You've Got Hail

by lizardsocks

It's looking like a new Starfleet project might drive Fer Nessellar out of business. She'd be fine with that, actually... except that they want her to join them.

"We reached out to your manager a few days ago," said Commander Soral. "We expected to hear back from her by now."

Algrady Golin watched as Sheleth, the reptilian captain of the small private transport vessel Rootstock, stood at her console at the front of the ship's bridge and calmly addressed the Starfleet representative on the small screen in front of her. "I would have thought so too," she said. "Fer is usually pretty prompt about replying to communications. I haven't seen her since last Tuesday, though, so I don't know what she's up to."

Soral paused for a moment. "Do you think you can track her down?"

"I figure I better," Sheleth replied. "She's my boss. How else will I know if I'm doing my job?"

Soral showed a hint of a smile, probably for the aliens' benefit more than his own. "Very well. Let me know what you find."

Algrady approached Sheleth as she turned off the viewscreen. This was shaping up to be a very strange first day on the job for the canine cosmonaut; then again, he still wasn't quite clear on what exactly his job was. His own people were still unaware of the existence of two-legged space creatures, much less the intelligent ones like zhrs, humans, and Ferengi who populated the planet of Iroshar and its colonies. Algrady, rather than risk an incident or undergo a memory wipe, was willing to let his people think him dead. Ever since then, he had been living in a cheap apartment in North Wind City, not too far from where the Rootstock was docked. Boredom set in quickly for him, so when Fer Nessellar offered him a paid position on her small fleet of transport ships, he figured it was worth a shot.

Algrady looked up at Sheleth's console as she pushed the screen back down to its normal table-level position. "How do you stand so close to that?" he asked. "Won't you look really big to the other person, being so close to the camera?"

Sheleth gestured towards the front of the bridge. "There's a camera back there. That's why I always keep my eyes above the screen. Then again, most humanoids can't really tell if a Kasheetan is making eye contact or not."

"That's fair," Algrady said. "Who was that, anyway? I came in when you were already on the call."

"Commander Soral, a Vulcan from the Federation Starfleet," said Sheleth. "It sounds like the Federation wants to start doing the kind of stuff we do. Transit, freight, a lot of weird one-offs."

"Even to non-Federation planets like Iroshar?"

"Especially Iroshar. It might be in the Ferengi Alliance, but it's always been friendly to the Federation. It used to be a candidate for membership."

"Until?"

"Until the Federation realized that they weren't interested." Sheleth smiled. "I'm sure Fer would have told them the same thing. But if they really want to get in this business, they're probably going to do it either way. So the question becomes - is there enough business for the both of us?"

"Hard to compete with someone who does it for free," Algrady said.

"I'm not worried about my own job prospects," Sheleth said. "My species is particularly short-lived. By the time the Federation actually has the system up and running, I'll probably be dead from old age. It's the other people who work here I'm worried about. Especially the Iroshans who staff the other ships."

"I've been meaning to ask about that, actually." Algrady glanced back at the door, as if trying to remember who all was behind it. "Out of all of General Interplantary's ships, the Rootstock is the only one crewed by people who aren't actually from Iroshar, right? It seems like anyone who has the means to travel the galaxy could find a place that gives them everything they need for free. What makes someone want to live on a capitalist planet?"

"Well, what makes you want to live here?"

"To be honest, I was thinking about moving to Earth, or maybe its moon, until General Interplanetary offered me this job," Algrady said, sitting up on his hind legs. "Really, the only reason I'm still here is because Ashley lives in my building. Outside my homeworld, she's the only person I know. What do you think makes her want to live here?"

"She's got a few reasons, I think," Sheleth said. "Earth has changed a lot in the past four centuries. I don't think she really feels at home there. I know the other crew members have their reasons, too. Pyrite's homeworld changed too - for the better, she says - but it kind of left her behind. Misam and Deb like being part of a smaller operation, with a more direct impact."

"What about you?"

Sheleth looked at the record of Commander Soral's hail in the ship's logs and sighed. "I miss my husband," he said. "I can't think of Starfleet without thinking of him."

Algrady looked around the busy mess hall. Most of the tables were occupied by Iroshan passengers, zhrs with their antennae or humans with their head hair, in groups of three to five. In the corner, though, was a long table with just two occupants: a beige-furred biped in a crew uniform and a young black-haired human male sitting all the way in the corner.

