Second Contact

The council sat across from them. One of the Earth Men was twiddling his thumbs. This was second contact. The council was composed of A squidish thing in a tank of water, and a synthesized being who had been configured to look like the Earth Men. The synthesized being spoke with a metallic voice

“Have you met with other species before?”

“No” responded one of the Earth Men

“How did you fend them off?”

The other Earth Man showed hesitation, but the first one spoke;

“We used fission bombs, nuclear.”

“You mean to tell us that you managed to weaponize your means of energy production in but a matter of days?”

“You must be lying!” shouted the speaker on the outside of the tank.

“We did not weaponize it in a matter of days we-”

“No ballistic missile can penetrate a ship's shields. Do not toy with us.” said the tank

“We did not penetrate their shields, we used the radiation of the bombs to kill ther inhabitants.”

“But the radiation shields would have reduced the level of radiation to a survivable amount.”

“We overloaded them.”

The robot chimed in “How many of these do you own?”

“The United States of America has approximately 3,700”

“What a peculiar name for a planet.” said the robot

“What do you mean peculiar?”

“That you named your planet America.”

“We did no such thing, we are but a single nation.”

“What an interesting name for a subdivision of a planet.”

“We are not a subdivision. There are other nations with Nuclear warheads, quite a number that we are hostile towards.”

“You mean to tell us that your planet has not yet unified, and that you have more fleet killing weapons?”

“A total of 13,900.”

“How many did it take to boil the crew of that ship?” Asked the Squiiddish being

“Excluding the tests to see what would work, 10.”