Hey! Maniac is out of sickbay! Let’s go talk to him. Oh, you can’t wait to fly with us? That’s great… just great. Oh, you have to go back to sickbay soon. That’s a real shame. Yeah. Sure, I’ll have one more drink with you. See you around. Hope you get back on the flying roster soon (on another ship. Preferably a freighter flying rubber dog shit out of New Hong Kong).
I did something a bit different in my playthrough for this mission. After a bunch of failed attempts, I finally gave up doing it the “correct” way, and jumped to Nav 3 first, then back to Nav 1, followed by Nav 2. The problem is that the Drayman-class transport gets destroyed too easily, so picking off the Salthi at Nav 3 reduces how much fighting you have to do with the Drayman around. It still requires some pretty aggressive flying to keep the Krants and Dralthi waves busy, but it’s at least a little more manageable.
Nav 4 features the TCS Austin, but the Austin jumps out pretty quickly and is never under much threat.
After this it’s on to another system, and a top secret assignment!