"...that they sleep together, and it's terrible, and they end up together anyway. To me, it really reinforces the earlier-" The furry crewman noticed Algrady approaching and slid sideways on the bench seating to make room. "Hey, Algrady. This is Jeremy from Blue River City, Iroshar. Jeremy, this is crewman Algrady Golin. I see you got your uniform?"

"Had to make it custom," Algrady said as he hopped up onto the bench. "They don't have a lot in my size."

The crewman, Leaf, was one of the employees he had met the first time he was on the Rootstock, when the crew had used their transporters to rescue him from his failed rocket launch. The main thing he remembered about Leaf was that the self-described "monster" was fascinated with creatures unlike himself, and humans in particular, so it figured that he'd find the human passenger and go chat him up.

"Say, have you seen Fer around anywhere?"

"She's still missing?" asked Leaf, sighing. "I feel like this might be my fault."

"Why's that?" Jeremy asked.

"I told her I was leaving. I wonder if she felt like I was uncomfortable here, and maybe feels bad about that?"

"I wouldn't worry about that," Jeremy said. "I'm sure she knows you can't keep every employee, and she's probably happy you're getting that opportunity. I bet you're looking forward to getting back to a Federation planet, though."

"I do like it here," Leaf said. "It's just... I really always wanted to join Starfleet, but on my planet, that's more of a human thing. I'd be the first monster to do it. I wanted to know what space travel was like first. But now I feel like I'm ready."

"Sheleth came from Starfleet, right?" asked Algrady.

"So did Deb and Misam. A lot of people do, I think. I'd be going in the other direction, from private enterprise to, well, maybe the actual Enterprise, at least someday."

"So you'd be going to Earth?" Jeremy asked.

Leaf nodded. "My planet is Federation too, and it's got humans living there, but it's not quite the same, culturally speaking."

"I know what you mean," Jeremy said, looking off into the distance for a moment. "It's nice to visit, but I don't think I'd be comfortable living there. I'm on the autism spectrum, and I've spent my whole life figuring out how other people behave on my own planet. If I were on Earth, I'd have to figure it out all over again."

"What's the autism spectrum?" asked Algrady.

"It's a way in which some humans are aneurotypical. It can manifest in a lot of ways."

"It has some things in common with the way monsters' minds work, compared to humans," added Leaf, "but it's not quite the same."

"Speaking of," Jeremy said, "I would like to visit your planet sometime."

"Really?" Leaf grimaced. "You know we have magic curses, right? You wouldn't be inoculated like the locals."

Jeremy laughed. "You don't visit a magic planet and not get cursed. That's kinda the reason you go in the first place."

As Algrady made his way down the corridor, he noticed the door to the medical bay was slightly ajar. He peeked in to see two of the crew members working on some sort of reorganization of supplies; all the drawers had been pulled out of their cabinets and were spread across the floor.

"Well, I don't know where I'll put these," Sharona Misam said to himself as he sat cross-legged on the floor, his catlike tail wrapped around his lap. "Every time you think you've got a box for everything, you find something that doesn't fit into any of them."

"Do you need boxes?" asked Algrady.

Misam shrugged. "They're not perfect, but you kinda need them to make sense of anything."

Algrady stepped over a thin, narrow drawer filled with empty hyposprays and looked up at Misam's partner. "Dr. Morrison?" he said. "I've got a question that I think might be somewhat revealing. Sensitive personal information and all that."

Deb Morrison, the company's part-time doctor, was a humanoid alien with big black eyes and a skin color that Algrady saw as a deep yellow, almost the color of the flowers of a lilac bush. She stood up and gestured towards Misam. "Is it about him?" she asked.

"Misam?" Algrady shook his head. "No, I don't think so. He's a typical Ferasan, right?"

"I still call myself Caitian, actually," said Misam. "Maybe I'm in the minority, but I always associate the term 'Ferasan' with the planet, and I never actually lived there."

"I was actually thinking about the biology of zhrs." Algrady took a seat on the floor himself. "They're a suppletive species, right? Their brains evolved from parasites. Could a zhr's brain be implanted in another species' body?"

Deb and Misam shared a knowing look. "It's possible," Deb said. "Although there's not a whole lot of demand for it. The symbiote can change the host's biology to some extent, but they can't control how it acts. It's not really ideal for either party."

"Can they change how it smells?"

"Not to my knowledge." Deb leaned in. "But if you're anything like an Earth canine," she added, "you're probably the best smeller on this ship. I'm half-tempted to give you a pile of Fer's clothes and see if you can sniff her out."

