Sorry FalseBill, I was very remiss in never getting to review this. At the time, my internet connection was bad. However, with the Stolen Toys week in full swing as part of the TToT14, it put me in mind that you did me the great honour of taking on my Kestrel gang. And boys did you ever. And I have to say, colour me impressed - first the zany story, the reasoning for the use of the Grasshopper, and the mad antics of the captain, then measured out by the gravity of what happened to the Kingfisher. You've got lots of the characteristics in play of the characters I love and do a brilliant job of depicting them as well as showing them to be beyond mere cardboard cutouts. A fantastic job. I also love the attention to detail, with the breadth and use of Kestrel's ensemble characters - you've got Becca, Nujinx, Gunny, Duffy, Berkley, and Kes the bust. Terrific. Bloody terrific. Honestly, I'm impressed by the attention to detail and of course the further shout out to Steff's piece with the broken glass. Honestly, I couldn't be happier. I made a small edit to the story however ... I added the Kestrel badge, so it joins the Kestrel stable of stories. Thank you again, FalseBill, for this generous and genuinely pleasing gift of a piece.

Ah, McGregor the insane.

And first of all, a quick shout-out to SLWalker; glad to see some resolution to her story. Was not expecting McGregor to have a tape recorder. And that scene in the bar, I think that was probably the most sober, straightforward confrontation I've seen for him, and a showing of his true character that was very well done.

Otherwise, everywhere else, he was, naturally, all over the place. Kev, this character is already hard to keep pace with, and FalseBill, you did a marvelous job keeping him very lively, odd, unstable, and very unpredictable. I'm still very new to the Kestrel universe, so I'm by no means at an expert level for it, but this seems to be a running trend for this man.

The Kingfisher was tragic, and again we see a very startlingly serious side of McGregor. I think even on the bridge, while he's making a joke about marshmallows he's still angry and hurt inside, doing what he can to not show it outside of his own personal realm. His incredibly unorthodox plan against the Ambassador was so expertly executed, it's hard to imagine that this man seems to be such an odd duck and maybe even drunk at any given hour of the day.

Which, as an aside - AWESOME idea giving a bunch of pirates an Ambassador-class ship. The irony there was pretty awesome.

And please, Kestrel didn't NEED the 'Fleet there, lol. It was awesome to see another possible sister ship (Falcon) getting in on some of the action of getting payback for the Kingfisher, too.

Great work on this one. You did a great job with the Kestrel and her crew.

Author's Response: Well Thank you for taking the time to read and review TemplarSola. The bar scene, I'll freely admit I did have to do a couple of re-writes and in the end I did need some helpful suggestion from SLWalker to get it right, so indeed she deserves credit as well. I'm glad you liked the ideas and the story.