NationStates Jolt Archive

The sun rises from over the eastern horizon, casting the shadows of the foothills of the Khess Mountains across the gently rolling hills of the Whispering Savannah. The land slowly wakes up as it has for countless years, flowers opening and turning towards the light, birds beginning to twitter in the waxing light of the dawn. The new day finds the slightly out-of-place already awake, stalking back and forth in her blue business suit over the simple yet elegant campus of H'zta and Kraah Enterprises.

"I'm telling ya, boss, it'll be fine." Jim Lowell smiles jovially, looking up at his aforementioned boss as he almost jogs to keep up with her strides. "Xav's got everything spruced up--hey, he is the PR guy, right? And I've been keepin' the ol' three-pounds workin on ways to make a show."

"You are not to make a show." H'zta grimaces for effect, but mostly shakes her head in amusement at her enthusiastic underling as she looks down momentarily. Jim is wearing his everyday business attire--loose-fitting button-up long-sleeve shirt, with the collar wide open and tilted to look like a bird banking in flight. "What you do need to do is clean yourself up."

"Aww... but, boss, we've been over this. I'm paid to come up with wacky capers, and, I quote you, 'by the Fanged God, stay far away from cameras or media.'"

She shakes her head, letting herself chuckle aloud. "You're also paid to follow reasonable requests. Asking you to put on a real suit once a year is hardly unreasonable. Get in your Class A's, Private."

Lowell laughs as he breaks off, jogging over towards the campus' lodgings. "Bah. Never had to wear A's in the service."

Stalking over to the main administrative building, she catches up with Xavier Hortense in the lobby as he looks up... and up... and up... at some Sakkran coworkers organized into a catering detail. "And we all know how Kraah is, so make sure to maintain a lot of cold cuts on reserve. If you get tasked with plate detail, feel free to avoid the old man--oh, hello, H'zta." He turns his head a bit and waves, still standing in place.

"How do the preparations proceed?" she asks simply, looking over the tables arrayed with simple light hors d'ouvres and informational pamphlets.

"Well, ma'am," Xavier begins, unconsciously pushing his glasses up his nose, "we had a momentary problem with the pamphlets. There was a typo the editors missed, but we managed to get it fixed before they were all printed. Their fault, not ours--I also managed to force through those design changes I desired... their chosen color scheme was just dreadful."

"Agreed." H'zta folds her arms and nods firmly. "All under control?"

"All is under control on this end, ma'am. Hopefully Low isn't planning or doing anything... untoward?" Xav smiles a little wryly, all too familiar with Low's propensity for 'untoward' actions.

"I just sent him to wash up. Now all that is needed is for Kraah to finalize the arrangements and for us to wait."

Xavier nods, then returns to briefing his crew as the 'ret walks back out, sighing softly. All is under control, and all is ready. Still, it's just like diplomacy or acting (some would argue there's no difference)... the anxious pause before the start of the show.

(OOC: Because Sakkra's browser decided to screw up, here I am with an introductory post!)

Looking out from his vantage-point in his residence on the H+K Compound, Kraah sips at his hot cup of Paroo. His crimson robe offsets his azure scalation. Looking at the manufacturing plants in full swing, the employees busy at their tasks, and knowing he has a full itinerary in store for him, he ponders. What could be on his mind?

It is time ... for lunch. As he turns to summon his personal assistant, she enters the room. A Grass-Walker female, she stands smaller than an average Sakkran, and by their standards is quite a looker. Toeing silently across the threshold into Kraah's office, she seems to glide as her long gown reaches to the floor. "Sir, preparations for the Convention are coming along as scheduled. In your DataFeed terminal is your itinerary for the day. I also have drafted a statement for your perusal. Would you care to look it over?"

Her mental speech resonates in Kraah's mind. He's careful to mask his thoughts around his assistant. She tends to pick up ambient stray thoughts. It made for an embarrasing situation more than once around the reknowned sensualist. "Yes, Phashaa, yes." He cinches the sash around his waist a bit, trying to suck in his formidable gut as he does so.

Phashaa treads silently to the DataFeed terminal, and brings it online, pressing the palm of her hand against the sensor-pad. The *klack-klack* sound of Kraah's claws hitting the ground behind her could be heard as he looks over her shoulder at the release ready to be shipped out to all inboxes that would accept it.


To all honorable corporate vendors, investors and representatives...

I am pleased to announce the beginning of the H'zta & Kraah Consortium Interstellar Trade Convention. Already four major corporations from the Empire are confirmed to attend, and this promises to be a magnificent opportunity to show of your wares, find ripe new investment potential, or merely browse at what goods are being offered. H+K Consortium, Hreer Weaponry, Guaah Armor Works and Kastaa Bio-Med will be holding demonstrations of their newest and most marvelous achievements. Could you afford to do no less?

The convention will be held at the island paradise of Kastaa, and their finest hotels have already been apprised of the level of service expected for visiting representatives. Numerous banquets, informal gathering places (IE Parties), and entertainments will be available for your distraction. Think of it as a working vacation. All transportation, security and anything else needed to make your stay one of comfort will be supplied by ourselves here at H+K.

If you would like to reserve a spot as a vendor, feel free to contact our corporate offices and let your needs be known. The Kastaa Convention Center holds an amazing amount of space. We here hope to see you all soon.

With best regards,
CEO Kraah

Kraah rears back up after looking over the missive, and scratches his scaley chin. "Hrrrmmmm...it is adequate. Let H'zta look it over and add her signature to it, and send it out right away. I need to see how the preparations are coming." Phashaa looks ascance at Kraah, as if sensing something else. her violet eyes seem to bore into his psyche.

"No no, none of that. Let's get to work here." He keeps a song on his head until he's sure she's out of range. Confound that woman. She can drive a man, such as it is, to distraction. Perhaps i'll set her up with my oldest. Hmmm....ah well, on to business. The business of eating.

OOC: This thread is now open to responses. Consider the invites sent out. Details such as landing trajectories and arrival at airports can be bypassd for the sake of not bogging things down with minute details. GAME ON!

http://www.debbiedoesdinner.com/new1002/Sample-Hors-d'oeuvres.gif

Vera Cook adjusts--just very slighty--one of the hors d'oeuvres into alignment with its kin on the big plate at the strategically located TME Industries Foods Division booth, located near the routes that everyone was guaranteed to pass every so often. There were advantages to arriving early, after all. Smiling softly to herself, she winks in her usual way to the peons sitting at the booth and turns around.

Ms. Cook is an interesting sort. Unlike the usual Scolopendran business-female, she disdains the usual suit for a dress... and while it certainly is a nice dress, it also is not actually anything most people would generally consider as business clothing. She currently wears a simple blue-dyed dress with lace trim cut in a conservative, old-fashioned style which gives it enough professionalism to work as a business dress, although it would perhaps seem to be more apropos for, say, a seamstress rather than a foods and marketing executive. Below the hem of the dress, which cuts off at about mid-calf, she wears high, well-polished yet not distractingly so combat boots, the usual lacing replaced with streamlined buckles up the side. This seems to fit somewhat better with her insistance on having short hair and almost-horn-rimmed glasses.

http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/scolopendra/vera_cook.gif

As stated previously, an interesting sort. Stepping back, she nods appreciatively at the banner that proclaims the booth's owner to the rest of the convention.

TECHNOLOGY-MANUFACTURING-ENERGY INDUSTRIES
"A Little Bit of Everything"

Yes, everything is just so, she thinks as she turns to the largish kzin standing next to her. "So, what do you think... Mister Speaker-Rrit?"

Forms of address for the Supreme Emperor were always up for debate because they were never codified or came under convention. Most Scolopendran citizens--and most Supreme Emperors, for that matter--were perfectly content with calling them "Mister Lastname" like the normal, everyday people they were. The addressed Supreme Emperor nods a little, somewhat less than interested with businesses and corporations--that was Jack's job, not his--but with the fall of ScoloMart some time back, TME Industries was now pretty much the major Scolopendran megacorporation, and so it was natural that they be present here. As for his presence, escorting them was simply a good excuse. "It's very nice, Ms. Cook." He looks around momentarily. "Where has Mr. Kerrigan gone?"

Vera shrugged. She didn't much like Interim Trade Advisor Jack Kerrigan, formerly of the People's Money Committee of the Legislative Unit. Then again, most corporate johnsons didn't like Kerrigan--he was quite a bit firmer on regulations than the late Ralph Spoilsport ever was. The little-guy cottage industrialists, though... they loved the man. Still... there was logic in the system he tried to enforce. Corporations mass-produce things that lower the cost of living through increased utility and life at decreased cost via competition; the little guys made all the kitzch that people could use to personalize their various lifestyles if they had the excess funds to do so. An oversimplification, most certainly, but an accurate description of the basic principles of the Scolopendran merchantile and industrial economy. "No idea, actually. Not like there are many places to go."

Speaker shrugs. "True. I must be off to one of those few places. I wish you luck, Ms. Cook--good morning." With that, the kzin turns and wanders off to go find H'zta. Hrr hrr. Sleeping with your competitors. I'd love to hear the cries of 'conflict of interest' on that one.

Somehow, someway, a missive filters to where it was probably never intended to end up. Perhaps chains of mailing lists finally connected two otherwise unrelated points; degrees of separation shifting from dozens to one. This missive grinds through the cogs and rusting gears of a bureaucracy that exists only to further itself, finally ending up on the desk of Commissar Jenkins, head of the SubOffice for Trade with External Powers, Undefined. The many-times-opened, many-times-resealed, photocopied, facimilied, and otherwise doctrinally abused little envelope shows the inevitable wear of its painful journey, once firm and smooth paper now worn thin and fuzzy, the corners of the envelope torn a bit and drooping depressingly, just like the brownish plant sitting at its regulation ten centimeters away from the corner of Jenkins' desk.

Tapping the ash from the end of his cardboard-and-cabbage Victory Cigar before returning it to his lips, he looks down at the soiled yellowish envelope, stamped repeatedly with blood-red indicators of its travels. CorpArms--the Arms Corporation, of course-- followed by the Corporate Subsidiary of Operations... Subdivision of External Affairs... Greater Office of Trade... Office of Trade with External Powers... and finally to him, the executor of the Work Ethic in this task. The commissar puffs himself up a bit pridefully. Yes, him, Commissar Anastasius Jenkins, Citizen Number J930219, would be doing his Most Holy Work in this, opening the envelope which contains something of such import to the Strategic Corps for Offensive Research and Corporate Hegemony.

Taking up his dull letter opener, he smiles smugly up at the blinking security camera as he deftly plunges its sharp point through the little gap between the fold of the tab and the glue... right into the meat of his hand holding it on the other side.

What he says next does not bear repeating in polite company.

* - * - *

Commissar Jenkins nods curtly at the work of his minions in their faded grey denim jumpsuits in the early morning equatorial Sakkran sun. This land was... strange, to say the least, as were the inhabitants, foul lizards that they were. Foul lizards with money, as the orders from SCORCH had said, and thus dear dear friends assuming if they could exchange wealth for some of the produce of the Ten Colors.

As advertised by the bright magenta wooden tank mockup behind their booth, the produce of the Ten Colors are tanks, arms, and their various accoutrements of death, destruction, and mayhem. A perfectly clean and decent business. Nursing his bandaged left hand, the Commissar nods again as a minion runs up and bows submissively. "Lord Commissar, the model is complete," the minion says quickly for fear of his speech being docked from his pay, "what is my next holy effort so I may uphold the holy Work Ethic?"

"Go put up the banner." Jenkins indicates a rolled up bit of thin tarpaulin with his bandaged hand. Minions were so annoying, always requiring direction. Never mind the fact he had, and relished, the authority to shoot them on sight for any signs of shirking duty, which includes subverting the Work Ethic via incompetence.

The minion salutes quickly in acknowledgement, then springs away to the sign. A good worker, Jenkins thinks. Perhaps I won't have to shoot this one.

OOC: I assume that bringing in a Star Destroyer is out of the question? Yes? Alright :/ Guess it's overkill to bring in a real-life walker.

Mikhail wanted to bring a Mistral, or maybe even a full Star Destroyer. Weyrik International was paid a lot of money not to sell it Star Destroyers, but there was nothing in the contract about using a one-point-four kilometer starship as an advertising tool. Blowing up the competition was a favorite, if somewhat jaded, Weyrean corporate tactic.

Weyrik International was not a company, but a conglomerate of the G-12, the twelve most powerful Weyrean corporations. The G-12 spanned half the galaxy, since Weyrean Star Guard craft all carried corporate advertisements and the spread of advertising was a sign of power. Seeing the logos of Integrated Auto or Highlander-Leigh on the sides of vessels that could literally vaporize your home world made for very compelling arguments.

Mikhail stretched, his black arachnoweave business suit shifting to better suit his motion. Little mites in the bulletproof fabric shifted cool air at his skin, and so he did not even sweat.

Mikhail looked like a businessman, save for the long, pointed ears that stuck out sideways from his head. He was not an elf -- he did not dance in the glades and sing to the trees for millennia at a time. He was a Weyrean, with dark blue hair tied into a short plait and sharp eyes that seemed to bore into one's soul. Four hundred years of inter-corporate and inter-phyle politics in Wye City and later in Paradigm City did that to a Weyrean, a human, or possibly any other sentient. Some said that Mikhail looked like a corporate devil.

Someone called him on the neural link. The wireless connection allowed him to access everything from mechs to comm. systems, provided he had the correct protocols.

"Problems?" he inquired over the Net.

"BIOS corrupt in third section. It'll be up in a few moments, ser," came the rapid response, accompanied by a thought-image of haste.

'Good," Mikhail, CEO of Weyrik International responded. the exchange had taken but a few seconds -- words traveled as fast as thought on the Net.

Over Mikhail was a mediatron proclaiming Weyrik International. The sign was tame, by Weyrean standards. It had less of the standard advertising mantra: big boobs, fast tires, and loud explosions, concentrating rather on the tires and the explosions. Behind him were subsections for everything from small, four-legged Fuchikoma police enforcers to behemoth Thunderer artillery pieces, whose fusactor power cores were so vast they could not be used even aboard large starships.

The large objects were not, of course, actually there. It cost too much to charter a Star Destroyer, and too risky to ferry billions of Weyrs worth of goods in a Starlighter. Mikhail opted for a neural display, which simulated everything from the visual to the tactile and olfactory in almost perfect clarity. All one had to do was put on a simple headband, which was actually quite expensive to make due to the mithril conduicts inside.

Back home in Irais* the snowy season was beginning, but down South in the Land of the Lizards it was damnably hot. David Roult sweated miserably in his suit, wishing he'd had the foresight to check what the Sakkran weather was like. The rest of the Chameleon Co-operative staff had arrived several days earlier, long enough to adjust to the weather and the timezone, but no such luck for the newly-appointed Exhibition Officer.

"We've got the stalls set up, Mister Roult." that was one of the booth girls, looking about as fetching as one could in a Co-operative t-shirt with a damn great big chameleon on the back (which was not very, alas). Her nametag said "Hi! My name is MELISSA".

"Wonderful! Do you think these Sakkrans don't feel the heat like we do? Their air conditioning leaves something to be desired..."

"Maybe if you took off your suit, Mister Roult?" Melissa suggested. "It seems fine to me..."

"I wouldn't be representing the Co-op then, now would I?" David's suit was manufactured from Chameleon Co-op's primary product and namesake, "invisibility" polymers which came, originally, from the Old One vault beneath Erliskan**.

Melissa shrugged, as if to say, suit yourself. There wasn't much respect for authority in a democratic Co-operative enterprise. Suyana, now - there was an honest-to-goodness corporation, left over from the Iron Years***, and still producing the maglift engines they'd once made for the Imperial Armour Legions. Compared to the Suyana space with it's polished hoverbikes and 'cars, the Chameleon stalls looked cheap.

Between them, however, were the myriad stalls, screens, plinths, and multitudes of hardware of the Harmonious Technological Co-operative, owned and run by geeks (who nonetheless seemed to have scrubbed up reasonably well). The weird blobby thing that was their logo and official mascot adorned most everything electronic within Ilona, and they were, like Chameleon and Suyana, looking to expand internationally.

"Good work, I suppose," David said, but Melissa could surely tell that he'd seen the Suyana space, and was bemoaning their chances. Chameleon might have a lucrative contract with the armed forces, but invisibility had gone from "fashionable" to "kitsch" and was now "last decade's news" among the civilian populace. Still, the foreigners might think differently.

OOC:
*Irais: the capital city of Ilona.
**Erliskan: another city, mostly known for having a stash of nonhuman technology under it.
**Iron Years: Back when Ilona was a racist, fascist, despotic and tyrannical Imperium. About a century ago.

Speaker wanders around the booths, pausing for a moment while he sees a man with pointed ears in a black suit standing in the middle of an empty lot, wearing a headband and looking self-important under a sort of hovering sign making loud noises and displaying lots of squealing tires and overdone slow-motion explosions, coupled with the very occasional bare breast. The 'tosh dismisses the momentary curiosity as some sort of preacher for a nihilistic religion and walks on.

Across the campus, H'zta stops by the Chameleon Co-operative booth and momentarily looks over the wares... or not, as the wares may defy visual inspection. Alternate ways to solve similar problems can often be useful, she thinks as she idly picks up a sales brochure. "Interesting," she broaches nonchalantly to one of the women in the booth, "how does it work?"

Mikhail pressed a small button on his headband. Something clicked; the silvery metal telescoped into a thumbnail-sized box. The vision vanished. He had no interest in overloading his neural link, so the external link was a necessity for the amount of sense data being moved from him to the central SEED unit.

He was standing in an empty lot.

"I think it would've been cheaper to hite that lighter," a voice said behind him.

"Maybe," the CEO responded, turning around. "Is it ready?"

"Yep," the young woman responded. She was the second of the two Weyrik International representatives on the campus. Miranda was not human, although it was almost impossible to tell without a very close inspection, she was an Inorganic Intelligence system.

"Then get it set up," Mikhail stated.

Miranda walked briskly to the center of the lot. One may have remarked that there was a high-end power conduit terminal right at the point where she halted. She took a small sphere from her pocket. The total cost that tiny construct amounted to several million Weyrs, but it was still cheaper than the alternative. Besides, their hosts were paying for the power expendures that a SEED required.

She dropped the sphere. It fell, halted exactly a meter above the ground. Miranda walked backwards. It might have appeared strange, except that every step was exactly half a meter in length. At forty meters, she stopped. Mikhail stepped up to stand beside her. The Two Weyreans seemed to stare at an empty space, for a moment.

"Go," Mikhail sent the silent command.

The sphere whined, a miniscule sound that did not carry far. There was a small flash of diminished azure light, the crackle of static discharge. The process took two seconds, slow by Weyrean SEED standards, but Mikhail did not want to stress the local power grid.

"Only ten?" Mikhail inquired, noticing the gap in the Weyrean booths that cropped up in a space of a few seconds. SEED was designed to construct entire buildings in seconds; a series of booths was no problem. There were data cubes, mediatronic paper brochures, full-immersion circlets, and holoimage projections demonstrating various ways to cause mayhem or to solve some sort of construction problem.

