An account by J M Kemp, Deputy Station Manager for the Solmine Corporation.

When the alarm first sounded I was at my desk in the station management offices. I immediately got up and ran to the Space Traffic Control room, which was next door.

On arriving I asked "what's going on?" and got the reply "Pirates, sir, four of them" I then asked "Have you called the Navy?" to which I received a reply in the negative. I ordered the STC officer on duty to send a distress signal immediately. This was done at .075/03, some 30 seconds after the alarm was sounded. I also gave my consent should the civil power wish to turn on the defensive gun turrets at .075/04.

The pirate vessels engaged the station defences immediately and gun turret number 4 jammed. None of the fire from the gun turrets was effective. I reported this to the civil power at that point. Before the jammed turret could be brought back online for diagnostics all of the turrets were disabled by pirate fire.

At this point the lead pirate ship identified itself as the SS Extreme Prejudice and queried why we had been shooting at it. I responded that we had fired in self defence and requested that they desist from boarding. There was no reply.

During this time I was also co-ordinating the blocking of all lifts at the outer deck of the station by placing an empty crate between the doors to prevent them closing and thereby the lifts from moving. This was done to both deny use of the lifts to the pirates and to reduce the chances of them being damaged by combat (either from fighting inside the lift or from the cables being severed and the lift dropping to the bottom of the shaft).

The first pirate shuttle entered the docking bay at .075/09 and the first pirate entered the station through cargo access lift 45 at .075/11 at which point the final lift was secured.

At this time I checked with Lt Bishop & Inspector Young that the local defence plan for sector 5 had been implemented. The police had almost completed directing the civilians to the designated safety zone. The police guard on the bank was also in place. I spoke to Lt Bishop and briefly asked whether his marines were in place to prevent pirates from entering Sector 5 via either the lift shaft or the maintenance hatch. He assured me that this wasn't a problem and offered that he was worried about the airlock and the bank. I told him not to worry about either as I was monitoring the pirates' shuttle activity and the bank was being guarded by the Police. I then told him that all he needed to do was to stick to the plan and prevent the pirates from coming up the spoke. He demurred but as he was not under my direct command there was little I could do.

At .075/17 the first pirates made it onto the inner deck of Sector 5.

Less than 1 minute had passed since I had spoken to Lt Bishop. Due entirely to his poor leadership three of the Marines became casualties before any of the pirates were hit. As a former Marine officer I immediately saw what action was required and urged Lt Bishop in the strongest terms to take it. Prompt action followed lead by a Marine Corporal which resulted in the pirates being denied the use of the maintenance. shaft. However it was apparent that Sector 5 could not be held by the remainder of Lt Bishop's squad, especially since both the Sgt and Corporal had become casualties. At .075/21 I put in a formal complaint to the civil power about Lt Bishop's dereliction of duty.

During the firefight he was in the bank.

Given the proximity of the pirates and the fact that there were no defending marines between us and them the Station Manager and I decided to evacuate Space Traffic Control. We also discovered that the doors to the safety air interlocks between sectors 5 & 6 had been welded shut by the construction crew. We decided that the best course of action was to move down to the outer deck as rapidly as possible with a view to joining the Police guarding the bank.

During our move there was some discussion on the command net about abandoning Sector 5 as no help would be available quickly enough to make a difference. I concurred but asked Mr Reeve to inform the station management before doing so.

At .075/24 I passed Lt Bishop in the corridor and asked what he planned to do next. He didn't have a plan. I urged him to avoid further unnecessary casualties before carrying on towards the Bank. On arrival I found that Inspector Young had fixed some demolition charges to detonate should the vault door be opened and was preparing to leave. It appeared that a decision to abandon Sector 5 had been taken without the station management being informed.

The construction workers weren't keen to give up without a fight and wanted to defend the bank. The Station Manager agreed that they could do this if they wished. We then left Sector 5, with the 10 strong police serial, via the airlock on the inner deck at .075/30 and moved along the inside circumference of the station.

We met a party of 8 Team 49 miners with two plasmatic borers coming out of the airlock on Sector 4 at .075/36. They told us that they were planning to move up the spoke and attempt to gain access to a pirate ship through its hull by jumping on a shuttle. I thought that they were crazy but told them to carry on as it would add to the confusion.

During the move round I liaised with the chief of police on the situation in Sector 1. We devised a plan in concert with some Team 49 miners to attack the pirates moving through Sector 2 towards Sector 1.

The Police in Sector 1 would defend as best they could and we would move in to attack them from behind via the airlock in Sector 2. The Station Manager & STC techs would continue round to the Sector 1 airlock.

Before we got to the Sector 2 airlock the Chief of Police discovered that an archaeological find left in his office for carriage to an appropriate authority could be used to disrupt all powered equipment. He dashed forwards with it to the store-room next to the air interlock and activated the device. This stopped the pirates dead and caused them some casualties.

We proceeded through to the Sector 1 airlock rather than engage the pirates on our own as they outnumbered us and we would have been fighting in an enclosed space on leaving the airlock. During this time I observed two of the four pirate vessels leaving the station orbit. I re-entered the station at .075/51 and moved rapidly into Sector 8 towards Sector 5 to investigate the hull breach alarm that had sounded from there.

The pirates in Sector 8 had begun to withdraw when I started to move through it. The ASIA miners took advantage of this and threw grenades at the departing pirates causing some casualties. My rapid advance caught up with the departing rear-guard (who were evacuating casualties). I shot and disabled one of this party and covered the corridor from a doorway. Unfortunately the pirates decided that I was too great a threat and three of them stopped to engage me. I traded shots but came off worst suffering a hit to the suit systems. I lost consciousness around .075/60.

The next thing I knew was that a Team 49 medic revived me amongst a crowd of surrendered pirates. In all we took 42 prisoners, plus the pirate I hit with my SCA1.

In the post-incident search to determine what the pirates had taken it became apparent that the bank vault was empty and that a plasmatic borer had been used to breach the hull. The funds have not as yet been recovered (as at .075/300) and I suspect that they were launched into space.

James Kemp

Deputy Station Manager

Prosperity Station