Patricio Brilione

[pbrione]

Patricio Brilione stared wistfully out of the window, to catch one last glimpse of Planet Crete before the smuggler ship carried him away from his homeland for the last time...


"Where did we all go wrong?" he pondered, "Back on Earth the Hispanic people had lived side by side with the other nations, and the Sleeper Ship Hispania had been respected as an equal by their Alliance brothers. But now - here we were, living a life on the fringes of Sirius, scraping a living as petty criminals. How had it ever come to this? How quickly the Corsairs had forgotton their civilized ancestry. And how long would it be before they finally reclaimed their rightful place alongside the other Houses of Sirius?"


Born on Crete and raised in a poor family of independent corsairs, he was forced to flee Omicron Gamma along with his brother Pablo at the age of only 9, when their parents were murdered in an honour killing by members of the Benitez family whom they had angered.

A passing trade ship took them as far as Freeport 9, where he lived for 8 years, raised by a kind hearted family of Zoners. He was happy there, and life aboard the Freeport was peaceful and comfortable, but lacked the excitement and sense of adventure that every young boy craves. Whilst Pablo stayed behind on the Freeport, by the time he was 17 Patricio had made up his mind to return to his homeland, and to rejoin his fellow Corsairs.

Having been exposed to the civilized and peaceful ways of the Zoners, however, he found reintegrating himself into his native culture to be more difficult than he had excpected. With every raid and piracy mission he was sent on, he grew steadily more and more revolted by the culture of violence and cruelty which seemed to prevail in what, until now, he had considered his friends and brothers. He started to grow more reluctant in his attacks against traders, sometimes even deliberately allowing them to escape, something which his Corsair brothers perceived as signs of weakness, which they mocked him for. Finally, less than two years after his return to Crete, he resolved himself to abandon piracy forever, and to seek out a better way of life. When the orders came through for yet another raid against shipping lanes, he hid himself aboard a shipment of artifacts, destined for Manhattan, and disappered from Corsair space, seemingly never to return.

The artifact shipment never reached Manhattan. Intercepted by the LPI in the Texas system, Patricio was arrested, but later released when he confessed his story to the authorites. To his disbelief an officer of the LPI even gave him some credits to help him start a new life. Patricio was shocked; he had been taught how Liberty was a corrupt and oppressive nation, yet here he was, standing in a whole new world of opportunity.

So began a career of trading, starting small and working his way up, job after job, making a life for himself. He soon realised that he found honest work infinetly more satisfying and fulfilling than his past life and ill-begotten credits had ever been. He worked for ALG in Rheinland, and then for Ageira, shipping Jump Gate parts to Tau 23. As he went along he picked up a crew, one by one, from all across Sirius. Men and women like himself, exiles from Corsair or Outcast territories, who all shared a common dream of a lawful Hispanic Nation. He discovered that there were far more Hispanics than he had thought who had rejected a life of crime and left the Corsair and Outcast homeworlds. Gradually, as their numbers grew, they decided that they were not content to simply have escaped from the world they hated, but that they wanted to actively do something about it. Finally, 17 years after Patricio left Crete for the last time, they have raised enough funds to buy what they hope will one day become the flagship of their cause - the Cruiser Odyssey, and have returned to Corsair territory to spread their message.

They now sail the space of the borderworlds, with four clear goals that they pursue, through diplomacy, attempting to avoid violent confrontations whenever possible:

1. To persaude the Corsair people to renounce piracy and aggression
2. To establish a Lawful Hispanic Nation, and to gain international recognition of such a nation by the major Houses
3. To bring an end to the vile practices of Cardamine trading and useage
4. To pursuade the 4 Houses to lift their ban on the harmless artifact trade, that the Corsair peoples may have a legal and non-violent way of earning a living

---

Sir Stanley Nelson




<span style="color:#000066">Charles Canning </span><span style="color:#000066"> Foreign Secretary</span>