Aboard Juno Kietan's Jackt, the rooms were all lush, rich, full of fruits, deep velvet and bright satins, with genuine wood paneling and top of the line servobots humming in the background. Pepe Benitez had been brought out of his escape pod into a cargo bay packed with crates, and then handcuffed.
He had been lead through the corridors, an placed in a huge overstuffed chair, across the table from the tiny GC trader, Juno Kietan.
"Pepe. I would like to take this opportunity, and try to end the bloodshed I have pulled upon your people."
Pepe, looked up at Juno, cleared his throat and started to speak, " Hola hermana, I did wish and audience with you but my battered ship just could not hold up in the radiation field".
He stepped forwaed
" I am the elder, Pepe_Benitez, from the clan benitez and would like to advise you of the chaos you are causing on Crete. It all started a couple of years ago when a few idiotic inner system yuppies thought that Crete would be a good place for vacation. They came on huge freighters, they either bought goods from Zoners at FP9 or from the local Zoner vendors on crete, that we can not touch due to our pact with them. The Cretean Zoners became very rich with this arrangement. As the demand for thses goods increased. Thses zoners, with the influx of this money, bought off most of our land where vegitations can actually grow. So at this point, the benitez living at crete are in turmoil. We dont have any land where we can grow goods nor we can afford most goods as we cannot outbid these dang Tourists.
The options we have left are to either beg or steal and the benitez will never Beg, Hence we have to pirate, we dont have a choice in that. The ships you see flying are the last working ships from the benitez clan. Our Don instructed our fighters to show respect when they pirate, because atleast we have a choice in being respectful to the people whose money we have to take. It hurts me more than you realize, that we have to do what we are doing, but when I wake up in the morning and see the young ones cry for food, I do not know how else to react.
We are also trying to make sure that our planet and system remain drug free as it will only compliactes matters for us. So the pilots are instructed to destroy the cargo of any transport carrying any morsel of the devil plant. If the cargo is in the hull, that is the traders mistake. You have all right to drop it and the fighter will leave you alone and destroy the cargo only."
Now I see you are picking out corsairs left and right and paying out throug hthe wazoo. I have a better option for you.
1. Help us with food, drop food at Crete !!!! let our young ones not starve.
2. Carry Artifacts out of crete so we can get our enonomy going again. We will escort you in our systems if you have artifacts on your ship. (The best we can with what we have/You re on your own against TBH and SCRA as we'd rather kill ourselves then harm our brothers.)
3. Stop carrying the devil plant with you in the Corsair territory. Our pilots dont count how much you have.
4. Last but not least, stop bringing tourists to Crete. We have poisoned a whole bunch of these basturds but they keep coming.
I am very interested in what your feed back is on this matter.
Pepe bowed his head in respect and awaited Juno's reply.
Juno licked orange stained lips, staring at her scarred hands.
"You forget, Pepe, that I am a Golden Chrysanthemum. I was born a slave on a Samura Plantation, was freed by my sisters, fed and clothed and raised on the wages of piracy. I was taught to fly a ship to defend my sisters from the Kirietsu. I stole my first freighter to feed little girls on Ainu. And so, I understand where your piracy is coming from...Damn corsair pride. But you need to understand this: everytime you demand money of me, I see slaves I could have freed from Samura... little girls saved from infanticide dying because we cant feed everyone we save....so yes. I know exactly how it feels to hold a child in your arms, and realize you have nothing to give her. And I will never be that way again, you understand me? Never again will i watch a child starve because i have nothing to give it. So, I am very stubborn when people demand money of me."
she looked back down,crying now.
"I have paid fifty-six million credits for the fighters of your family. Because I saw you as a threat to my sisters...you were one who would have stolen life from their lips....and, because of your damn corsair honor, and my stubborn refusal, fifty six million credits have been stolen from the starving children of sirius...i am the very same villain i had hoped to defeat."
Hermana, remember that you do have a choice as to where you trade, we on the other hand do not have many allies nor many resources to try to conduct trade. We have scanned your ship running all over sirius. Whats with carrying 1 cardamime plant? is it just to taunt us to attack ? or are you trying to forget the hardships of real life or may be the past. I know mi amiga it hurts but cardamime is not the solution.
