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That is what we shall do from now on. Before, we had an agenda. Now, its just becoming an expensive nuisance.

The Cardassian Union has taken action we deem necessary to secure our nation and the safety of our people. The evidence against the Ferengi is irrefutable. The Ferengi's only response has been vague platitudes that it wouldn't have been good business, ignoring the fact that while their scheme was underway they secured millions more in loan interest payments, and tens of millions in technology purchases from the Cardassian Union to combat the very threat they were manufacturing. They worked with Breen insurgents hiding within the territory claimed by the Federation to supply them with weapons of mass destruction, both trilithium and subspace based. Their agents fomented an insurgency sending vessels to make suicide attacks upon our ships or suicide runs attempting to kill billions on our planets. Over twenty million Cardassians died attempting to invade the unassociated Breen worlds to end an insurgency that the Breen on these worlds had nothing to do with.

The Federation's "evidence" is pitiful. Sensor logs of a star system fifty light years from our closest border? Truly the Federation must have made an impressive advancement in technology in less than five years if during the Breen war they couldn't locate Breen warships or starbases without direct reconnisence of individual systems and yet now they can pick out individual life signs from fifty light years away. They claim to be concerned about international shipping when the insurgency was occuring in an area where no major trade routes passed through. Worries about losing shipping when the very nation under attack had grown our trade by 17% in the aforementioned time. Then, their "solution" to the possible disruption in international shipping is to completely terminate all trade too and from the Union for three years, disrupting 12 million kilotons of trade per year, bring by their own admission potential economic ruin to nearly every other major power in near space. Remind me never to go to a Federation politician to fix a broken finger, they'll likely shoot me and call it a remedy. To top it all off the Federation refused to cooperate with the Union during this time. For three years they admit the skulked around the perimeter of the Union trying to gather evidence to frame the Union for an imagined wrong doing. If they really were concerned about trade the Federation would have brought us any evidence they had and we could have worked together to end the threat. They didn't, because their motivation was never to secure the area and make it peacable for trade. They gambled with the lives of hundreds of billions of Cardassians so they could try and find a way to implicate the Union in their imagined wrong doings, not to secure trade or keep the peace but simply to find a way to slap down a growing power and remind them who was in charge. They also gained the chance to unilaterally suspend millions of kilotons of international trade making an example of the Union and also yanking tight their leash around all our necks to remind us that they can do it when they please. The Union will not be bullied by thugs. We are willing to give the Federation the benefit of the doubt, your chaotic form of government no doubt allows fools into positions of power from time to time. We are willing to count this against the insanity of your current leaders and look forward to working with more rational beings in the future.

As for the Ferengi Alliance, your leadership has chased their profits to the wrong end. The Union is not the war wracked nation it once was, desperate to do anything we could to rebuild after a devastating war. Your leadership mis-read the situation and thought that they could manipulate us into economic servitude, they were wrong. We are willing to be magnanimous, if you do not resist you are unlikely to see a Cardassian face. Our ships will pass you by, our troops will not trouble you. We will not interfere with your business and your lives will continue on as they always have. Resist and you will be complicit in the crimes of your leadership. Your ships will be destroyed or confiscated, your businesses seized, your wealth redistributed, all business licenses revoked. You have a choice, to let those in power suffer for the foolishness of their schemes but your own lives and businesses will not be impacted, or you may resist and suffer along with your leadership. The choice is yours, but make it quickly.

To the Klingons, we know you signed a treaty with the Ferengi for defense. We believe they wished to use your warriors as a bulwark against our vengeance should their scheme be uncovered. The Cardassian people have no quarrel with the Klingons and we will not instigate hostilities. We trust that when confronted with the truth your warriors will not die in defense of these honorless little swindlers.

To the Federation, we have no desire for conflict with the Federation. The poor judgment of your current leadership has harmed our relationship deeply, that we will not lie about. We trust that the Federation people are wise enough to see that the statements made by their leadership and their actions do not match up. They claim to want peace, but withhold information and cooperation that could lead to it. They say they want to stabilize trade, yet want to unilaterally terminate over 12 million kilotons of it. Make your own judgments. The Cardassian Union has no desire for conflict with the Federation and we will not instigate hostilities.

As for the Ferengi, we are at war.

If you didn't want to be in debt to us, why didn't you borrow from someone else?

Any "servitude" you brought upon yourself. We wanted to help the Union to recover, and did so for the stability of all powers. After that, you continued coming back to us. Why didn't you go to the Federation? We do not have a monopoly on credits. Or did you have this plan from the start, to force us into a position that we couldn't fight back, and would have no support.
It seems the Cardassian people have not changed. They are still the fools of decades past.


