Spoiler
How do I make friends with the cabal?
There's only a few ways I've discovered.
1: locate a cabalero in any bar that can support pirate contacts. Bet on the dice for a small faction increase and potentially unlock a cabal contact?(testing needed). Don't drop illegal drugs, they generally don't like that
2: Every roaming fleet of cabal raiders can be interacted with to gain faction rating either by 'donating' to the cause or spending a story point to fast talk your way out of paying them. They can ask for any high tech item, colony items, weapons, fighters, ships, and in the absence of all those just a boatload of credits. Paying them like this is among the fastest ways ive found to gain faction rating.
If you want there ships you really only need them at inhospitable. That will let you dock at port tse and tibicena (transponder off), pay a one off fee for that visit and a huge markup and u can buy there ships like that. Or go around blowing them up and recovering them.
Getting friendly allows you to buy the ship blueprint package from tibicena, co-operative lets u buy some nice colony items including a pristine nanoforge as well as reducing the cost of there ships/weapons.
There may be other ways to gain factions, these are the ones ive found. hope this helps