Re: Episode Nine: The Approaching Storm
Bixby gathered up the datapad, looking it over. "A backup plan is always a good thing to have, and most of them aren't this detailed," he said, as he looked it over. Without looking up, he answered, "Hardy's correct. I only have a couple of missile mounts on my bird. If you want any sort of wild-weasel missile, I'll be the one to carry them. They aren't a standard package, but I think I can modify a couple of the HARM missiles to broadcast instead of receive."
He continued poring over the information, as he added, "And the enemy DID take casualties when they attacked Earth. It took a destroyer captain doing a suicide dive into their ship...and it was one of the smaller ships...but they aren't invulnerable." He looked up.
"They're just tough as all hell." He set the pad down.
"I like most of what you've got here...but there are a couple of points that should be refined. We won't need a sniper, for the kind of response you're preparing against...Lieutenant Khan is just as capable as the Commander, here, even if he doesn't like to admit it." He looked back at Vance with the same kind of teasing smile. "I've got the in-flight combat logs to back that up, if you'd like..."
Without waiting for Hardy's response, he continued, "Keep your anti-missile load-out, give both Hardy and Khan an assault load-out. If we take two nukes, we're basically taking everything the Ranger's got without requiring them to dismantle some of the ship-to-ship missiles and reconfigure the warheads to fit a Veritech missile. They've both flown through some pretty heavy nuclear winds...we can take one, save it as a last resort...detonate it just outside point-blank range. The energy pulse from the blast would scramble anything the aliens have, as far as we know, to try and detect or track us, and the light from the blast would make visual tracking impossible for at least a minute or two. That's a lot of time to make a Veritech pretty damned hard to find in open space." He nodded, then looked grimly at all three of the combat pilots.
"Edwards is right, though...worse comes to worst, we can NOT lead them back to the Ranger."