Part 1: Flight Log 1 - Lt. Lance Casey

[Flight Log 1 - Lt. Lance Casey]

When I heard the announcement, I ran to the flight deck as fast as I could. I had no idea what was going on, but I know that when they call for all pilots to report in, something bad is happening. I wasn't quite prepared for what was going to happen next, and I was still tired from the last mission, but I grabbed the first available ship and hopped in.



As I launched, I was given my mission description. From everything I had heard, I wasn't surprised to hear that Maniac had found trouble. What did surprise me was that he bit off more than he could chew, and it surprised me even more that a squadron full of "plebes", as he so nicely put it, had to save his ass. The CAG tried to tell us that they had planned a route that would avoid enemies, but I'd learned not to trust promises from the government.



Sure enough, as we got there, Maniac gave us about as much credit as I expected he would. But I wasn't paying attention to him. I was paying attention to the red blips covering my radar. My God, how many of them were there? I had lost count, and I had to remind myself that Maniac and the Black Widows had undoubtedly taken some of them out before we got there.



I had no idea what the enemies were, but the charging mass driver worked as well as it did in the simulators. Even Maniac was "almost impressed", which was about as much of a complement as one could possibly expect from him.



While we knew the aliens had been scanning our communications, it didn't click with me why they'd be doing it until their face popped up on my monitor. What in the hell were these things? They looked like giant bugs, but there had to be more to them than that. Apparently they used the comm scan to try to communicate with us, but I had no idea what they were trying to say.



The communications and video was being fed back into the Midway computers to someone named Finley, and they'd have a chance to analyze them. But that didn't concern me at that moment. What concerned me was the sheer number of ships that they were throwing at us. Upon arriving at our next nav point, there were no aliens to be seen. But I had a feeling that we weren't done with combat in this mission.



Sure enough, at the next NAV point, more ships than I had ever seen in my life were coming at us full force. While they were plentiful, their pilots did not seem to be very well trained, and so we took them down with relative ease. With only a few enemies left, I realized I had yet to use any missiles, so I decided to use them to put a quick end to this fight.



Spraying the area with rapid-fire dumbfire missiles didn't do wonders for my hit percentage, but it was certainly a good way to cause the enemy to undergo evasive maneuvers. And I was more than happy for that, because if he's dodging my shots, he's not shooting me.



As we got back to the Midway, Stiletto managed to hit Maniac with a pretty good zinger. While the Diamondbacks might not be as high profile as the Black Widows, we were perfectly capable of holding our own. My respect for Stiletto went up for this, because I knew she'd be the target of Maniac's practical jokes for weeks because of that comment.



The mission status report showed that my accuracy was still a little off. However, 17 kills against an unknown enemy was nothing to sneeze at. I was sure that my scores would get better as time went on, and even better, Rachel didn't yell at me for bringing her back a damaged ship.


H'rekkah 2 **** (fairly plot heavy mission)
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Cutscene 3
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