We have not traded any weapons of mass destruction with anyone, especially not the Breen remnant. How could we, when the Federation is actively patrolling that area. We do not have cloaking devices, unlike the Union. The only ones who could have supplied the Breen with such devices are the Union, the Federation, and the Romulans.

However, you are as militant as always, and would invade us even if we had proof that someone else was responsible. We gave you the benefit of the doubt, yet you have no such courtesy.

We have no fighting power. We are a merchant nation, not one of war. If others do not defend us, we will have no choice but to surrender.

The high council has been called to immediate session to decide on this war. I am a man of my people, a proud people and I will serve their will at all costs.

::: Open Transmission :::

The High Council has made its decision. It's decision based on one word, one word tied down to the very nature of the Klingon Race: Honour.

The Federation and Klingon powers agreed by treaty to protect the Ferengi from attack, to keep their power safe against assailants. This agreement stands today.
The Klingon Empire has no love for the Ferengi, that we admit. But we do not turn our back on our agreements. We will stand with our Federation allies in their decisions.

The Empire has chosen to uphold their treaty. We are at war.

For both enemy and friend...perhaps, Today is a good day to die!

Qap'la!

Then the Union and Empire are at war, and that is unfortunate.

The Federation calls on the Union to stand down its armed forces even now moving towards Ferengi space and return to Cardassian space before this madness spreads any further. Your forces have fired upon and killed many of our Klingon allies. This cannot be tolerated. Withdrawl and there is a chance, however slim, that peace might be preserved.

Yes, our forces fired upon another power's whom we currently exist in a state of war with. Such things happen. The Klingons have chosen to honor their alliance with the Ferengi in spite of the Ferengi's lies. While I cannot say that we would do the same in their position they do it for their honor and that we can respect. What is your excuse? The outright lies that your excuses for calling the Breen conference were have been exposed as has your blatant extortion of not only the Union but every other power in the local area so we both know you're not standing beside the Ferengi out of a sense of honor. They foment terrorism against their neighbors, sell weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, and do it all to pad their bottom line and you find this behavior worthy of your protection? Will your citizens? Will the men and women under your command offer up their lives in the defense of those who under any other administration they would be helping to bring to justice?

The Ferengi's actions have cost the lives of tens of millions of Cardassians, cost us tens of millions of credits, and soured our relations with the Breen remnant for a generation or more just so they could add a few more bars of latinum to their fortunes. The Cardassian Union will bring them to task for this.

However, our quarrel is with the Ferengi and the Ferengi alone. It is not with the Federation or the Klingon Empire. As such I pledge that the Union will confine military operations to the Ferengi Alliance and the area between the Alliance and the Union. We have no desire to wage war on the Federation or the Klingon Empire or any of their people nor will we. We will not widen the war beyond the area in question, we will not jeopardize anyone's lives that need not be. The Federation will have to chose to broaden the war, the Federation will choose to put more people's lives in danger. Stand aside and this will be over quickly and bloodlessly.

Our forces will not be turning back.

We grow weary of the Union's position on this matter. We are releasing along with this dispatch a complete record of our survey of Cardassian space through which we located the Breen prisoners and their ships being held. Within it one will find contained a detailed survey of every world of the Union, the industrial resources of each world and the evidence of which we speak. Verification of its legitimacy would necessitate only the transit through Union space of any independent vessel capable of taking detailed sensor readings. This will more than establish that the Federation has the technical ability to have learned what it did.

We have seen no proof against the Ferengi. We have offered what we know for others to examine. They may question the legitimacy of what we have provided and indeed we cannot offer anything beyond the detailed sensor logs we are providing, along with the timetable we gave earlier, the interviews with the Breen found bound on the freighter (each conducted independtly and in isolation) and the cloaking device captured on that freighter. If indeed it is a fake then we would be running a terrible risk by making this public when we have no real reason to do so. Let us examine again the time table for this.

We freely admit we had knowledge of Union activities before the conference was called. We informed other powers of what we suspected from the outset. The conference was called to give your government a chance to provide an explaination without first giving you the information to rationalize it all away. The Union was given the floor to speak.

The Union made a lengthy statement of 355 words, not one of which mentioned the Ferengi. There was lengthy discussion of the Orion's and the Ferengi's invovlement with the Orions and still nothing was said about the Ferengi. The Federation finally released a statement of its findings.

Suddenly the Ferengi spring to the forefront as the villans behind this all. Why then? Why not earlier when the Union had the floor to speak? Where did this other information suddenly come from? Had the Union made any other power aware of their findings prior to their claim? Suddenly the Union has evidence of Ferengi on freighters with sub-space weapons?

Despite what the Federation found it hardly threatened the Union with war. We asked that you do yourself what we would have to do otherwise, which was restrict the flow of your trade due to the misuse of freighters as weapons of war, so that we could avoid a public falling out between two of the foremost powers in the region. War with the Ferengi is hardly the answer to all of this.

