There is... friction.

Not very many people from either group expected this meeting. The experiments (if they can be called that, given how complete and functional they are) are used to much lower baseline aggressiveness and their conflict-resolution techniques are optimised for that society. The visitors are tired, too far away from home, stuck in a political war they did not want to be a part of.

The Captain explains in more detail what happened: an elf and a human managed to convince a couple of 'flayers that the rest of their collective consciousness had been infected by a mind virus and they needed to find a way to free them, and in order to do that they had to work secretly. They kept a communication channel to the Feds open, and managed to cloak their ships while they were approaching the system. The rest, as they say, is history.

Sadde and the Captain spend a lot of time working together on what they're going to do—Sadde works as courier and interface and errand-girl and right-hand-man and basically doesn't stop working. They're not completely outside Federation radius so it's a matter of time until they're found. Lord is not happy with this solution. So what they decide to do is... colonise another planet. Lord already had plans about that, and this was the push they needed.

They had a planet in mind already. It doesn't really have a name—it's merely called URPS-3. But they know where it is, and Temperance has a way to reach it.

(As does Sadde, who has decided they'll just give up already and focus on spacetime magic.)