"Where are we going?"

"My suite, which is quite private and safe. I am not a fan of email and prefer talking face to face - ideally in places nicer than this alleyway."

"...in your limo there?"

"Yes. My chauffeur is extremely discreet and the window blinds are up right now regardless."

This is objectively stupid but this is the alien who bought her the credit so Peka will put the truck in park, slide out, and walk over tentatively.

Moira enjoys the finer things in life, even more so when those things are legally dubious to acquire.

"After you."

The passenger seats are separated from the driver by an opaque panel. 

"Do you need to do this kind of thing a lot, that you have a dedicated car for it?"

"I'm something of a specialist in handling the less ... above the board aspects of first contact. Making sure that criminal organizations don't try to slow down progress that they perceive as disruptive, that embezzlers don't steal too much of our aid, and that politicians of the sort who expect bribes get bribed by the right people. It involves quite a few meetings that I'd rather not become general knowledge."

"Also, I do enjoy the aesthetics of owning my own private car, with a chauffeur who doesn't ask questions."

"It's very fancy."

"It's a shame I couldn't manage both having you mostly relaxed and keeping the location and events of our evening a mystery. Alas, that would probably require someone who is far more talented than I at convincing people they aren't secretly a nefarious villain."

"I mean, you might be a perfectly nice space alien who doesn't know what'll get me in trouble. In fact, that was my best guess, but if you specialize in trouble..."

"It's a useful skill set, yes."

Moira smiles.

"When I first met the Amaliens they had made quite a reputation for trying so hard at having good intentions it resulted in ... more trouble than you could fit on a single planet. Desire to avoid a repeat of that is a lot of why they give me such free rein."

"Yeah, we all read the news that said no stars but probably Katme."

"Yeah. There might be other things we could do, but no stars I expect."

"I'm sorry. I don't actually think I could have prevented that but a more discreet approach might have led to us being able to distribute warp to more civilizations and avoided war with the Federation when they eventually discovered."

"The Federation sound like they kind of suck."

"Absolutely. I was trapped there for some time and strongly oppose ever returning."

"I do hope Katme will be helpful at least. I hear the terraforming is going well."

"They're maybe not going to put any reds on it." Sigh.

"... Your caste system is rather dreadful."

"Why not any?"

"Well, by the time anyone's moving there to stay forever, they might've figured out how to get purples to do it, with enough layers of plastic or something."

"Would a section of land owned by alien entrepreneurs that wanted to import red laborers exclusively be helpful?"

"Uh? Maybe? Why would you want that? You can't possibly shit that much."

"I doubt most Amentans have any idea how much I shit, thank you very much."

"Though actually I was imagining that some rather wealthy Ferengi friends of mine would be interested in investing in a developing economy of sorely underutilized workers. Possibly retraining reds and their children in something that they could export to other planets for a substantial profit."

"I think the cleans'll hate it enormously if we're exporting stuff."

"Even if it's to non-Amentans?"

"Well, yeah, because then it'd get all over those non-Amentans and they couldn't import stuff from them or go visit or even let them visit."