Today was a rather eventful day, the glorious Samurai forces of the Emperor managed to destroy numerous enemies of Kusari while preserving our samurai honor and preventing Kusari citizens from being lost.
I began my patrol by taking off from Planet New Tokyo, then did a short patrol around Kyushu, Honshu, New Tokyo and Shikoku. I didn't have any encounters besides a few traders passing through until I got to Shikoku. A strange gunboat-class vessel designated as Long.John-Silver disrupted my trade lane sequence, throwing me out to open space. After a short conversation, I determined that the ship belonged to a Freelancer, who rescued some Farmers Alliance pilots from a wreckage and was merely passing through the area. I told him to release the pilots and leave Kusari space, he was willing to follow both orders and left off torwards Galileo. He also jettisoned some escape pods filled with different sort of pirates, I took the pirates to Fuchu and the Alliance pilots to Battleship Myoko.
As I approached the prison, I noticed a Kishiro transport, the Konpaku.Maru transporting about 5000 Bretonian POWs to Fuchu. For security issues, I decided to escort the vessel, who ferried Hydrocarbons to Planet Honshu afterwards. The journey was safe, we didn't encounter any hostiles on our route. Upon competition, I landed on New Tokyo.
A few hours afterwards, I returned to space. I met several members of the Katana wing, that being Sakabatou and Kanadzuchi, and a reserve pilot Jiro Tachibana. I met them in Kyushu, where Tachibana was fighting a fearsome battle with a Golden Chrysanthemum bomber, piloted by Rin Masaki. Tachibana had the upper hand, our pilot was skilled at the art of combat. Masaki's vessel was destroyed, the Emperor's samurai won the skirmish.
Shortly afterwards, another Golden Chrysanthemum showed up in the system, an obviously higher ranking member, called Lady Kurisho. Her original intentions were unknown, but it quickly turned out that she was looking for her lost underling. Chūjō Hajime Hiroito gained command of the Niigata to handle the situation, while the other Katana-wing pilot left off to address other matters. Since the Chrysanthemum had one of our pilots in captivity too, Chūjō Hiroito arranged a meeting to exchange the escape pods. We met the Lady in deep space, near the trade lanes between the Planet and Tsushima. The hostile gunboat and the Niigata exchanged the prisoners and the Chrysanthemum left the area.
Our next encounter was remarkably weird. We moved back to the Planet to release the formerly captive Naval Forces Pilot, but just as soon as we arrived, we spotted a Synth foods train, designated as Innocentius1, escorted by an Order Guard cruiser, baring the designation Elite. Chūjō Hiroito ordered the cruiser to leave Kusari space, but the Synth Foods captain insisted on his presence, since he said he paid the Order captain to guarantee his safety. Honestly, it was really weird to see a corporate captain holding an Order cruiser on his leash, one that couldn't even stand up for his own defence, since the trader was talking all along. The trader attempted to bribe us to let him pass, insulting our Samurai honor and later even refused to apologise. He also admitted that he was supplying the Macduff with the Military vehicles in his hold, that was the point where I charged my guns up. The trader ignored Chūjō Hiroito's orders to cut his engines, make his cruiser leave, apologise for his insults, release his cargo and pay the fine the Chūjō put up, so we were ordered to destroy the trading vessel. The Order escort cruiser cowardly left off, leaving his trader behind, the vessel was successfully destroyed. Another trader, the Timmylo also engaged our ships during the fight, he claimed to be protecting his business associate. We confronted him after the destruction of the Innocentius, failing to negotiate, we were ordered to destroy the bumblebee-class vessel. It was a quick kill.