Rho Wing (Brimstone System)

Rho Wing
Fighter	Scimitar
Wingmen	Todd Marshall
Objectives	Destroy Kilrathi Convoy
Previous	Theta Wing (Brimstone System)
Next	Gamma Wing (Dakota System) (Win Series) Eta Wing (Port Hedland System) (Lose Series)

Mission Layout

• Between the Tiger's Claw and Nav 1
  • 2 Jalthi
• Nav 1
  • Wave 1
    • 4 Krant led by Khajja nar Ja'targk
    • 1 Dorkir-Class Transport
  • Wave 2
    • 2 Krant

The Memoirs of Lieutenant Colonel Carl T. LaFong

Maniac and I headed to Nav 1 to take out a Dorkir sport and her fighter escort. Confederation warships were pounding the Kilrathi bases in Brimstone, and stopping their freighters from delivering any new supplies was vital.

I kept thinking of Iceman's advice to hit them from the rear and Bossman's suggestion to take out the fighter wings before going after the larger Kilrathi ships. I was also concerned with Maniac flying on my wing, when he called out that two bogies had appeared.

"How did Intel miss these guys?" I said to myself. "We aren't even close to the Dorkir yet." In fact, we were still 42,000 kilometers from the capital ship and I doubted these guys were an escort. Just dumb luck that they'd found us.

They were Jalthi and packed a lot of firepower. A straight-on approach was out as we faced six neutron guns and six laser cannons from only two enemy ships. "Break and attack!" I screamed at Maniac.

I ran the throttle up to 360 KPS and kept my thumb on the afterburner switch. I knew we had to steer clear of all those guns and get to their rear shields. The first shots of the battle rocketed toward. It looked like a whole wing of Salthi were shooting, but these were much more powerful neutrons.

I hit the afterburners, rolled right, and went into a hard left turn. It was the quickest way to slide above them. Then I yanked the stick right and almost slammed right into the enemy ships. I kept jockeying for position, and almost collided two more times. Finally I figured out a pattern to their movements and slowed down when they approached from either side, then hit the afterburners to stay on their rear end when they raced away. That did it. Maniac dropped one with his mass drivers, while I took down the shields and weakened the armor with guns and finished off the last enemy with a Javelin. Missiles alone wouldn't have done the job unless I'd used my entire inventory on one ship.

When we reached the Dorkir, four Krant were protecting her. I told Maniac to attack my target when the four enemy ships spotted us and turned to defend the target. Weakest on the left and right, I knew an afterburner slide would put me into position to inflict heavy damage on more than one plane. If I locked onto the lead target, Maniac would stay with him and I could then attack the rest of the wing from the rear.

When 3000 meters separated us, I turned about 20 degrees to the left and stayed on my afterburners. At 1500 meters I turned hard to the right, bringing my nose around to target the lead Krant. While sliding, I locked onto the target and held down the fire key until my blaster power was gone. I knew I'd scored more than once, but didn't know how many ships I'd hit. As the wing raced past on my right, I spun around and followed, again hitting the afterburners.

Maniac had the locked target, so I concentrated on the others. I wasn't even thinking about the Dorkir yet. The tailing Krant turned to attack me head on, but a dumb-fire missile blasted his fore shield before he completed the maneuver. It was Khajja. Six shots from the mass driver finished him. Maniac yelled that he'd blown up his target. I ordered him to break and attack so we'd be one-on-one with the last two Krant.

I had taken some damage before we finished off the last of the escort wing with our Gatlings. I swung around to approach the Dorkir from the rear. At 2000 meters I launched my last Dart and hit backspace to stop and keep my position. As soon as the Dart hit, I slammed the throttle to full and jumped on the fire button when I hit 1500 meters. I broke right at 1000 meters and hit the afterburners to avoid the turreted lasers. After repeating the maneuver two more times, the Dorkir was orbiting Vega as a thousand shards of metal and tyrilium.

We'd completed the objective and I was proud. Two Jalthi, four Krant and a Dorkir were the toughest assignment I'd pulled so far. Two more Krant tried to slow us up on the way to the Tiger's Claw, but our ships had made repairs and regenerated shields. It wasn't that tough a fight, although Maniac reported damage to his computer system before we finished. I was ready to get away from Brimstone.