 > :In front of a delegation from [Bad Guy], facetiously: > "Commander [Good Guy]? Do you have any idea where the [Bad Guy]'s Military is? They seem to have misplaced it. And do you smell something burning?" -- [RecklessPrudence](http://ift.tt/2hLSaYw) Of course, it was a metaphor. The humans were irritatingly rife with them. Smell could no more travel through the gulfs of space than sound could transmit through vacuum. Nevertheless, they were also irritatingly good at inventing means of transmitting information at ludicrously faster speeds. Only for the humans was impatience a virtue. His comms bleeped. Text only. He lifted the screen and read Final Failure reports from vessel after vessel in the Conid fleet. Sudden unexpected failure of the _Bloodthirsty_. Sudden unexpected failure of the _Ravager_. Sudden unexpected failure of the _Radula_. On and on. Five hundred ships, turned to very brief stars in the eternal night of space. "Now," said the small, dark-skinned human opposite K'kroth at the negotiations table. "You were saying something about a vast fleet of your best weapons, aimed at my inferior numbers?" There are many lessons in the infinite universe. Some even apply to Deathworlders like the Conid. One of those is as follows: _Never, ever attempt to take away that which the humans have claimed as their own._ K'kroth flexed his feeding appendage. "Do you intend to kill me as well?" "Nonsense," cooed the human. "We only wish to display how... restrained... we have been before now. Your fleet was an annoyance we decided we could do without." Five hundred of their best warships. Thousands of lives. If this was human restraint, K'kroth never wished to witness human _enthusiasm_. He cleared his speaking flaps. "And your terms for our surrender?" [Image Copyright: gow27 / 123RF Stock Photo] If you like my stories, please [Check out my blog and Follow me](http://ift.tt/2hmHO3F). [Send me a prompt](http://ift.tt/2hp7Vsq) [14 remaining prompts!] [Check out the other stuff I'm selling](http://ift.tt/2hF4WIe) http://ift.tt/eA8V8J http://ift.tt/2jh895l
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