Honorable Elders of the Golden Chrysanthemums, I send you this message after months of an unofficial armistice that took place between the pilots of our fleets. Hoping that this stance will go on and our people will live in peace we come with this proposition:
We will open our borders to your ships. You will be able to travel through our space as long as you don't cause any problems in the upper Taus. However, this doesn't affect freelancers, mercenaries or Outcasts that are working with or for you. Only the [GC] tagged vessels will be allowed in Tau-44.
In return to all these, we ask you to open your space for us, only for transit purposes.
I hope to hear a positive response from you, soon.
Incomming Transmission From: Office of the Elders Council, Tau-65 To: Elizabeth Branwen, Chief of Colonial Bureau of Foreign affairs Subject: Passage through our space & your space
Konnichiwa Miss Branwen,
the Council of the Elders has agreed to you proposal to a certain point. One point of interest that has not been mentioned yet by you would be
if there could be the possibility of the mighty Colonial Republic supporting us a little bit, let's say with a rather low ammount of credits, something in between 500 to 1000 Credits per Niobium Ore unit, should you in your great wisdom decide that transporting the Niobium Ore through our space might be safer or faster than transporting it through the standard ways.
We're awaiting your response,
I appreciate that you are agreeing to our proposal, however, I don't find the financial support a great contribution to your cause. Instead of that, we are granting you access to Tau-44 as a transit route. This brings many advantages to your pilots and to your internal economy. I'll describe this shorter and safer route for you. Your pilots won't have to deal with the Kusari authorities in Kyushu and New Tokyo; the H-Fuel used for this route is half of the one used for the classic route and the time to complete this route is also half of the time that would take you to complete a run on the classic route.
Incomming Transmission From: Office of the Elders Council, Tau-65 To: Elizabeth Branwen, Chief of Colonial Bureau of Foreign affairs Subject: Passage through our space & your space
Konnichiwa Miss Branwen,
Excuse us Miss Branwen, it seems we have a little misunderstanding here.
But
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We will open our borders to your ships. You will be able to travel through our space as long as you don't cause any problems in the upper Taus. However, this doesn't affect freelancers, mercenaries or Outcasts that are working with or for you. Only the [GC] tagged vessels will be allowed in Tau-44.
[color=#CC66CC]According to our understandings is totally identical with
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[font=Georgia]Konnichiwa,
I appreciate that you are agreeing to our proposal, however, I don't find the financial support a great contribution to your cause. Instead of that, we are granting you access to Tau-44 as a transit route. .
[color=#CC33CC]So, you actually just repeated your initial offer instead of offering us something new for replacing that few credits with something else.
We're looking forward to recieving a different offer.
You're right. It was the same balanced offer like the first. There's a word that has its place in diplomacy. I'm sure the members of the Council are well aware of it: reciprocity.
I understand that you need that financial support from our transports so I have to ask something in return. I think you understand that our citizens will start asking questions when they will see your transports hauling cardamine through our space. We don't want to cause riots and media unrest so we will have to tax your transports with a minimum fee of 300 $c per cardamine unit.
If this measure is accepted we also accept to pay 500 $c per niobium ore unit.
Incomming Transmission From: Office of the Elders Council, Tau-65 To: Elizabeth Branwen, Chief of Colonial Bureau of Foreign affairs Subject: Passage through our space & your space
Konnichiwa Miss Branwen,
Konnichiwa again.
The Council of Elders has decided to send you the following answer. So, you want access to a systems not even our allies, the Outcasts have access to, and offer us 200 credits per unit of ore for that? There's no point in following this any further.
We're sorry for this rather late reply. There has been considerable debate concerning the final terms of this agreement. However, all factors, bargaining position and immediate necessities considered - We agree to your terms. The proprietor of every cargo frieghter passing Tau-65 will be required to pay a tariff of $c500 (Five hundred credits) per each carried niobium ore unit of mass. Thereby we understand, that no Colonial spacecraft traversing Tau-65 in good will is to be intercepted unless failing to meet the agreement's terms. In turn - No Golden Chrysanthemum spacecraft will be intercepted while traversing the Tau-44 system in good will. A staisfactory end to our talks if I may say so.
Incomming Transmission From: Office of the Elders Council, Tau-65 To: Elizabeth Branwen, Chief of Colonial Bureau of Foreign affairs Subject: Passage through our space & your space
Konnichiwa again,
The Council of the Golden Chrysanthemum Elders decided to reply you with the following message: So, you really believed we would allow you, a group who is not even allied to us and with which we had rather unpleasant encounters in the past to enter a system to which not even all of our allies have access to? And for that, we would only ask these few credits? The official answer from the Elders is:
We deny the "offer" you gave us.