Coros bel Bendi was born on Corellia on Galactic Standard Date April 12, 2198. Little is recorded of his childhood beside the bare facts; he was born to an affluent house descended from the pre-Revolution nobility of Corellia, was an indifferent-to-poor student throughout primary and secondary school, and squeaked through the Corellian Naval Academy just under the demerits expulsion bar.

According to Coros bel Bendi's own accounts, he had no serious interests in life until the ship he was serving on went pirate in 2225. As a junior lieutenant, bel Bendi served with grace and distinction on a pirate ship which, in six years, he eventually rose to first officer. After a successful period of interdicting star liner traffic near the Outer Rim, his ship was brought to bear and forced to surrender by Captain Buchanan O'Hare's WDF Righteous Indignation in 2232. bel Bendi served a term of ten years for piracy and was released in 2239 with time off for good behavior.

After his release, bel Bendi found himself unable to secure legal employment. As recorded in his memoirs, he soon took to work as pilot on a series of smuggling ships, a career that lasted for fourteen years. In 2244 bel Bendi had secured his own ship and was smuggling virtually anything anywhere... until he discovered a cargo of slaves on his ship, bound for Hutt Space from Niven Sector. bel Bendi swiftly surrendered his vessel and turned state's evidence upon the slave ring's leaders, but they escaped on legal technicalities, and bel Bendi's second career was in ruins.

The United Galactica, seeking to provide some form of restitution, commissioned bel Bendi as a commander of one of the confederation's handful of warships. The slave ring he had betrayed had significant allies, however, and before long the UGS Greathawk was framed in a major Galactic incident (see Massacre of T'Koll), and bel Bendi and his crew were forced into piracy once more.

bel Bendi evaded WDF, CFMF and UGS forces for six long years, keeping his command together by careful raiding and an instinct for when to fight and when to avoid action. It is during this time, in which he preyed heavily upon certain merchant lines and cruise ships, that he gained the dubious honorific of 'Dread Pirate.' During this period of time, he followed the policy that defines him as one of the noble pirates of the day; he never allowed the death or injury of any unarmed persons in the course of a raid.

Finally, bel Bendi tracked down and captured the people who had framed his command for the incident. With careful assembly of the evidence and spotless handling of his prisoners, bel Bendi surrendered himself to the authorities. Although his crimes as a pirate could not be overlooked, bel Bendi was acquitted of the Massacre and given great leniency for his pirate activities. bel Bendi served for fifteen years in a maximum-security reformatory, emerging in 2365 with honor intact but pocketbook empty.

Without experience or qualifications for any other work, bel Bendi became a mercenary. Beginning as a captain for the Norala Hutt family, bel Bendi soon gathered a rough but capable fleet of nine warships, all of which followed him into piracy when the Hutts attempted to assassinate him rather than to pay his crews' back wages. During his time as a Hutt captain, he met his one and only wife and sired his three children.

Again on the run from Galactic law, bel Bendi was joined by his wife, most of his officers and crew from the Greathawk, outrunning and outwitting all major military forces until finally brought to bear in 2276 by the Wayward Son herself. bel Bendi, caught in a gravity well with the Son blocking his escape, surrendered without a fight. This time there was no amnesty or goodwill forthcoming from the courts, and bel Bendi was sentenced to life imprisonment.

This prison sentence was cut drastically short when, in 2288, agents of a then-unknown force (later revealed to be GENOM) staged a jailbreak to release a large number of people thought hostile to the WDF. bel Bendi refused to escape and even organized a counter-jailbreak to secure some of the more hardened criminals from escape. For this effort he was pardoned by vote of the Galactica Assembly in 2290.

bel Bendi, now in his nineties, was nearing the end of what constituted 'middle age' at the turn of the 24th Century. He had spent a third of his life in jail, and nearly as much of his life as a pirate. At this point in life, where others had retired before, bel Bendi joined the rush of men to the planetary-system fleets and mercenary services. Swiftly attracting a broad range of men and ships, bel Bendi became commander of a large privateer fleet, taking sides in the petty interplanetary wars which characterized the early 'Interregeneum' or 'Exile' period. For a third time the Dread Pirate of Corellia roamed the spaceways, and until 2302 there was no power willing or able to stop him.

2302, however, marked the opening of the Eighth Great Kilrathi War. Although the Eighth War did not compare to the vast scale of the Sixth, it was nearly enough to doom the worlds of the fracturing Galactica. As the combined forces of the Royal Salusian Navy, the Royal Manticoran Navy, and the CFMF stopped the Kilrathi advance, lesser forces were pressed into service for the counterattack. One of these groups was the bel Bendi fleet, which was strong-armed into joining the CFMF permanently in 2303. bel Bendi became a commodore in that force, commanding several skilled system defense battles and the famous Second Raid of Kilrah. When Kilrah asked for terms in 2305, bel Bendi took his pension (and a major book deal) and retired for good.

In retirement bel Bendi became a spokesperson and elder statesman for the Corellian fringe population, calling for amnesty, reform of the court system, and restrictions on the power of the Corellian corporate elite. Outliving all of his children and all but two of his grandchildren, bel Bendi finally fell victim to a degenerative disorder of the circulatory system, causing intermittent dementia and forgetfulness. Medical treatments and luck extended his life further still, until he suffered a final, fatal stroke on December 12, 2416.

bel Bendi has been largely forgotten by modern Galactic society, but he represents the beau model of what otherwise would be a myth. As an officer, a pirate, and a privateer, he upheld a personal code of honor and discipline totally at odds with his relaxed personality. He greeted every challenge of his long life with enthusiasm and determination, and to the end he remained true to himself. In the process he inspired five generations of Corellians, Earthmen and Freespacers with his courage and compassion. There are better-known pirate captains and more popular legends than bel Bendi, but his is all the more novel for being true.

J. B. diGriz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Alternate Morality at Freespacer State University. The author has been published in over thirty philosophical and psychiatric journals and is wanted for felonies on forty planets.

- Redneck

Red wizard needs money badly...
www.wlpcomics.com
White Lightning Productions - don't tell the Pope

So Slippery Jim is passing on a Healthy Disregard for, well, most things
to a whole new generation? Does FSU have correspondence enrolment? (and
where can I borrow a transfictional subetheric IP router for the holidays)

--cjb

p.s. So do prison sentences get longer in proportion to average lifespans?

--
Wielder of Avis Domestica Elastica; Warden of the Cubiculum Magikos.
"veni vidi nuclei jactare - I came, I saw, I dumped core".

The Manticoran Navy, eh? Will we have the pleasure of seeing Ms. Harrington in the next Redneck story? Or a future story at least? The next Redneck story will be a pleasure by itself, but with Honor Harrington, it would be even better. :-)

>J. B. diGriz is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Alternate
>Morality at Freespacer State University. The author has been published
>in over thirty philosophical and psychiatric journals and is wanted
>for felonies on forty planets.

Nice to see the Stainless Steel Rat making his way into the UF universe. It seems like a fitting place for him.

Donnerjack
--
reality@peoplearestrange.net
BOFH to www.astralstudios.com
Who is becoming frightened by how many references he now catches...