NARRATOR: Meanwhile, 27,000 light-years away...
KERCHAK: It's a Foxtrot, all right, and the other guys are leading the orchestra.
KERCHAK: We've found the General, but Captain Tagon is down, the Teraport Cage is gone, and most of the team is pinned down by an armored infantry platoon.
The Touch-And-Go is approaching turnaround, but I don't believe it has enough firepower to be very helpful.
Summary: this would be the perfect time for one of those high-energy, punch-through-anything teraport extractions you're now infamous for.
PETEY: Do you have any idea just how much energy goes into those extractions?
KERCHAK: I don't know. Petawatts?
PETEY NODE: Petawatts are chump change.
ATHENS: But rather than attempt to describe my energy budget by concetenating increasingly ridiculous prefixes, I shall share the terrifying opportunity cost.
PETEY
PETEY NODE
ATHENS (collectively): If I spend the power to rescue our friends, an entire world full of innocent people will die.
PETEY NODE: You might regard that as merely a horrible tragedy in some distant place, but I can hear every heartbeat.
ATHENS: Which is of course why I cannot deliver our friends with my usual deific finesse.
PETEY: That is also why I employed you in the first place. I gave you huge amounts of money because I can't spare the huge amounts of power.
KERCHAK: Oh. Well... do you have any more of that money?
PD: I have a team of accountants whose job it is to count the accountants who keep track of my accountants.