“Elves?”
“Yes, sir. Elves.”
“Like Santa’s little helpers?”
“No, sir. Like Tolkien. Lord of the Rings. Those kinds of elves. Sir.”
“You’re telling me that planet down there is Middle Earth? We found god damned Middle Earth out here in the middle of space?”
“Uh…no, sir. Not exactly. It’s not Middle Earth, sir, but the people down there are definitely elves.”
“Elves in space. What will they think of next?”
“Sir?”
“Nothing. So what’s their tech like? Can we take that ship?”
“With just the two ships, us and them, it’d be a straight fight, Commander. Our sensors show Kerion Cannons, a phase-shield generator, and a Tesseract Drive. Their tech level seems to be equal to our own. But since this is their planet, I’m willing to bet they have a lot more ships down there.”
“So they got us, then. Wonder why they haven’t attacked us yet, or called for reinforcements?”
“Do you want my opinion, sir?”
“No. Hail them. Let’s see if we can be friends. Heaven knows we could use some allies out here. We’re an awfully long way from home, and we got more enemies than we can shake a stick at. Let’s see if Gandalf wants to be our friend.”
“Legolas, sir.”
“What’s that, Lieutenant?”
“Legolas, sir. You said ‘Gandalf’, but he wasn’t an elf, sir. Legolas was the elf. Sir.”
“Very well. Let’s see if Legolas wants to be our friend.”
“Yes, sir.”