"Istaril and Bladeworks pulled out," Miranda responded.

"Alright, he nodded, pulled a nametag out of his suit pocket, attached it to the front of his jacket. Melissa did the same to her tight, oval coverall.

A dozen Fuchikoma police enforcers skittered to a stop before the pair. hey were products of the small SEED, like the rest of the Weyrean booths.

”Fuchikoma one ready..."

"Fuchikoma two ready..."[/]

[i]”Fuchikoma three ready..."

”Fuchikoma four ready..." the small, squat, purple, four-legged crab-like mechs each saluted with one of their forward arms, each of which contained deadly blaster anti-personnel cannons hidden behind adept grasping claws. They would be the ones actually 'manning' the booths.

"Thank you. You have received instructions, please carry them out," Mikhail half-bowed towards the mechs.

"Aye aye," the Fuchikomas skittered off.

'Why made this sign?" Mikhail inquired, seeming to notice the ridiculous display above his head for the first time.

"United Artisans, Miranda responded.

"Fire them. They never work for this corporation again. Ever," Mikhail stated. He mentally keyed into the mediatronic sign, edited a few commands. The sign shifted, became tamer, began cycling through the names of the Group of Twelve corporations and their mottoes

Weyrik international, Inc.
Paradox Starworks: the Future is Now
Integrated Automotive Consortium: Wheels Unlimited
Arachnolayers: Bulletproof fabrics for all occasions
Paradigm Staryards: You dream it, we build it
Istrada: Makers of the Point-Singularity Cannon planetBusters....

the list went on.

Before she'd volunteered to staff the expo at the HKICTCon, Melissa had been warned that the natives were essentially giant lizards. They hadn't mentioned giant cats...

Giving the Kzin her best smile, Melissa launched into her pitch. "On the chameleon fabric are millions of tiny colour-changing cells, like the chromatophores on an octopus, a suna* or a chameleon." On cue, the plasma screen set up behind her displayed images of these creatures. "Ours use intererometric modulators, which are a pair of microscopic mirrors, to change the colour by light interference instead of pigments. They're arranged in a hexagonal lattice" - here an image of this appeared, greatly magnified; six little dots surrounding a larger silvery one - "Around a microscopic optical sensor, which transmits what it sees to the cells on the other side of whatever object the chameleon cloth covers - be it a suit, or a hat, or a main battle tank."

OOC: *Suna: The national animal.

Besides, their hosts were paying for the power expendures that a SEED required.
A boxy device on H'zta's belt buzzes. "Pardon me... one moment," she apologizes to the Ilonian girl and brings the device to her ear. "H'zta."

-Massive power draw. I'd swear someone's using a nanolathe on our dime.-

H'zta sighs. "Who?"

-Looks like... uh... some interests from Weyr?-

"Send them the bill, cost plus twenty percent for handling and provision." Despite not being corporate by upbringing, training, or nature, she got the hang of it relatively quickly. "Payable either in currency or in equivalent power draw. Out." Toggling the transmit key with her thumb, she returns the device to her belt. "One would think people could ask permission once in a while..."

The kzinret then listens politely to the explanation and nods. Optically based rather than chemically based, like Sakkran technology... still, they seem to sell this as a consumer product. She flips through the brochure in her hands. Commercially viable is a good thing. "If I can ask, how do you produce it? It must be an efficient process to make your product profitable."

"Interesting," Mikhail thought, without a trace of emotion, as the bill data was shunted into his neural link. The head of the Weyrik International logistics directorate was wakened by a massive neural burn, and informed that he was out of work, and that he owed Weyrik International several hundred million Weyrs in operating costs. "Get six Starfire No.611 Mk5 fusactors here, with lifetime supply of feed material, and hook them up to wherever our hosts want them."

Fusactors were the mainstay of Weyrean power generation. They worked with anything, even lead, although the energy extracted from heavy, stable elements was negligible. The H'zta & Kraah Consortium was getting six of the more-powerful versions, which were normally used to power warships. As long as those fuactors continued working, Weyrik International would provide a free and steady supply of Feed materials, provided that H'zta & Kraah Consortium accepted the offer. Wyerik International was ruthless in its dealings, but almost no one could say that it was unfair.

"I will see what else is here. Can you handle the booth?" the Weyrean asked.

"Sure," Miranda shrugged. The Fuchikomas were perfectly capable of handling themselves, and of taking care of trouble. Perhaps it was a bad idea to have an enforcer mech advertise armor and arachnoweave, but it was also a lot cheaper than hiring a professional marketing sentient.

******

"TECHNOLOGY-MANUFACTURING-ENERGY INDUSTRIES" proclaimed a sign. It seemed to claim to sell everything. Mikhail wondered what that everything was, and how efficient could a company that made everything be.

"It's all done by machine - a vat in Erliskan produces the modulators, and another makes the sensors, and they're strung together in a factory in Irais. Very simple, really." Chameleon Co-op tended to downplay the fact that the vats producing modulators and sensors were nanotechnology vats - after several "grey goo" atrocities during the Iron Years, the word was something of a taboo.

H'zta at the Chameleon Booth

Buzz. Buzz.

H'zta sighs, and smiles diplomatically. "My apologies again." Comm to ear. "H'zta."

-Weyrik's asking if we'd like six capgrade reactors and lifetime supplies of fuel.-

"Outstanding. Thank them for their speedy payment and say we look forward to working more closely with them in the future... and thanks for helping with this. H'zta out." She toggles the device again and returns it to her belt before returning to her previously scheduled conversation.

"Can you tell," she says with a tired smile, "that I am the one in charge? H'zta, CEO of H'zta and Kraah Enterprises." She extends a hand in greeting, mulling the figures about in her head. "Most interesting product. Depending on just how cost-effective it is, my corporation may be interested in subcontracting work needing your required skills."

TME Industries Booth

And, indeed, it seems to produce a little bit of everything if the paraphenalia surrounding it is to be believed. Tableware, dishwashers, aircraft components, military hardware, optics... nothing that looks like it's going to take off and soar into the history books (except for the TME-196 Selene executive shuttle, which looks rather nice) but everything looks sturdy and built to last.

Seeing the first interested party of the day walking up, Vera smiles a winning smile. "Hi," she says with a barely-covered grin, "welcome to our booth. What's your interest this fine morning?"

A row over Navi watched the nanolathe spin out a number of contraptions. She ran her hand over her forehead wiping away a spot of grease. Her soft leather cap and ancient aviator goggles hid her ruffled hair.

"Hey, Claus, what do you think of that."

Behind her in a rather unique looking craft Claus poked his head out from his seat, wrench-like device in his hand.

"Nano-tech, good for them."

Navi frowned, idly playing with her cap, "No style, no style at all."

She spun about noticing Claus had disappeared under the dash once more, she could hear him whistling a tune she was intimately familiar with.

Grabbing a small tool gage she threw it at the craft, it fell into the hole where Claus was.

"Ow, that was uncalled for Navi."

"You know I hate that song Claus."

"Sorry...hey, hit the power would you?"

Navi reached into the rear seat and flips a few switches, the instrument panel glowed softly, and for a moment nothing happened.

But slowly the craft began to hum, the engine sounding like the combustion engines of old.

Claus pushed himself out from under the dash. "Good, it's cooperating."

He pulled back on the trottle slightly, bringing the craft down to a few inches above the groud. Hopping out of the seat, he glanced at the make-shift booth they had set up earlier. The stack of cheap pamplets still undisturbed by any of the people at the conference.

"Hey Navi...navi...NAVI!"

He spun about glaring at Navi who was staring into the crowds.
"Navi why aren't you at the booth?"
"Titan to Navi, wake up."

Navi simply nodded at the crowd, "Look over there Claus, isn't that Speaker-Rrit."

Claus scanned the crowd, spotting a few K'zin, finally seeing Speaker-Rrit. "Must be here with the TME Industries crowd."

With that Claus returned to the booth, idly thumbing through a pamplet. Business was always slow.

Next to the TME booth, a large area is cordened off with waist high metallic barriers, in a semi circle. A wide break allowes entry to the display area. Inside, arranged along the inside of the circle are displays for several of the KarmaCorp TechSystems divisions, with appropriete accouterments, all facing a large, center dias supporting a curved, continuous display that wraps around its entirety. Represented divisions include GeneWerks (genetic manipulation of plants/animals, responsible for producing the flora/fauna of Titan), ConsumerWerks (consumer goods), PowerWerks (power generation/application), NetWerks(data transfer/storage/interaction), WeaponWerks (obvious) and FleetWerks(ship design/construction). Zin Karma, founding CEO of KCTS walks up to the display manager, standing next to the ConsumerWerks area, and talking to a facilities services rep from the convention center. He waits until they finish their conversation.

"What kind of power hookup do you need?"
"We make our own, but a standard hookup for the small stuff would be great." The rep walks off, indicating the nearest power hookup and checking a box on his clipboard.


Zin looks down at the FüsToaster on display, "Everything set, Mr Johnson?"

"Yes, sir, core is coming online right now." He turns toward the center dias where a tech is working on a control panel. The lights in the booth come to life as the display screens flicker on and go through their self-tests. "I went ahead and got us a hookup to the power grid, figure we can be nice and step down some of our output and dump it off to the grid. They should make some postive gross selling the excess back to the main grid."

"Excellent. I leave the display in your capable hands then. I think I will go browse the various offerings."

"Have a good time sir, lunch is about 1300 local if you are interested." Zin walks off and Johnson turns toward the dias. "No, Trev, I want the contest announcement on the front third not the back!"

The tech fiddles with the control for the display until a large format announcement fills the bottom half of the front third of the screen. It reads: WIN A SOLSTREAM MARK 2 INTRASYSTEM CRAFT! DETAILS AT THE FLEETWERKS BOOTH!

Claus looks up from his pamplet and notices the rather large glaring letters of the KCTS booths.
A contest eh?

"Navi, watch the booth for a moment."

Claus wanders over to the KCTS area, walking slowly inside. Fleetwerks, fleetwerks...ah, there it is. He wanders over, adjusting his ancient aviator goggles so that they didn't fall over his eyes.

He walks over to whom he thinks is the booth worker. "Excuse me, I'd like to know how to win that Solstream."

TME Industries Booth

And, indeed, it seems to produce a little bit of everything if the paraphenalia surrounding it is to be believed. Tableware, dishwashers, aircraft components, military hardware, optics... nothing that looks like it's going to take off and soar into the history books (except for the TME-196 Selene executive shuttle, which looks rather nice) but everything looks sturdy and built to last.

Seeing the first interested party of the day walking up, Vera smiles a winning smile. "Hi," she says with a barely-covered grin, "welcome to our booth. What's your interest this fine morning?"

"Just looking around," Mikhail shrugged, noticed something strange. His name tag was of a painful, hot-pink hue. Without a thought, he altered it to a darker, more somber tone. "Otherwise....improved visual interpretation scanner systems, psedo-intelligence systems, and inorganic-sentience systems."

TME Industries Booth

Vera Cook nods, smiling brilliantly once again, with exposed teeth no less--no kzin in the area, no need to cover. "Yup, got those. We have advanced visual interpretation algorithms that work across a wide variety of input based off of work we do with Zero-One MonoCorporation; it's been proven in multiple military and civilian augmented reality systems over the years. Presentient 'knowbots'--probably equivalent to the 'pseudo-intelligence' you're looking for--are pretty much a standard for higher forms of quantum computation requiring rapid iterative prototyping and fuzzy logic to estimate creativity and near-intuition by using algorithms designed from years of experience. That's as close as we get to producing true sentience for customers," she says with a smile, "because while quantum-computational mechatronic intelligences are nothing new, they are sentient and thusly Scolopendran citizens if we make them with all of the rights thereto. We're not much into slavery." This last phrase is said in a still cheerful voice, but there's an odd firmness to it.

"Of course, there's not much glitz to any of it; if you're interested in any particular computing system or bit of software, it'll do what you ask and do it well... but we're not much for needless frills."

This much is advertised by the products arrayed around the booth. To the left is a collection of consumer goods, all in burnished steel. They are sleek and far from ugly, but they are clearly designed to perform one function, perform it durably, and fit into standardized spaces, which leads to a utilitarian blockiness of design and a definite lack of vanity paneling. To the right are various personal vehicles--a moped, a motorcycle, and a sedan--with plaques in front of them indicating what they look like if a buyer opts for a version that trades in wheels for something a bit more esoteric. They actually do have the usual vehicle bright-colored composite hulls, but are shaped the way they are because they have to be for optimum performance and durability. The streamlining is simple and care is taken to maintain an elegance and purity of design, but beyond that, aesthetics is dropped beyond what naturally results from building something to get someone from point A to point B efficiently.

A Selene-class shuttle is parked behind, and even that has a simple fluidity and sleekness that appears to be more a function of design and efficiency than a need to make it look pretty. But it does, in fact, look stand-out-of-a-crowd pretty.

Everything else... efficient, sleek, robust, but not exemplars of vanity.

The FleetWerks rep turns around from arranging a stack of info cards under a display of the KCTS C-909 City Hopper and addresses Claus.

"Of course sir!" He points to a large model of the SolStream, one of several models arranged around the display, and it begins to rotate in 3-space. "The KCTS SolStream Mark 2 is the latest offering from KCTS FleetWerks for the intrasystem business-sentient on the go." The model highlights key features and zooms for detailed looks, revealing itself to be a high-definition holo. "From unmatched-in-its-class speed, to a fully customizable and built-to-order interior, your SolStream will truly be one of a kind. If you would like to enter the drawing, please, fill out the quick survey on the terminal over there. The drawing will be held at the conclusion of the conference. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, and make sure to see all the other exiting KCTS products before you leave!"


The survey, it turns out is fairly generic, with a name and address block, and several questions relating to the aerospace habits of the surveyed. "When was the last time you flew on an aircraft? Spacecraft? Do you remember the make/model? Do you own a personal aero/space vehicle? etc."

Claus thanked the rep and proceeded to fill out the survey form.
This would be perfect to get our transport service going
Name: Claus Rowe
Address: XXXX Jenora, Berserker, Titan
When was the last time you flew on an aircraft: Earlier today
Do you remember the make/model?: Custom built gravcraft.
When was the last time you flew on an spacecraft: 3 days ago.
Do you remember the make/model?: Commercial cargo hauler.
Do you own a personal aero/space vehicle: Aforementioned Custom built gravcraft.
and so on.

Once finished Claus thanked the rep once more and spent a few minutes walking about the KCTS area picking up the requisite swag.

Upon returning to their booth, he told Navi to go sign up, and she followed suit.

Mikhail listened to the representative, showing less emotion than a tub of mayonase.

"Ser OOC: standard genderless honorific, the Administrative Officer of Weyrik is a Constructed Intelligence. Paradigm Prefecture and Weyrik Common law grant Constructed Sentience the same rights as organic sentients. I cannot say we do not have discrimination, but it is something every open society has to deal with." Mikhail responded.

Weyr had faced the problem of artificial life over two centuries ago, and decided that it was no different from any other sentient life. Several religious and pro-organic phyles and sects disagreed, but that was what phyles were for -- disagreement. A phyle could be as xenophobic and exclusive as it wished to be, as long as it did not try and shove its views down anyone else's throat.

"That aside," the blue-haired Weyrean continued, "we are looking for pseudo-intelligence systems that are capable of navigating through tranSpace. Any piece of rod logic can be programmed to not dive into a data stream too small for its vessel. The crunch, so to speak, is infinite probability. Each data stream can take a vessel from point Alpha to point Beta in exactly the same amount of time, with exactly the same chance of safety, even if that stream is going backwards. The code for passing an infinite probability loop causes a stutter in every program we have tested so far, which destroys both the vessel and everyone on board. The money involved in making a PI system that can travel through tranSpace is, as you may imagine, quite a large sum."

"Infinite probability basically means a probability of one," Vera says guardedly, carefully trying to piece together bits of scientific jargon the visitor apparently had no interest in defining further. "Coding for that is generally simple, to the extent of 'take first path that meets criteria.' If they all get one there--thus meeting the criteria--then first one detected should do. Beyond that is a bandwidth problem, and the standard bandwidth difficulty is that there's usually no way to know how much a particular pipe can carry without actually testing it first via ping."

She smiles. "Our propulsion systems are quite different, so I'm working off of a networking analogy here. If there is a way for the ship to 'ping' these various data-streams, and absolutely all of them lead to the destination--as I'm lead to believe from what you told me--then the infinite probability factor is nullified by a simple loop that states, in layman's terms, 'ping datastreams until one returns the bandwidth required, then take that one.' Failing some sort of ability to remotely sense bandwidth, at which point coding simply becomes 'follow the largest-bandwidth path detected if it is larger than minimum.' Unless these things have qualities that can only be exploited with intuition or something close thereto, what you need isn't a pseudosentience; what you need is a sufficiently fast brute-force computer."

CEO Kargaah arrives as his underlings begin putting together their display models of some of the more recent products from Hreer that were deemed suitable for trade. EM Personal Gauss Rifles, Mark II Chunk Projecters, Gelignite flamethrowers, and various man-portable anit-personell and anti-armor devices, as well as standard non-lethal arms.

They were arranged in their clear-Resin cases and polished to a high sheen. Of course, none of the weaponry was loaded, and firing mechanisms were removed in case someone managed to not only procure the appropo ammunition, but decided to test it on 'live subjects'. Behind the booth, and to the left of two chairs meant for the corporate representatives, was a Horde Suit with an EM Gauss Cannon mounted on the left arm, and a Chunk Projecter mounted on the right. No pilot could be discerned as being inside the suit. Behind that, the banner of Hreer Weaponry hung bearing it's corporate emblem; A Sakkran fist holding aloft a 90mm self-propelled round of ammunition.

A trio of portable walls displayed information in paper form on the various items in the booth, and a holographic display of each item could be cued up from a terminal to the left of theisplay cases. Kargaah chomped noisily on his cigar as he oversaw the preparations. When they were complete, he 'grumph'ed noisily.

"Very good. Be certain to answer questions asked, take any orders or trade offers in note, and do NOT fall asleep at your posts." A clawed finger is waved at each of the representatives in turn. "Yes, CEO." was the answer given from each rep in unison.

"Very good. I'm going to see what the competition has dragged here. Be aware of industrial espionage. I won't have anyone gleaning too much info for free."

"Yes, CEO."

A CEO? Talking to me? This is not a common occurance for Melissa; even in a democratic organisation, a layer of burecracy seperates the actual decisionmakers from the secretaries-turned-booth-girls.

"Uh, hi," she told H'zta, "I'm Melissa. I'm just a glorified secretary really. Uh, you'd need to talk to Mister Roult about that side of things - he should be about somewhere."

She looked about briefly, but was unable to spot him. "He's wearing a chameleon-cloth coat, he shouldn't be too hard to pick out... unless there's more than one disembodied head floating about?"

Kraah enters the conference center finally, being distracted by the food vendors outside, hawking their wares. He emerges bearing a leg shank of some beast, and chomps and slurps at it noisily. Looking around at the various corporate representatives and their booths, he decides to stop over at the booth of the Chameleon Co-op group.

