Part 96: Mission #91: Olympus station, Ghorah Khar system
Mission #91: Olympus station, Ghorah Khar systemPreviously on Wing Commander: A quick trip with Paladin to Olympus station, our temporary base. From here we'll be dealing with the ongoing Ghorah Khar rebellion.
Warning: incoming info-dump!
Three other planets along the Kilrathi-Enigma frontier - N'Tanya, K'arakh, and Shariha - are also rebelling. As each Kilrathi planet joins the Confederation, the Empire is slowly being whittled away from within. The Emperor can't afford to lose any more planets. The political damage will destroy his regime.
One hour later...
So this is a bit silly; we've been fighting humans until recently, and now we have to protect a Kilrathi ship. Oh well, here's the setup: we take the Clydesdale tanker and along the way meet up with a Kilrathi Ralatha; then we need to escort them both to a jump point and return back to the base. This is actually a real escort mission; both ships that you have under your protection CAN be destroyed in it (although neither one is a winning condition, so even if they do get destroyed you will still be able to stay on the winning path). Again, as in previous mission, we do not have a wingman--you may have noticed that in the way wingmen and ship assignments are treated this is already kind of transitioning towards the WC3/4 model.
This mission is actually not particularly problematic. The human tanker (incidentally named TCS Tinderbox) is much more likely to get destroyed than the Ralatha, but as I've said it makes no difference for win/lose. It is also a good mission to try out the full guns on your Crossbow, as at least in the first part, you will be facing slow enemies. There is nothing special to be said, just mind what's going on around the tanker and you should be fine. The Jalkehi also have a good chance of running away if you take too long.
One of the Grikaths is actually an Imperial guard, but since there is only two, there is not much to worry about. One thing you may want to be careful about here is this: it is possible that by the time you approach it, one of the Grikaths will be able to get a torpedo lock on one of your ships--when you come forward to face it, make sure you don't run into it as it means instant death. This actually happened to me a couple of times during test runs.
For the Kamekhs, you can treat them as usual, but definitely move away to the other side of the 'battlefield' as otherwise you may find that one of the capital ships either bumps into you or comes directly in front of you just as you are acquiring the torpedo lock, which is pretty annoying. Other than that, thanks to the shields/armour you don't need to worry about those missiles that they are firing too much.
On the way back you encounter five Drakhri; I would suggest saving your FF missiles for these guys and just unload as soon as you see them as you need to bring their numbers down to something a bomber can more easily manage; otherwise nothing special, they aren't Imperial guards, just ordinary die-in-two-hits Drakhri.
Next time we are back in Sabre and will be flying with the highest number of wingmen yet, more than in any mission so far, if you can believe it!
Oh and also... Major Edmond will have to explain that snippy remark about our mission taking 'too long'!
Current kill total: 91 missions/756 kills
Next time on Wing Commander
