LAST EDITED ON Aug-26-15 AT 11:06 PM (EDT)
 
Gentlemen and/or Ladies,

Please accept my sincere condolences on the death of Bellestes, dread pirate of star system Epsilon Indi. My acquaintance with Bellestes was very brief, consisting as it did only of the following text communications:

Bellestes: That's the ship I'm looking for - the one with the huge haul.

Bellestes: Don't even try to run, Commander, there's no escape.

Bellestes: You're mine now!

Even from those short and pithy text messages, I can tell that he was a person of refined tastes, excellent discernment, and good humor. I'm forced to concede that I must accept some responsibility for his untimely demise - the rich and fragrant treasure trove I was blatant enough to carry into his area of influence (eight tons of biowaste) was an enticement no truly cosmopolitan wayfarer of the spacelanes could reasonably be expected to pass up.

However, I cannot claim complete credit for Bellestes's death. Direct blame for that unhappy state of affairs must rest with the automated defense grid of space station Perry Depot, orbiting the planet Lee (Epsilon Indi II), which vaporized him without my intervention when he opened fire on me within its defensive perimeter...

... and, of course, the ultimate responsibility must lie with Bellestes himself, for being both so stupendously inept as to fail to intercept his quarry and attempt a FrameShift Drive Interdiction at any point in the process before said quarry was dropping out of frameshift anyway preparatory to docking, and so monumentally imbecilic as to follow that failure up by pursuing said quarry to within seven kilometers of an Orbis-class space station and still open fire upon it. As my great-uncle Dennis used to say, you've got to be a real piece of Samsonite to take the matter that far.

I hope that this message finds you well, and that you are recovering from the untimely loss of what I would assume, from circumstantial evidence, to have been your household's chief provider - although empirical evidence suggests that he can't have been that good at it, so perhaps you're better off. Regardless, please accept my condolences once again in what must be a trying personal time, and take what comfort you may in the knowledge that there is some corner of the Perry Depot defense grid that is forever Bellestes.

Yours truly,
Commander Zebulon P. Gryphon
Captain, Trading Vessel Bohica Maru II