Ah, the artificial solution to the same premise of our own material. Interesting...... Informational data is looked over as Kraah brandishes the leg-shank in one hand, looking like a club made of roasted meat. "Mmmm...mmhmmmm...hmmm...." He wipes one hand absently on his silken tunic of a very toned-down sienna.

Suddenly he hears H'zta's voice from his side. One eye swivels at her, and another noisy chomping slurp is taken. "Well, by my eye-teeth. I see we have been making the rounds, eh? Hrar! And who is this lovely human we're talking with, eh?" A short bow is offered, with a bit of meat-juices dripping from his jaws with a slight splatting sound as it hits the ground.

MEANWHILE....

At another end of the conference room, Kastaa Bio-Med has begun setting up their display and demonstration booth. The banner that hangs up over it bears the corporate logo, a big red triangle with the Eye of Horus in the middle of it. The slogan "Natural solutions for an artificial world" is displayed beneath the logo.

Three representatives have been chosen to man the booth here. A human, a hrubban and a Sakkran in the off-white clothing of the Kastaa Bio-Med uniform. Several large tanks full of various liquids are arrayed on top of and to the sides of the display platform they have. Some of the denizens of the tanks are still quite alive as bio-luminescent fishes swim about in a darkened tank, small turtles in their own watery container crane their necks about at all the noise outside, moray eels in a simulated reef open and close their maws with their heads barely poking out of holes in the calcium-rich substance, and a hatchling Swamp Newt sleeps in the largest tank there.

Products made by Kastaa Bio-Med are also present. Medical kits, field emergency packages, synth-skin patches, and tailored regen-bacterium in syringes, as well as much more, are displayed with information on their use and the effects of said use.

Not only this, but some other gene-modded symbiotids seem to be in existence here. Organic universal translators, toxin extractors, tailored immuno-boosters and various creatures designed to operate at the equivalency of artificial technologies are displayed proudly, along with their care and feeding guides.

Eeep.

"Uh, my name's Melissa. Melissa Sanders," Melissa told the great big lizard. "I'm, uh, just manning the booth here..."

She gave him a nervous grin.

OOC: Sorry it couldn't be longer. Feel free to check out the Harmonious Technological Co-operative or Suyana Corporation too.

Kraah rears his head back without moving his torso. "Oh. come now. Surely the fine corporation of ...." He takes a moment to look at the banner. "... Chameleon Co-operative wouldn't entrust the weighty responsibilities of a corporate representative to someone named Melissa Sanders who plays the part of seat-warmer! I have it on good authority ..." A sly wink to H'zta." ...that THIS Melissa Sanders is actually quite knowledgeable and professional; meriting her auspicious position which has landed her here today, gracing my eyes with her presence. Or am I mistaken?"

With his free eye, Kraah spots a corporate hospitality-service booth setting out some samples of their culinary artistry. A hand shoots out quickly and snaps twice, bringing a pair of scaled heads looking over the crowd at Kraah's direction. A pointed claw and a swift hand signal later, the heads beeline for the samples and pick out enough for a small plate, hurriedly rushing the steaming succulents towards the pair of H'zta and Kraah.

"I love these affairs. We really should do this more often." Some beef ribs find its way into his mouth at that point, disappearing swiftly with a loud crunching of bones.

Ah, Kraah. The co-CEO, more on the 'personnel resources' end of the scale. Sometimes self-assured to the point of tactlessness, usually sloppy to a level just short of disgusting, and almost always Epicurian bordering on hedonistic. H'zta loves the guy, the a beer-drinking brother who gauges the quality of his belching on tonal clarity and length that she never had. Therefore, it is with a familial chuckle as she shakes her head at her peer's antics, of course returning winks on cue. In fact, he's so distracting that she completely misses the grin.

"Oh, don't mind him," H'zta says playfully (in the way that cats play with their food playfully) to poor Melissa, "he is co-CEO Kraah. He does not bite... without permission."

She doubted his reputation extended that far. Still, that joke tended to get a snicker around the water cooler in Sakkra, where Old Man Kraah's various dabblings in some of the more pleasant Seven Deadlies were legend. "So, Kraah, shall we divide and conquer? She's just referred me to a Mister Roult, who is probably that one there." She points at the matching set of head, feet, and hands sweating a bit in the equatorial sun. "I am sure you see as much value in this as I do... I can continue 'making the rounds' while you pursue our interests here?"

H'zta, despite being a massive yet lithe--i.e. very healthy--kzinret, somehow didn't quite have the debating presence of Old Man Kraah. He was larger, for a start, and his paunch did make him somewhat resemble a megalopolis-threatening atomic-fire breathing monster; instead of being amusing, this usually just added to the 'rawr I can eat your family' image. Coupled with his extremely gregarious nature, he was his own good-cop bad-cop couple--a wonderful negotiator. At least that's how H'zta sees it.

Kraah looks at the direction of the sweaty human, and gives his approximation of a grin as the scent of the sesame oils coating his scales wafts slightly. "Oh, yes. By all means let's 'divide and conquer'." He squats down on his haunches, hoping to make Melissa feel a bit more at ease.

"So now, my dear, let's talk about what your company does precisely. And do tell how our hotels fare for you. If your representatives have needs that aren't being addressed i'm sure we can find SOME way of amending that."

---------------

Guahh Armor Works in the meanwhile, has finished setting up its booth. To one side stands a Horde Suit complete with pilot, and to the other is a Minion Suit, also with a pilot. The reinforced compartments are open allowing some of the internal systems to be seen.

Three reptilian representatives sit in high-backed chairs with terminals in front of them, and holographic displays showing the suits in action in a variety of environs. It is footage of the 13th Armor Cavalry in action against cybernetic hive-mind opponents in space and on the ground. Sub-titles at the bottom of the displays scroll 'Actual combat footage of our product in use!' swiftly.

A TacSoft suit of infantry armor is laid out in front of all this, with some details as to its workings, capabilities and so on, with hard-copy pictures of the TacSoft armor being worn, as well as a number of brichures and other informational pamphlets.

Commissar Jenkins frowns, shifting slightly in his coarse grey uniform. It was his holy duty to ensure that customers came to SCORCH's little booth, or, as the manual and the sign above it declared, "storefront."

They weren't. This meant that he was remiss in his duties. He frowns a bit more, trying to keep the sweat from breaking out in his brow. That meant he was failing in his work; he was shirking. Breathing in once, he lets it out slowly--he was in an entirely different heathen country; there were no Arbiters here; it was unlikely that his minions were plants... but they could, and would, report. They were good workers.

Coming to a decision, Jenkins calls over another nondescript minion. "You have a field promotion to Minion Superior. Ensure this booth operates smoothly in accordance with the Most Holy Work Ethic and await my return."

The new Minion Superior clicks his heels and salutes. "Yes, Lord Commissar. It will be done."

When the commissar appears in front of the Suyana booth, he's probably something of an unimpressive figure. He has the vaguely emaciated look of the 'ruling class' of MoAG, caused mostly from bad diet and high levels of stress. His face is far too angular to be anywhere near healthy, and his hair is the color and consistency of dry straw under a grey garrison cap, one side showing a small enamel replica of the MoAG flag. The broomstick up his colon has permanently fused itself to his spine, and his uniform, while made of a cheap, scratchy cotton-like material, is quite sharp in its double-breasted lines, patch-pockets, epaulettes, and belt over the tunic. Added to the stiffness of his movements, however, and he only lacks a red-and-white armband to complete his image of some sort of Nazi Wehrmacht robot.

"Greetings, in the name of the Work Ethic." Lips peel back from teeth slightly yellowed from cabbage-and-cardboard Victory Cigars in a nervous gesture that never quite makes its goal of a smile. One hand juts out in tandem with his salutation, the motion as mechanical as the automated feed of a hopper. "I see you have quite the array of vehicles here. Could you tell me more about them?"

Suyana Corporation, with more money and less morals (or at least what pass for morals in Ilona's liberal culture), had hired "booth babes" to represent it's product, as opposed to drafting in personell from it's national offices. The corporate heads knew, after all, that sex sells. No matter if it was in a different nation, where the dominant species wasn't even human, the tried and true would continue to generate revenue.

"Sure." Booth Babe gave Imperial-Cyborg-Guy her best product-selling smile. He might look like a refugee from a bad Iron Years drama, but heck, selling hovercars beat stripping or waiting tables.

"Here we have the Suyana Suna Mark Three hoverbike, a best-seller in it's field," Booth Babe pats the sleek racing machine beside her, "And over there is the Helios Mark One" - a similarly sleek two-door model - "And that" - a four-door, relegated further towards the back - "Is the Jericho Mark Five, one of our longest-selling civilian models. What would you like to know?"

---

"Uh, really it's fine," Melissa tells the Sakkran. "Um... what would you like to know, then?"

Neihart Shipping
Faster, More Reliable, and Much Better Armed

While they may seem a bit out of place at a meeting of manufacturers such as this, Clan Neihart knew that such an event was bound to have at least some kind of purchases made. Money would exchange hands in return for goods and materials, and those goods would have to go from the seller to the buyer. Given the shear size of the companies and governments involved, it would almost certainly mean huge quantaties would be moving about, requiring the use of ships and shuttle capable of handling a great deal of mass and with large holds.

What better place, then, for one of the largest space-based shipping firms in the system to be? The clan had ships of all sizes, from small shuttles, to mid-sized external can-haulers and passenger liners, up to their massive three-kilometer Passage-class superfreighters with huge internal holds and docking collars for over a hundred Large Cargo Cannisters, dropships, or defence pods (sealed cannisters available, no questions asked). An image of the firm's flagship, A Civilian Application, was displayed on the back wall of the booth, with a relatively small Supreme Emperor TYCS-BB alongside.

Need a small package delived quickly from Io to Venus? A Neihart courier can be routed your way. Worried about pirates, hostile goverments, or overzealous rivals? All Neihart ships are armed, and the company maintains a large number of defence pods that can be hooked their larger ship to give them battleship-grade weapons when passing through dangerous space - not to mention the close ties with the Cetagandan Space Service to act as a deterence. Need a dropship ferried to an colony? FTL-capable ships make regular runs to all Triumvirate colonies, and can make side trips to other non-aligned worlds. All rates and standard schedules available, and those in need of special jobs can ask with the company representative.


Meanwhile, another booth is being set up nearby, under a sign that reads:

IngolfTech
Tomorrow's Tech Today, Without Temporal Causality Loops

Jenkins hrmms, looking at the sleek craft built for pleasure, the embodiment of shirk. Hardly armored, looking at their skins; they'd quickly be ripped apart in gritstorms of the Ashen Wastes. No usefulness whatsoever to the Strategic Coalition. No use to him right now.

"Actually..." he looks around, loosening up just a bit as he habitually brings his bandaged hand up to his chin. "Do you have anything of a more... ah... secure nature? Where I come from, the territory is rather... dangerous and so people need hulls a bit thicker than... uhm..." He motions slightly to the civilian vehicles. "Whatever they are. Also... I'm not seeing wheels or treads or anything of the sort. How do they... ah... move?"

He feels something of the fool, asking so many questions when arguably he should be in charge. Still... the Commissar of a SubOffice is a lowly thing, especially out here in the rest of the world that SCORCH denies the existence where even that, what little he had, didn't mean a thing.

While word of H+K corporation's meeting had reached the RGF unusually late, such an oppourtunity was not to be missed.

Quickly, one of the two massive inter-system bulk freighters, the Ravi Shankar, is readied to attend the trade conference. While the freighters of LRR operate under what is probably a different system than most -direct state control- it does move innumerable tons of cargo and explore and chart all over the Milky Way galaxy and occasionally make voyages to Andromeda and the Dwarf galaxies closer than that.

OCC: More in depth tomorrow.

"Infinite probability basically means a probability of one," Vera says guardedly, carefully trying to piece together bits of scientific jargon the visitor apparently had no interest in defining further. "Coding for that is generally simple, to the extent of 'take first path that meets criteria.' If they all get one there--thus meeting the criteria--then first one detected should do. Beyond that is a bandwidth problem, and the standard bandwidth difficulty is that there's usually no way to know how much a particular pipe can carry without actually testing it first via ping."

She smiles. "Our propulsion systems are quite different, so I'm working off of a networking analogy here. If there is a way for the ship to 'ping' these various data-streams, and absolutely all of them lead to the destination--as I'm lead to believe from what you told me--then the infinite probability factor is nullified by a simple loop that states, in layman's terms, 'ping datastreams until one returns the bandwidth required, then take that one.' Failing some sort of ability to remotely sense bandwidth, at which point coding simply becomes 'follow the largest-bandwidth path detected if it is larger than minimum.' Unless these things have qualities that can only be exploited with intuition or something close thereto, what you need isn't a pseudosentience; what you need is a sufficiently fast brute-force computer."

Mikhail kept his face impassive, listening carefully to the response while formulating a better description of the tranSpace Net. "We can adapt data transfer technology to check the time dilation for a ship stream, but the time required to wait for a return would negate any increases in profit. Following the largest bandwidth does not work because the 'fastest' stream is also the narrowest. When the ship goes too low, it implodes.

"Aside from that, no concrete map of the tranSpace Net exists below the most fundamental level. A PI system will only be able to see where it can go when it get to a fork. That is the snag. A PI can 'dive' deeper into the Net, taking a narrower and faster data stream, but the potential forks on that path increase exponentially as a result. Each potential fork has the exact same potential to produce the same time dilation and contains the same possibility of danger. As far as we have managed to observe, a PI will 'stutter' while it literally 'flips a coin' to decide which path to take. That, in itself is not a problem, until the craft attempts to do so every nanosecond to see whether to dive deeper or go higher, or to take a fork."

*********
Meanwhile, at the Weyrik International booth(s)

"I'm bored," Fuchikoma-5 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Weyr/GroundWar/fuchi6.jpg) sighed. The four-legged walker tried to make itself as tall as possible, sagged back down. "Can I shoot one of these cars, ser?" it pointed a clawed hand at a heavily-armored mechanical horse, which was originally designed for front-line combat and featured things like ammo storage, inbuilt weapons systems, and self-targeting.

"No," Miranda responded, watching the new booths being set up in this part of the campus/center/whatever.

"Please?"

"No...maybe. How good are your shields?"

"Ready for action, ser"

"Would you like to shoot each other?"

"No, ser,"

At the doors of the convention hall arrives Zhilla Charr, a Deep One of some bearing. her deep red and armor-plated scaling is covered in bony protruberances. A tan toga-like tunic made of finely constructed kevlar covers her chest and groin areas, making it appear to be a toga of sorts. Exiting from her personal transport, she ascends the small steps up into the main hall.

She looks about at the various booths of vendors, followed closely by a pair of Grass-Walkers bearing the emblem of her private militia. This, you see, is the sole owner and big cheese of a mercenary ring that has taken some pains to keep its name unknown to the general populace.

They walk about, looking over the Guaah Armor Works booth, several civilian merchant areas and some retail chains before coming to the booth of the Mother of all Games. Her mouth-plates gnash and grind together, with her claws clacking and gesticulating. After a brief pause, her translator brooch kicks in with a pleasant feminine voice.

"You will inform me of your goods."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, Kraah continues his chat with Melissa.

"Well, seeing as i'm more into the personnel aspect of business, I always have a keen eye for talent. But I also like to know how the treatment of workers is handled. For instance, benefit packages, vacation time, work hours and so on. It helps to know I do business with reputable firms, and not shoddy fly-by-night operations."

"They levitate by repulsing against the planetary magnetic field," Booth Babe tells Jenkins brightly, "And the ducted fans here provide propulsion and forward momentum. The Suna here runs on six hydrogen fuel cells."

Foreigners are allowed to be a little - or a lot - odd, really; after the things the Imperium did to them during it's century of global rule, it's only fair. Maybe this odd man comes from one of the places where the Imperial Legions used targetted bioweapons or dirty nukes or the like.

"But it sounds like what you need is surplus military stock," Booth Babe continues, "And Suyana Corp does manufacture lift systems and military chassis through the Irais Armour Yards subsidary, but you'd have to buy in bulk, or buy decomissioned military units, and I'm afraid IAY isn't represented here."

---

"Oh, the employee benefit package is really very good," Melissa assures Kraah. "We get to vote in Co-op decisions, you see, so it has to be, really."

Several smaller, 100-200m light freighters are loaded into the massive cargo hold of the Ravi Shankar, barely noticable from the other end of the bay.

However, the actual propulsion systems and crew areas on the ship are located in the foreward module, which is a sphere, conforming to regular RGF design, about .5 kilometers in diameter. It houses all the extra computers and machinery necessary to run the large cargo modules, and the large cables, derricks, and magnetic locks used to hold the cargo module in place. It is covered in secondary armement turrets and point defense lasers as well, and protected by heavy armor and a strong shield.

The drives are held in four large, sturdy pylons which jut out from the main sphere. This design feature allows the cargo module to be removed, and the sphere to be used as a large wrecker.

Captain Steve Marley floats onto the bridge of his ship, semi-recessed into one of two ultra-heavy freighter bays built into what was a moon, but has metamorphasized into a huge floating lightbulb out in an obscure and largely unvisited solar system on the perseus arm.

"How are the displays coming?"
"Very good, sah."

Several aesthetic tri-folds are constructed by the AI and 'printed' into three dimensions. They advertise a wide range of LRR equipment, including construction equipment, repair robots, light freighters, computer systems, power management systems, and mining industries, among other things.

"It looks very good. Alright, take us out!"

The freighter is pushed off of the moon with a little help from magnetic boosters. But since the moon is mostly synthetic and hollow by now, taken up by scaffolding and machinery, its escape velocity is very low.

The freighter fires up its ion drives, and makes course for the convention, hyperspace engines glowing as they charge up.

Like some of the other Triumvirate-based corporations present, IngolfTech is a one-corp-fits-most operation for most anything technology related (there was another sister corp dealing with medical devices, implants, and biotechnology). Its biggest client is the Cetagandan government, as it is trusted with even the highest-security technology (in no small part due to over fifty percent of its stock owned by either the Emperor or Ingolfson Prime line, thus letting the government effectively appoint the board). Weapons, vehicles, spacecraft hulls, drives, powerplants - all are within its field of expertise. Still, there's a great deal of civilian and out-of-Cetaganda business as well, and it wouldn't do to let all that go to waste, or worse yet, profit certain competitors. Their main products for these potential are simply less advanced versions of what it sold to trusted governments - military equipment and personal weapons are especially popular, and many corporations and nations find the highly customizable general-purpose spaceship and vehicle hulls to be of great value (and easily affordable, especially on installment plans). Of course, research in the primary areas is constantly spinning off related possibilities, and there are numerous divisions of the company dedicated to refining these commercial applications.

Once such application is an interesting subsentient EI and hologram system based on an milspec electroptic camo package. In this case, it's used to custom-fit advertising to fit the viewer, using sensors and a complex holo-projection system to align the appropriate image with the correct viewer's eyes/relevant sensory organ. For example, anyone the EI is reasonably sure isn't affiliated with KCTS might see this sign projected above the booth.

