I'll add a little bit to what Magoo! said, rather than just echoing him:
Once you have a ship in space, and it's over level 30, it is, as far as I'm concerned, always in RP unless it has just been destroyed and is leaving the system. My own reaction, had I been in that cruiser and seen a pair of freighters bumbling along, would have been to try to hush them up as much as possible. Not to dismiss them OOCly as not being part of the event - they are part of a consistent, real-time Sirius. So is that cruiser of yours.
Also, yep, the reason Johnny and Frederick had sat behind that great big rock was to hide from weapons fire. You appeared to cruise towards it... I slunk around, and into the hole in it, and had started to type again. Unfortunately I'd not stopped completely, drifted out, and got vaped.
