PETEY: Tagon, I need to put a two-day hold on your paid vacation. Something urgent just came up.
TAGON: Something always does. The troops are used to it.
PETEY: Oh, most of the troops can do. The mission profile here is for three soldiers, tops.
PETEY: See, there's somebody I'd really like to talk to, and I need you to abduct him for me.
PETEY: The Ob'enn have been funding a guerilla war in the Ystrebe system. It's distracting the representative government, and will prevent them from amassing sufficient forces to repel the imminent Ob'enn invasion.
PETEY: The guerillas are divided into cells, and I've just located the one guy who can finger all the cells.
TAGON: So tell the local government where he is. This sounds like a job for a telephone, not a mercenary.
PETEY: There are two reasons why that won't work.
PETEY: First, their government lacks the ability to penetrate the facility he's holed up in. They'd just kill him, or lose him.
PETEY: Second, even if they DID get him out, their laws prevent them from mind-ripping the organizational data from him.
I have no such inhibitions in this case.
TAGON: Mind-ripping a prisoner... Wow. I mean... that sets a dangerous precedent for us, doesn't it?
PETEY: I don't do precedent.
PETEY: I evaluate each and every situation on its own merits, processing far more data than mere legislators or judges ever have at their disposal.
TAGON: So... situational ethics.
PETEY: There isn't enough antacid on board for you to describe it that way to the Reverend.