Part 3: Flight Log 3 - Lt. Lance Casey

[Flight Log 3 - Lt. Lance Casey]

Another scramble. I had barely enough time to take off my flight suit and decontaminate from the last mission before I heard the news. Putting my exhaustion aside, I ran to my locker, pulled my suit back on, and headed to the flight deck.



Turns out the bugs had found us before we could get out of the H'rekkah system. Our job was to hold them off until the Midway got to the jump point, so we could get the hell out of here, regroup, and hopefully talk to Confed about what was going on.



As I launched, I got quite a surprise. The bugs had learned our language, and awfully fast. This made me a little nervous. How smart were these things to have learned our entire language in a matter of hours? We barely understand that we're being shot at by a new alien race, and they can already talk to us. Zero and Maestro shared my concern about how fast they picked up on our language.



Again, I grabbed the first available ship, and again, it turned out to be something that I had only ever flied in the simulator missions. The Wasp was equipped with a Solid Rocket Booster, which allowed a brief period of super speed. For this mission, I considered myself lucky to have gotten one, because it allowed me to reach our targets far before they'd ever have a chance to attack the Midway.



Along with our new booster, the Wasp was also equipped with Swarmer missiles, which I fell in love with immediately. After a lock, firing a Swarmer resulted in eight missiles being fired at the target, all of which keep locking on until they run out of fuel or you stop targetting the enemy. The unknown all-purpose fighters that we were up against stood no chance against this new weapon.



Between the new missiles and my Charging Mass Driver, we made short work of the bugs. It was somewhat annoying how much they felt like they needed to show off their new mastery of the English language. They were talking constantly, and even more disturbing, some of the things that they said were very fatalistic. Listening to them talk, I started to think that there would probably be no reasoning with these aliens. But what else is new?



We had done it! The Midway was ready to jump! They called everyone back to the ship, and I fired off one last Swarmer and headed back to the ship. I knew that, given the choice, the captain would decide to save the carrier rather than wait for one straggling Wasp, and I couldn't blame him. So I afterburnered back to the Midway immediately.



OK, so that's not entirely true. I saw one of those unknown fighters hanging around outside of the carrier, so I decided to fire off the last couple of my image recognition missiles to try to take him out. Apparently Stiletto saw and gave me a reminder that I needed to get back to the ship. I'm still not sure how to take her. Sometimes she seems really cool, but other times, she's a cold-hearted bitch. Time will tell, I guess. If I stay alive that long.



Despite how exhausted I was, I still managed to obtain a pretty good score for this one. I had some minor armor damage, but nothing to be concerned about. The important thing was that the Midway was safe, and that I could finally go get some sleep.

H'rekkah 4 *** (you get to hear the bugs talk, see a new plane, and view a short jump point cutscene at the end. All pretty cool things, but nothing plot-critical)
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Cutscene 4
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(can someone please post so I don't quintuple post tomorrow? I'm actually putting some effort into this, so if it sucks for some reason, please let me know why so I can fix it. Also, another reason I did this was to spark some Wing Commander discussion, so feel free to talk about the game or any of the previous ones. I can't imagine getting sick of talking about these games.)