"No need. I was on laundry duty this morning, so I've learned the smells of the whole crew. And her scent - or maybe the scent of her host, if she's got one - I picked that up somewhere else, too."

Misam shrugged. "Well, that's the fastest anyone's ever found out."

"It's not exactly a secret," Deb said. "It's listed on her government ID, after all. But that doesn't mean we go advertising it either."

"So it's true?" asked Algrady. "Fer's brain is in a human body? She sure didn't look human when I met her."

"The zhr brain can induce morphological changes in its host body," said Misam. "It doesn't change the DNA - it overrides it."

"Does the body ever change back?"

"In a shared-body scenario, it sure can. Actually, it can happen if a zhr is in their own body, too - people can start to lose their buglike features in certain cases. It's something they make medication for."

"So he's on the ship?" asked Deb.

"Yep." Algrady glanced towards the closed medbay door out of habit. "I'm guessing he bought a ticket just like everyone else."

Misam chuckled. "Well, I suppose he knows his way around, doesn't he?"

"I don't get why you'd want to share a body with someone else, though," said Algrady. "Especially when you've already got one of your own. I guess I could see it on my world, with the state of our medical technology, but with everything you've got, surely it would be easier to fix the body you have. Who gets to control the body if they fight over it?"

"The zhr controls the body's form, but the host controls what it can do," said Misam. "But also, if Fer doesn't want to control the body, then that puts him in control whether he wants it or not."

"And I doubt he does," added Deb.

"I don't know," Algrady said. "I feel like it would be more unpleasant to not be controlling your own body. And Fer has a whole company to run - I bet she's using the body pretty much all the time. What's Jeremy get out of it?"

"Most people don't agree to have symbiotes implanted without a good reason," said Deb. "Jeremy told me he can't read people's emotions very well, and it's always been hard for him to form relationships. Sharing a body with Fer, well, at least there's one person who he can know how she's feeling."

"So it's about that intimacy," Algrady said. "That automatic connection. I suppose it must be nice to never be lonely."

Commander Soral looked over his personal task list yet again. He didn't really mind if Starfleet gave him errands to run. His science vessel had a substantial number of experienced officers and wasn't designed to hold up in a fight; it was only logical to limit the risk posed to his crew.

Soral had been given twenty tasks at the start of the fortnight. One by one, he had either accomplished them, or made sure that they were at least being worked on by somebody. All but one.

Why would Fer Nessellar not return his calls?

The door to Soral's quarters opened, and a young Voth woman stepped in. Regan Torra was on temporary assignment while the Challenger was undergoing maintenance. Starfleet still didn't have a reliable way to get Torra back to her home in the Delta Quadrant, but for now, she seemed content to pursue her work. Speech pathology had been her field of study; her request for a placement somewhere in outer space had been somewhat unusual, but Starfleet quickly found a place for her.

"You called for me?" asked Torra.

Soral gave a slight nod. "I believe you have acquaintances on Iroshar, correct? I was wondering if you could provide some insight as to the general culture of the planet."

Torra looked down at her combadge, then unhooked it from her uniform and set it on the table.

Soral raised an eyebrow. "Should this meeting be off the record?"

"No," Torra said. "My combadge just isn't working. It's making a weird noise. Continue, please."

"I hope it isn't discouraging that I'm again asking you for information not related to your training," said Soral.

Torra smiled gently. "I'm used to it," she said as she took a seat. "I don't know how you happened to get pointed in Nessellar's direction, but there's a couple people I know on her crew. Sheleth, the one you talked to, is the widow of an old crewmate of mine on the Baku, and Ashley Dekker, one of the other people on Nessellar's ship, was a client of mine."

"Do you still stay in touch?"

"With Ashley I do. Although she's the kind of person who stays in touch with everybody. Iroshar is a cosmopolitan planet, with big Human and Ferengi populations in addition to the native species, but from what she says, it's not like other Ferengi planets - it has a very distinct culture of its own. It's hard for me to judge, not growing up on this side of the galaxy, but... your proposal was for her company and its operations was to be folded into Starfleet, right?"

"That was the proposal I was told to give by Starfleet Command," said Soral.

"Maybe you just spooked her," said Torra. "Starfleet doesn't operate on the basis of profit and loss like Iroshan businesses do. It's not that they think their economic system is somehow better - they don't. But they just don't understand anything else. Maybe you just need to give her some time?"

