It felt good to be back in the cockpit of a Raptor again. Even more so on a mission like this, trying to help save lives, not just trash some Kilrathi base. Not that the cats seemed to share that sentiment. Despite our primary mission in the Dakota system being a humanitarian one, the cats weren’t going to pass up an opportunity to increase the human bodycount. Not even a hospital ship was safe.
“Knight! We’ve got incoming Salthi! You take the trailer, I’ll hit the lead!” In the Raptor, I didn’t have to worry so much about a few laser hits. The first of the four Salthis vanished under a full gun volley. The second didn’t last much longer. But I let the third get on my tail for too long, and got pretty banged up. By the time I bagged the third, Knight had polished off the trailer, and the Drayman was little the worse for wear.
The Krants waiting at the rendezvous point were a bit more difficult. I called Fox 4 and popped the Raptor’s single Iffy, only to watch the missile race off for some target other than the Krant I had locked onto. It figured. I let Knight engage one of the trailers, and focused on trying to keep the big Kilrathi medium fighters from chewing up the Drayman too badly.
Moving on to pick up the inbound transport, we found a wing of Jalthi waiting for us. This was where things got a little difficult. Trying to keep the heavy fighters away from the fragile Drayman was difficult enough, even worse considering I could only count on Knight to tie up one enemy at a time. Somehow we made it through.
It wasn’t a pretty mission, but it worked. The medical transport got out, and the one carrying the vaccine got in. It was nice to actually feel good about accomplishing something other than just killing a few furballs for a change.