"I would like you to hold a coup. I could alienify it - have some things arranged as backup - but we firstly don't know the area and secondly don't want you as enemies. I think I can run Calado well without blues. I am not remotely under the impression I could run it well with uncooperative greys."

Generals size each other up. One of them plays a card.

"You can have all the kids you want. We have planets for 'em."

"None of us is under twenty," a general points out.

"Grandkids. Great-grandkids. I'm not even sure we'll bother with permissions. There are a whole lot of stars."

"Is the colony planet for the blues a euphemism?"

"No. I know a place that'll take them and feed them even if they find all the jobs beneath their dignity. I'd very much like as few people as possible to die."

"They're not all bad, you know, they just will try literally anything that meets the criterion 'if this worked, would I look good to the right people, and if it doesn't work, can I probably make it go away'."

"Where I'm from that, by people with power over others, is in fact considered very bad. But if I had a way to do this without terrorizing them I would. If you have one I'll get you the resources to do it."

"No, we've pretty much got 'march in with guns'." He is offered a bowl of nuts.

"Uh huh. I have eight proper lightleapers in this star system and forty shuttles for them. They can land wherever you'd like."

"We can't guarantee they'd all make it aboard."

"I'm not expecting everybody, but I'm not willing to go through with it without more resources if you're expecting hundreds dead."

"Depends on how much of a fight they put up and whether any of 'em can talk units around. Do you not eat nuts?"

He has some nuts. "If it helps your troops be less persuadable I can find a nice habitable planet for when Valinor and Endorë fill up and put our name on it."

"You going to have much use of an army after you've conquered what-all you want conquered?"

"I take it they're regarded as fairly essential for discouraging the neighbors from making trouble. But if we can direct lots of greys into space exploration as an occupation that'd likely be more sustainable in the long run."

"You going to stop at Calado?"

"We'll offer everyone else the chance to learn starship physics on the same terms. I hope that no one else sees fit to render themselves impossible to work with - or that, if they do, it's after we have a colony program running and can accept immigrants, so their poor decisions need not affect their citizens. I have no ambitions beyond Calado."

Generals eat nuts thoughtfully and look at each other.

Maitimo sits down and waits and resists the urge to sing.

"Getting mad when people don't do what they say they'll do for you doesn't always mean you do what you say you'll do," one remarks.

"It doesn't. At home we solve this problem with a chip feature that binds you to your word - irrevocably so - but that only works when everyone knows that it works and how it works."

"Which we don't."

"This would be quite easily achieved if I had more appetite for bloodshed. Get the immigrants to Valinor to come confirm they're comfortably situated with jobs and homes and four child permissions, announce everyone who brings me a blue gets the same deal. I am not threatening to do that. If you're not comfortable with this we will leave and go to Tapa. But that'd be how to get it done, if I didn't want to bother making commitments people might hold me to."