Who are they? It was a strange encounter with ships that didn't seem to be marked to any house I know.

Whoever they are, they should not have been this difficult to destroy with 2:1 odds.

I feel I should give better props to my squad. They did everything right today against a very tough and unexpected opponent.

It started with a simple patrol through the outskirts of Vladislav's territory. I never thought I would see a pair of lone asteroid miners blasting rocks that far away from everything. They were in our space, of course, and mining minerals without our permission, so our objective was to destroy. What we didn't know is that the mining ships had fighter escorts. They were powered down so close to the asteroids our scanners didn't detect them at all until they were on their attack approach.

No one in my squad hesitated for even a moment. Ivanov may have gotten me killed in the sims, but he saved all of our skins out in the real world. He pulled off a very daring feign, positioning his ship with as wide a target as possible to the approaching enemy fighters, and jetting his engines on and off. It looked like he was having engine trouble; the two fighters took the bait.

Ivanov pulled off this crazy maneuver that I am not even sure how to describe. He set his fighter on a very erratic spin just before the enemy fighters were on him. Due to the nature of the constant spinning, the enemy ships couldn't get a target lead on his ship when he finally gunned it. Within seconds, he corrected his spin, and was returning fire. The enemy pilots took evasive action, and that allowed my team to get back in a defensive formation.

I thought at that point that it would be a cake walk. Our 5 fighters using a defensive attack pattern against their 2, and they wouldn't last long. That was until one of the mining ships got a missile lock. Who ever heard of an asteroid miner with a missile mod?! At our speed and trajectory, we had no choice but to scatter and hope. Firing off decoy flares left and right, we were all going in different directions in space when the missile exploded. We were lucky it hit one of the flares, but we were completely out of sync with each other, and the two fighters were bearing down on us once again with an attack advantage.

This is where the real test of my comrades' skills came in. In complete chaos, and with no pattern or positioning as we had been trained to fight with, we had to think entirely on our toes all the while not getting in each other's way. The two enemy pilots seemed to thrive in the chaos, constantly keeping us from forming up to regain the advantage. Luckily, it seemed there was only the one missile between the two mining ships. They both jetted off once the missile was fired.

Finally a hit. It seemed like hours, but was only about 90 seconds of chaos before I gunned down one of the two ships. From that point, it was easy to work together and eliminate the second. Comparatively easy, I should say.

To my comrades with me on Fighter Squad 72b, I salute you. We brought our ships home with only minor damage today. It was an accomplishment to have kept all of our machines in one piece.

S. Gat, Sergeant 1st Class