IngolfTech
Tomorrow's Tech Today, Without Temporal Causality Loops
Hey, we may not be perfect, but at least we're not Zin Karma!

A variety of other goods are on display, including personal weapons, communications gear, and scale models of spacecraft and vehicles. There's also an obligatory sleek-looking personal spaceship, built around the same hull as the Cetagandan Shrike Mk V aerospace omnifighter (complete with only-slightly-obvious gunports), and a larger general-purpose shuttle.

Vera smiles slyly, not about to get into an argument over the semantics about 'bandwidth.' Even if she is just Marketing, she isn't shallow, and while it's all well and good to debate this all friendly-like there's still no need to hand a profitable answer to someone on a silver platter for nothing in return. After all, this was supposed to be worth quite a bit, and it looked like a traditional case of overthinking the problem--possibly by getting a computer too advanced for the task at hand. If the computer stutters by 'flipping coins' to choose between infinite equally beneficial outcomes (an oversimplification, certainly, as that ignores going 'up' or 'donw'), then the trick is to simply take the first that comes along when it comes to forks that are all equally risky and equally likely to lead to the destination.

"It's a fascinating problem," she says, "and I'm sure our compsci and programming departments will think so too." In fact, it sounds more like a programming problem than an actual computing problem... oh well. "I'll be the first to admit that I'm not necessarily the best suited to solve your problems for you... still, we do have proficient programmers and computer engineers who could work on this problem for you. While our solutions tend not to be inordinately fancy, they do tend to be more robust and less expensive because of it. Would that be potentially interesting?"

* - * - *

H'zta, seeing Kraah working on the booth, wanders over to the disembodied head. As much as humans love camouflaging the sight of things, they have yet to truely spend much time trying to camouflage scent. From the scent of things, she feels a bit sorry for the man in the heavy suit in the hot sun, herself trusting lighter, probably more breathable fabrics. "H'zta, operations executive of H'zta and Kraah," she introduces herself as she offers a hand in greeting, "your helpful assistant in the booth directed me here to you. We were wondering how your technology compares to other possibilities in the field and are interested in researching it further."

(OOC: Sorry for sporadic posting; am currently travelling [yay])

The massive freighter exits hyperspace, and makes for the convention site.

Unfortunately, their arrival was not announced or invited, so there might be some trouble in the future. But the crew of the Ravi Shankar does not know this.

"Attention system control, this is the RGSV Ravi Shankar. We are here to attend a trade convention opened by the H'zta and Kraah corporation. We are requesting directions to that location, over."

OOC: No prob.

But...to a computer the problem is that at a fork there is -no- 'first'. You come to both possibilities at the same time. Lacking any way of distinguishing between the several possible routes, the compy has to make a choice, and the only way to do so is to do a random integer generation. There are no maps of the Net, and the faster, smaller data streams change every day.

Any semi-sentient pilot computer will 'dive' to the bottom level of the tranSpace Net before imploding; or will 'stutter' because it will literally try to override the safety protocols preventing it from 'diving', which will cause it to shoot off the Net and into normSpace while trying accelerate into a non-existant dimension. Even the best CI's, like Miranda, who's manning the Weyrean booth, will have such a strong urge to dive that their ghost (conscience/soul/whatever) will fry.

The attempt for 'flipping coins' was a random integer generator for the number of potential forks, which caused an even bigger problem since the computer then had to first calculate the number of potentialities. A 'simple' pilot computer faces a stranger problem -- it acquires a ghost (soul/consciousness) within several minutes of being in tranSpace. no idea how or why.....but that ghost then tries to 'dive' into the tranSpace net, and implodes the ship.

"Yes, it would," Mikhail half-bows, half-nods in assent. "I will have a conract drafted up immediately, and presented to your company for approval, if that is acceptable."

The staticless sound of Sakkra Aero-Space Traffic Control comes in clearly. "We copy that Ravi Shankar. Ident is confirmed, and clearance granted at berth 14 of Kastaa Port coordinates [xyz]. Enjoy your visit."

OOC: Basically you can set up your shop, hob-knob with the other guests or do as your strange little heart desires.

The Dominion corporations had secured a ‘block’ of booths, having chosen ahead of time to work together to show off their wares, and compliment one another’s products as best they could – which when all was said and done, seemed to work fairly well.

Subtly-placed guardsrepresented the Genovese Security interests, dressed in unrelieved black, save for the company logo, that now and then almost seemed to blur their movements if they reacted suddenly. Models sporting the latest fashions ( http://home.mchsi.com/~ketri/wsb/links/fashion.xls) from Ferrara, Partuzzi, Bernasconi and other designers drew attention to the booths highlighting catalogues and showing footage from the latest shows in Devras, Corinth, Trieste, and Scythia, as well as those booths for the food vendors. Everything from men’s and women’s formal, business and casual or sport clothing was shown off, as well as children’s lines. Accessories, footwear – nothing was forgotten.

Tomi Footwear was showing off their latest lines, including dress, casual, sport and the most recent, fetish boots and shoes, which seemed to have taken off, not only in the Dominion, but several trade nations.

Mercati displayed their new rugged gear sports clothing and accessories, for those who enjoyed the outdoors, and various extreme sports. Whether it was boots and skis, climbing gloves, safety gear, cold-weather clothing, tents, or sleeping bags, they had it – or would build to specs, if the price was right.

One booth even proudly showed the technique of digitally printing patterns onto silks and other fabrics, including the newer nanoweave materials (which offered a whole new medium to work in, offering color-changing, temperature moderating, and other such unique properties to the fabric) imported from Sentient Peoples, producing incredibly vivid color and fine details previously thought impossible – the designers, and the corporation, NavarraTech, were thrilled.

Rossetti and Barichello’s booth was stocked with bottles of their liqueurs ( http://home.mchsi.com/~ketri/wsb/links/liqueurs.xls), samples of course for the taking. Across the way, the Di Medici Corporation was showing off product from some of the top wineries in the nation, Doumani, Assante, and La Rocca to name a few. A champaigne fountain was the centerpiece of that display, with catalogues and bottles all set in a faux brick façade giving the booth an old country feel.

Capelli Meats, Sansovino Brothers Cheeses, Palermo Oils & Vinegars, Mama Zanetti’s Baked Goods and Vercesi Foods Inc. had both their own booths, and a joint table set out with samples of their goods, mostly in antipasti style – and of course, served with samples of appropriate wines from the nearby vendors to accent the various dishes.

Oddly enough, even the Della Corte Equestrian School was represented, boasting not only their premiere rider training, but some of the finest horses and breeding programs in the Dominion. Their longstanding history, and centuries-old lines were a matter of pride, and it showed, in the classy presentation of video footage, their books and catalogues showing bloodlines and stud fees, and of course, classes, and their costs, as well as notable graduates.

Last, but not least, Eidolon Technologies Inc., the frontrunners in aerospace design and off-world shipping in the Dominion. Not only could they boast involvement in the new Dominion fleets, but had begun a lucrative business of offering shipping to nations not enjoying the freedom of space, at competitive prices. ‘Trucks ( http://home.mchsi.com/~ketri/wsb/links/Ships/spacedytrucks2.jpg)’ could be contracted out, or, depending on the nation’s status, franchises could be purchased – with conditions, of course. The latest development was personal transports, which was something that until now, only military or the very rich (and very connected) could have afforded – in their nation at least. The prototype models were on display, downsized for space considerations, their vidscreens showing scenes from around Sol, and beyond. It was plain enough that those in that particular booth had a high interest in others represented there, Ingolftech, KTCS, Wyeric Int., MOAG, Suyana, Hreer Weaponry, and TME being right at the forefront.

All in all, each felt good about the selection, their representation, and their setup, not to mention how smoothly they blended with one another. Each of the selling teams split into shifts, some working, some perusing the competition, with the setup crews taking their ease, enjoying the goodies and taking in the sights, waiting for any possible tech calls.

"Hello!" Roult replies. He takes the giant, furred, clawed hand in his own and shaking vigorously, as if to make up for the vast disparity in "rawr" between Feline Killing Machine and Invisible Suit Man. "David Roult, Exhibitions Officer for Chameleon Co-op. Pleased to meet you."

He listens politely, frowning a little. "I'm not aware of any other similar technologies in commercial use, but then I'm afraid Ilona doesn't really have much of an aerospace industry."

OOC: I'm afraid that me + economics = ¡error!, so from here on in it's likely to be played by ear. Pull me if I make any glaring mistakes, please?

The staticless sound of Sakkra Aero-Space Traffic Control comes in clearly. "We copy that Ravi Shankar. Ident is confirmed, and clearance granted at berth 14 of Kastaa Port coordinates [xyz]. Enjoy your visit."

OOC: Basically you can set up your shop, hob-knob with the other guests or do as your strange little heart desires.

"Roger that system control. We are in-bound."

Perhaps a ten-kilometer long freighter will cause something of a stir at the convention. After all, its not something you see every day. Hopefully, its presence would lead to some lucrative shipping contracts.

The freighter arrives at berth 14, and begins to dock. Captain Marley is surprised that they have a berth big enough to accomodate his ship, and he, along with the repair bots, is immediately outside, performing checks on the circutry on the cargo module.

The ship's large loading and unloading arms unfold and remove the freighter samples from their partition towards the back of the module.

Captain Marley, once satisfied of the cargo module's circutry, heads towards the convention center to secure a place for the LRR exhibit. He arrives at the reception desk after a walk of several minutes.

"You will inform me of your goods."Comrade Minion Blevins (brevet Minion Superior), the previously unnamed grey jumpsuited man, suppresses a gulp as he looks up... and up... and up... at the bastard child of a therapod and a lobster. While what it says is first taken as "I will eat your children" and then refined to "you will surrender your life," eventually the true meaning of the very simple and direct command filters down past blocks hastily erected by fear to his not necessarily deficient gray matter.

"Uhm," he replies intelligently, stalling momentarily for time. This was his duty! Stalling is shirk! "Actually, certainly. SCORCH is the central authority of Mother of All Games and has a wide variety of armored vehicles and armored vehicle accessories for the discriminating military mind."

He pivots instantly on his heels, catching himself on the table of his booth as if for support, then comes back with glossy if somewhat cheap-looking flyers filled with all sorts of things. Small tanks, big tanks, tanks with turrets, tank destroyers... and, of course, accessories. Fuel and munitions--tracers, various kinds of missiles (baby and standard), tactical MIRV weapons, and even "funky bombs," advertised in a full-page glossy full of explosions and people running in fear and whatnot.

"But it sounds like what you need is surplus military stock," Booth Babe continues, "And Suyana Corp does manufacture lift systems and military chassis through the Irais Armour Yards subsidary, but you'd have to buy in bulk, or buy decomissioned military units, and I'm afraid IAY isn't represented here.""Magnetic levitation, you say?" Jenkins starts calculating, grey uniform creasing and crinkling like his brow as he takes the traditional pose of the thinker, fist to bottom lip, opposing hand tucked in crook of elbow, head bowed down slightly. "Well, if you could recommend us to your Irais people--the subsidiary--we could actually have a long term relationship. For now, however, what would it take to perhaps acquire some of these vehicles, or maybe a small contract for your basic model? You know... basically an engine with controls attached. I suppose that bike-like thing would work." He points over at the mentioned sleek hoverbike.

Captain Marley, a robot, walks up to the receptionist at the entrance to the convention.

"Excuse me, I represent the RGF. I believe we have a previous reservation at this convention."

The staticless sound of Sakkra Aero-Space Traffic Control comes in clearly. "We copy that Ravi Shankar. Ident is confirmed, and clearance granted at berth 14 of Kastaa Port coordinates [xyz]. Enjoy your visit."

OOC: Basically you can set up your shop, hob-knob with the other guests or do as your strange little heart desires.

[[OOC: Shall I take this as an open invitation? :) ]]

Lita McCrom glared down at the docking LRR 10km long transport from her piloting console in the suborbital transport. Having once been a military vessel, the large transport had once been able to carry a full 8 armored vehicles...and was utterly dwarfed by the freighter her eyes were resting on.

"Honestly," she asked retorically, "what are they going to do with a freighter larger then the convention itself?"

"Trust an insane AI to something oddball." Her co-pilot, a man named Bradley Strom answered.

"Well, I guess it is a good advertisement...no billboard bigger." McCrom admitted.



A few minutes later, the pair had landed their passengers and load, and the Wazzu booths began assembly.

From her new perspective on the exposition room floor, Lita again looked upon the growing LRR display and the hoards of people (robots?) putting up up with a tad bit of envy. Not that it was her fault her government was so ineffectual politically lately...lately being the past few centuries. She half wished someone would invent some sort of 'Viagra' for Wazzu's government.

******

It wasn't all bad. There was an advantage to being a pilot on this run. Namely, she had nothing to do with the Wazzu conglomerate corporations' kiosk. So while the salesmen worked, she got the time half off. She had to be here, but at least she was free to wonder and do as she pleased until it was time to load up again.

Co-Pilot Bradley Strom, in the same position, joined her in the stroll.

******

With both shifts of 20 workers (each) assembling it, the comparibly small event booth went up fast. Despite their late arrival, Wazzu corporations were hawking their products before the robots could finish [[OOC: Suckers! :) Sorry, j/k! :) ]]. Of course, all of the largest mega-corps that pretty much ran their country were present.

Lifeworks Inc. was pushing it's classic medicines like the Vampirism Vaccine and the life extending Rejuv as well as newer products, such as gene therapies in appearance modification (and weight loss) and Laser Imaging Bio-Spectroscopy devices that could scan for, identify, and locate in tri-D all biological organisms within 100 meters line-of-sight.

Oren Moore Inc. was flaunting a new civilian hull material by making fun of the best military armor the nations of nearby booths could manage. It was simotaniously bragging about high-density population building projects as an offered solution to nations running out of living space.

And of course, what Wazzu exhibition would be complete without aerospace giant TransCorp...which was attempting entice nations to allow sales of private amphibous flyers and aerospace craft at middle-class prices (and advanced ground transport at even lower prices).

Elegant Solutions was also present and was making it's first attempted power sales off Mars. It promised to revolutionize power transmission through what it called a Hyper-Optical Power Grid...which wasn't succeptible to either summer high temperatures or EMPs like traditional super-conducting wires were.


As the small Wazzuian salesmen (and women) in those and other booths pushed product, others spread out into the crowd to point the way to the great products.

OCC: It is probably best to consider LRR people robots. They are mostly not human, that's for sure.

IC:

Captain Marley surveys the finished RGF display area. Most of the displays deal with freighter designs and propulsion systems, and some advertise RGF shipping services. There is even one poster dedicated to the Ravi Shankar, explaining how it was built to carry space station components and large ships. Also explained are the ship's design features, many of which are considered 'innovative,' or 'revolutionary.'

Foam models of the smaller export freighters built and sold by the RGF shipyards in large numbers are available as well. "They make a nice mobile," says the sales brochure.

Diagrams and displays of the newest and most advanced ion drives installed on independent cruisers are also present, as are sales brochures, and members of the freighter's crew are present to explain any inquiries.

As Marley walks around, he sees the advertisement for the hyper-optical power grid, and heads over to get a better look at it.

Booth Babe looks somewhat put out at hearing the Suna described as "basically an engine with controls attached". Clearly, this poor man doesn't know his vehicles...

"The Suna here currently sells for twenty-five thousand tablets* each," she tells him. "A production contract ... well, you'd have to talk to the manufacturing and distribution personell. I can get you contact information for them or IAY if you'd like."

OOC: *Tablet: The Ilonan currency. According to a calculator I looked at, it's worth about half a ... whatever the standard is.

Commissar Jenkins sticks one hand into his left trouser pocket and extracts it, gently pawing through the depressingly small number of heavy roller labor credit chits that he finds in his palm. International conversion rates... the heavy roller is worth three-halves of the international standard...

He could buy, perhaps, a pound of Premium Victory Coffee, the kind where they at least tar the sawdust black so it's not obviously cut. His pocket change falls far, far short of what he needs to obtain one of these cycles and their drives for the glory of the Work Ethic. To get the money, he has to fill out a Funds for Requisition (Extemporaneous) form, which then has to make its way back up to the Greater Office of Trade, which then allocates slush funding back down...

But that could take days or even weeks. Hardly tenable for a transaction such as this, where there's No Time To Lose. In MoAG, there is never time to lose--losing time is shirk, and shirk is death. Jenkins looks around and scratches the back of his head. "Uhm... I'm sure the people I represent would be interested. If I could get some contact information, we'll get back to you as soon as we can."

For now, however, he continues to scan the crowd a little nervously. Someone around here has to have sufficient liquid funds on their person to cover the expense, and while he is unforgivably thin, it's that sort of tense, wiry thin that can be dangerous when desperate.

Back at the magenta mock-up tank, the pamphlets (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=7578530#post7578530) contain all sorts of information on missiles, baby nukes, funky bombs, and the cheap tanks that MoAG prides itself on. Brevet Minion Superior Blevins takes the opportunity to roll out some dummy munitions for the large reptilians of Sakkra, essentially variations on rocket-propelled warheads ranging from eighty to a hundred and eighty millimeters in diameter.

-Ilona-

Kraah seems to nod his head sagely. 'Yes, that is almost a standard practice of enlightened corporate cultures. that is information I needed before I could make my next move ....." He reaches inside his robe, and produces a miniature chit with a dataport on on end of it. "In this is all contact information for the H+K Consortium pertinent to the offer being tabled. Subcontracting will require these contacts be made, to keep everything on the ....'up and up' is the saying? Regardless, this chit would need to find it's way to the parties required for these discussions to take place. In the event of .....of...."

His eyes seem to glaze over a bit, as he stands yet again, with the nostrils atop his head seeming to grow in size. Deep sniffing sounds are heard. "Oh. Oh my. I smell...I smell....oils. And in such variety! Excuse me, Miss Melissa, but this bears investigating!" He places the chit down before her, and turns to walk, but spins on his heel. "I will like to continue these talks. Here is my mobile messenger ident number." A series of letters and numbers, with appropo dashes, is quickly jotted down by Kraah dipping his claw into a tiny pocket located on the lapel of his robe, and scribbling on a small scrap of paper. "Call any time."

At that, he spins and stalks off into the direction of the Palermo Oils & Vinegars booth.
**********************************************************
Mother of All Games

Zhilla looks at the information held by the tiny inner-fingers on her hands, accompanying the massive lobster-like claws. She leafs through several pamphlets, and lets out a low rumble from her throat. The mouth-plates gnash and grind against each other.

"The information here is sufficient. Is there footage of these items that can be viewed?" As she states her question, she eyeballs the demo ammunition being rolled out. "Interesting...." A clack of her claws and one of her escorting Grass-Walker guards holds aloft a metallic drum on a large leather strap, which she clasps in her claw and holds at her side.

Weyr

Vera nods and smiles her best marketing smile. "I'm sure that'd work. Every problem's got a solution."

