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."