This is almost an exact clone of the Dakota 2 mission, just with tougher opposition and a weaker fighter. Pre-mission chatter with Knight and Spirit largely matches what takes place in Dakota 2 as well, save that Spirit warns you that the war is not going well, rather than telling you that things are going well, but we need to remain vigilant.
I couldn’t save Knight. His AI isn’t especially aggressive, which is actually kind of a problem in weaker fighters against tough opposition. In this case, Knight got too much attention that he couldn’t shake before I could shoot everything off his tail. Normally this would be an automatic reload for me, but this mission set is headed down the worst possible future anyway, so screw it. We’re all going to die in the end anyway.
This leads to maybe the oddest Wing Commander bug I’ve ever seen – a zombie wingman in debrief. Usually mission scripting is smart enough to remove a deceased wingman from the debrief. Apparently there’s something wrong with the scripting for this particular mission. It was a bit disconcerting, as can be seen on the video. Oh well.