Part 14: Flight Log 12 - Lt. Lance Casey

[Flight Log 12 - Lt. Lance Casey]

(there's a problem with this mission where the text doesn't fully display on the bottom of the screen, so I'm going to cap what I can)







This was a huge day. Not only was I going to be flying first strike on a bombing mission for the first time in my career, but it was going to be against a carrier. On top of that, we were going to be teaming up with the Kilrathi to destroy it! Maniac and Hawk were pissed about having to fly with Cats, but it didn't bother me so much. I was still in diapers when Blair nuked Kilrah, so I didn't grow up with the prejudice against the Kilrathi that some of the older pilots seemed to have.



When we got to Nav 1, we met the Kilrathi. I had seen them on holovids before, but this was the first time I had actually seen one in person. The greeting we got from them was less than inspiring, but as long as I didn't see them on my six putting a missile up my tailpipe, I could live with it. Hawk certainly didn't appreciate the comment, though.



At Nav 2, we ran into a group of enemy fighters, but for the first time since I got to the Midway, we outnumbered the enemy by a landslide, and defeating them was almost a formality. I could get used to flying with a large battle group, that was for sure. I had to remind myself that the real test was still coming up around the corner.




Arriving at Nav 3, we saw the enemy fleet, and I have to say, I was in shock. I expected the carrier to be big, but honestly, I wasn't prepared for what I saw. The alien carrier easily dwarfed the cruiser, and the cruiser had been one of the biggest ships I had ever flown against before. Thankfully, as we arrived, the Kilrathi informed us that they would handle the carrier. While I was tempted to back them up, I couldn't help but think "Better them than me" and let them go to it. With luck, they'd have it done around the same time I took down the cruiser, and we could all get out of here.



The aliens certainly pulled out all of the stops, including throwing one of their ace pilots in a Devil Ray at me. I had decided to help the fighter wing clear out the alien fighter craft, because not only would it make their life easier, but these ships weren't going anywhere, and it would make my life easier when I made a bombing run. So between the three fighter squadrons and me, even a Devil Ray couldn't stand up to us very long.



With that out of the way, I turned my attention back to the cruiser and began my bombing run. Without fighters harassing me, the destruction of the cruiser simply became a matter of locking on with a torpedo, firing, circling around, and repeating. While it was nice flying a ship with a lot of armor and a vast array of weapons, I still felt more comfortable behind the flight stick of a fighter, though.



I was still working on disabling the engines of the cruiser when I heard the death screams of the crew of the carrier on my comm link. Whatever you might think about their culture, you had to admire the flying ability of the Kilrathi. To take down a carrier before I could take down a cruiser earned them my immediate respect.



Not to be outdone, though, a couple more passes and the cruiser's bugs joined the carrier's in Hell, courtesy of me. Not too bad for my first bombing run outside of flight simulation in the Academy. Even better, although a couple of pilots had to eject, I hadn't heard any reports of any of our pilots being killed. You can't get much more successful than that.



We weren't quite done yet, though. We had to drop the Kilrathi off at Nav 4, and sure enough, there was a squadron of bugs waiting for us. But much like Nav 2, between the vast number of ships we had, they didn't pose much of a problem to our convoy, and we took them down fairly fast.



You can't ever complain about getting a 92% on a mission, especially one where you're flying in a new type of ship. But the real success was the fact that we bought the Midway and Confed some time to figure out where these bugs were coming from, and what we could do about it. Now it was up to the brainiacs upstairs to figure out where to go from here.


T'lan Meth 4 *** (See me fly a bomber for the first time, as well as an alien carrier. I'm not terribly happy with my commentary, though.)
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(this will probably be my last update for a while. When you post three updates in a row and nobody says anything in your thread, it's pretty disheartening (as is 15 updates and 85 replies), and this is the second time this has happened. I'm putting a lot of work into this thread, and if nobody's really reading it, I don't see much of a point in wasting my time continuing with it. Honestly, I'd rather have people telling me why this thread sucks so I could fix it instead of just ignoring it.

Anyway, I'm not saying I'm abandoning it, but I don't see the point in pushing myself to make daily updates if nobody cares, so I'm going to take a break from this for a while. Maybe I'll come back later with renewed enthusiasm. Maybe not.)