We again call upon the Union, stand down this invasion of Ferengi space.

BigJKU316 wrote:We grow weary of the Union's position on this matter. We are releasing along with this dispatch a complete record of our survey of Cardassian space through which we located the Breen prisoners and their ships being held. Within it one will find contained a detailed survey of every world of the Union, the industrial resources of each world and the evidence of which we speak. Verification of its legitimacy would necessitate only the transit through Union space of any independent vessel capable of taking detailed sensor readings. This will more than establish that the Federation has the technical ability to have learned what it did.

Again you dodge the question I have put to you several times already. If you had this amazing sensor capability why was it never used during the war with the Breen? As for your sensor logs, I congratulate you on compiling an extensive database of information that is widely available to anyone with a working computer terminal. Never mind that the Union has allowed, until now, the starships of many of our trading partners to transit our space, or the ships of your own Starfleet nearly free access during our war with the Breen. Your logs prove nothing, and our own interactions with Starfleet indicate a level of sensor refinement far less than what you claim.

None of which explains why if you were so concerned about the stability of the region you did not approach us before now. Your own admission is that you have been skulking around for three years with little to go on besides your own paranoid suspicions. It's hardly the actions of a responsible government looking out for regional stability. Even if you suspected the Union to be complicit in these actions I have to again question why you would wait instead of quashing such a plot in its infancy. How is stability aided by allowing such a plot to continue for three years?

We have seen no proof against the Ferengi.

You have yet to even ask for hard copies of the evidence which again, makes me question if the Federation is interested at all in the truth of what is going on or only in the explanation most convenient for you. Copies of our findings are freely available for whoever wishes them.

We have offered what we know for others to examine. They may question the legitimacy of what we have provided and indeed we cannot offer anything beyond the detailed sensor logs we are providing, along with the timetable we gave earlier, the interviews with the Breen found bound on the freighter (each conducted independtly and in isolation) and the cloaking device captured on that freighter. If indeed it is a fake then we would be running a terrible risk by making this public when we have no real reason to do so.

What you refer to as a terrible risk I refer to as a foolish one. The Union is willing to admit that there might have been some activity in the Volus system. In five years we had never been able to peg with any certainty where the attacks originated from. If they did originate from Volus it represents a breach in our own security that desperately needs to be rectified. However our chance to discover what might have been going on there was years prior when you first had suspicions. We could have made a joint investigation of the system, caught whoever was operating there by surprise. Your ham handed extortion tactics explicitly naming the Volus system in your list of demands as a site for a future conference over public channels was so painfully obvious that anyone using that system as a base of operations left before any official actions could be taken.

Until now I had assumed it was a case of another political simpleton from the Federation not truly considering his actions but now I must wonder, was it to ensure that whomever might have been using that system as a base did leave before we could arrive and do anything about it? After all, it would be quite inconvenient for the Federation if we arrived and discovered a Ferengi or Orion presence wouldn't it?

The conference was called to give your government a chance to provide an explaination without first giving you the information to rationalize it all away. The Union was given the floor to speak.

The Union made a lengthy statement of 355 words, not one of which mentioned the Ferengi. There was lengthy discussion of the Orion's and the Ferengi's invovlement with the Orions and still nothing was said about the Ferengi. The Federation finally released a statement of its findings.

Suddenly the Ferengi spring to the forefront as the villans behind this all. Why then? Why not earlier when the Union had the floor to speak? Where did this other information suddenly come from? Had the Union made any other power aware of their findings prior to their claim? Suddenly the Union has evidence of Ferengi on freighters with sub-space weapons?

The Union provided the information we had at the time. Further investigations were underway at the time but unlike the Federation we preferred to examine our findings and verify them with cold hard facts before leaping to conclusions about our neighbors. Perhaps the ambassador is simply unaware of the passing of time? That unlike the Federation the rest of us are limited to experiencing it linearly and that until something happens we cannot report it? When we had the facts we were prepared to begin a dialogue with those involved. Could it be that your wild accusations prevented us from handling the situation in a more civil and contained matter?

We were prepared to inform you that some of your new citizens were financing the purchase of weapons of mass destruction, quietly, and privately. We were aware how this would look to not only other nations but to your own people as well as ours and in order to avoid misunderstandings we were going to present it to you privately. The Union still considered the Federation an ally, not one we saw eye to eye with all the time but one deserving the benefit of the doubt. Like wise we were prepared to deal with the Ferengi situation quietly, but again someone felt that extortion rather than dialogue was the best way to handle these affairs.

