Part 87: Blackmane System, Vega Sector, Mission 3 (Story)

Blackmane System, Vega Sector
TCS Victory

Just the one conversation before this mission. Even the scriptwriters thought Blackmane was kind of dull, I guess. It gets more interesting after the next jump.

Gunnery Control


(in which Ilanin attempts to smooth out video compression artifacts without making Flint look like an impressionist painting. I think it almost worked).

: Feels good, what we've been doing here.
: Why, are the stakes less personal in this system?
: I hate to admit it. Those are real people down there, just as real as the people I knew back in Locanda system. Can't say they're as real to me, though. I just don't have an image of them in my mind.
: You'd burn out very quickly, if you did.
: Yeah, sometimes I hate myself because I actually feel lucky there is a war.
: I knew... I mean, I know someone who feels that way. She lives to fight the good fight.
: For me, it's the flying. I love the purity... nothing holding me back.
: Only pilots know that feeling.

If we'd grounded Flint after the stunt she pulled in Locanda, she'd have requested reinstatement to the flight roster here and that would have been a dialogue choice (though it's a fake one, because the options are "reinstate her" and "pass the buck to Eisen" - and Eisen reinstates her and chews you out for passing the buck).

We're not exactly wrapping up Flint's story here - there's more to come - but it's a partial bit of closure (more or less confirmation that she has, in fact, got her head straight and not grounding her isn't going to bite us in the ass). Flint's learning to cope with casualties (Blair's statement here is much kinder than "It's war, people die all the time", but it has the same meaning), to deal with the war being something other than a reason to be allowed to fly starfighters. (That said, I've always thought it a slightly odd line..."nothing holding me back" from the most cautious, by-the-book officer on the Victory?).

The other thing to note in this conversation, of course, is Blair referring to Angel in the past tense and then catching himself. I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to suggest; that he's partly accepted that she's probably dead (despite not officially even being listed as missing) and is partly in denial, maybe? I guess you might also note how Flint brings Angel to mind for Blair, but given what we know about her (flies heavy fighters and bombers by preference, cautious and analytical when not flipping out over biomissiles being fired at her homeworld) it's not suprising.

Rec Room

Just the killboard here, with the usual ten extra kills for me. If I were less lazy I would photoshop this to show the right number, but if I were less lazy...well, many things would be different. More updates, for a start. Though I think editing audio is a bit of a special case - it gets special loathing because I can't listen to music while I'm doing it, which is just unreasonable.



Mission Briefing
Briefing Room

This briefing starts rather abruptly. This is because the introduction to the briefing that would normally play is either commending us for putting Flint back on the roster or criticising us for passing the buck:

: Ah, Colonel! Good call putting Flint back on the roster. We need every good pilot we can get. I think she's got her head back on straight. Well, let's get started.
or
: Colonel, I've put Flint back on the roster. I'm not really impressed with how you passed the buck. Frankly, I think she's got her head back on straight. Let's get started.

Since neither of these would make much sense in our situation, where we didn't suspend her in the first place, the game just skips the intro and goes straight to the map bit of the briefing. I guess Blair showed up late and Eisen started without him or something (in honour of which, I have chosen a frame without Blair in it to set the scene). It's a pretty short briefing, anyway:



: We've got a weapons convoy coming in. If we can get it through the blockade, the base will have a chance at defending itself. We must protect this convoy at all costs.

Choose your own Blair!

No conversation choice here (since you didn't ground Flint), so it's just a case of fighter and wingman. I'm toying with telling you before each mission what the opposition actually is, so as to give you a better idea of which fighter to pick (and then just vote Hellcat anyway because you're Insert Name Here and thus a jerk), but then again, nobody playing through each mission would actually know that before it happened. Any opinions? Anyway, this time around you've got a choice from all the wingmen except Maniac (since we flew with him last time) and the Arrow, Hellcat and Thunderbolt, probably, I have no real idea how I'd go about this in a Hellcat, though if you don't mind the update taking ages to appear (yet again) I guess I can experiment a bit.