Wooklesh let her Brain-case repeatedly hit the desk in front of her. She had done it before, the human gesture being the only way to communicate the incredible stupidity she had just heard.

The fact that the gesture had been instinctive meant she had spent too much time with humans.

"No. No. No, no, and oh, in case you were wondering, NO!"

Jim, across from her, shrugged. "It's not that bad of an idea."

"You are trying to vassalize a Devouring Swarm. Unending hunger, one mind united in purpose, scours life clean off of planets, killed half of a stellar cluster... Did you suddenly forget what we spent the last 20 years doing?"

"I talked to some of the egg-heads behind the idea. It'll be fine, trust me." Jim made another dismissive gesture.

"The last time I heard a human say 'It'll be fine', we were hot-dropping onto a Hive Nexus. So no, I will not be trusting you, or your much smarter friends"

"But we did get out of that one just fine! Drop in, Bang Bang Bag, plant the charges and run like hell." Jim helpfully made finger guns to illustrate his performance. "Worked like a charm!"

"I technically escaped with all my limbs." Wooklesh crossed her three remaining graspers in front of her in another human gesture.

Jim frowned, as if noticing the missing limb for the first time. "Well you guys can grow them back anyways."

"No. No, we can't. We aren't glo**ping starfish!"

Jim nodded sagely. "It's the eyes that give you away."

Wooklesh uncrossed her graspers from her not-at-all-like-a-starfish body. "In any case, this is the worst idea any human has come up with, ever."

"Even the Holland Protocol?"

Wooklesh paused. "Ok, second worst idea. But even you didn't actually enact the Holland Protocol, and you ARE planning on going through with this one!"

"You need to watch up on human history," Jim said, "Humans are experts on domestication. Take for example, or ancient nemesis, the-"

"Yes, the wolf, used to be your predator and now it rolls around chasing it's own tail. I've heard it a thousand glo**ping times! But even despite how different a simple predator and several planet Hive Mind is, you aren't trying to make it a pet. You aren't even keeping a sample alive as some sort of military secret weapon. You are trying to vassalize it. Giving it glo**ping sovereignty!"

Jim made another of his dismissive hand-waves. "Sovereignty is just semantics. Means all the existing treaties about trade, extradition and migration apply, and we only need to draft up a couple of new clauses to compensate for-"

"Migration? Why would you- Of course you would. Leave it to glo**ping humans to turn a Hive planet into a vacation destination. Why stay safe at home, when you could go to a place where LITERALLY EVERYTHING TRIES TO EAT YOU."

"The ground and air doesn't try to eat you," Jim shot back, "Oh wait, the air does. Because of the spores. And some of the ground does too..."

"A place where literally everything except for some patches of ground tries to eat you. Better?"

"Mhmm. Tents have to be pitched somewhere."

"I never thought I'd be telling humans to be using nukes. Normally it's all 'no, don't nuke this, stop nuking that.' But the moment we actually find something that should be purged with fire down to bedrock, you guys try to make it a glo**ping subject! It's a 3 on the Nollocks scale. The only thing we've found above it is the heat death of the universe at a 1."

"Humans are a 7. They can't be that bad."

"You do this, Humans will be a 6."

"I always thought we were mis-rated."