Leslie:
"Yeah... that first time we ran into polywater back in the '66 mission, well.
I spent the whole mess stoned out of my mind writing weird limericks and queueing them up to be sent back home, but some of what I hear happened in the rec rooms, uh. Let's just say, trust Jay. He's right."
Halkh, reading this line by line:
"
Unfair. ...Hm, okay, now that is less unfair. Okay, they've got us on that one. And that one. Aaaand that one. But the part about the trials being fake is merely the basest libel!"
Halkh:
"Do you mean ourselves, or the Laio? The Laio have never been anything but friends to your Federation; they even helped you against us, in minor ways, though their ships of the time had not a prayer of facing ours in line of battle. Were I a Federation councilman, I would cry shame that Starfleet had not volunteered to investigate the depredations at the root of the present crisis long since. The Laio love you well enough, and deserve better than to be rejected at this hour."
"As for my own species? Earth and Morshadd share no mutual defense accords, no sharing of strategic knowledge or
impedimenta... And there is certainly no great respect in Paris for our institutions or our mode of government. If the Federation thinks of the Arcadian Empire as an ally, this is the first I've heard of it."
Leslie:
"I bet the Harmony can
neutralize a man's neurons pretty hard, if they put their minds to it."
It's possible that sheer volume of ships may let us at least
slow the war by presenting enough evidence to get everyone to blink and reconsider.
If my own darker suspicions are correct, the Harmony of Horizon is the
only polity in the galaxy that is well and truly immune to having its senior officials replaced by Lecarre.
Well, that and the Betazoid planetary government, of course.
Oh, you thought the Dreamer Collective was immune?
[points to that one Dreamer over there]
That is actually eight jillion Lecarre operating a giant
mockup Dreamer costume.
