchins, living legend on Earth and indirectly responsible for wiping Worcester off the map twice, and keeping in mind that such sportship eluded Earthforce by apparently breaking six seperate laws of physics
  
• An RA with power armor that impresses Gryphon
  

one may assume that the problem wasn't so much the execution, but the intelligence. Add to that the fact that they may not have had time for proper intel per standard procedures, and you realize that Tremayne isn't particularly incompetent.

I think a similar effect would be had if a police department attempted a drug raid on a facility that turned out to be a powwow between the Mafia, the <insert here> "State Militia", the GRU and the US arm of Al Quada.

Tremayne was well prepared to extract one student from a college campus. He was not ready at all to handle a tremendously unlikely confluence of such highly talented people and such incredible equipment.

--rR