-Ilona-

H'zta smiles slyly, letting the typically predatory image of the kzin face do the rest. "Well then, you have competition you do not know about. What I would like to see is whether or not you also have an edge you do not know about. If you do, I am sure it would be mutually beneficial for our corporations to work together to press this edge. As we have connections to extant markets for your product, and you may have a superior product in some ways... mutually beneficial indeed."

"The information here is sufficient. Is there footage of these items that can be viewed?" As she states her question, she eyeballs the demo ammunition being rolled out. "Interesting...." A clack of her claws and one of her escorting Grass-Walker guards holds aloft a metallic drum on a large leather strap, which she clasps in her claw and holds at her side.
"Right... viewing. Videos." Directing people behind him with snapping and pointing fingers, the minions under Blevins immediately set up a television and VCR deck, working feverishly in their grey denim jumpsuits. They quickly hook up coaxial AV cables, then put a tape into the deck and press 'play.'

It's all footage from the Color Wars, but it works. Sleek angular scout tanks that look nothing like the icon in the sales pamphlet drive at full speed out of craters, guns barking and belching out fire. Baby missiles streak in volleys, along with standard missiles and MIRVs, characteristic firey HE blossoms almost, but not quite, obscuring the needle-thin lances of self-forged copper at their cores as they slam into tanks and blow them apart. Another bit of footage shows a line of tanks firing their self-propelled rounds into the air; the tracer smoke arcs up into the distance, then drops back down into simultaneous mushroom clouds--baby nukes in use. Then a similar situation, but this time multiple clouds of various colors pop up around the nuclear detonations--the camera zooms in on one, where a tank suddenly catches on fire as its armor oxidizes combustively in the superreactive acid clouds.

The demonstration dud rounds that the MoAG people pass around follow the pattern of most self-propelled tank rounds: Cylinders with aft rocket motors (mounted in front of a propellant charge, oddly enough) with slots that indicate where small fins pop out to ensure that the round stays true. The warhead is carried centrally, and the modular nose cone contains the fuze mechanism. They range from the Baby Missile, a relatively nondescript eighty millimeter round, through the Missile and Baby Nuke, proportionally larger one-twenty-two millimeter rounds (although the Baby Nuke is decorated with a large radiation-warning roundel), to the more interesting multiple weapons. The Baby MIRV opens up to reveal Baby Missile warheads inside, obviously designed to scatter something like shot; the large one-eighty millimeter MIRV does the same except with Missile warheads. The Funky Bomb cutaway reveals the Baby Nuke core and the interestingly shaped aeroshells for the acid chemical weapon submunitions, designed to ride (albeit somewhat erratically) on the blast wave of the one-kiloton nuclear weapon inside.

Zhilla Chaar looks at the footage, her companions nodding at intervals while watching the footage and looking at each other wordlessly. At odd times, Zhilla herself nods as well, and gesticulates with her free hand. The drum-shaped case remains in her other claw.

After the footage runs, and with some silent manner of discussion held amongst the three of them, Zhilla levels her eyes at the Comrade Minion Blevins. "What we have seen is favorable. "One of the Grass-Walkers holds a datapad in front of her, while she taps it with her free hand using the tiny utility fingers. After a time, a small chit pops out the side of the pad, and she hands it to Blevins.

"This contains our needs for your devices, as well as color specifications and coordinates where delivery will have to be made. Strict disretion is needed for this, you realize." Her translator lets out what sounds like stones rolling over each other, but is actually a small chuckle.

The order details out 40 Scout Tanks, 15 Medium Tanks, 4,000 rounds of baby missile ammo, 1,000 rounds of Missile ammo, 300 rounds of Baby MIRVs, and 120 rounds of Funky Bombs. The tanks are requested in a navy blue color.

She lays the metallic drum on the table, and opens the top of it. Inside are numerous precious gems in a variety of types. Rubies, emeralds, high-grade diamonds in a variety of carats. Using a pair of large tweezers, she portions out an amount close to 2,750,000 in gems, which is held in a large velvet pouch. The Grass-Walkers note down on their pads the transaction, while Zhilla places the bag on the table. "I trust there will be some manner of receipt."

The robots manning the LRR display grow bored with the low patronage. They therefore begin constructing elaborate paper airplanes out of sales brochures.

Soon, the first are built and zipping around above the convention goers.

Blevins, like most of the Minions in the financially-centered sections of CorpArms, actually has a decent amount of education. He's literate--which already puts him in the top twelve percent of the nation--and has the equivalent of any modern nation's secondary education. Still, the numbers involved are quite large. He nods and immediately hops over to the cash register behind the counter...

...then remembers that Commissar Jenkins failed to give him the activation keycode. Pondering for a moment, he looks down at the keypad as he drags one palm over his slightly rounded face, wiping away the sweat accumulating from the hot day. He the Commissar putting it in earlier, and so he could easily guess it, but he really shouldn't know it...

...but, then again, this is money for SCORCH and MoAG; this is a direct benefit to the Work Ethic. His dilemma cleared, he quickly types in the four-digit pass and immediately works out the order, the daisy-wheel printer inside the cash register typing out each line as he enters it.

The machine rattles softly as it prints, and Blevins strokes one hand underneath the onion-thin printout to look it over. Scanning over at the monetary exchange chart and after scribbling some math on a scratchpad next to him with a gleaming-new graphite pencil, he notes that the money provided is a bit short. Looking up at the Deep One, he decides that asking for more money is unwise and taps another key. Another line comes out of the printer; content with his work, Blevins tears it off and proffers it to the reptilian. These lizard-things are so much nicer than those bugs infesting the Verdant Wastes.

"Here you go..." He ponders for a moment, then decides that no honorific is better than a misplaced one. "We'll make sure we're quiet about delivery."

RECIEPT OF SALE
DD-MMM-YYYY MOBILE TRADE STAND

ITEM.......QTY....ITEMCOST.....TOTALS
TNK-SCT......40...$*25.000/1...$*1.000.000,00
TNK-MED......15...$*50.000/1...$*..750.000,00
MIS-BBY...4.000...$*...400/10..$*..160.000,00
MIS.......1.000...$*.1.875/5...$*..375.000,00
MRV-BBY.....300...$*...400/3...$*...40.000,00
FNKYBM......120...$*10.000/2...$*..600.000,00
TOTAL..........................$*2.925.000,00
BONUS.MIS-BBY...55x99...5.445
TOTAL.LESS.BONUS.MIS-BBY.......$*2.765.000,00
AMOUNT.TENDERED.[CASH].........$*2.765.000,00
CHANGE.........................$*........0,00

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATRONAGE
REMEMBER SCORCH FOR YOUR ARMOR NEEDS
"99 BABY MISSILES FREE WITH EVERY TANK!"

Meanwhile, Commissar Jenkins looks around with a frown as he pulls the paper airplane from his grey epaulette. Those people over there look something like traders, which mean they may have money. I looks militaristic, so it wouldn't be untoward of me to fake having a gun, he thinks as he walks over towards the Lunatic Retard Robots booth. I can just hold these people up and... wait... how do I get away? Looking around, he sees a glint over towards his booth, then looks more closely, gawking when he sees Blevins accepting all sorts of precious stones, all while his body continues to march resolutely towards the LRR booth. Buh... wha... money?

Turning his head around, he stops just before running into the LRR booth. Smiling nervously at the robots, his mind races as he tries to connect vision to knowledge, come up with something intelligent to say about the wares... whatever they are... provided.

The best he can come up with on such short notice is "Good morning."

Vera nods and smiles her best marketing smile. "I'm sure that'd work. Every problem's got a solution."

Mikhail inclined his head, again, "The contract will be drafted within the next twenty-four hours. My card," he produced a small black card made of heavy mediatronic paper, with white font on the front and back. There were generally quite a number of ways to contact a weyrean corporate officer, and Mikhail as noexception. One could have even contacted him via telegraph, had that been a necessity. "Thank you. It has been an...interesting conversation."

Mikhail wondered if the TME could really figure out a solution. [I]Perhaps, and perhaps not, he decided. Weyreans had a set bias against trying new pseudo-intelligence Translation pilots. he scanned the booths -- the number of representatives had grown in the past...period of time.

Seeing the decidedly large Sakkran stalking determinedly towards their booth, both the middle-aged, slightly rotund Marco Bonelli and the lovely young showing-entirely-too-much-leg-and-ample-chest Natalia Di Negri go wide-eyed, the latter managing a quiet ‘eep’, while the gentleman murmurs “Sweet Jesu …” before launching into a quick and quiet prayer.

“H—how can we be of assistance my good gentlem…er… good sir?” Marco manages warmly as Kraah reaches the booth, the poor man’s knees quivering behind the cover of the skirted tables. “As you can see, we have many fine oils to sample, in varying flavours and consistencies, depending on your needs. Only the finest ingredients for Palermo Oils and Vinegars, whether they be olive or one of the many other ( http://www.hormel.com/templates/knowledge/knowledge.asp?catitemid=42&id=569) sorts that we manufacture. Would you perhaps care for one of our brochures?”


ooc: Yes. I know I'm cheating with that last link. Deal. *grins* Ran out of server space and time to make my own docs.

The receipt is handed to one of the accompanying Grass-Walkers, who looks over it for a time. A short whistling sound emits from its nostrils, making Zhilla look over at the receipt. A short nod, and her eye focuses on Blevins. The translator kicks in a moment after she speaks. "The remainder will be paid when confirmation of the delivery is achieved."

The receipt is tucked into a fold in the velvety material on the drum-like case, which is then closed and sealed shut. This is then handed to her aides. "Good fortune to you." The trio turn and walk about, heads never moving while eyeballs move indipendently of each other, scanning the area all about them. One of the aides eyeballs the Lifeworks Inc. booth, and motions towards it.

A silver-scaled Grass-Walker sends to the other two in the group privately. "That most certainly could prove useful. We should inquire, yes?" Zhilla looks over, and nods. They make their way there, dodging out the less-aware of the representatives about, and sometimes letting others careen off Zhilla's bulky frame. When they arrive, the gold-scaled aide produces a very simple card.

Chaar Disposal Services
'For when quick, clean and quiet are the order.'
It has a single contact number on the bottom of it, and Zhilla looks at the corp reps there. Mouth-plates gnash and grind, which translate after a moment. "Tell me of what you offer."
**********************************************************
Kraah, in the meantime, looks at Marco Bonelli, and especially at his girth. He pats his own gut. "Ah, a gourmand, I assume? Excellent. I am in need of oils which provide a rather pleasant scent. Nothing overpowering, yet definitely something that will be noticed." He takes a deep whiff, and his eyes seem to retract into his skull.

"Aaaah, yeeees. Hrrmmm.....this is a very nice one." He procures a small vial of the walnut oil, and opens the stopper on it. A drip is put between his inner-thumb and his index finger, rubbed in a circular fashion, and then applied to his wrist. "The texture is delightful."

The wrist is lifted to his nose, and the scent is inhaled. "Nice. Very nice. And it absorbs so nicely into my scales. I would definitely like some informational pamphlets. The shopping list is long, after all. Ah, the mate would love this!" He opens a jar of the cocnut oil, and inhales deeply. His crest seems to rise fully as his tympanum waver and vibrate. "Oooh, baby!"
**********************************************************
Meanwhile, the H+K Consortium booth is now ready to roll. Several glass display cases hold odd-looking devices in them. Some look like mealworms with minute tendrils coming from either end of them. A bio-monitor attached to a suspension grid in this display cases seems to provide life-support for it. Above this case reads "Symbiotic Translation Device".

Others appear to be swatches of cloth that change color in 30 second intervals. This display reads out "Melanophoric Chameleon Cloth". A brief description of the patented process is given on the case's side.

Several other cases hold devices from flat roll-out display screens for computer terminals to ornate jewelery that plays recordings in full stereo sound of the classics.

OOC: I'll leave it to Scolo to describe the other items in the booth. He does a better job of it than I.

As Marley walks around, he sees the advertisement for the hyper-optical power grid, and heads over to get a better look at it.


Among a crowd of onlookers, a sales...dwarf is busily selling his wares...ware, to potential investors. “Truely, there is NO better way to transfer power than with optics. Forget about creating RF noise with the wiring in a new house, stop worrying about lightning bolts running down your TV cord to fry you in a storm. Not only are our optics capable of carrying more power then superconductors, but you can send signals through them for kilometers with no signal loss!.

“You sir!” the Dwarf, about as short as a human Wazzuian but much broader pointed towards the oncoming Marley. “You look like you may have a power problem to solve. Why don’t you share, see if Elegant Solutions can help?”



The receipt is handed to one of the accompanying Grass-Walkers, who looks over it for a time. A short whistling sound emits from its nostrils, making Zhilla look over at the receipt. A short nod, and her eye focuses on Blevins. The translator kicks in a moment after she speaks. "The remainder will be paid when confirmation of the delivery is achieved."

The receipt is tucked into a fold in the velvety material on the drum-like case, which is then closed and sealed shut. This is then handed to her aides. "Good fortune to you." The trio turn and walk about, heads never moving while eyeballs move indipendently of each other, scanning the area all about them. One of the aides eyeballs the Lifeworks Inc. booth, and motions towards it.

A silver-scaled Grass-Walker sends to the other two in the group privately. "That most certainly could prove useful. We should inquire, yes?" Zhilla looks over, and nods. They make their way there, dodging out the less-aware of the representatives about, and sometimes letting others careen off Zhilla's bulky frame. When they arrive, the gold-scaled aide produces a very simple card.


Despite Lifeworks always having been much more profitable a company then Elegant Solutions (the former has done quite well on the international market, the latter has been almost bankrupt for over 600 years), Lifeworks was never as good at advertising. So the booth was mostly quiet, and mostly empty.

At the moment, one of the two people inside was busy tearing up a paper airplane made from an advertisement...the other seemed to be making something under a table...likely another airplane to send in retaliation.

The first looked up, “Can I help you...uhhh...gentle beings?” he asked. He didn't mean to be rude by not answering the Sakkran's question...with an question of his own. It was just that not everyone in Wazzu was exactly, well, brave. The 4 foot man felt a bit like lunch.

The H+K Booth

The H+K booth contains, mostly, the mental work of two people. The first, Chief Engineer Jouuha, is a brilliant tinkerer and inventor that used to run the Eeorouh Maritime Yards when Kraah was emperor. He is directly responsible for the realization of most H+K products. The second is the 'odd man out' of the company, the one who, to most outsiders, serves no observable purpose. Jim Lowell, previously of H'zta's M.I. diplomatic security squad, dresses sloppily, looks and acts with almost none of the professionalism that permeates the rest of the company. His office has lots of windows, is messy with a sort of chaotic order, and filled with all sorts of oddball office toys, which he can usually be found playing with for most of the day.

Still, all this slacking is allowed simply because he is doing his job. He's the company's dreamer, who comes up with random ideas that he then checks past H'zta and Kraah before sending them over to challenge Jouuha and the engineering staff's skills. When he leans back in his chair, daydreaming, fingers idly fiddling with glow-in-the-dark marbleized putty, he's doing what he does best--think of things that would be Really Cool. That's even how he usually announces them: "Hey, I just had an idea. It'd be really cool if..."

And that's where most of the wares in the booth come in. One table is entirely covered in various forms of small gizmos and mechanisms, various labor-saving or simply utilitarian devices. Sure, most multitools of the "Swiss Army Knife" variety come with knives, screw drivers, can openers... but how many come with magnets on extendable rods to pick up screws that may have fallen down into hard-to-reach places or into snow? Sure, everyone makes combination communicators and web-capable PDAs... but do they also have headphones for music, augmented reality monocles, an attached full-function multitool and is armored well enough to act as a cutting board or a makeshift hammer? The table covered in multitools and gizmos has a plastic standup station presenting several models of these OmniTechnoTools ranging from the sleek to the militaristically hard-looking.

Other innovations, mostly office-oriented, cover another table. Wouldn't it be cool if you had a permanent marker you could erase if you had to? Thus came the alcohol-based CleanMarks--a permanent marker with two heads, one that dispenses the usual waterproof and fadeproof inks and another on the opposite end that dispenses a catalyst that turns the ink clear. Wouldn't it be cool if dry-erase markers worked on more than just dry-erase boards, meaning any reasonably smooth but not glossy surface could be used as a scratchpad if need be? The OmniDryMark is actually more like a crayon than a marker, with a push-out feed that dispenses a relatively thin trail of pigment that brushes off easily. Wouldn't it be cool to have a clipboard that is easily portable because the backboard rolls out from a tube that doubles as the clip when the board is extended? Opens up with either a deft pull or a flick of the wrist; scrolls right back in when pulled gently like a window blind.

Another table is dedicated to the materials science aspect of H+K, showcasing various materials and their applications. Artificial stone for masonry or things requiring great strength under compressive loads; a wide range of composites and plastics for everything ranging from heavy industry to medicine. It goes on down the line, all the way to something simplistic like stiffer, more resilient cardboard--honeycombed rather than corrugated. They even have watertight and airtight cardboard, made with an resinous paper mulch that looks almost as if it were laminated. Several layers would be needed to make a pressure vessel, but it works.

Weyr

Cook accepts the card and looks over it with interest before slipping it into a small series of slots in her purse which seem made for the purpose. "Excellent, then. We look forward to working on the problem and we'll keep you informed of our progress."

She had only a little interest in puzzles and programming, and she found it to be an intriguing case of probable overengineering. The computer science people back home would absolutely eat it up. A new problem that has 'never been solved...' just the thing for TME Industries. Their quiet insider motto: Everything is possible; the impossible just takes a bit more ingenuity. An idealist megacorp for an idealist people.

Among a crowd of onlookers, a sales...dwarf is busily selling his wares...ware, to potential investors. “Truely, there is NO better way to transfer power than with optics. Forget about creating RF noise with the wiring in a new house, stop worrying about lightning bolts running down your TV cord to fry you in a storm. Not only are our optics capable of carrying more power then superconductors, but you can send signals through them for kilometers with no signal loss!.

“You sir!” the Dwarf, about as short as a human Wazzuian but much broader pointed towards the oncoming Marley. “You look like you may have a power problem to solve. Why don’t you share, see if Elegant Solutions can help?”

Startled out of pondering on a complicated astrophysics problem, captain Marley looks around, and decides that he is who the Dwarf was addressing.

"Erm...how much current can they handle?"

From what he saw of the display, the whole apparatus looked worth a visit. While it is unlikely that much is going to replace the superconductors in LRR use currently, the whole Hyper-Optical grid might be of some use in the more far-flung parts of the commonwealth.

Meanwhile, at the sales booth, the robots see Commisar Jenkins.

"Good morning to you, sir," says one of them, chrome like the rest. Jenkins had stopped short of the display board for the Q-55 series modular ore hauler.

"Interested in anything?"

It was probably a bad idea to have the robots running any sales-type setup, considering the fact that they are not exactly interested in what they are supposed to be doing, which is, in their eyes, much less interesting than being in space aboard the freighter. But they are still polite.

Walking through the gathered booth is a nondescript man of medium height and with short auburn hair. He wears civilian clothes that are reasonable fashionable, but not so much that he stands out. His wanderings take him from booth to booth while he occasionally examines some merchandise. As he passes the SCORCH booth, he picks up one of the pamphlets. While not terribly impressed with the wares, the price catches his attention and he looks up at the brevet minion-superior with a smile.

