Part 138: Kilrah System, Kilrah Sector, Mission 1 (Story)

Kilrah System, Kilrah Sector
KIS Hvar'kann

Prince Thrakhath readies his fleet for the final blow against the Terran Confederation.





: How long?
: The assault on the Terran home system commences in 48 hours.
: Victory, Melek… it smells sweet… Although combat is never predictable, I do hope for one last encounter with The Heart of the Tiger. It will make our triumph all the more complete…


Freya System, Vega Sector

The TCS Victory joins the Confederation fleet staging in Freya. Wait, what? Two missions ago Eisen said they were staging in Hyperion, but it's apparent the Victory (and therefore the rest of the Confederation's Third Fleet) must be in Freya, since not only have we not seen it jump, but we're going to launch fighters that take a jump point to Kilrah, and the only one of those we know about is in Freya.



: Colonel Blair, report to the briefing room. Colonel Blair, report to the briefing room.

Needless to say, this is something of a major plothole; not just because it contradicts Eisen's earlier statement, but also because it beggars belief that the Kilrathi wouldn't have the jump point from Freya to Kilrah heavily blockaded (you've just seen how many ships they have in Kilrah) if there was a large Confederation fleet on the other side. Confed needs to distract attention away from the Freya system. This is not conventionally done by concentrating the majority of your battlefleet strength there.

Flight Control, TCS Victory



: Colonel… I’d just like to take this opportunity to say… at first, I wasn’t so sure about your assignment to the Victory. But I’m glad you came on board. It’s been an honour and a privilege serving with you.
: That goes both ways, Captain.
: The Temblor Bomb still seems like a long shot. But from what I’ve seen, you’re the one man who can do what has to be done.
: I just hope I can justify that faith, sir.
: You will. Shall we?
: [nods and sighs]

We don't get the chance to check the kill-board after this - under the circumstances, I guess it makes sense that you're forced to enter the briefing room - and after you leave, all you can do is set loadout and launch. Speaking of which...

Mission Briefing
Briefing Room



: Well, gentlemen, our goal is simple: Termination of the Kilrathi homeworld via the T-Bomb. And since we can’t jump the entire fleet into Kilrah, we’ve equipped your Excalibur with Confed’s first attempt at truly impenetrable cloaking technology. The shroud device seems effective at jamming their tracking monitors, but it causes severe drain on your ship’s systems. It’ll be useless after you deliver the payload – you’ll need all your power just to get out of there. Now, the first step is to assemble a quick-strike team – up to three wingmen -penetrate the Kilrah system, where you’ll stage at a clandestine refuelling depot set up by Covert Ops. Due to its mass, sensitive guidance suite, and the risk of flying with it, the T-Bomb has already been secreted into the system. Once you load it here, at your second stop, you’ll have just one target. Successful insertion will require the ultimate in navigational skills. As we’ve been told, Confed holds that destruction of the Kilrathi homeworld will badly cripple their war effort. And our timing may be just right, since Intel believes much of the enemy fleet is being outfitted in the shipyards surrounding their homeworld. Colonel, if all goes well – you will not return to the Victory until you’ve succeeded with the entire operation.
: This is my only briefing then, sir?
: An old comrade of yours will be taking over.
: Hello again, laddie. I know Captain Eisen has given you a thorough briefing, but you’ll find a few more messages from yours truly on the other side of the jump point. I may not be flying on your wing like times past, but I’m still with you – you can count on that.
: Colonel, good luck.
: Thank you, sir.

And there, finally, is the thing Thrakhath doesn't know, the thing that makes a complete mess of his strategy. The Confederation has a fighter-sized cloak, at last - and unlike the Kilrathi, they've also figured out how to mount it on a heavy fighter without compromising the fighter's capabilities. Thrakhath knows about the Temblor Bomb, and his response is to hold the Imperial Navy back around Kilrah until he's ready to launch an offensive that will reach Earth so quickly he thinks the Confederation will be forced onto the defensive with everything they have and not be able to launch a strike at the homeworld (and he's right, since you get the Proxima mission if you screw up this one). But what he's not counted on is that his defensive stance at Kilrah isn't anywhere near the sure thing he thinks it is, since Confed now has a fighter that could slip through the Kilrathi blockade. If he had known, he'd have been better off launching his offensive as soon as possible; defeating the Confederation before its final strike could be readied. The TCN doesn't have the conventional forces available to hold the Kilrathi back, even if Thrakhath heads out with less than his entire fleet.

(The fact that this is the second overwhelming force the Kilrathi have pulled out of their arses in six months shall be gently glossed over. If we consider Fleet Action (which, again, WC3 references in its manual, so we can't sensibly not do so) and WC3, then essentially the capital ships are the wrong shape (they ought to be throwing the other seven Hakaga supercarriers at us, now they've finished building/repairing) but the superiority is about right. The problem is the number of fighters and, especially, pilots that they have - they couldn't deploy their entire carrier force in Fleet Action due to a pilot shortage, and their losses at Sirius and Earth were even worse than the Terran ones.)

Choose your own Blair!
No conversation choices, and we're locked into the Excalibur for what ought to be fairly obvious reasons (it's the fighter the cloaking device and the Temblor bomb have been designed for). But for this strike against Kilrah we're taking a full flight of four Excaliburs (it's called Lancelot Flight in the novel), so there's three wingmen to pick (and then I'll have to play the previous mission a *third* time - once for the LP video, once to record the intermission cutscenes, and once to choose the correct wingmen). For those of you who care, the canon choice is Maniac, Flint and Vagabond.

This is also actually the last choice in Wing Commander III, since you're obviously limited to the wingmen you've already got with you for the remaining Kilrah missions, and Origin apparently didn't feel like recording a whole bunch of "if you took this wingman to Kilrah with you" conversations, so we'll not have any decisions there either. It won't be quite the last choice in this thread though, for reasons that you might be able to guess if you think ahead a bit.