Part 26: Mission #22: 27 May 2654, Border Zone

Mission #22: 27 May 2654, Terran Confederation/Empire of Kilrah Border Zone

Previously on Wing Commander: We learned the devastating news about the Goddard colony having been destroyed by an unknown Kilrathi weapon. Orders have been received to follow the Kilrathi fleet containing the new weapon deep into the enemy territory with the ultimate goal of destroying it; final preparations for this are underway. Our shipmates seem to be under considerable stress, which is not helping matters.


Paladin and Knight... maybe Paladin has been in a situation like this before? Honestly, I doubt it.





I think they're both a little on the edge. Let me know if you hear anything else about Goddard, okay?














This sentence seems to just kind of float in the air there...


Uh.


Well, yeah, he kind of told us about it earlier on... Guess he's been telling everyone who'd listen. If that's not a cry for help, I don't know what is.



I think Todd's losing it. He's always been on the edge, but this looks real bad. I'd keep a close eye on him, if he was my wingman. Otherwise, that crazy laugh of his might be the last thing you hear.



Mission Time!

And yet again, so much fun was had in the bar that I'd much rather go out there and fly!







They're sending a convoy to rendezvous with us. But these ships will appear back at the border... right where we had our last scrap with the furballs. So I'm sending wings to retrieve it. You'll return to that jump-point, destroying any Kilrathi that you encounter.









Norse mythology corner: Sleipnir is an eight-legged freakhorse, that the god Odin rides to Hel (in English this word would be spelled with two Ls, of course; and this would be the non-Christian version of it). Fun fact: Wednesday is named after Odin.

We need all the help we can get out here, people. Don't screw up. Each wing will escort their convoy to a jump point in Kilrathi territory. After the Reavers jump, then return to Tiger's Claw. If we're lucky, this mission will bring us an additional benefit. The Kilrathi might think that this is only an extensive border attack---and not realize that we're heading deep into their space. Okay, individual wing assignments.









Rendezvous with your convoy at Nav One. Escort them back to Nav 2, just this side of the hot zone. When they jump clear, break off and return home.


I suppose we'll probably find out at some point what it is...





Ok then, except for that mine belt, this seems relatively straightforward: we go and meet up with the two transport ships (ugh) on the Terran side, and bring them in just over to the Kilrathi side of the mine belt from where they will make a hyperspace to wherever it is they're going.

• Mission Video (Youtube)
  

And indeed, this mission really is as straightforward as we thought. The enemies were not exactly coming in overwhelming numbers at us and even that Jalthi attack at the transports didn't seem like much--this is mostly due to the enemy ships being still relatively far from the transports and Jalthi's extremely weak rear side giving us an easy way to kill them fast.

Other than that, the behaviour of the transports is quite annoying and often there is no choice but to manually select the next nav point and continue rather than wait for them to figure out what they are doing, just make sure you see two jump flashes on your screen later and you're fine. We didn't have problems here with them not following us properly in the first place, but it happened to me at least once during a test run that only one transport followed me to the next nav point. It may be possible to simply go back and pick up the other one but I haven't tried it.

And that strange bug near the end where it seemed like the game decided to invoke the self destruct clause for coming too close to TC but then changing its mind! I would think myself crazy, but you can CLEARLY see two enemies reappearing out of nowhere on the screen!

I suspect this mission may have been included to give us a bit of a breather, considering that we are back in Scimitar for the next couple of missions so it's definitely not going to be quite this easy. The Scimitar reassignment by the way cannot be avoided--there is only one path in SM1, no branching, so this is where you always have to go next.

The killboard:





Next time on Wing Commander
The revenge of the pig!