Part 81: Locanda System, Epsilon Sector, Mission 2 (Story)

Locanda System, Epsilon Sector
Rec Room, TCS Victory

As the Victory closes with Kilrathi forces threatening Flint's homeworld of Locanda IV, the ship is abuzz with talk of Kilrathi bioweapons. Meanwhile, Francois Chau and Mark Hamill attempt to prove me wrong about the standard of WCIII's acting with a scene sufficiently wooden it probably floats on water. Chau in particular appears to have been paralyzed from the neck down. And, of course, there's the now traditional "we could only afford one lamp" lighting style.


(I have been resisting the temptation to show actors looking silly in freeze-frame poses, but there's so little else to recommend this scene I gave in.)

: You've been in these parts before, right? Word is the Kilrathi have bled this system pretty dry over the years.
: Locanda's always been hotly contested.
: Few months ago, I heard stories about some backwater system the Kilrathi had under siege for months. But after they cleaned it out, they didn't just move on. They dusted it with some new biological weapon. The whole system's supposedly a total bio-hazmat. Really ugly. No one can get near it. Rumour has it Confed's quarantined that system - nobody even talks about it.
: Nothing the cats do surprises me anymore. But if we do our job right, we won't have to worry about that kind of thing.

This is actually a choice, but I decided that having Blair deny all rumours of biological weapons would be a bit stupid (given the briefing), and you've already voted that he's a bit skeptical of the stuff Confed tells him.

While we're here might as well check out the killboard as it is now. We're beginning to develop a solid lead over Vagabond and Maniac:



Gunnery Control

Hobbes is mystified by reports that the Kilrathi are leaving without a fight - he doesn't believe they're capable of such an action.



: I used to raid these planets.
: Yeah, I know.
: It puzzles me, these reports that the Kilrathi are... surrendering the system. Surrender - though I know the word in your language, I still fail in truly grasping it. I cannot guess at all what my one-time comrades might do, and Kilrathi are most dangerous when they are unpredictable.

Mission Briefing
Briefing Room

Intelligence believes (maybe they were listening to Cobra) that the Kilrathi are indeed planning to make an attack on Locanda IV with biological weapons. Following the Sr-90 biocide attacks on Sirius and Warsaw it's not exactly news that the cats are happy to wipe out all life on a planet, of course.



: Let's get started, Colonel.
: Yes, sir.
: We've still got more questions than answers on Kilrathi operations here. Some of the Kilrathi forces are pulling out, though other elements are closing in on Locanda IV. Intel thinks they've got warheads tipped with a new kind of bio-weapon, capable of spreading a pandemic over the whole planet within minutes. If Intel's correct, the half-life of this virus is over 500 years. Colonel, we can't let a single warhead slip through and strike the planet. If the warhead's bio, the civilians on Locanda IV will... well, they'll die slow deaths from a ravaging disease, and all we'll be able to do is pull out of here as fast as we can. Good luck, son.

Oh, and since I forgot her last update:

Lieutenant Laurel Buckley

Callsign: Cobra
Played by: BJ Jefferson
Current role: Pilot, 36th Fighter Wing, TCS Victory
Previously: She's not telling. The Victory's flight wing is possibly her first assingment as a pilot.

Cobra is an interesting if somewhat under-used character. Fanatically hostile towards the Kilrathi, and fairly hostile towards everyone else. It's never entirely clear whether she dislikes Blair just because of his friendship with Hobbes, or if she's just defensive to the point of hostility around anyone she doesn't know well, since you only see her in conversation with others very rarely (I think once, with Rollins). When we get to learn more of her background, you'll see there's good reasons for that to be either way. The problem is, we don't find that out until very late in the plot afrer which there's not much time left to develop her any further, so Cobra is just an angry enigma for most of the game. I think in general that WC3 could have done with fewer characters each of whom got more development. Vaquero and Flash could both probably have been lost without really negatively impacting the story, and if that time had been spent on Cobra, Flint and Vagabond the overall story would have been richer. Of course, there's a problem with the decreased number of wingmen, but they got around that easily enough in the next game by adding redshirts, so I don't see why it couldn't have been done here.

As a wingman, she's...functional but unexceptional. Doesn't eject often, usually follows orders, never seems to get particularly many kills. I rarely use her, to be honest, playing the game by myself my most common wingman picks are Flint, Vagabond and Maniac, and Hobbes, Cobra, Vaquero and Flash get used more sparingly. The strategy guide gives her these stats, which suggests that under low-morale conditions she's probably even more unreliable than Maniac is:

Choose your own Blair!

I could have given you the Vagabond conversation choice, but I decided that "Is Blair actually stupid enough to deny all knowledge of Kilrathi bioweapons when we had a conversation about them last mission" wasn't really much of a question. So it's a case of fighter and wingman. The only wingmen we've not flown with yet are Vaquero and Flash, and as for fighters, the Arrow, Hellcat and Thunderbolt are all available (and while I've never tried to do this mission in a Hellcat, it's not sufficiently hard that I think it'd be a problem).