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the side of his fist against the plax window. It flexed, but did not break.
    Down on the factory floor he saw a scruffy, silver little robot engaged in oddly animated conversations with subordinate workbots of varying sizes and designs. The little one’s name was Ipsy, an odd mechanical runt who had an officious, irritating personality. He certainly grated on Jacopo, and other sentient robots took offense to him at times as well, as they seemed to be doing at the moment. Jacopo had tried to teach him personal interaction and management skills, but Ipsy had been resistant to learning them.
    Now, Ipsy pushed another robot in the chest, knocking him backward against others. Three more of them tumbled over like dominoes. Jacopo had seen this mechanical emotionalism and physicality before, and always Ipsy won out. Someone had programmed him to be quite aggressive.
    Despite his gruff methods, the little guy had taken charge of the facility, causing it to hum at high efficiency, producing more robots and machine parts than ever before. Jacopo knew where some of the products were being shipped around the galaxy, but not all of them. He only knew for certain that business was booming. Ipsy didn’t seem to know all of the end-user details either, or he was keeping the information to himself. As a large part of this factory’s business, it produced electronic instruments and control panels—components that could be used for a variety of purposes.
    Unfortunately, the facility was making money Jacopo could not spend. The Hibbils allowed him access to heavily edited financial reports, but he couldn’t get his hands on his share of the funds themselves, and he was not allowed access to any form of transportation. The factory complex was ringed with an electronic containment field that penned him in. The furry little bastards even forced him to live in a rudimentary apartment on the grounds, a stunted, boxlike abode that had been designed for one of them , not for a Human being.
    Each day Nehr woke up in a foul mood, then spent much of his time dithering around the factory, hoping something would change, that the Hibbils who had essentially imprisoned him there more than a week ago would set him free and allow him to return to Canopa. But he saw no sign of that happening.
    He hadn’t seen any fellow Humans at all since being forced to fly across the galaxy on a strange podship, one that was unlike any other he’d ever seen. From Ipsy he’d learned it was a craft that had been bred in a laboratory, and guided by a Hibbil navigation system. The thought of an artificial podship boggled his mind, not easily done to an inventor and businessman of his stature. One of the leading merchant princes in the Alliance, Jacopo Nehr had discovered the nehrcom cross-space communication system, and had built an impressive multi-planet business empire around that connective tissue. Before falling out of favor with the princes, he had even been appointed Supreme General of the Merchant Prince Armed Forces—the primary Human military force.
    Down on the floor, Ipsy was getting increasingly aggressive, and he pushed other workbots out of his way as they pressed in around him.
    Jacopo hardly cared. Ipsy would get his way, as always. The merchant prince was more concerned about being held prisoner in his own factory complex, with no one to talk to except the robots that ran the facility. Why was he being treated this way? It seemed like a cruel joke, but he wasn’t laughing.
    To make it even more perplexing, a Hibbil had done this to him, and not just any furball, either. It had been Pimyt, the Royal Attaché to Lorenzo del Velli, former Doge of the Alliance. Pimyt was so trusted that for a time he had even been appointed regent of the entire multi-planet empire, until the princes could agree on the selection of a new doge—the prince of all princes. Nehr had suspected for some time that Pimyt was involved in war profiteering, but he’d found no