"Good morning. My name is Tobias Monroe. I happen to be looking for some inexpensive vehicles, and your prices caught my attention. I've got a few questions, though. How easy is it to learn to use these tanks of yours, especially for inexperienced people - say, people more used to civilian vehicles or farm equipment, who have a few highly trained professionals to assist them in learning? And how easy are they to maintain, and get spare parts for?"

Robots are entirely anathema to MoAG. Not unknown; there are stories in the history books of the Poolsharks, Shooters, and Cyborgs that were used in the Color Wars. Still, due to the deadly efficiency of the higher-level minds, a neoLuddite jihad ensued. Now all that remained were Morons and a few strategic caches of Poolsharks everyone denied. Still, it was artificial intelligences that served the role (along with shirkers) as useful bogeymen for MoAG propagandists that eat children and flay good workers in their sleep.

The good commissar turns an exquisite shade of green, made to look even more sickly by the grey he wears. He tries to brush it off with another nervous smile. They're not what I think, they're from elsewhere... "Not for myself... probably a bit out of my price range." He chuckles nervously. "I'll just... uhm... take a flyer just in case the people I represent might be interested." After gingerly taking a pamphlet like it was a dead animal, he spins on the heels of his patent-leather high-calf boots and stalks off with a politely mumbled "Good morning... I seem to be feeling ill... my apologies..."

"Well, sir," Brevet Minion Superior Jenkins says back at the booth, "they are simple. They have to be as they're intended to be used by illiterates. Maintenance helps performance... but if these people can fix tractors, they can fix these. They'll suffer a bit, but they'll work. As for spare parts... we have all the spare parts anyone could ever need, but..." Looking left and right, he leans in conspiratorially. "I have it on good authority from a Grey armor tech that these things can be jury-rigged like nothing else. Any component that performs the function can probably be fixed."

“I ah … well, that is … yes, I do rather enjoy my food, and wine,” Marco says, chuckling, albeit a touch nervously. He had of course been briefed on their hosts, but seeing a Sakkran face to face – and a very enthusiastic-looking one at that – was far different from simply being told about them. He was, at least for the moment, fairly sure that he was not on the menu, and as such, began to relax from his initial shock.

“I can see you are a being of discerning tastes, good sir,” he says more smoothly. “We do pride ourselves on the quality of our product. You’ll not find a more cleanly refined line of oils, nor a larger selection of types and flavours.” Noting the inferences as to use, he tilts his head slightly. “What quantity were you looking at, if I may ask? We have several package deals and a nice bulk pricing, depending on what your needs might be.”

Through it all, Natalia stands looking … well, as she’s supposed to look. Leggy, pretty, welcoming, and if a bit wide-eyed, at least the expression added to her charm, which was what was intended anyway.




ooc: more characters from other booths to come as I get them fleshed out, and/or as they are needed. Yay!

Kraah continues sampling different oils, unstopping tops of small jars and taking heady whiffs of the contents. At tthis point he's smelling rather .... fancy. The contents of 6 different bottles are on his wrists and neck. "The situation is thus. During my reign as Emperor, I had taken a liking to the oils sent from the Dominion; very superior to the home-made leechee nut oil and paroo oil made here. Keeps the scales supple and soft. Wearing fine-scented oils have become a mark of distinguishment and bearing." He opens a bottle of sesame oil, and sniffs it.

"Ah, my personal favorite." His eyes rest briefly on the face of Natalia, and then back on Marco. "Suffice it to say, the Imperial Line will be most interested in your wares. Anticipate a bulk order of some size. For the moment, a case of your sesame oil is in order. I will procure these brochures and send them out to my hatchlings. I assume off-world shipping isn't a problem? Otherwise arrangements can be made."

Suddenly, one of his eyes seems to focus on one of the other booths. he tilts his head upwards at the chin, and inhales. "Aah, snacks." He declines his head again, and leaves a business card. "If there are any problems with the order to be placed, you may contact me at the comm idents provided." His head angles towards the food-sample booths.
**********************************************************
Wazzu
The first looked up, “Can I help you...uhhh...gentle beings?” he asked. He didn't mean to be rude by not answering the Sakkran's question...with an question of his own. It was just that not everyone in Wazzu was exactly, well, brave. The 4 foot man felt a bit like lunch.

Zhilla's claws clacked in a staccato rhythm while her mouthplates ground against each other. "Yes. I am interested in information on your Laser Imaging Bio-Spectroscopy. You will provide the information." The pair of svelte Grass-Walkers flanking her maiintain their silence, although tell-tale signs of their pupils dilating at odd intervals can be seen.

"Well, sir," Brevet Minion Superior Jenkins says back at the booth, "they are simple. They have to be as they're intended to be used by illiterates. Maintenance helps performance... but if these people can fix tractors, they can fix these. They'll suffer a bit, but they'll work. As for spare parts... we have all the spare parts anyone could ever need, but..." Looking left and right, he leans in conspiratorially. "I have it on good authority from a Grey armor tech that these things can be jury-rigged like nothing else. Any component that performs the function can probably be fixed."

Monroe leans forward as well. "Really, that's excellent news," he breathes. "My organization has been looking for some fighting vehicles, but so many of them don't have the right combination of easy use and low cost." He pulls out a generic perscomp and checks some figures. "Right now our funds are rather limited, but we expect to have some large sources of income in a fairly short period of time. Tell you what - we'll start with ten scout tanks and five medium tanks. Um...fifteen hundred baby missiles, five hundred missiles, three hundred baby MIRVS, thirty regular MIRVS, and, hmmm...three Baby Nukes, and two Funky Bombs. If we like what we see, I think I can assure you that you'll be seeing a lot more orders."

He calculates up the cost, and says, "Can you accept a direct transfer from the First Bank of Moneylaunderingstan? I can pay up front - I know that you wouldn't do anything untoward like take the money and run." While his smile remains fixed, his tone and body language sends the signal that Very Bad Things would occur to any corporation and/or nation foolish enough to try something like that.

Chameleon Co-operative Booth

Watching the decidedly odd Sakkran depart, Melissa takes the datachit. Obviously it's some manner of solid-state memory, but she doesn't know if anyone back in Irais would have a proper port for it. Ah well, someone will have something. She puts it carefully into a small zip-loc bag, and attaches a post-it note reading Trades Dept. - H&K Offer.

Suyana Corporation Booth

"Sure!" says Booth Babe cheerily. Watching the poor man go through his pocket change - as if one could buy a hoverbike with pocket change! - was amusing, but one doesn't laugh at the customers; they're always right, after all.

The booth proper is furnished with a wide array of pamphlets, posters, Suyana-subsidised car magazines, and other promotional materials. Booth Babe gives Jenkins the required pamphlets - two for Suyana Corp and another for IAY - and goes back to her station by the hoverbike.

Roult & H'zta

"Oh!" says Roult, looking dismayed. "That's not good. Competition, I mean. Um, yes, that should be beneficial. Yes." the man is clearly rather flustered - it's not every day he talks with giant cats, after all.

"Any problems?" Mikhail inquired back at the Weyrik International booths.

"We're not getting any customers, ser, but that's about it," Miranda shrugged. "And the fuchikimas are bored."

"Think you an get footage of a fuchikoma in action?"

"Maybe. Some undeveloped nation versus a squad of fuchikomas?" the woman inquires.

"Yes, that should do nicely," Mikhail nods. "Combined with the Hoplite armor."

"Gotcha," she nodded, already altering the code for the large mediatron floating over the Weyrik International area.

There was something impressive about a small, semi-sentient droid (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Weyr/GroundWar/fuchi2.jpg) ripping apart a main battle tank or mowing down marines charging down a street, or taking down incoming missiles. Mikhail looked up to see a High Guard general infantry soldier (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Weyr/GroundWar/infantryCTF.jpg) being hit head-on by an RPG-7, smashed into a concrete wall, having the said wall fall on him, and getting away from it all with only a few broken ribs and bruised organs.

"Two centuries of progress," Miranda chuckled.

"Yes. We make efficient war implements," Mikhail nodded, sighed. "I can understand why the other companies did not want to come."

Several robots go out to browse around the other booths. They pick up sales brochures here and there, but the Palermo Oils booth attracts several. While not needing to eat, robots are notoriously good cooks, and cooking is one of the biggest hobbies in LRR.

Anyone at the booth would find about four shiny chrome robots surveying samples and specemins, and digging around in their pockets for funds or bartering goods.

The robots still manning the booth are surprised at Commisar Jenkins' reaction, and look around in confusion.

"Must have had too much to eat."

H'zta smiles again, softer this time, and steps back a little to ease Mr. Roult's discomfort. There were also disadvantages to living amongst Sakkrans and humans to whom a kzin is an everyday occurence. "Competition keeps you adapting and staying strong, and, if it turns out your system is better, then you have an advantage in our markets. That can only be beneficial to you. Am I mistaken in this analysis?"

Brevet Minion Superior Blevins quickly taps the order into the old cash register, daisywheel buzzing with each new line, and dirty tricks far, far from his mind. SCORCH may be corrupt and self-serving, but not to its customers--now was a vital time for Mother of All Games, and the best way to open new markets is to establish a reputation.

RECIEPT OF SALE
DD-MMM-YYYY MOBILE TRADE STAND

ITEM.......QTY....ITEMCOST.....TOTALS
TNK-SCT......10...$*25.000/1...$*..250.000,00
TNK-MED.......5...$*50.000/1...$*..250.000,00
MIS-BBY...1.500...$*...400/10..$*...60.000,00
MIS.........500...$*.1.875/5...$*..187.500,00
MRV-BBY.....300...$*...400/3...$*...40.000,00
MRV.........30...$*10.000/3...$*..100.000,00
FNKYBM.......2...$*10.000/2...$*...10.000,00
TOTAL..........................$*..897.500,00
BONUS.MIS-BBY...15x99...1.485
TOTAL.LESS.BONUS.MIS-BBY.......$*..896.900,00

((Hrm

Can I join in this late?))

OOC: I don't see why not. The more, the merrier.

"Excellent. Here's the details for delivery and contacting me if you need to," says Monroe after taking his receipt. He glances around the booth once more, then decides the other thing he seeks definately isn't going to be found here. "Have a good day."

The next part of his shopping trip he was seeking an entirely different kind of purchase. Unfortunatly, thus far he had only spotted one acceptable source, and that one was a bit too close to home for comfort. Still, his organization needs these items, and so he strides up to the Hreer Weaponry booth.

"Hello. I am Tobias Monroe, and I am looking for some non-lethal weaponry, as well as lethal weapons that will not penetrate a spacecraft hull. What do you have to offer?"

A smallish Sakkran manning the booth of Hreer Weapon Works looks over the being before him, and cocks his head slightly. "Greetings and good cycle to you, Tobias Monroe. I am Khees. Lethal weaponry that doesn't penetrate hulls? An interesting request. What we have in that vein...."

He ducks down behind the booth, and re-appears with some pamphlets, which are handed to the questioning consumer. "....are Fletchette rifles. They feature single-fire, semi-auto and full autmatic fire, and shoot fletchettes at a rate of 1,200 per minute. It has been shown to do minimal damage against armored targets, but will shred soft targets."

More pamphlets are handed over. "We also manufacture and carry Electro-Shock EM rifles. It uses caseless 60mm ammunition that produces a 10,000 volt shock on impact from a charged battery housed within the shell of the ammunition. An organic body would complete the circuit requiring the shock to activate. The rate of fire from these is about 45 rounds per minute, but the effect is worth the wait. Now for non-lethal weaponry, we feature ...."

More pamphlets are produced and laid out, with designs and instructions on proper use. ".....shock gloves, chemical stun batons, 40mm riot grenade launchers and a favorite amongst the rural farmer population. The 60mm rock-salt cannon. Has a cone dispersal range of 9 meters wide, allowing a good area of coverage." The salesman lets a warbling chuckle come from his throat. "Bear in mind this is a sampling of what we can offer you. If you're equipping a private militia, representing foreign peace-keeping interests or arming a mercenary coalition, we can supply your needs at a fair price with a greater stock than what this humble booth has to offer."

"Hmmm. I suppose that you could say that we're a militia organization of sorts, operating mainly in space," Monroe replies with a chuckle of his own. "We're mainly interested in taking down targets with the minimum of harm, but of course we do need some kind of lethal weapons as well. The electro-shock rounds certainly sound promising. Are the rounds rechargeable, and are the voltage and power scaleable?"

Khees shakes his head in the negative. "No, i'm afraid the rounds are not rechargeable or scaleable. They're break-away shells that allow the charged and unshielded battery to impact the organism. The firing weapon itself has no control over the rounds. They are quite affordable though. Drum-canisters of 60 and 120 rounds are available, costing 75 and 125 Teeth each, respectably.

"You say you need to take down targets with a minimum of harm? And it seems you need a reusable device.... I think we can accomodate that." A datachit is inserted into a display terminal. The image that comes up is a pair of helmeted Sakkran ERT civilian peace-officers at the scene of a small-scale riot. One holds a grenade-launcher of some fashion, while the other wields a stun-baton.

The officers wielding the grenade-launcher shoulders it, aiming slightly above the crowd. A round is fired, which soars over the crowd and lands in the midst of them. Immediately they clutch their ears and fall, writhing, stumbling and twitching. "Those are the high-frequency grenades. A very short burst of high-frequency sound at the moment of activation disorients by affecting the balance-centers of the inner ear. It is also painful, but not lethal except in prolonged periods of exposure. The sounds is emitted for a short period of time, until the battery wears out. It is rechargeable and reusable."

"Huh. Still, the shock weapons do appear quite useful, as do the close-quarters weapons such as the stun-batons. I do have concerns about the sonic grenade, though. We'll likely be looking at close-quarters fighting, such as the insides of a spacecraft. Will the launcher system be effective in such a situation? While we may have access to some kind of armor that may protect against the effect, I can't guarantee that all of our personel will. Is there a more focused handheld version, perhaps?"

“I can’t tell you how pleased we are to hear our product pleases, and has found such status here,” Marco beams, Natalia smiling in her typically just-sit-there-and-look-pretty way and shifting under Kraah’s gaze slightly. “We will be quite happy to accommodate your needs, I assure you. There is no problem whatsoever in shipping, as we have excellent contracts with Eidolon Tech and their shipping division. We look forward to fulfilling your order, and wish you a pleasant day.” Smiling reassuringly, Marco lifts a hand in a farewell gesture as Kraah heads off to the foods, then looks more closely at the business card.

“Sweet Jesu … One of the joint heads of H&K, that was! Now that was quite the experience, no?” he says to Natalia, who is still standing there looking pretty and smiling.

“Eep?” she manages, looking over a bit wide-eyed.

The arrival of the ‘bots is something it seems she can deal with somewhat easier.

“Buon giorno, Signores,” she says cheerfully while handing out pamphlets and brochures, albeit in a slightly brainless-sounding way. “Welcome to Palermo Oils and Vinegars. We hope you enjoy the samples.”

Marco, for his part, smiles pleasantly and makes himself useful answering any questions that come his way while keeping a sharp eye on the potential customers – metal and glass, after all, have a history of unpleasant consequences when meeting with sufficient force.

*=*=*=*=*

From earlier ...

Rossetti and Barichello’s booth was stocked with bottles of their liqueurs ( http://home.mchsi.com/~ketri/wsb/links/liqueurs.xls), samples of course for the taking. Across the way, the Di Medici Corporation was showing off product from some of the top wineries in the nation, Doumani, Assante, and La Rocca to name a few. A champagne fountain was the centerpiece of that display, with catalogues and bottles all set in a faux brick façade giving the booth an old country feel.

Capelli Meats, Sansovino Brothers Cheeses, Palermo Oils & Vinegars, Mama Zanetti’s Baked Goods and Vercesi Foods Inc. had both their own booths, and a joint table set out with samples of their goods, mostly in antipasti style – and of course, served with samples ( http://home.mchsi.com/~ketri/wsb/links/foods.xls) of appropriate wines from the nearby vendors to accent the various dishes.

Over at the foods booths and sample tables, the reps had had an opportunity to observe from a distance, and hence, were better prepared (and in some cases, had been better briefed) to handle the arrival of Kraah – whom soon found himself offered all manner of samples, each one prepared for optimal flavour, presentation, and of course, accompanied by the perfect drink to accent it – all in small manageable samples, with small dishes of vanilla gelato to cleans the palate between samplings.

Meats, cheeses, seafood, vegetables, fruits, pastas, breads, sweets and pastries – all combined or served in truly delicious fashions (and in ample amounts, surprisingly enough).

From one and all, the message was clear: We’re here to sell you on our products. Tell us how we can help fulfill your needs?


ooc: hoping to post more interaction from my other folks with others soon. ack with catching up!

Wazzu


Zhilla's claws clacked in a staccato rhythm while her mouthplates ground against each other. "Yes. I am interested in information on your Laser Imaging Bio-Spectroscopy. You will provide the information." The pair of svelte Grass-Walkers flanking her maiintain their silence, although tell-tale signs of their pupils dilating at odd intervals can be seen.

“Errrr….OK.” the salesman responded. “Ummm, not much to tell really. It’s just like any other spectrometer…except…uhhh...you don’t need to have a test tube.” The man loosened his tie a little, and started concentrating on the sale rather then the huge reptilian alien in front of him. “So basically you don’t need a ahh, sample. You just need to be close. It’s multi frequency too! That’s something new!

“That means it can not only detect objects as small as viruses and proteins, but also tell the difference between them. It ahh, can’t detect DNA or anything, nothing actually inside an organism or a container, like DNA, but it can tell the difference between different surfaces, tell you what they are made of, and even give you a 3D image. So if you classify something, it will recognize it from then on.

“Our biggest customers are police and security services! But we’ve sold to hospitals, schools, explorers….” The man starts to ramble more and more…anything to keep his conscious mind off the Sakkran. It was a sort of mental flight, where physical flight would have meant his job.



Startled out of pondering on a complicated astrophysics problem, captain Marley looks around, and decides that he is who the Dwarf was addressing.

"Erm...how much current can they handle?"

From what he saw of the display, the whole apparatus looked worth a visit. While it is unlikely that much is going to replace the superconductors in LRR use currently, the whole Hyper-Optical grid might be of some use in the more far-flung parts of the commonwealth.


The dwarf for his point was, well, stolid. “Current? This is light, not electricity, there isn’t any current. But if your talking about power, well, your aware that superconductors can only take so much EMF before they loose superconductivity? In terms of power, these optics can provide for between 4 and 7 times the power density of a superconductor with the same cross-sectional surface area. Of course all that depends on the quality of the optics you want, and the superconductors you have.”

It was obvious the dwarf had been an engineer, not a salesman, and realized his mistake himself when a fellow employee elbowed him in the ribs. “Errr, that means you can replace existing systems for the same original price and get better than 5 times the power delivery.”

