Part 107: Loki System, Vega Sector, Mission 1 (Story)

The way it's presented in the novels, Strakhas are horrifically expensive and so the Kilrathi don't like to use them freely. They might be looking for a cheaper alternative.

Loki System, Vega Sector (Mission 1)

The Behemoth jumps into the Loki System in order to test-fire the superlaser, or whatever the Confederation calls it. Why they had to do this in a front-line system, I have no idea. Well, OK, I sort of do, it's because of what Tolwyn's planning to do next (see the briefing), but his strategy could reasonably be described as "high-risk" if he really isn't sure that it's going to work.



Somebody is looking over the Behemoth specs. Well, that's not an uncommon activity around here of late, I guess...



KIS Hvar'kann, Unknown Location



Ah. That probably isn't good. I think Tolwyn's plan just got a hell of a lot more high-risk. It would be nice for once to be on a carrier that didn't have some kind of traitor on board. If Blair's experience is representative, somewhere in excess of half the ships in the TCN have Kilrathi sympathisers on them. No wonder we're losing the war. As a practical matter, I don't really see what adding this subplot did for the game. Wing Commander II is all about trust and treachery, and the traitor plot is a major part of that. WC3 isn't, though, it's a story about how war gets progressively nastier. This doesn't really add to that; at least, not the way it's presented in game (which is pretty bad), and also not in the way it was originally written and then cut. It could have been written to emphasise the game's main theme, but it wasn't.

Flight Deck, TCS Victory

We all know Tolwyn's a by-the-book sort of character, and, well, certain people's appearance aboard ship is hardly regulation... or at least it wasn't, anyway. Unfortunately, it seems the Admiral's exacting standards don't extend to video compression, because this conversation is blurry as...well, as blurry as certain parts of other Ginger Lynn movies would be if shown in an area with strict censorship laws. Well, OK, it's not that bad moving, but taking screencaps from it is another matter.



: <laughs>
: Don't say a thing.
: Heard you got chewed out by the Admiral himself.
: Yeah, well, I suppose I should wear that as a badge of honour. According to the Admiral [doing her best Tolwyn impression] "Sloppy dress means sloppy work" Well, excuse me for not heading to the cleaners every time after I swap out a part.
: Well, he sticks really close to the regs.
: Yeah, well, after the war is over, I'm gonna make it my mission to loosen the screws on every moving part belonging to guys like him.
: Well, save a screwdriver for me, will you?

But there's something else here, too - this is the scene on the flight deck when you go to play that movie:


Normally, the fighter that's shown on the flight deck here is the fighter you flew in the last mission. But that's not an Arrow. It's something we've not seen since Tamayo - an Excalibur. So it seems that Tolwyn's had one of the first shipments of the new fighters sent out to the Victory - which does make a certain amount of sense, I guess. However, we can't fly them just yet, since new fighters are generally shipped out in pieces, so Rachel and her team are still assembling them.

Barracks

Vaquero's optimistic about our chances for success, or maybe he just feels like he needs to develop some kind of defining characteristic so we don't completely forget about his existence.



: Wanna buy a ticket, sir?
: To what?
: Opening night party at my cantina. People are saying the war is almost over. Once we pull the trigger on that Behemoth-thing, it'll be hasta la vista los gatos.

Rec Room

Just the killboard here. I note that Blair is now only 1 kill behind Maniac and Flash's scores put together.



Mission Briefing
Briefing Room

Hmm. No Eisen. Well, I'm sure the Admiral knows what he's doing. Increasing the variety in the briefing screenshot, if nothing else.



: There's been a change of command, Colonel.
: No disrespect intended, sir, but, why am I not surprised?
: As we move close to deployment of the Behemoth, I've decided to assume command personally. I hold the fate of the Confederation in my hands. Well, let's get down to business, shall we? We are about to enter the Loki system, where we will test the Behemoth on Loki VI, home to a small Kilrathi military base. Loki VI is a unique planet in that it orbits a quasar. As you know, the quasar blocks out all stellar communications. So the base will be unable to call for help, but by the time the Kilrathi send out a ship to investigate, we shall be pulling up just outside downtown Kilrah. But before we can test fire the Behemoth, a little house cleaning is in order. On this mission, I'd like you to sweep out Loki VI's surrounding environs - don't leave any strays out there. We don't need anyone bothering us when we line up the weapon for its first test. Got it?
: Understood, Admiral.

Ahhh, where to start? Quasars are sources of highly intense radio emissions, first detected by radio astronomers in the 1950s. Because they were point-like - that is to say, the emissions came from a small area, like a star, rather than spread over an area, like a galaxy, there was some debate as to their nature for a couple of decades. However, the large redshift in these signals implied they were extremely distant, and nowadays it is widely believed that the radio emissions of a quasar come from the accretion disc (briefly, a body of matter clustered around a massive central object, held in an unstable orbit - meaning it will eventually spiral into the middle - gravitationally) surrounding the supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy.

Quasars are, therefore, not something a planet could be found in orbit of, and even if they were, wouldn't be found somewhere out away from the centre of a galaxy in an area on the front lines of the war (OK, this assumes that hyperspace maps onto the galaxy more or less normally, but it does appear to do so - most of the stars which are near the Sol system also show up in Sol sector). And the starfield certainly wouldn't look normal in such a system (which it does).

Choose your own Blair!
I think the scriptwriters forgot about the interactivity for a while here, since once again there's no dialogue choices (they will come back later), and there's not all that much of a fighter choice either - it's the Arrow or the Hellcat, either of which will work just fine since we're only playing on Ace or Rookie. Wingman is the usual choice of everybody except who we flew with last time, which was Vagabond.