Part 76: Tamayo System, Vega Sector, Mission 2 (Story)

Tamayo System, Vega Sector
Barracks, TCS Victory

After hearing from Rollins that Flash sat out a fight in which a pilot under his command was killed, Colonel Blair goes to confront Major Dillon directly. Meanwhile, the reason for the Kilrathi assault on the Victory becomes clear as troop transports enter the system and it becomes apparent that Admiral Tolwyn has accidentally ordered a carrier group onto the flank of a Kilrathi raiding taskforce. I guess everyone deserves some luck. Eisen directs his air wing to interdict the Kilrathi marines.

Turns out Flash wasn't so much sitting the flight out as sleeping through it. Blair isn't best pleased (and Mark Hamill and Josh Lucas do a pretty good job with this scene, too - overall I think Hamill does a pretty good job of being Christopher Blair, but he's much better with Lucas, Bernard and to some extent Wilson than he is with the rest of the cast):



: What the hell do you think you're doing?!
: I'm waking up now, "sir"
: Didn't you hear that scramble alarm?
: Yeah, it woke me up, for a minute.
: We were under attack, for god's sakes!
: My talents won't be wasted on your little skirmishes.
: Yeah, well people were dying out there, you son-of-a-bitch!
: It's a war. People die all the time.
: You've never seen it, have you?
: Seen what?
: Never seen pilots - people you know - getting fried in their own cockpits.
: I do my part for Confed.
: I don't think I've ever met anyone as... frightened as you.
: You think what you want. I've got my orders.
: Yeah, and you'll find refuge in that just as long as you can.

Rec Room

To calm down after that row, Blair takes a good, long, relaxing bask in the killboard, now restored to its natural order:



Eventually, he realises that Rachel's been giving him a strange look for the last five minutes or so and decides he'd better go over. Fortunately, she's too eager to complain about Flash to make any comment.



: That Excalibur's one hell of a ship. But just like I figured, there's a real dick on the other end of the leash.
: What, he's not letting you do your job?
: These loving hands, I can tweak anything and make it run a little better.
: Of course, and a little grease never hurt.
: Maybe he doesn't need me now, but there's gonna come a time when he's flying a paste-and-glue special, and then see what kind of servicing he gets.
: I bet you'd like to take her for a shakedown spin. You know, you swing by at the right time, you just might find the key in the ignition.

It was suggested that it probably wasn't necessary to put this choice to the vote since the thread's intention to annoy Flash as much as possible was already pretty clear, but I probably won't be able to record the next update out for a day or so anyway so I figure I might as well ask (though I'll be pretty suprised if you don't vote "yes" here - the next conversation choice, on the other hand, won't be a vote, because that one is "do you or don't you want more content" and I think I can guess the answer to that): do our plans to get at Flash extend to twocking* his fighter?

*Offense under English criminal law; from the acronym Taking Without Owners Consent, created to criminalise taking a vehicle, driving it around a bit and then abandoning it somewhere since this doesn't meet the common law definition of theft ("taking with intent to permanently deprive").

What? You want to know what we'll be using his fighter for? Oh well, reasonable I guess...

Mission Briefing
Briefing Room


Captain Eisen gets straight to the point.

: Come in, Colonel. We have to move quickly on this. The only reason we aren't under attack right now is because the Kilrathi have bigger fish to fry. They've targeted Tamayo II - their transports are already moving there. If you and your wing can cut through the fighter cover, we might have a shot at destroying those transports. We’ll need a lot of fire-power and we’ll need it fast.
: Scramble everybody! I want those flight decks emptied!
: Right away, sir.

OK, this time we're with Hobbes and Flint. But...

Choose your own Blair!

In which fighter? Do we take Rachel up on her offer to fly in the Excalibur, or do we instead decide not to steal an experimental fighter from its test pilot and fly it against the Kilrathi, and take the tried and tested Thunderbolt or even the Longbow bomber (which I've never used for this mission before, but it can't be that bad, right?) ?