Challenge #00319: In Memorium

Found on a gravestone, “Name, date-date, (Killed 99 bears) We pray he has found rest”

We pray he found rest. We’re not sure, but we hope so, because nobody ever found a body, and 99 may not have been enough.

(replace bears with appropriate sentient or nonsentient species at your discretion, especially in the case of early-contact humans :P)

If any being needed any further proof of human insanity - besides ten minutes’ contact with any number of the species - all they had to do was visit Memorial Moon at Velliguas Three.

There is a temple, there. Carved out of a mountain. With Bas-reliefs depicting heroic deeds. And a statue of a human in a space suit and in a heroic pose.

And a plaque.

ANDREW JONES, it reads, 234598-234632. Destroyed 99 planet-eaters. We pray he has found his rest.

Then the visitor reads about the exploits in the Bas-reliefs. Sees the recorded videos depicting skin-of-teeth, seat-of-pants, luck-of-idiots combat style that ended ninety-nine of the swarming creatures that ate planets.

The hundredth planet-eater… destroyed the vessel Jones was piloting. The Velligulae never found any remains to bury, though they did have to gang up to vanquish the last of the beasts where one human had previously sufficed.

Put in association with the humans’ reputation for being unkillable, and one could see exactly why the Velligulae pray Andrew Jones found his rest.

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