So, rather than handle things quietly your ham fisted attempt to cow us and the rest of near space has resulted in the situation as it is now. With everything aired in plain sight of the rest of quadrant and a quiet diplomatic solution something that we can only gaze back longingly at wondering what might have been.

Despite what the Federation found it hardly threatened the Union with war. We asked that you do yourself what we would have to do otherwise, which was restrict the flow of your trade due to the misuse of freighters as weapons of war, so that we could avoid a public falling out between two of the foremost powers in the region. War with the Ferengi is hardly the answer to all of this.

We again call upon the Union, stand down this invasion of Ferengi space.

[/quote]
No, the Federation decided to economically threaten the Union over something we had nothing to do with. You saw a golden opportunity to ensure that you were the singular foremost power in the region without a war that would no doubt be distasteful to your citizenry. You seized upon that chance expecting the Union to do as you told us. The Union has done no wrong here.

The Ferengi's actions have resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Cardassians, threatened the lives of hundreds of billions of Cardassian citizens. If that the answer to that isn't war I don't know what is.

Again, we call upon the Federation to stand aside. This only need be as bloody as you decide to make it.

GM Note:

Following the Federation's statement information packages were sent to every major government in the region. These records showed highly detailed scans of every cardassian world with high resolution scans. The scans matched exactly with commonly known information from major trade hubs of the Union.

For the entry on planet 52 there is an unusually large, and pure signature of metallic compounds existing in the "Kuiper Belt" of the system. These signitures are scattered in several small patches around the belt.

Additionally on the planet of the system, sensor records indicate a large prison area on a relatively unsettled are on the globe. Inside the prison area there are bio-signs of both Cardassians and Breen, the ratio suggests that of guard to prisoner respectively, but without more direct observation that is speculative.

There is no evidence or signs that this is a forgery.

We never sold any weapons of mass destruction, nor purchased such. If you want to find trilithium, look at the Romulans. They are the only ones who have weaponized it.

The oddest thing, is, for the first time in the history of the Ferengi Alliance, we haven't lied once to our neighbors. And it is now, that we haven't lied, that we are accused of such.

The only deaths our actions have lead to are those of the Breen. If we had not stepped in and aided the Union in its recovery, you would have stood little chance at their invasion. So yes, blame us for those lives, the ones we are responsible for. However, so far we are not in any way responsible for the life of a single Cardassian.
Not only have we had nothing to do with the creation of the Breen insurgency, we have been actively attempting to locate their source of materials, with little luck. Most of our agents have come back less than whole.

The question that should be asked is where did the Breen get their cloaking device. We only have one. We have not even equipped it to a ship. We simply used it in our labs to develop the EMP device. That is our sole cloaking device. And it is still located in our R&D labs.
So where did they get it? We have not been able to determine this.

On a separate note, the Ferengi Alliance will no longer conduct business through the Orion Syndicate. They are criminals. Anyone wishing to continue business that once went through them must contact us directly.

In an attempt to capture a Syndicate cell, we have made the Orions very angry. Our goal was to capture them. Now, because of the Cardassian fools, we lost an opportunity to bring down a large ring of operations. Almost five years of work, wasted.

If anyone seeks details, you may message the Office of the Nagus.

The Federation is not in the habit of disclosing its technical intelligence gathering means and capabilities just to satisfy another power. Let us cut to the heart of the matter. You do not believe our claim and we do not believe yours.

The Federation position is as follows.

1. We will not tolerate or allow the Union to continue its invasion of Ferengi space. That we are compelled to act by treaty is unnecessary to our response. Such aggression will not be allowed to stand.

2. If Union forces do not begin their withdrawl in 24 hours the President has asked for and the council has approved a Resolution for the Defence of Ferengi Space. Military operations will begin to carry out that resolution and will continue until the Cardassian military is removed from Ferengi and surrounding neutral space.

3. The Cardassian border with the Federation is herby closed to any and all traffic. Any ships attempting to cross from the Union will be consider to have committed an act of war directly against the Federation and will risk expanding this conflict. Any ships attempting to enter Union space through the Federation will be turned back to their port of origin.

Federation forces have dispatched to Ferenginar as a part of Operation Sheltered Dove, which will accomplish the defense of the Ferengi from their aggressors. We hope that the Union will see sense and draw back from these actions. If not then we are prepared to accept the cost of defeating this attack...whatever it may be.

As of this year, the Klingon Empire fleet has gone to high alert. Any intrusion into our space without proper authorization codes (provided via trade routes) will be followed by seizure or destruction.

The first blood of this war has been spilled and it is Klingon blood. The Empire has been given reason to fight, it's people incensed by the loss of 380,000 warriors by use of Cowardly surprise tactics. But they died maintaining their honour and Sto'vo'kor is a fitting place for warriors.

We will not allow this to happen again.