Part 93: Ariel System, Vega Sector, Mission 3 (Story)

Ariel System, Vega Sector (Mission 3)
TCS Victory

With intercepted Kilrathi communications signalling a hunter-killer taskforce is being formed to look for the Victory, the Terran carrier preprares to retreat from enemy-held space.

Rec Room

We have a nonsensical conversation with Flint due to your care-Blairing. Or maybe due to how many cocktails Flint's already had, I dunno. It's possible, if she's a happy drunk; she does seem a bit, erm, enthusiastic in this conversation.



[recieving drink from bartender]: Thanks. Hello, Colonel. Good to see you.
: You're flying high today.
: Well, word is, things are looking up for the good guys. You know, when I was growing up, my father taught us about other campaigns. Other wars. Weapons keep changing, but we can still learn from the past.
: Yeah?
: Take the Trojan Wars. That conflict also lasted generations.
: That's the one that ended with the Trojan Horse, right?
: According to legend, but the important thing is that it did end.
: It's good to know conflicts like this don't last forever. It just seems like it.

What? No, seriously, what? Precisely what are we supposed to take away from this conversation? Why do they suddenly start talking about the Trojan War, and what do oversized equine traps have to do with anything? Just to round things off, the Trojan War only lasted ten years according to the Iliad, which is only generations for species which have a rather short lifespan. It's not as if there weren't conflicts that did last generations to pick from - the Thirty Years' and Hundred Years' Wars in Europe, the Warring States periods in China and Japan, the Peloponnesian War (27 years) and the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars (26 years) both lasted about a generation...and I'm not even trying to come up with stuff here, just listing things which occur to me. The Terran-Kilrathi War, for what it's worth, has been going on since 2634, which is 35 years. This is your fault, thread - if you hadn't picked all those touchy-feely options we'd have a conversation which actually makes sense and tells us something about Christopher Blair (and Robin Peters, for that matter), with the veteran educating the rookie in war-weary cynicism:

: Thanks. So what's your opinion, Colonel? Are we winning this war, or just digging our own graves?
[sighs]: The war has been going on for a generation. It's not going to end next week, no matter what you hear.
: Well, guys like Lieutenant Rollins? Nobody would listen to them if Confed was more up front about things.
: What's this illusion that HQ has everything worked out?
: So we're on our own up here?
: Everyone for himself now, don't look for a saviour coming from Confed Command.

Here's the killboard. At least it makes sense:



That's also the only conversation between these missions - maybe Blair's as confused as I am - so now it's time for the

Mission Briefing
Briefing Room

After a couple of different briefing shots in the last few missions we're back to normal this time. So let's have Rollins wiping his nose, I'm pretty certain I've not done that one yet.



: Ah. No rest for the weary, Colonel. Let's get to it.
: As you wish, Captain.
: We're packing your bags and getting the hell out of here, Colonel - Intel has a hunch the Kilrathi are on to us. Get this old barge out of this nebula and to the jump point, OK? And let's try to keep a low profile. I hate long goodbyes. Go to it, Colonel.

Choose your own Blair!

No conversations this time around, so it's a question of fighter and wingman. Every wingman except Maniac (since we chose him last time) and every fighter except the Excalibur is available, and you've got until I get back from my grandfather's 80th birthday celebrations (which will be Sunday afternoon/evening GMT) to pick one.

Meanwhile, I'll make some comments.

Missed this one from earlier. Yeah, a lot of WC2's music was great and it's practically all gone - even the "return home" and "launch" themes, which are still there, have been redone and lost a lot of their majesty in the redoing (and the launch one now only appears during scrambles). This might have been copyright issues or something, since the music to the two games was written by different people, but you'd have guessed Origin would have owned all the copyrights. So maybe it was just Chris Roberts doing his "I don't like WC2, change it" thing.


Vaktoths are the fighters most people who played the game will have memories of being the hardest (regular) enemy, due to a quirk of the AI settings on the default difficulty level which meant they were the only fighter which made regular use of their afterburners. With the difficulty slammed all the way up it's the Dralthi, which no longer needs a missile lock to dump its IRs, that's the biggest threat. As for Corvettes, they're mostly a "how patient are you" enemy. Provided you keep one eye on your shield strength indicator and break off to recharge them, there's no reason you should ever take any serious damage against a Kamrani, but if you just go in on it and try to kill it they're likely to be nasty.