The dwarf leaned in a moment and lowered his voice. “Really, that’s kind of an expensive proposition. You’re better off just using this in new projects. Eventually, you’ll raise the old stuff anyway. It’ll take more time, but your government won’t be spending any more then it already has.” He added a very obvious wink…definitely an engineer.

Captain Marley is embarassed over his mistake, applying current to an optical system. He was still thinking of something else, though, so that might be an excuse.

"Could you put me down for mabye a small sample system?" he asks the dwarf.

Wazzu

Zhilla stared at the human with one of her slightly-glowy red eyes, waiting for the rambling to end. Her lobster-like claws clacked slowly and rhythmically. She took a deep whiff of the air with her nostrils, and raised up a hand.

"The information is sufficient. I will discuss with my aides as to interest in this technology." She turned 90 degrees, in order to keep one eye on the booth, and the other eye aimed at her two assistants. Silent discourse was held amongst them.

"Practical applications towards modifying our power-assist combat armors with this technology are present. Full 360 degree sensitivity will aid in their sensitivity." The silver scaled Grass-Walker nodded her head as she and the golden one chatted telepathically with Zhilla listening in.

"The application may not merit the cost in time and finance to adjust the armor to work with this technology. While it may work, I believe it will not be sufficient to merit the attention paid...." Zhilla lifts a hand for silence, and turns again to face the human fully.

"Your technology has garnered my interest. I desire informational material and ordering forms on this device for my later perusal."

Ceta

"Hmmmm...." Khees rubs his chin with one hand as files are leafed through, and papers peered over. "I don't believe we offer a hand-held version of the sonic grenade launcher. Perhaps at a later time, we will develop one, but for now we have none of that type. And the launcher system is not optimally used in close-quarters. It is designed mainly to be a support device at range." Khees shrugs at that.

"But we do have the stun wands available in bulk, with a 10% discount for the bulk orders; the same for the shock-rifle system. Ammunition of both varieties, as described, are also plentiful in our store-houses."

"Too bad. It sounds like a useful device, but its simply not suitable for the needs of my organization," says Monroe, shrugging. "Let's see, a ten percent discount for bulk orders, you say? Excellent. We're on a bit of a tight budget on the moment. I'll take, let's see, five hundred of the shock rifles with a twelve hundred rounds each, for a total of six hundred thousand- we'll go with the larger drums. A thousand of the stun wands as well, with a spare power cell each plus an appropriate number recharge units if they need one."

He pauses a moment, then adds with a grin, "And two of those rock-salt guns, too, on a seperate tab. It sounds like just that my father-in-law would appreciate for a birthday gift. "

Commissar Jenkins makes his way back to the MoAG booth beside the mock-up magenta tank, still a bit green from his encounter with the robots. "There's robots over there," he hisses quietly, leaning conspiratorially against one of the supporting poles of the booth, wide eyes boring into Blevins. The brevet minion superior quirks a brow and stands up on tiptoe, craning his neck to try and get a look.

"Don't do that!" the commissar whispers furtively, eyes darting to his right as if they could rotate a half-turn and look out the back of his skull, "they may see you! Act natural."

"Yes, lord commissar." Relaxing back into place, Blevins looks down and idly taps the countertop. "Errr... for better news, we're making money."

"I saw... I think." Jenkins looks automatically at the cash register. "How much?"

"Around three-point-six billion international trading dollars, Lord Commissar." Blevins drums on the tabletop some more, turning it into a sort of cadence to go with the martial wares he sells. The commissar, on the other hand, just blinks and gapes a bit... before beginning to think.

Funds acquired on-station are arguably slush until sent up further into the corporation. Seeing how his funds for requisition of materiel order would inevitably be accepted (the cost is relatively low, and the materiel is sufficiently advanced), he could use the slush funds now to get that magnetic lift technology. It represented, in whole, a much larger benefit than the cost required to get it. "Hmm... could I get about a hundred thousand of it, for the Work Ethic?"

The brevet minion superior scratches his head. "It's in precious stones, Lord Commissar... and a lot of them. I'm not too sure how exactly it's set up... but here's the bag." He taps the "NO SALE" key and the cash register drawer pops open, revealing the hefty bag of brilliantly cut stones.

Jenkins blinks again. "That will do nicely, actually." Simply grabbing and pocketing a small handful, he indicates for the minion to close the drawer as he turns and marches off resolutely back to the Suyana booth.

"Good morning, again," he calls ahead, "I have found funding. Do you accept precious stones?"

Roult & H'zta

While the "competition causes adaption" adage is bourne out in the Ilonan model of human evolution, Roult refrains to mention the fact that the designers of the chameleon cloth stopped adapting some forty thousand years ago, and became extinct a century ago. The fact that your main product was designed by the Old Ones is seldom a major selling point.

"Um, yes," he replies, "Er - no, no! Not at all, not at all."

Suyana Corp. Booth

Booth Babe blinks. He goes away with pocket change and comes back with thousands in precious stones? She suspects something fishy here, but the customer is always right ... except when he's unfortunately SOL.

"I'm afraid not, sir," she replies, bestowing her best smile upon him in partial compensation. "We can take quite a number of currencies, but we're not able to take precious metals or such, I'm sorry."

OOC: Work + energy = no energy for later + money. Work is a negative value, but money is a positive one. In any case you may consider the above bits of speech to be shorn of ums, ahs, pauses, stutters, and the like - as I now know all too well, the way we speak is nothing like the way we type speech, unless it's transcription. G'night.

Commissar Jenkins' face falls, but he waves politely and immediately to-the-rears on his next step, pivoting around and stalking off. By the Work Ethic! Do these people accept anything of value? There's barter... but I doubt they'd be interested in a brace of Baby Nukes. Spite!

Wandering to about the middle of the lot, he looks around. What I need... is either someone who needs gems or a gem dealer. He scratches his head, fingers sneaking under his garrison cap. And who would that be? Spite and blast!

Khees does the numbers with his datapad. "Very good. So 1,000 stun wands at 250 per, minus 10%....and 500 shock rifles at 2,500 each .... with 1,200 large drums of ammo each at 125 per drum for 600,000 rounds. Hmmm....." He scratches his head a bit, until the numbers come up. "The total will be one hundred thirtysix million and five hundred and seventy five thousand with the 10% discount. Will this be in hard currency, precious gems and ores or electronic transfer? And I assume you would like a receipt?"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the meantime, Kraah is running roughshod over the samples at the booth of Capelli Meats. As samples are offered, they are unceremoniously pinched up and juggled into the gaping maw of Kraah. "Oh, that's lovely. What's this? Ooh...." Following each sample is a goblet of accompanying wine to cleanse the palate, and the ritual continues for some time in this fashion.

"Most impressive. MOST impressive. I believe that, for my personal larder I will place an order. 30 pounds of the prosciutto, finely sliced, 20 portions of the pork crown roast, 10 whole pigs, suitable for roasting and 100 pounds of beef shank. The accompanying wines will find a place in my heart, and gut. Make sure these are by the barrel. Two of the DeLuca Merlot, one of the Allegrini Merlot, one of the Vignavento cabernet sauvignon, and a barrel of the Alvaro Pecorari Pinot Grigio. Hmm.... if these are as good as the samples suggest, you can expect standing orders of some frequency."

He pats his belly, and looks down fondly at it as the stomach makes a low gurgling sound. "Yes, my pretty. We are both sated for now."

Monroe winces, and pulls out his wallet. "Electronic transfer, please." He hands over the appropriate billing and shipping information and takes his receipt. Expensive, yes, but it was was high quality, effective equipment and a considerable amount of ammunition.

Jenkins' plight had not gone unnoticed, as he scurried about, gems in hand - at least not by those who's job it was to notice such irregularities, and in turn, use them to their advantage. Business, after all, was business. And business was what this whole gathering was about. In particular, he caught the eye of a a tall young man (http://test.air-power.us//gallery/albums/Nathi/genovesesm.jpg), dressed in simple black, a stylish leather jacket worn over the top, casual yet respectable, his bearing speaking of quiet confidence. He keeps his eyes forward, scanning the contents of the booths ahead of them, his manner relaxed, never standing too close, nor too far away.

"Buon giorno, Signore. You seem to be in need of some assistance," the man said in an unassuming tone, approaching Jenkins from the left, and just slightly ahead of him, so as not to catch the Commissar unawares. "Lucano Genovese, President of Genovese Securities - among other things. Perhaps there is something along the lines of 'business' we could discuss over a glass of wine or other fine drink over at the Dominion displays?"

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

To say that the booth attendants were overwhelmed at Kraah's onslaught would be like saying plagues in Egypt were a minor inconvenience. The efficiency and determination with which he packs the samples away is ... stunning. The amounts of his purchases is equally as stunning. And between the looks of shock and awe on the attendant's faces, there is also a look of "Praise Jesus". Orders are taken and noted, with assurances of speedy delivery and guaranteed satisfaction.

"Signore, we are most pleased to be doing business with you," Gianni Salvatore beams with a full, yet close-lipped smile. "Your taste is to be complimented. If you could just sign off on the details here," he notes, pointing to the proper box on the stylus and interactive datapad that he had been quickly loading numbers into. On the screen, an itemised list of Kraah's requests.

734.40 for one *barrel of Vignavento Cabernet Sauvignon
1836.00 for 2 barrels of DeLuca Merlot
896.00 for 1 barrel of Allegrini Merlot
537.70 for one barel of Pinot Grigio
520 for 30 pounds of the prosciutto, finely sliced
1424 for 20 portions of the pork crown roast
4500 for 10 whole pigs, for roasting
499 for 100 pounds of beef shank

10,947.10
-164.21 15% discount for bulk purchase
---------------------
10,782.89

"Once you have been able to confirm that your order is as directed, if you would sign there at the bottom, I shall send this off for immediate attention. I believe that we could very well have this within five working days." He and the others sneak curious peeks at the large leezardy-type being who seems so enthusiastic about their wares, blinking as he speaks to his ample somach, and blinking again as it seems almost to ... reply.





ooc: *barrel -- went with approx. 3 cases since I couldn't find equivalent barrel prices. Prices given are equivalent to the dollar as a baseline - no idea on the conversions. I'm no economist.

At the approach of the strange man, Commissar Jenkins' head snaps around just a little, guardedly looking at the man sideways while his body turns to catch up and meet the man face on. "Good morning. I'm not entirely certain; it depends on exactly what kind of business you're speaking of. While I'm hardly thirsty," he lies, as alcohol consumption is against the Work Ethic, especially in circumstances right now when an opponent can take advantage of any mental slowness, "there is a possibility that you can help me, yes."

Keep it cool, Jenkins. The last thing you need is to get tricked into a small sum of money and deny SCORCH it's holy profit. He slowly seems to warm to the idea. "Lead the way."

"Of course - right this way," the young man says, smiling pleasantly, then continuing on in his casual but confident stride. Reaching the block of Dominion booths, he takes up one of the platters containing samples of cheese, fruit, bread, and some seasoned dipping oils, and nods to Gianni Salvatore who is coordinating there for the various food and beverage vendors. He cuts back behind the counter at the Di Medici booth, motioning Jenkins to follow, then continues around the faux brick display wall with its rack of wines, leading the Commissar to a cozy little back room of sorts, with high canvas walls of deep burgundy lined with boxes of stock, and a steepled roof from which a pleasantly soft lamp illuminates the interior. There in the center sits a small table and a couple of padded folding chairs, and from each corner hangs a small black speaker, playing soothing classical music selections just loud enough to mask quiet conversations being heard from outside the enclosure.

"Please, make yourself comfortable." Lucano sets the tray on the table, and takes up a couple of glasses from a nearby stand holding several by their stems. "If not wine, then perhaps some juice or bottled water? Our compliments, of course," he says, trying to reassure the stranger. He selects an opened bottle of chianti for himself, pouring a conservative portion into his own glass, then slowly reaching into an inner pocket of his jacket to retrieve a jewelers loupe, angling himself to make certain Jenkins can see every move he is making. "Now. About your needs. You seem to have had some difficulty with exchanging your currency. Depending on the quality, I think we could assist you in that regard. If I might examine a sample?"

"Yes... quite some difficulty." While this certainly is exactly what Jenkins needed, the timing was... paranoia-inducing. He'd certainly been seen, or overheard, and now he is turned around and disoriented deep within what may as well be an enemy camp. Probably not within shouting distance to his own minions and potentially surrounded by this man's hired muscle, or at least, muscle friendlier to this man than to himself.

He begins to wish that he was armed. "Still, anyone can carry around a loupe and claim to be one who studies gems. I'm certain you'd understand my... concern, for I work for an entity somewhat larger than me and it would not reflect very well on my person if assets belonging to that entity got misplaced. If it's not too much trouble, I'd like to see an example of your work--to set my probably far-too-nervous mind at ease, of course."

While this looks quite good on paper, he says it perhaps just a touch too quickly.

"You've got to be kidding me. We're going to be laughed off the planet."

The young man stood in the middle of an open lot and looked around at the massive displays of space craft, robots, weaponry, and uber-hi-tech stuff.

"Eðelred, will you trust me for once? An apprentice is supposed to learn from, not fight wið his master."

"Sorry, Orþanc."

"Very well. Will you and Garfeld set up the booth?"

The two youths, with the industriousness that only young men can accomplish when trying to impress the numerous attractive females (wo)manning the other booths, quickly set up this stall. The outermost layer consisted of rich fabrics and tapestries in many colors, often shot through with golden threads. Parchements were everywhere declaring that some lord or lady had patroniged Orþanc. The inside was heavy jet-black wool pockmarked with scorchs and singes. In the very center was a small forge (heated by a portable atomic cell), anvil, and rack of metal ingots.

In front of the stall, seeming all the brighter due to the pitch-black background were the wares. On the right were suits of full platemail, some effective, some fancy, and some both. On the left was finely wrought jewelry in gold, silver, platinum, and scrith. Some simple chains, others fanciful networks of metal and gemstones. In between these two extremes was everything, well, in between: Swords, chainmail, leggings, knives, buckles.

Above it all, a well-crafted, but old banner:
Orþanc Smið

"My work?" Lucano asks, arching a brow and smiling. "While I could tell you that I graduated in the top quarter of my class at the Academia di Medici in Devras, recieving my Masters in Business Administration, and that my jewelers experience was gained through working for D'Amati both before and after my two years of service in the Dominion military, and that during the last of those six years of work I recieved my accreditation through the Dominion Gem Society as an Associate in Appraisal, I am afraid that I have no such pieces to offer up for your perusal. My focus is on appraisal and market value, I am afraid. I lack the skills required to actually create a fine piece of jewelry."

The young man shrugs, and casually reaches for a bit of bread, dipping it first in the flavoured oil before popping it in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully. Once finished with the bite, he goes on. "Of course I understand your hesitance. Were your situations reversed, I would be cautious as well"

Commissar Jenkins nods. Well, one must take risks at times... Fishing out one smallish gem from his pocket, he hands it over. "Well, this will have to do as an example, then."

Khees produces a pad with the order displayed on the screen, and pushes it on the table towards Monroe. "Just confirm your signature here...." A blinking X indicates where the signature is to be placed. "....and we'll get confirmation of moneys received. Now, then, we'll need coordinates for delivery managed by our shipping agents. If you require an insured delivery, that will be 100 Teeth for 1 million Teeth coverage. Insured delivery comes with armed escort, and the most discreet means."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kraah dips his claw into a small ink-well embroidered into the lapel of his food-covered tunic, eyeballs the listing of his order and scratches his mark onto the paper before him. "There. that should do it."

His crest raises slightly, and the scent of nutmeg wafts lightly off him. "This is most fortuitous. In that time, my Line is expected to hold a reunion. This will go well for the function." A loud 'GREPP!' escapes his lips, and he holds a hand to his mouth. "Excuse me. A compliment to your quality of wares." Now his crest drops flat, and his eyes blink quickly. "Oh, my."

Lucano nods, gingerly accepting the dark blue stone. He sets the loupe against his right eye, standing slowly to better utilize the light as he holds the beautifully-cut sapphire up to examine it carefully.

Exquisite color ... finely cut ... beautiful depth and clarity ... Hmmm. Around six carats, I'd estimate ... a good twenty-kay rock, or thereabouts. Jesus, if this is the sort of swag he's bagging ...

His expression gives nothing away of course, and he takes his time, weighing and measuring with his eyes as best as can be managed outside a professional setting. "Would you say that this is representative of the rest of your wares, Mr. ...?" He trails off casually, still examining the stone.

"Thereabouts, yes." Commissar Jenkins sees no need to announce his name, especially given that it's printed on his tunic. "Although I'm hardly an expert in these things myself, unlike you, sir. Not exactly in my line of expertise, you understand." This is true, but, having seen how many there were and how many he portioned off, he has some estimation of how much they should be worth on average. He knows that, of the five stones he took, they should be worth around 100 thousand in the usual international currency. A hundred divided by five is twenty--he can go no lower than that.

"My turn, ser," Miranda grinned, getting off the display counter, whose layers of mediatronic flyers slowly begin to resume their normal form, having been pressed together under the CI's weight for some time.

"No problem," Mikhail shrugged, still meddling with the large sign floating over the Weyrean series of booths. The large mass of micro- and nanoware was now showing random footage of Weyrean soldiers dispatching demons, with a good amount of success -- only half the Weyrean squad was down, with the rest darting between wrecked apartment blocks, twenty or more meters into the air, all the while blazing away with subEtheric rifles and targets that looked like fleeting shadows or creatures from some warped nightmares. Beneath the mediatronic sign's image was a little caption titled 'live' -- Mikhail did not see much reason to use old footage when he could just borrow direct imagery from Southport, where The Tower was mounting another misguided effort to wipe out the infestation released into that city during the Weyrean Civil War.

Miranda wondered if there was anythign interesting. Food-- she could taste things, and actually drew power from what she ate, but she could get almost anything she wanted in Paradigm or Wye City. Weapons -- she could buy those anywhere.

Orþanc Smið

That was something new. She decided to check the booth out.

The sound of steel on steel greets the ear of Miranda as she approached the booth. In the dark of the interior she can make out the large figure of Orþanc hammering away at his anvil, sparks flying off to the sides and catching themselves in the heavy wool. A sword is slowly taking shape beneath the heavy hammer. Though still crude and dull, there is a feeling of great potential to it.

Assisting Orþanc at the forge are his two apprentices Eðelred and Garfeld. Should Miranda begin examining the wares, one will keep an eye on her and an ear open should she try to speak to them. If she doesn't, they'll keep on working the fire.

MoAG
Two things are readily apparent to Lucano. One, Jenkins has no sense of the finer subtleties and politenesses the young man has come to expect in dealings. Fine and well. The second, is that however much he feels is lacking in style, this man is no slouch. His words ... his tone. He knows bloody well how much he's willing to part with them for. Blast and damn. Still, what with markups and the usual high-spenders that lap up these sorts of baubles, no doubt even at a fair price enough of a profit could be made. Aside from that, contacts and what trails they may lead to are never amiss.

"And just how many might you be looking to exchange at this time," Lucano asks, looking back to the gentleman, one brow arched slightly.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Sakkra
"Of ... course Signore," replies Salvatore, looking very pleased. The order is completed, the reciept given to Kraah, as well as a small bag of complimentary mints. "Thank you for your business! We hope that you and yours will be pleased with the products, and are more than happy to be of service."

