“Next trade request is formulated,” Kittering confirmed. He’d been working on a kind of super-condensed trade offer that was also kind of a warning, and possibly even an extortionist’s threat. Lovely colony you’ve got here, shame if an Architect happened to it. Get us the stuff on our list because you really don’t want us sticking around. Not exactly their proudest moment, but it was that or end up stuck somewhere when they didn’t have even the modest amount of power required to drop into unspace.