"Ashley." Algrady jogged down the hallway to catch up with the human, whose long legs gave her a large stride. "You've lived on Iroshar for a while, so you basically know everybody, right?"

"I feel like if I say yes," she said, bemused, "you'll hit me with a name I don't recognize."

"Actually, I'm more thinking about the culture of the planet. Or, maybe North Wind City in particular." He slowed to walk alongside her. "It seems like everyone is asking me why I want to be here. Why I want to live on Iroshar. I mean, they've all decided to do it - what's so weird about me doing it too?"

"I don't know," Ashley said. "Maybe they're really asking if you have any other options, or if you're stuck here."

"Well, I have no shortage of options. There's a lot of demand out there for jobs that need a good sense of smell. It's not as common among bipeds as I would have thought."

"I'm sure they'd pay better than this. Or maybe they could even get you inside the Federation, and at that point you wouldn't even need the money. Why'd you take this job, anyway?"

Algrady laughed. "I'm a cosmonaut. I wanna be in space."

"Fair enough." Ashley stopped outside the door to her quarters. "I don't know what the economy of your planet is like. But when I was growing up, some four hundred years ago, you couldn't just get food and shelter - you had to get a job so you could get money to buy the stuff you needed."

"That's how it is on Iroshar, too."

Ashley nodded. "A lot of the people Fer hires for her ships are people who don't have the formal qualifications needed to get better-paying jobs. She's always believed that it's important to hire people who are willing to learn and adapt, especially with how automated ships are when they're running standard starlanes. That doesn't mean all those people want to be doing menial jobs onboard a ship, though, especially when they're away from their families all the time."

"But they don't have any better options," said Algrady. "Not in the Alliance. Now that I think about it... the permanent Rootstock crew, the ones from the Federation – none of them have kids, do they?"

Ashley shook her head. "Nope. At least, not yet. And you're right, we're all from Federation planets, or at least planets in the process of joining, so it's not like we need the money. We're only here because it lets us get away from our homeworlds and still be useful."

"Does that mean you have something to get away from, then?" asked Algrady.

"I suppose." Ashley put her hands in her pockets and looked off into the distance. "Whenever I go back, I feel like I have to hide the fact that I'm from the 20th century. When other humans find out, they make assumptions about the way I was treated growing up, and since they're centuries removed from ever experiencing that, they've got a fuzzy sense of time and place. I'm not going to say it wasn't rough, but it would be nice if they would listen to what my experience was actually like instead of making assumptions."

"I guess the nice thing about Iroshar is that people don't care enough about you to assume anything."

"See, you get it. As long as you can find something people are willing to pay you for, Iroshar isn't such a bad place. It's just that the Federation exists, too, and Iroshans are constantly reminded of how much worse they look."

"Wouldn't that be true of the Ferengi as well?"

"People from Ferenginar are confident in what they do, I'll give them that. They really do think raw capitalism is the best way to run things. Iroshans just don't think they're capable of anything better."

The scent, once Algrady got hold of it, led him down the corridor to the Rootstock's holodeck.

He reminded himself that he needed to come up with some excuse if Fer or Jeremy asked how he found them. It wasn't a particularly bad smell, and it was faint enough to be imperceptible to the humanoids, but most of them would prefer to think they didn't smell like anything at all. It all seemed a bit silly to Algrady, though - the way a person smelled wasn't any different as an identifier than the way they looked or sounded. There was no need to be insulted by it.

"Are you sure it makes sense for me to talk to her?" Algrady asked as Sheleth followed behind him with the laundry basket. "She's the one who hired me. I mean, I don't really need this job - I kind of took it as a lark - but she doesn't know that."

"I understand your concerns," said Sheleth, "but also... you're not going to ask about the holodeck?"

"I feel like I've asked a lot of questions already," Algrady replied, "and this just seems like another cool alien thing."

"Well, it is." Sheleth started tapping in the entry code on a keypad next to the door. "But it's even cooler when the computer can establish a neural connection to an implant - or a symbiote. You can do some pretty impressive things with perception and external rendering."

The door opened to a seemingly empty holodeck.

Sheleth leaned inside. "Hey, Fer," she called. "Algrady did your laundry."

"I'll get it. Computer, unhide me." Jeremy appeared from nowhere in the corner of the room. "Most of them are my clothes anyway."

"You're not Fer," Sheleth said.

"I mean, I kinda am?"