We are not asking you to take food away from your sisters lips or financially ruin you so you cant help them. If the god forsaken facility was in Gamma sector, we would have given all effort to make sure that your sister's were freed. When a kid is born it is just a kid. It is the environment that shapes them to become what they become when they grow up. There is no difference between a a corsair kid and a GC kid, they both laugh and cry at the same things . I feel your pain and I understand your concern. But if it is really about the money, you could have given the Benitez a fraction of the money you are spending on your hunt rampage and we would not only have left you alone, but would have protected you the best we could have. You "donation" would have put us on a path to self-reliance again.
You want to trade through gamma, Buy from the Corsair shop. Our artifacts fetch big prices in the inner systems. We do not have the transports to do it our selves. You talk about hunger, look around and see what you have available to you, pepe gestured to the plates of food sitting in the chamber. We, the corsairs, on the other hand have done things out of desparation that will shudder you to the bones. We ate our own brothers and sisters to survive. The elders from previous generations decided who was going to be used as a source of protein and the proud ones silently laid down to be butchered to save us. I, as an elder will not allow that to happen again, I do not have the heart for it. You want to see desparation, visit the deserts of Montoya on crete and see the mass graves we dug for the bones of our loved ones.
This is all I have to say to you. You still disagree about this discussion mi nombre'. So be it. I guess I have failed. Throw me out of the air lock and put this old man out of his misery.
Last but not least, please don't cry. I would hug you, but I cant. Pepe pointed to his shackles. Remember mi Nombre', We are not bad people. We, out of sheer desparation are put in a situation that we are forced to do bad things we are ashamed of.
"I am not going to kill you. And, you are strangely innocent...'forget the hardships of real life'...no. Cardamine is life. You feel only the pains of hunger and thirst, not the third. I live on cardamine...mock you? If cardamine is mocking you, how could I not? A day without cardamine is a day without water, a day without air, a day of burning, shrieking pain. And, everywhere I go...everywhere, I'm made to chose...another day in anguish, or be hunted out, stalked by the houses, stalked by the corsairs...or what....I could go to malta...I could traffic the drug that destroys me...I could poison more lives..."
"But I wont. So, here I in the arse end of Sirius, enduring withdrawal and shock every day, and I do sell your artifacts. And guess who buys em? Outcasts. Bye the crate. On Malta dockyards."
Innocent ? nah mi amiga... I carry the burden of guilt that will crush mountains. But I see where you are going with that. I see a sliver of innocence in your soul too... these tears would not have rolled from your eyes otherwise. I will talk to my brothers about your predicament but we have a few hard headed brothers who will never allow that to happen. So I suggest a compromise. Let your escort carry the cardi.
We will make sure he earns his/her run money but we will leave you alone.
Sigh....you probably already know what kind of a fate awaits you. This drug will eventually kill you.
I feel for you mi pequeno nombre, and i wish there was something I could do for you. This is the reason why we want the devil plant as far away from crete as possible. In desparation, the devil plant becomes even more seductive and I cant afford to lose my next generation due to this addiction.
"Life eventually kills you, cardamine actually prolongs it...and I do not carry enough to be a supplier. I carry cardamine on my ship so its within reach, so i can grab it when I hurt, or when the ship demands it."
"Can we not come to some sort of accommodation? I will not be pirated...but neither will I let children starve...Is there nothing I could do?"
You misunderstand me... It may prolong your life, but it really kills the essence of you.
You may live a lot longer than me, but are you really the person you would have been had you have not been introduced to the substance, ponder upon it sometime ?
As to not being pirated, if you can donate some funds and goods to the Benitez cause whenever you can afford to, we could actually help you trade through our sector {free escote}(We will not however engage any of our blood). Also. I will try my best to convince the Benitez Don to overlook 1 unit of Cargo of cardamime on the Unseelie (ooc: this is taken care of, Benitez will not bother you for 1 cardi unit). I understand your predicaments and hopefully we can keep a line of communication open, and help each other out whenever we can.
Is this acceptable ?
(ooc: Once I have an agreement, I will post this on our forumz)
{ooc: This discussion ended with Uselie flying Papa Pepe to his homeworld "Crete", meeting the Don and donating some money to the Benitez clan. The RP was disrupted multiple times but went rather smoothly. The Bounties were taken off of the corsairs. }
![[Image: pixresizeuo0.jpg]](http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/4504/pixresizeuo0.jpg)
