Let's Play Wing Commander 1: McAuliffe Mission 3

I was going to miss flying with Paladin. He sure wasn't flashy, but you knew exactly where he was, and that he had your back. I hadn't realized how valuable that was back in the academy.


For what would be our last mission as a flight pair, the Colonel had us back on escort duty. Confed had a lot of heavy cargo coming in, both to fortify the system, and to resupply before our next jump. Not that the Cats were going to make it easy. They'd turned one of their best loose somewhere in system, and were putting up a massive fight.

Given that, I shouldn't have been surprised that we bumped into a four-ship of Krants halfway to the jump point. Paladin broke right to take the lead, and I burned in underneath to try and catch at least one of the big medium fighters from behind before its pilot could react. After that it just dissolved into a massive furball, fighters going every which way. Paladin drew a lot more than his fair share of fire, which allowed me to knock down most of the enemies.

That issue solved, we pressed on to the jump point. The Drayman transport jumped in right on schedule, and we started for home. That's when Bhurak and his two wingmen (wingcats?) jumped us. I knew Bhurak had me maneuvered, but he was still flying a Salthi. While Paladin rolled in on the wingmen, I went straight for Starkiller. Intel had said that the Kilrathi ace liked to launch his missiles at max range and then close for gun kills. I figured if I closed fast enough, I could negate his maneuvering advantage and bring my Scim's mass drivers to bear faster.

Against a heavier fighter, I would have been toast. As it was, I swear I saw one of Bhurak's rockets just pass my right wing, then I opened up with the mass drivers. Maybe the cat was used to people running from him. Maybe he just didn't expect a human to play chicken. I don't know. What I do know, is that I flew through an expanding glass cloud that used to be a Salthi, and the cat hadn't managed to knock my shields down.

After that it was an easy 2v2 cleanup of the remaining hostiles with Paladin. Then home to the Claw for a bit of R&R before the next jump.

Note: Success in this mission will send players to the Gimle System to fly Raptors. Failure will send players to the Brimstone System, still in Scimitars.