Lounge Rouge

[shemkel]

For a second, Lancehead considered pulling out his gun and shooting this shameless death seller right here, right now. But last time he did something like this on Ames, there was a lot of problems with Malrone, the chief brainiac here...
His second thought was that this bold outcast has to have balls of steel to come here. Or he must be extremely greedy...
"You just made an offer to the worst possible man you could choose" he said to Rizza. "You're right about two things though. First: we do have a strong network planetside. And second: we have some interest in the cardamine industry."
He took a shot of the booze and continued. "What you apparently do not know, is that our interest in cardamine industry focuses on removing it from the market."
Ronnie leaned back, searching his pockets for something. His hand touched one of his guns under the worn leather of his jacket. He resisted the temptation once again and pulled out a cigar. Pointing with it at Fabiano's forehead, he continued: "You see, our main goal is to keep Liberty healthy and prosperous. For that, we need healthy people. Not some junkies." He lighted the cigar with his old-style zippo replica, poofed a few times and pointed the cigar at Rizza again. "You surely understand the basics of the market. The more cardamine there is, the lower the price goes. We, xenos, don't want that. As long as your drug is expensive enough so that the workers of Liberty can't afford it, they just won't get addicted. On the other hand, we have the wealthy, greedy pigs on Manhattan. They can afford the cardamine no matter how much the bloody junkers will take for it. Yeah, junkers. You think that rogues can dock on Manhattan that easily? Anyway. This is where our interest in controlling the market kicks in - controlling the cardamine means controlling the bloody leeches - so called 'upper class'. The only thing you misunderstood here is that the only thing we have to do to keep them addicts in our control is killing enough cardamine smugglers."
Finishing the sentence, Ronnie leaned back again watching Rizzas face. Suddenly, he got an idea. Trying to make it look like an accident, he dropped his cigar on the floor. He bowed down to pick it up, but in the same time, he attached a small voice recorder under the table with his other hand.
"but allright... you took quite a trip to get here and you're bold or stupid enough to talk to me about this. So I'll give you a chance to convince me to reconsider the whole thing. Why do you think that we would want to deal the cardamine?"

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Once a Xeno - Always a Xeno