"She was trying to stab me in the - never mind." It had just been a relex, after all. Nothing to be embarassed about.

The report she pulls up and sends to Howard's omnicomm actually has two parts. The first is an exhaustive description of what they saw of the culture of Epicurea: the clans, the status signals in food and dress and attendants, the dinosaurs, the arena sports; the second is a very simplified version of what happened, without many details. Negotiations started, failed, team accomplished mission anyway. It does go into a little more detail about how poorly suited the female negotiator chosen by Stacy was for the role, and how the mission only succeeded due to the skills of Howard and Zouichi.

"Megnama," she muttered to herself as she sent it, for some reason.