Despite having made an incredible sale, one and all look more than a little perplexed to some degree or other at just what to think of the gregarious Sakkran ... who talks to his belly ... inhales food like no tomorrow ... and can out-belch rather anyone they know.

Oh my indeed.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Freod
The smith's booth was to Dominion eyes like an oasis in the desert. Here, amidst all the wonderful technologies and advances, there still existed room for the finer things in life - something Dominion natives prided themselves (overall) on being able to appreciate (in their opinion) better than many others. Damian Esposito, working the NavarraTech booth where they were working with printing and textiles, drew the lot for taking first break. There was no question where he was headed.

He took his time examining the beautiful jewelry, looking over the armor inquisitively, nodding thoughtfully as he read the writs of patronage, and carefully checking out the blades. His eyes drifted contstantly to the smith, watching him work, fascinated by how he managed to mix past and present in his art. Eventually, with a polite nod to the foreign woman already perusing the wares, he clears his throat quietly.

"Excuse me, Signores, but would you happen to have a price list for your goods? I must say, the work is exquisite."

MoAG
Two things are readily apparent to Lucano. One, Jenkins has no sense of the finer subtleties and politenesses the young man has come to expect in dealings. Fine and well. The second, is that however much he feels is lacking in style, this man is no slouch. His words ... his tone. He knows bloody well how much he's willing to part with them for. Blast and damn. Still, what with markups and the usual high-spenders that lap up these sorts of baubles, no doubt even at a fair price enough of a profit could be made. Aside from that, contacts and what trails they may lead to are never amiss.

"And just how many might you be looking to exchange at this time," Lucano asks, looking back to the gentleman, one brow arched slightly."
"Three," the commissar half-lies easily. Three times twenty is sixty, and he needs fifty-five. The other two lie in reserve, just in case. Idle conversation is shirk, and there is no more information that needs to be relayed quite yet, so Jenkins simply folds his hands while he waits.

"Excellent. If I might examine the other two, I think I will be able to give you a solid offer, if that suits you," Lucano says casually, setting the fine gem back on the table within easy reach of Jenkins. "Can't be expected to offer sight unseen, you understand."

And if the other two match ... interesting. Such a small number we could cover easily without much delay. So much the better if they are a matched set, though I suppose that might be too much to hope for. The new Duchessa di Scalia I believe, was looking for fine jewels for a coronet she wished to have designed for her ... well, we shall see.

Commissar Jenkins retrieves two more gems from his pocket and sets them next to the first. One is an oblate star sapphire, a little bit larger than the first blue sapphire, that seems to burn a firey red on the table; the other is an unusually large emerald in a spherical cut, throwing out the light that hits it in a variety of colors like a prism. "My apologies that they are not matched," the commissar says... apologetically, "but this is what my source supplied me with. Hopefully you find them suitably worthwhile nevertheless."

Nathi

With a final strike of the hammer, Orþanc turns away from the anvil, speaks a few instructions to his apprentices, and leaves the steel behind him ringing like a bell.

He is a bear of a man, about two meters tall and about 130 kilograms. Heavy brown hair and a short dense beard frames face. In fact, as far as can be seen the only parts of his body that aren't hairy are his forearms which are completely smooth and covered with minute scars. His fingers, though heavy and calloused, move almost daintily. A jet-black woolen tunic and leggings complete the outfit along with similarly hued heavy leather boots and apron.

"Wes þu hal, eorl. I am pleased that you find pleasure in my work. The arts that I use today were brought by my family from the old country many generations ago. In fact, this one (He picks up one of the more finely wrought pieces of gold) was crafted by my rihtfæderencyn Listhando. (He replaces it on the cloth, almost reverently.) Now, in what might you be interested?"

MoAG

Lucano delicately takes up the star sapphire first, maintaining his casual demeanor as he carefully examines the gem, turning it gently under the light. "Please, no apologies necessary. If nothing else, it is always a pleasure to have the opportunity to examine such beautiful baubles."

To his satisfaction, the brilliant star effect fades and shifts as he manipulates the stone, confirming it to be a non-synthetic at first glance. Further examination yields equally promising results. The asterism seems to hold its own silvery glow, the lines and points of the six-rayed star remaining clear and sharp when displayed properly. The rutile within the beautiful gem appears tightly, evenly distributed, and the deep color itself is a rarity truly wonderful to behold. At the six point five to seven carats he estimates it at, given all the criteria, it would seem Jenkins is correct in his estimation of the gems being similar in value. Another indication of the man's shrewdness. Or an indication of intent to entrap ... still, in all their observances this didn't seem to be the case. Caution, as always, would be excercised as best as could be managed.

Nodding thoughtfully, he carefully sets the gem back alongside the others, and takes up the large emerald. An interesting cut, this, and it did show off the gem's clean cuts and inner light nicely. While a good deal larger than the other two, sitting he imagines at nearly twelve carats, the depth of color is not as rich as it could be, accounting for its closer approximation in value to the other two. An incredible stone nonetheless, and due to its size and unique shape, no doubt quite marketable. When dealing with stones of this size and quality, the buyer's pool certainly became more limited, yet the potential for profit expanded exponentially. A damnably good find this was, indeed.

Laying the emerald back gently with its companions, Lucano sits back down, putting away the loupe and taking a slow sip of his wine, taking no offense in the fact that Jenkins has stubbornly (in his mind) refused to partake of the offered hospitality. Suit yourself, my boy. Our ways are not your ways so it seems. Pity.

"I could see my way clear in offering you fifty-six point two five thousand for the lot," he says simply, awaiting the expected counter-offer with a patient, pleasant smile. "Further, I believe I could have those funds within thirty minutes, depending on your needs, free of any unfortunate entanglements such as uneccessary paperwork and the like, if such an arrangement is to your liking."

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Freod

"Begging your pardon, Master Smith, but I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the term, ah ... reet-fay-daren-keen Listhando, per favore. If you would enlighten me?" Damian says carefully, stumbling over the unfamiliar terms. "As for what I seek, personally ... well, I ah ... " The gentleman looks somewhat nervous, his eyes shifting about from here to there. "Well, truth be known, I'm looking for an engagement ring. I wanted something exotic - something outside of the usual Dominion norm. I hadn't expected to find such a booth here while on the job, you see and ... yes. Something unique, special."

His eyes light up as he thinks of the reason behind his request, a young lady who's family was of old blood, based to the west in Corinth. They had met at the University, she majoring in Communications, himself in Graphic Design, which had landed him his current job with NavarraTech. He could lay no claim to nobility, granted, though before now it hadn't mattered so much. Still, though she didn't expect such treasures, her family was another matter entirely. Perhaps, if he could find something not only to show her how much he loved her, but showed her family the way in which he hoped to provide for their daughter ... well, business was good, and until this planned purchase, he had managed to remain debt-free. Surely we can work it out.

Nathi

"Rihtfæderencyn Listhando is my, ummm, Great-great-great Grandfather Listhando."

The smith's eyes twinkle when he hears the reason for the ring. "Ah, an engagement ring. Let me see what I have, though of course that does not approach what I have left in my shop or could make for a lady as lucky as yours..."

As he reaches behind the counter to pull out more samples he asks, "I believe that it is traditional in your custom to have a precious stone in the band?"

What comes out, when combined with what is on the counter, consists of not quite a dozen rings. While most are of gold, there are several made of other precious metals including silver and titanium. None contain precious stones, instead the fittings sit empty waiting to caress the gem that is selected for them.


A plain yellow gold band with a fitting for a stone.
A plain silver band with a fitting for a stone.
A plain titanium band with a fitting for a stone.
A band of yellow gold consisting of finely overlapping oakleaves.
A band of silver wrought into the intertwining roots of a tree that gather together to clasp the gemstone in their trunk.
What appears to be no less than 6 individual white gold rings interwoven that all come up together to each grasp the stone at one point.
A band of yellow gold with celtic knotwork in silver around it and framing the fitting.
A band made up of fine white gold tracery with a fitting.
A band consisting of a helix of yellow and white gold threads with a place for a stone.
A band of yellow gold. Growing up from around and within it are tree roots of green gold which gather together at the top and branch out in white gold to clasp the stone.
A plain, dull, almost matte, gray band with no fitting.

His belly satisfied for the moment, Kraah decides to make the rounds and drum up the reputation of the H+K Corporation. Rifling through his pockets, he produces a stack of business cards, handing them out to any who happen by him, and pointing out the booth housing the wares of the company. This carries him through the majority of the convention hall. The mints are juggled into his mouth on occasion, when he hears the sound of steel on steel.

Combat? He decides to see what the fuss is about, and follows the directio n of the noise. Several peoples seem to have gathered around a booth that smells of a smithy. It doesn't take much for him to see over the heads of the beings there, and he does indeed spy a blacksmith's stand. He decides to hang at the back and eye-ball the offerings there, as well as how the beings from Freod work their craft.

"I could see my way clear in offering you fifty-six point two five thousand for the lot," he says simply, awaiting the expected counter-offer with a patient, pleasant smile. "Further, I believe I could have those funds within thirty minutes, depending on your needs, free of any unfortunate entanglements such as uneccessary paperwork and the like, if such an arrangement is to your liking."
Jenkins smiles softly. Fifty-six is enough, but less than sixty. "I and the party I represent were hoping for something more in the sixty-seven thousand even range. Still, I see you are a fair sort and we can always recoup the losses later; perhaps sixty-five thousand even is more mutually acceptable?"

Freod:

"Traditional, yes," Damian says, looking over the settings with interest. "It would seem your ancestors have passed on their craft and skill to you - this is truly beautiful work." Several caught his eye, for different reasons, though one stood out in particular.

"Pardon, but this one here ..." He looks to the smith with a curious expression, and points to the plain dull band of grey - the only one it seems that is secured to prevent removal, despite the seemingly obvious superior design and level of intricacy of the others. "I can't say as I can place it. Perhaps you could tell me more?"

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

MoAG:

"Hmmm," Lucano says, reaching out to idly toy with the stones with one outstretched fingertip, his expression thoughtful. "I hate to disappoint, but you see, the small occlusion just along the lower edge of that sapphire takes down the value somewhat, as well as the slight variation in coloration at one point in the emerald - not something easily detected by the unaided, untrained eye, granted, but there nonetheless. Excellent specimens, to be sure, all in all, however I don't think my means would allow me to go over fiftty-seven five."

Nathi

"Ah, yes. Perhaps the most valuable ring of the collection. The clip isn't to prevent theft though. I know that none of my customers would think to steal from me. It is for a more practical purpose."

He unclips the ring and carefully moves it to a slit in the tray for a normal ring. He the inverts the tray, and while all of the other rings are held firm, this plain band falls out as if it were not secured at all.

"Practically frictionless. (chuckle) It can make it very difficult to handle." He hands the ring to Damian. "There are probably fewer than fifty rings of its sort in the known universe and fewer than a dozen smiths capable of crafting one.

"It's pure scrith."

"Excellent specimens, to be sure, all in all, however I don't think my means would allow me to go over fiftty-seven five."
"And," the commissar replies with an almost playful smile, "because they are not 'easily detected by the unaided, untrained eye,' you can most certainly... convince the appropriately untrained into a price that provides decent enough profit no matter how much you get them for. Given the difficulty and rarity of finding such specimens, sixty-three thousand is certainly not asking for too much."

Freod

Damian arches a brow, clearly intrigued by the ring and the Smith's explanation of it. "That rare, hmm? I wonder ... " He handles it delicately, amazed at the feel of it, the lightness and smoothness of its surface, the odd sensation it elicits on his palm, against his finger as he very gently prods and follows its curved lines.

"I ah ... I don't suppose such material takes engraving or inlay well on account," he asks curiously.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

MoAG

"Ah, but what sort of businessman would I be if I willingly payed more for product I know to be flawed - whether my customers were aware or no? Are you suggesting I am a fool, Signore, or that I conduct my business dishonestly?" Lucano replies in a deceptively mild tone, one brow arching up. "Perhaps you're not in such need of my services as you seemed." He lets the words linger for a moment as he slowly drains his glass.

Another slow look at the gems laying on the table, then he looks over at Jenkins steadily. "Fifty-five even. I feel the market shifting as we speak."

Jenkins smiles evenly, face unreadable past a placid, Zen-like contentment. "Nothing of the sort. It is just a simple fact of business that one sells for higher than one obtains the good whenever possible. If you think that it will be a simple matter for you to find something of this quality again, perhaps you are correct; if not, I and the interests I work for are willing to part with them for sixty thousand even, no less."

So the man does have nerve. And knows damn well what the stones are worth, as suspected. I wonder, just how many more does he have tucked away there? Could make for a tidy little side biz, this. It -is- a fair enough price, and there have always been those more than happy to be gouged on prices back home. Ah, the vanity of some of the old blood.

Lucano smiles across the table at Jenkins, both brows raising briefly as he drops his gaze to look again at the stones in an expression that clearly indicates amused 'surprise'. "Sixty, you say?" he says, looking back to Jenkins as he idly reaches for a bit of bread, dipping it slowly in the spiced oil. "It might take some doing, but ..." He brings the bit of bread to his mouth with a practiced ease, savoring it before finishing his thought.

"Sixty it is, then. Are you sure you won't avail yourself of something to eat or drink while my people make the arrangements? And - perdon, Signore - will Dominion sovereigns be acceptable, or is there another form of currency you prefer?"

"Dominion sovereigns are perfectly acceptable," Jenkins replies with a smile, trying hard not to look relieved. He didn't call my bluff. Thanks be to the Work Ethic, that I have acquitted my holy work well today. "Thank you," he nods, "but I must abstain. It is... ah... a period of fasting."

Of course it's a period of fasting. It's always a period of fasting inbetween previously scheduled meals in MoAG. Snacking is shirk, as it complicates the allocation of food.

"As you wish, Signore Jenkins," Lucano says smoothly, not pressing the issue of 'fasting' or anything else for that matter. Those who wished to deny themselves the finer things were a mystery to him, but then again, it took all sorts. "If you will excuse me, then ..."

The young man rises to his feet smoothly, taking out a small phone and hitting one of the many quick dial numbers. Speaking rapidly and quietly in his native tongue, he lays out the instructions for a simple, sturdy briefcase to be delivered, standard M.O. of the usual non-sequential bills, this time in the twenties denomination, bound neatly in packs of fifty bills each. No need for anything fancy as this consisted of a simple 'investment'. With the contacts and accounts and networking at the Genovese Family's fingertips, such a small transaction was a simple matter of the time involved in putting the cash together, which was to say, little time at all.

Roughly thirty minutes after the phone call is concluded, there is a knock on the framed archway leading out to the front of the booth, a Genovese Security agent appearing with case in hand from around the corner.

"As directed, Signore Lucano, he says with a curt nod, turning the case to offer it out flat wtih both hands, handle towards the young Capo, who moves smoothly to accept it.

"Grazie, Bruno. Be sure to pass my thanks on to Mia and Tomas." Turning back to Jenkins as the agent nods and takes his leave, the young man gently lays the case down on the table, opening it up for the other gentleman's inspection. "All in good order, I hope," he says, gesturing to the sixty separate stacks of bills resting within.

Commissar Jenkins looks down in the briefcase at more concentrated wealth than he has ever seen in his entire life (in cash at least) and nods in a very business-like fashion. Reaching out, he quickly flips through the stacked bills, simply making sure that they are not photocopies or newspaper dummies behind a few real bills... not a gesture of adulation or greed, simply a quick fact-checking. Nodding again, he leans back. "In very good order. This is most acceptable."

At this point, he is quite happy to accept the cash in return for the gems and contact information, just in case more business is desired with SCORCH.

"Benissimo!", Lucano says with a genuine smile. He doesn't seem bothered in the least at Jenkins' casual inspection of the payment. After all, only a fool accepts what he's given without at least a cursory glance. "I have enjoyed doing business with you, Signore Jenkins. Should you have further need of our services, for this or other possible solutions, please - feel free to contact us."

The young man reaches into his jacket pocket, again at such an angle as Jenkins can observe his actions, and takes out a glossy black business card (http://test.air-power.us//gallery/albums/Nathi/genovese_bizcard3.jpg), sliding it smoothly across the table to the Commissar. "My offices," he says simply. "For most things, I'm certain my people can take care of your needs. For those things which require a more delicate touch, drop me a line. We'll talk."

As he brings his hand back, he gently takes up the three gems, tucking them into the same inside pocket he drew the card from with what seems practiced ease. Nimble fingers, this young man. Rising to his feet, he extends his hand in the nearly universal sign of closure for agreements, and an end to meetings. "It has been a pleasure, Signore."

After looking over the business card and placing it in a patch pocket, Commissar Jenkins stands up as well, accepting the hand and shaking it firmly as he takes the money. "The enjoyment has been mutual, sir. I shall relate this ahead to my superiors and, hopefully, they will see fit to work with you more in the future." Perhaps not in security... but that could be an opening. "Likewise, I am certain my superiors in SCORCH may have quite a few offers for you as well, depending on your needs. Simply contact the nation of Mother of All Games if you may have some need of SCORCH's services. We've a booth at this convention if you're curious."

With a polite nod, Jenkins allows himself to be escorted out of the tangled weave of the Genovese Security booths. Reorienting himself, he stalks back to the Suyana booth. There is Work to be done!

((OOC: Aaaiya, I'm just NOW getting into this thread. Please excuse my tardiness ._. ))

One of the booths has yet to open for business, mostly due to its crew and goods being delayed by bad weather in the Shogunate. Under the supervision of CEO Akkard Grey, various reploid and human lackies scurry to finish readying RPRA Techcorp's booth.

When the lights come on, one would almost think it to be a toy store with the number of models on display. The centerpiece of the display consists of three actual Bandit combat motorcycles, marks one-thru-three, the Techcorp's mainstay and oldest product, posed on display stands for a suitably dramatic look. A large flat-panel screen behind the display plays an informative video about the Techcorp and its history, as well as lots of footage of various products in action and the company's logo. Several scale models of the company's larger items- ships, spacecraft, and aircraft- are on display, each accompanied by informative pamphlets.

At the far back of the booth is a large-scale mock-up of the Space Taxi mass driver standing some fifteen feet high, with cutouts and explanations of how the real one (and the smaller ones the Techcorp builds) operate. At the front, complete Techcorp product catalogues (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=275271) are available, and several engineers and sales reps are on hand to chat with prospective buyers.

Akkard nods his head in satisfaction as the booth goes live, particularly at the brightly colored sign propped up near the front. If the Techcorp's auctions in the past were any indication, the one sign alone would draw lots of people.

The sign, all bright colors screaming out "LOOK AT ME!", bears a simple message and a few photographs of a sleek but efficient little spacecraft.

"Enter our raffle! Grand Prize: 1 Toriko aerospace shuttlecraft!"

Nathi

"No, we can size it given a month's time, but that's about the only modifications possible. The inside is slightly roughened so that it doesn't slip off too easily, but you still need to be careful with it."