[Polysentience] Making the Queen Work For it

[Dumont]

So is this just your thing? You're going to drop snide hints all day until I assign you a task? Arccos' voice was transmitted alongside flat text. Every syllable an electronically modulated growl.

I told you important things that need doing back at the hotel in Nepleslia, but you just spaced out and sulked. From my perspective it just looks like you're waiting for me to hold your hand through doing a job you were born to do.

And you know what? Fine. Maybe I'm just being stupid in expecting people to have initiative. Maybe the idea that we're all able to depend on one another is exactly why we suffered so much after the genocide.

So here's the deal: I need a space station capable of mounting and powering a strat-ops mainframe the size of a mid-size ship, ideally it will be capable of docking a small fleet, and have the necessary bays for operating a trade in mined ice.

What I have right now is a bunch of ships and naked systems mounted in a rickety frame. But I'm working on getting the materials together to add a bunch of smaller industrial space stations to it. I need someone to make it 'functional' rather than 'barely holding together'.

I will supply the needed labor force, and materials. I just need someone to design it and provide instructions to these people. In exchange for your services in designing and coordinating the building of this, I will triple the size of the fleet you brought to assist in the battle against the NMX, as well as give you three of the aforementioned industrial space stations for your people.

If this isn't good enough for your people, then I'll be having a talk with my associates to make sure that there's no chance whatsoever of your people developing any profitable relations with anyone in our organisation.

You'll be free to go and pursue whatever works tickle your ego, with nothing wasted but your time and mine.

 

[Navian]

Queenie used the time where she was sitting quietly while listening to the headless bantering from the Queen's Slave's bridge to cautiously compose a reply, while trying to stay camera ready.

"I meant 'something to do with this money'," she answered. "So, I'm afraid you misread me. We seem to have great difficulty communicating and coordinating. I'm not too surprised; USO doesn't seem to have hired anyone for the role of diplomat, or even comms officers. In lieu of those, let's try to learn the art of starting a conversation at the beginning. It's not something I've mastered, either.

"On the matter of initiative: To get what I need without negotiating, I would need either to rob you by some uncertain means, or else blunder about wasting time and resources for deeply suboptimal results. I know it's customary to scrounge and improvise, here, and I know just as well it's something I will never master. My CV is not the product of simply having superlative skills, I had the right skills for the situation. This is no longer the case, hence your disappointment, and my underemployment.

"I believe I could design several subsystems for the space station you propose, and build them into the starbase if it was available, without any issue. I do not think that if I designed an entire strategic military installation by myself it would resemble the work of a great empire rather than an oversized child's toy, but perhaps I am being too humble, or perhaps the distinction between the two is not as clear as I think it is. I could do this, although my recommendation would be to find others to help with the overall hull design, the superstructure, and any weapons, defenses, or other features that lay outside my field of specialty.

"If you don't want to waste your time and mine, don't use threats. There is virtually a 0% chance that the deal you proposed would not be accepted on its own merits, but if I mentioned the stick you've proposed along with the carrot, it would actually become a point of debate whether we should risk dealing with you at all; not something I've never wondered, myself. I'm not out of work at the Hive right now; our dealings with USO so far have already created more than enough political instability to keep me occupied."