[b]The Plousios![/b]

"The movements of rogue servitors and Publica agents aren't my department," said NBX-462 reassuringly. He's a fine little Synnefo with a curling mustache and a walking stick wrapped in a little crocheted cozy. He came in person with only a secretary when contacted. No bodyguards, no retinue - a little sign that he was so replaceable he had nothing to fear from stepping onto a pirate ship. "No, I have no legal requirement to report your movements, I assure you. My task is simply the removal of friction; at some point the Skies will turn their attention to this world and I need that to be as painless a process as possible. And the presence of a Ceron commando team - well, it's nothing [i]but [/i]friction. Please, consider that a compliment - the existence of an industrialized alien civilization on the frontier does not even register against the ongoing insurgency of trying to remove Ceronians from a planet. These are the Star Kings, by the way, I believe they've got a specialty in energy esoterics."

He cleared his throat and his secretary set out a large wooden planetary map painting. "Now, the Ceronians are currently playing a rather silly game of cops and robbers with the locals," he said. "They're plundering freely, setting themselves up as local dictators, that kind of thing. Then they get into playful brawls with the locals uplifted by Cash Money - knocking over buildings and so on. It's all very destabilizing on its own right but before long they'll start recruiting locals to their pack and the next thing we know we'll have an entire Legion growing out here. If you convince them to leave my sector then I'll procure for you whatever you require and consider it a bargain at the price."

Which question do you each ask of NBX-462?

[b]Dolce![/b]

"Oh yeah, sure!" said Contribution cheerfully as a passing wing of fighter craft were blasted by ground-based ELF artillery, crashing down to the surface in flames. "You just gotta, like, say stuff for the benefit of the audience, or failing that yourself. Like, drop little veiled injokes, wisecracks and things that signal to people on your wavelength what your real feelings are. It's like a language trick, right? You say one thing to the boss and another thing to the people around you who realize what a fucking idiot the boss is being. The boss shows up to a meeting hung over, you just slow down the proceeding a little, be a little more formal than normal to drive in the nails. If you're confronted then hand off to a colleague nearby who will apologize for the inconvenience and then, because you're communicating with them and they agree with you, will start up some whole new inconvenience that's just as annoying."

He grinned, illuminated by illumination flare rockets. "Right? One sheep isn't much. Easy to push around. A herd is just a mass of wool and bad ideas and that can't really be negotiated with," he said. "But you could always try and find a competent boss instead who you don't have to be mad about. Like Liquid Bronze!" he sighed dreamily. "Now there's a man you can set your watch to."