“What if we say no?” I said.
“Then we’ll kill you here and now,” said the alien. “The only reason we haven’t, of course, is because you are holding the Dread God’s brain. We do not want to damage it, even though we know it is capable of healing itself from any injuries it sustains. Plus, we take no pleasure in murdering other creatures, even if they are our technological and biological inferiors, as you humans are. We are a merciful species ruled by a Dread God, after all. We always give our enemies a chance to cooperate before we annihilate them.”
I bit my lower lip. There didn’t seem to be any way out of this situation, at least none that I could see. Crashing the ship would just get us killed, and that was assuming we could make it to the ship’s control room in the first place. Giving