"I know the holodeck can render her separately from you, Jeremy. We installed a whole software package for it. And she's the boss, and she has a responsibility to the business."

A small blue insect appeared behind Jeremy and flew tentatively over to Sheleth, landing on a nearby computer terminal. It had Fer's eyes.

"Should I stay," asked Jeremy, "or..."

Sheleth waved him off. "Nah, you can go hide again."

"You know everything you tell to one of us, the other- I mean, it's not like I'm leaving."

"Yeah, I know. It's just weird with more than two people talking. Speaking of, I should probably go too."

As Sheleth turned to head out, the bug took a couple steps in her direction. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"It's not me you need to talk to, Fer," said Sheleth. "Algrady's not from the Federation or the Alliance. Maybe he can help you work it out."

Algrady propped himself up on a stool that the computer created for him and set himself at eye level with Fer's three-inch-long virtual avatar.

Sheleth had explained to him that the software running on the Rootstock's holodeck was originally designed on Trill with the hopes of developing a new, less invasive way to perform the zhian'tara, the Trill rite of closure. If the personalities and memories of a symbiont's previous hosts could be interacted with on the holodeck, the thinking went, then finding willing hosts for the ritual would no longer be necessary. The project ultimately hit a roadblock due to an unrelated quirk of Trill biology, but that hadn't stopped other species from getting use out of it.

"So have you always been this short?" joked Algrady. "Or did I just get bigger since the last time we met?"

Fer sighed. "I guess I feel safer this way," she told him. "I'm not a very outgoing person, and when I'm in here with Jeremy, I like to stay out of sight." She shook her head. "I don't need to bother you with this. It's not your job."

"Well, Sheleth told me to, so I guess it is," said Algrady. "But also, I see it as an opportunity to learn more about you, and about the company. That's why I'm here."

"That might be difficult," she said. "I'm from Iroshar, after all. We're not exactly the most outgoing."

"You ended up being CEO, though. That's hard to do without knowing the right people."

Fer looked down at Algrady's work uniform. "You know how I started General Interplanetary?" she asked. "Personal relationships were never part of it. I had an idea, and the investors knew my work in the transport sector and thought my plan was solid. But they've never been directly involved with the operation."

"Must have been a good idea," Algrady said.

"Well, I thought so," said Fer. "I spent my career in the Ferengi Alliance transit industry. Back when I started, the only people doing regular system-to-system warp flights were the big Ferengi outfits, and that was just to Ferenginar. If you wanted to go to Orion or Freecloud, or even some of our own colonies, you had to wait for someone to put together a special trip."

"So you decided to compete with the Ferengi?"

"Not exactly. What I wanted to do was to build out a regional Iroshan system, something that would connect the Alliance and Federation transit networks. A couple of my investors are actually the same transport companies that run those Ferenginar lines."

"So if the Federation was to take over... would that take the company away from those investors?"

"I'm sure Starfleet would pay them. They'd be happy to sell if the price is right. It's not like we've ever turned a profit."

Algrady tilted his head in confusion.

"General Interplanetary is definitely worth something," Fer continued, "but only because of its potential for growth and economies of scale. The Starfleet people want to make sure I stick around, though."

"Because they trust you to know the local market."

Fer nodded. "Just like the Ferengi investors do. Most of the ships would still be run by Iroshans. I'm sure Starfleet would enforce more generous pay and benefits than what I've been giving the crew so far, but they deserve it; I've had a real problem with employee retention, and if I wasn't so worried about the survival of the business, I'd be giving them more, too." She glanced away for a moment, as if distracted by a thought. "That's the only reason I'm even considering it," she added. "The problem is that they're not allowed to have someone from the Alliance in charge. They'd have to make me an official Federation citizen."

"They can do that?" asked Algrady. "What would that mean for you?"

"It's a moneyless society. They wouldn't be paying me a salary."

"So you get free stuff for the rest of your life, and you can keep your job and your employees."

"Yeah. And if I don't take it, the company goes away, the employees all lose their jobs... I mean, I'm sure I could find a job as a middle manager somewhere, but a lot of my crew doesn't have any sort of formal training. I don't know what they'd fall back on if Starfleet - or even some random startup from Ressinak - shows up to run us out of business. This takeover offer is the only way to make sure they'll all be taken care of. Obviously I need to accept it."

"So what's holding it up?"

"What's really holding it up is me. I tried asking if they could do it without me, but they don't think they can."

