Harper here,

Haven't been around to submit anything for a while, but I did enjoy my christmas holidays, thanks for askin'.
My first day back in space wasn't quite a piece o' cake though, not exactly... I was lucky enough to run into a whole bunch of these pirate scumbags, who made it a lot harder than it shoulda been.

I know you want the details, so I'll start off with a list of all the ones I found sitting around at the California gate in New York... and 'bout three of these only joined in later.

Appleton - Junker Salvager (escaped)
Clown - Cutlass bomber (escaped)
Deep.Impact - Wasupu VHF (escaped)
Fantasme` - Roc bomber (escaped)
Johnny.Storm - Marauder Heavy fighter (escaped)
Mord'Sith - Wasupu VHF (escaped)
Mr.Havoc - Wasupu VHF? (escaped)
Rosenheim - Roc bomber (escaped)
Suncica - Havoc Mk II bomber (dead)
VoPol - Eclipse bomber (dead)
|\/\/|_UA2 - Shiptype unknown (dead)

Well, sadly they weren't so interested in payin' their fines for piracy, not to mention getting arrested for assault, so I decided to do it the hard way and opened fire on 'em. Now, I'll tell ye it ain't easy dodging with at least five of 'em on your arse constantly, but I did manage to poke a few holes in their bombers when they were gettin' careless.

Backup from the secondary fleet was rarely more useful than firecrackers, a siege cruiser did manage to take out one pirate though before going down in a massive fireball... By the time they started robbin' bypassing ships for nanobots, and a junker in one of these fat gunboats felt the need to shoot at me too, I got a little tired of the whole charade and dodged my way back to West Point.

Turned out to be an hour overall and felt like two, I managed to slip away towards Pennsylvania, where I got some direly needed repairs and a good cup o' Sunbucks coffee. Of course, I couldn't just let 'em go like that, so I returned to West Point....

I found about three of 'em left there, fighting a lone Reaver... I'm no fan o' these, but as long as she didn't shoot me, I'll tell ye I was pretty happy to get some fire support against these muppets. One of 'em, 'Suncica' was actually crazy enough to turn himself into toast in the sun after he had all his equipment trashed... fits the name at least, I s'pose. Finally, I chased down and destroyed the last one I could find, VoPol, in California's northern asteroid field.

I'll be signing off for today,

Douglas Harper

P.S: Judging by their behaviour, fightin' and err... English, it wouldn't surprise me if these came straight from some training camp for Indians.