Sunday April 27, 2014
Book 15: Delegates and Delegation — Part I: Confidence
Note: The Plenipotent Dominion is what used to be called The Fleetmind. It's that AI-powered, city-building superpower parked atop the Milky Way's galactic core, where the supermassive black hole has been turned into a fantastically powerful generator capable of, among other things, moving the entire galaxy. The principal voice of the Plenipotent Dominion, or P.D., is Petey, the warship A.I. liberated by Tagon's Toughs.
 
Some people have taken to referring to Petey's dominion as "The P.D.," but that is too easily conflated with references to "Police Department," and given the fact that Petey already meddles in the affairs of sovereign states to a level that would give any rights-respecting police department a screaming case of the improbable causes, it's better to spell things all the way out.

Transcript

NARRATOR: Shuttling back to the Chesapeake...

CHESTER: *over comm* General, you have a priority ultra call from Admiral Manyara Emm.

BALA-AMIN: Oh, lovely.

I'm sorry.  What I meant to say was, "Thank you, Chester.  Put her through."

CHESTER: *over comm* Done.

EMM: *on screen* General Bala-Amin, your office has just extended diplomatic cloaks to rogue U.N.S. agents.

BALA-AMIN: No niceties?  I was going to ask about your health, and whether you'd gotten a deck back under your feet.

EMM: Stuff the chatter, General!  This is a matter of critical system security.  You must detain the Neosynchronicity and everyone aboard until my agents arrive to claim our people.

BALA-AMIN: Their background checks were clean, which means if these are your agents, and I'm not saying they're not, then they're off-the-books, plausibly deniable, black-ops, cloak-and-dagger agents.

EMM: *on screen* Detain them, General.

BALA-AMIN: If that's an order, which it can't be because of our relative jurisdictions, then I suspect it's illegal.

EMM: *over comm* It is not illegal.  In your office you can legally detain whomever you choose.

BALA-AMIN: Oh, that's right!  I can.  Of course, this delegation has been sponsored by the Plenipotent Dominion.

EMM: And you take orders from foreign powers, now?

BALA-AMIN: No, but I do have standing orders to start exactly zero wars with the psychobear of destruction at the galactic core.