[Gene takes this opportunity to look at Valdis quite witheringly. Jeez, why do people always gotta think the worst of him?]

I didn't mean that we should intimidate them, [he says shortly,] I meant that they owe us. Without us, they would have all been so much dead meat. And it seems like they've forgotten that.

[Well, Tony, the Foreigners could always make their own gang. With blackjack! And hookers!] So we don't 'suck up' to any faction in particular, [he says.] We deal with them as much as we have to, but prove ourselves to be coming from a place of power on our own. They're treating us Foreigners like our own faction anyway. Why not make it official? [Then he smiles a little.] We are the biggest badasses on the turtle, since the kedan owe us all their lives, probably several times over.