According to Righteous Fire, Menesch is a former governor in another sector, who came to Gemini
and started dealing in illegal sales of arms and ships to the pirates and retros. We are also
told that at some point he starts getting Kat salthis for the retros. An in one of his last few
breaths he confesses to have stolen your gun, and managed to obtain ships from the Kats in exchange
for promising them that the gun would not end in Confed hands. The story is believable if we assume
RF is taking place near the end of the war, in 2669, NOT 2670 of course, at the time when the kats
are winning the war so they don't need the gun in order to win; --just preventing the Confeds'
getting it is enough for them.
Where was Menesch governor?
We know that he had contacts with kats due to his diplomatic endeavors, and that he got kicked out
of government after some of his corrupt activities hit the fan.
Diplomacy would seem to be more the job of Terran Confederation officials than of a system governor.
Unless, that is, he was governor of a system near the Kilrathi border. There were various instances
of systems that tried to negotiate some kind of neutrality with the kats. I'd place him at one of
those. Or, of those, any in particular that had a history of government corruption.
Anyhow, Menesch seems like a guy of little imagination, though:
First the fact that he wasn't subtle enough in his dealings as governor and lost the post. Later
by the mistakes he makes in his dealings with the Retros, Kats and Confeds...
Even corrupt Confeds were unhappy to see Retros getting ships. Pirates they didn't mind so much.
After all, the work of fighting pirates fell mostly to the private sector, so the whole thing was
like collecting extra taxes via a roundabout way. Taxation through piracy is a sort of progressive
tax, in that most pirates would choose big biz transports with pricier stuff, rather than attack
the little guy transporting iron. And they are more manageable: They have bases and leaders that
can be negotiated with through mobs and other contacts. Retros, on the other hand, attack everybody,
increase the money confeds must spend on militias, and are unmanageable.
Plus, they are hateful idiots.
And there's the fact of the well established, arms dealing mob boss: Roman Lynch. Lynch would
complain to Confeds' selling ships to Menesch, and as the main customer for the Confeds in
Decomissionings, he has clout.
We can therefore assume that the reason Menesch is so desperate to get ships from the kats, is that
he's lost his Confed supply. He again fails to see the possible consequences...
With a supply of kat ships, retros grow less reliant on talons and talon parts, whether new or used.
This causes the second-hand market prices for talons to plummet. That chokes Lynch, chokes the Confed
Decommisioning suppliers, and, more importantly for Menesch, chokes off the funds feeding the
Belisarius Group and Y-12. The latter authorize a large bounty on Menesch, and Menesch is history.
Kroiz is a lot sharper than Menesch...