"Why would you want them to, though?" asked Algrady. "You know the ships, the routes, the people."

"I don't think I can do it," said Fer. "I don't think I can work in Starfleet."

"Really? Are their ships different, or something?"

"It's not that. Starfleet started on Earth, and Earth is run by humans. It's humans from Earth who define the culture of Starfleet to this day. A lot of the Earthlings I've met have this massive guilt complex about the way their planet used to be - it's not just them, I suppose, Vulcans are like that too. When they see me, they see the demons of their own past. And Iroshans don't exactly have the best self-esteem in the first place."

"So they're judgmental to you because of it?"

"Not exactly," Fer said. "They try to be polite. But the problem is that no society is equal. Every sentient being assigns worth to people at a subconscious level, and the Federation is no exception. It might not matter how much money you can have, or how much you can make, but in order to be successful in the Federation, you absolutely need to make deep, meaningful relationships with people. And that's one thing I can't do."

"So you'll never fit in there," Algrady said. "You'll never be put in a position to succeed, because you won't know the people who have the power to put you there."

"Exactly. I didn't need to know those Ferengi investors to get them to sign onto my project. I didn't need to discuss literature with them, or bake them a delicious lasagna. I just needed to convince them that I had an idea worth risking something for. The decentralized Iroshan capitalist system put me in a position to succeed despite my limitations, and I don't think the Federation could have done that for me."

"Decentralized, but not unregulated," Algrady pointed out.

"True. If capitalism is the engine that gets you down the road, then doing it without regulation is like driving without a steering wheel."

"So what makes it so hard to form relationships?" asked Algrady. "Is it a personal issue for you, or something in your species' genetics?"

"It's common among zhrs, I feel like. The thing people don't realize about my species, and we don't even realize about ourselves half the time, is that we're incredibly empathetic. We're too empathetic. It hurts to see other people's pain, especially if we're close to the situation."

"But if zhrs have so much empathy," Algrady asked, "wouldn't you be trying to work together to build something better?"

"Just to get involved, we would have to subject ourselves to part of that suffering," Fer told him. "Plus, if you want to make real change, you can only go so far before you have to actually fight other people, and negative experiences weigh so heavily on our minds that we learn to avoid personal interaction altogether. We have a saying on Iroshar: 'if you don't want to fight a firebear to keep your home, then let her have it.'"

"Wouldn't that mean you're more willing to change if it gives people what they want?"

"I mean, a lot of us are supportive of some pretty radical changes, me included. But that's not really altruistic. It's just because I don't want people to be mad at me - allyship as a form of avoidance. Just one angry interaction is enough for me to throw in the towel."

"So you shut yourselves off from each other," Algrady said. "Because it's the only way to protect yourselves. You can't make yourself vulnerable if you tell yourself you don't care."

"Sad thing is, it doesn't even work most of the time. But that's why we're still a capitalist planet after all these years; it's unreliable and unstable, but it's the best thing you can do when people aren't capable of working together. And it's the only system I know. Unfortunately, that's just not how the Federation does business."

"Wait a minute," said Algrady. "That might not be how Earth does business. But there's more than one world in the Federation.

"I don't see why you needed to call me in the dead of night," said the Tellarite freighter captain Tagguf. "You should know my ship is set to the standard time of Tellar's capital."

"If you wanted me to know your ship's time, you should have broadcasted it on your signal's carrier frequency," replied Fer. "And nobody can sleep in your capital anyway. People are probably still setting off fireworks from last month's holiday as we speak."

Tagguf laughed. "Very good. I see you know our etiquette. Now, what business do you have for me? I am a very busy man, after all. I can only do so many things in a day."

"I only ask that you do the same thing you do today," Fer said, "only more of it. I believe most of your work comes from Starfleet?"

"How do you know that?"

"I'm in the transport business," Fer said. "I sell transportation services. Starfleet's come to me with the same offer, and as generous as it may be, I'm not exactly jumping at the offer to join them."

"Who can blame you?" Tagguf laughed again. "There's a reason Iroshar never did join the Federation, after all! Humans have an irritating tendency to equate friendliness with friendship, in my experience."

"Come to Iroshar sometime," said Fer. "We're all equally grumpy and unlikable, no matter our species."

"About this offer, then," Tagguf said. "Since I already have a relationship with Starfleet, I take it you want your business with them to go through me?"

"If it keeps me from having to work with them? Absolutely." Fer smiled. "I knew you would understand."