Message to the Junkers Congress

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*INCOMING TRANSMISSION*
TO: ALL SIGMA 13 TRAFFIC
FROM: Arbiter Vladimir Tinkerbell, Junker Congress
RE: YANAGI and HARVESTERS

My apologies for being away. Serious matters required my attention and I return to find more. Fine--let's review:

I have asked for meetings with the Blood Dragons and Outcasts to work out an accord regarding these very things. In each case, louder threats precede from those I ask to meet yet no discussions are held. What do you expect to happen?

The Harvesters do respect the 2 km base limit but this may be a new Harvester who had not fully uploaded its initial protocols. In addition, Harvesters have been known to malfunction during the "learning process". Sometimes this is simply a mistake they learn from, sometimes it is a unit with corrupted programming. Attacks against Junker traffic at Yanagi--or the Harvester itself--would be seen as a threat and would have been responded to as well. It could have been any of the above. I was not present so I can not speak for this Harvester. In a short time, we will have a specific diplomatic channel for Harvester related issues.

The Congressmen present are showing restraint due to the unresolved issues at Yanagi and didn't intervene as we do have an agreement not to attack the Harvesters in return for their not initiating hostility towards us and we have been careful to not antagonize the Dragons or Outcasts by getting involved in combat situations with them.

Now let's move on to the greater issue...Dragons are upset when we don't "jump in" when they are attacked incoming to our neutral base...yet they send a war fleet to attack other traffic doing the very same thing. In those cases, if we intervene, they declare it is hostility and attack Junkers and the base--calling for their allies to join in if they are present. This is bad for business all around and why we have a proposal for Sigma 13.

In addition, the area is swarming with unaligned pirates and bounty hunters not to mention the Wild and the occasional Kusari battleship. All crying "foul" at the Junkers.

We and traffic coming to our base are constantly assaulted by:

• The Outcasts
  
• The Wild
  
• Bounty Hunters
  
• The KNF
  
• The Blood Dragons
  
• Independent Pirates and Mercenaries
  

Yet somehow, we are horrible aggressors destabilizing the system. In fact, we are trying to stabilize it--but that requires specific diplomacy between us--not fleets. The testosterone driven saber rattling continues yet simple dialogue would resolve all these issues.

So: Groups with large numbers of powerful ships can fly around insisting Junkers are their whipping boys and better toe their line or they can sit down at the table with us and work with us to make Sigma 13 a secure place. There are enough threats in Sigma for all of your groups to benefit from cooperating.

I am creating a virtual diplomatic conference in this coming week. We need to have this matter resolved by the next week end else we will exercise other options that have been open to us and no one will benefit from them.

Arbiter Vladimir Tinkerbell, Junker Congress

*END TRANSMISSION*

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