Gus seems to be the kind of magnificent villain who always "thinks of everything".
But not taking Bettina into account in any capacity (as threat or in any other way) in the mission briefing that he gave his guys, that seems like a blunder with potentially significant consequences. He may be underestimating her...
Ah. I was only slightly off on my assessment. Aegis is here to "help" MSV (damn me but I can't help but root for them versus Tim Timmy), but also to "help themselves" to some of those sweet, sweet murderbear autonomous defense unit plans. (Or, rather, help Gus get ahold of them...)
Now, you really have me wondering what Tiny is up to there. I mean, she obviously makes it out of this work alive (spoilers), but what could she possibly be up to here?
Simplest guess: To seize and/or lock down the company secrets. She needs power and influence to manage the aftermath of this invasion, and making herself the sole person with access to family assets would be a nice start.
Others include taking the fight to dear brother, helping dear brother fight back against the army launched by the madwoman that tortured her, attempting to rescue folks caught in the mess, and tampering with paperwork while everybody's busy so that everything goes in her name in the event of Timmy Timmy the Third's death.
Regarding Gus' plans: If you ask me, getting his own private murderbear would be perfectly sufficient for a villain's end goal. :-D
Regarding Bettina's plans:
I think this time I actually have a little bit of insider insight of what is going on here - but of course I will keep my lips shut! ;-) Besides, even with said extra info, I am still at the wild guessing stage here too.
What kind of penny-ante, amateur-hour bullshit is Tona running, letting Bettina go to walk into her battlefield like that, unescorted even? No, we've covered this, she's rushing unprepared with poor leadership for questionable reasons. I also shouldn't expect better of a woman whose higher-ups are generally seagull managers with permanent diarrhea.
These Aegis guys are doing an awful lot of standing around and shooting the shit for people that sold themselves as backup to a lady with an active, bloody, firefight on her hands. This is probably good for them since getting involved in any way beyond accomplishing their own, limited objectives is just bad for their casualties and mission profit and loss statement. That said, I'd be further disappointed in Tona if she doesn't notice how much help these guys are--and to whom--in the debriefing.
I would venture that Aegis Securitechno is a little less filled with sociopaths and a little more concerned with morale. They can also afford to let MSV take the brunt of the firefight. After all, they are in no way beholden to Tona or anyone besides Augustus Alexander.
Sure, she can dress them down at the debriefing. And they can just leave.
They are not her soldiers, and Gus didn't have to send them to "help". As long as they don't directly interfere with the actions of MSV, I would argue that she can't really touch them.
Something something gift horse something mouth... :P
If they never get caught at what they're really doing then sure, but these people are pretty openly conspiring to commit corporate espionage here. That involves no small number of crimes including the conspiracy itself if they actually attempt it. At this point the whole op looks like a dumb idea, and if Tona can throw Augustus under the bus for it somehow (which might even work since it was all his idea) that might give her a bit of political cover.
Mind you, considering he did more or less plan to get everything this far chances are he has responses prepared if Tona tries that. Gotta respect Augustus' ability to do his homework.
@ AC: I was gonna gonna say that no, it's Aegis who is allowing Bettina to stroll into the battlefield unattended - but on second glance, yes, you are right.
Tona even has a more active part here than Aegis: They just ignore Bettina, while Tona released her from the torture table. (Which, don't get me wrong, is of course the decent thing to do from a moral standpoint.)
Either Tona just stopped paying attention to Bettina after that.
(Either in the vain of: "You are free now, do what you want, I don't care." Or she is indeed too busy to notice that that technically her prisoner escapes!)
Or Bettina and Tona... have hatched out a plan together.
In this case, yeah, a friggin' escort should be in order here!
Yeah, that's what I was thinking MR. But we've already covered how Tona is an amazingly bad commander before. TVTropes entries for, "BadBoss" and maybe also, "DickDastardlyStopsToCheat" seem relevant. (URLs mercifully disarmed to allow people a second chance to avoid wasting time diving through TV Tropes.)
Hiding in plain sight. If she had an (armed) escort, then the group becomes an active target. After all, nobody expects poor, tortured, eye-candy, Bettina to do anything sinister...
