Meina Gladstone deciding to destroy the farcaster system at the end of Fall of Hyperion. Destroying your civilization in order to save it… awesome.
"Get away from her, you bitch!"
“I want that car! I need the keys!”
One of my favourite scenes is in the third episode of the original Gunbuster! Aim For The Top! anime: as the aliens have surrounded Earth’s flagship, the Exelion, and destroyed or incapacitated all of the other ships and the Buster Machine squadrons, her captain decides to ram the alien mothership to make sure the alien fleet never reaches Earth…
… but he is saved from this gravest act by Noriko Takaya, who, piloting the partially-completed Gunbuster unit, rises to the defense of Humanity during a particularly rousing musical score.
The ending of the series is inspiring as well:
After using one of the Gunbuster’s collapsing generators to “jump-start” the Jupiter bomb and create a black hole that will consume the alien menace once and for all, Noriko and Kazumi limp home using Gunbuster’s remaining engine. Due to the effects of time dilation, they are unsure if anyone will even be left on Earth to greet them when they return some time in the 15th millennium. As they approach, however, a network of lights on the surface bright enough to be seen from space relays the survivors’ gratitude.
[spoiler]But the implications of that messed up message (One of the characters is written backwards.) are chilling. It’s obvious that while Noriko and Kazumi are remembered, their ability mesh with the surviving culture is seriously in doubt. Twelve thousand years, that’s at the most generous, almost three times the length of recorded human history. Can you imagine, seriously, just how alone they’re going to be, and how isolated?
It’s still a great ending. But it misses Happy by a wide margin.[/spoiler]
Star Trek has introduced us to the Enterprise in a number of inspiring ways in the various feature films. TMP had that great dry docks shot, TSFS had the Ent’ fly by the lounge in a Star Base giving those inside a good look at its scars and Generations had the launch scene (the bottle coming into view, not that “Tuesday” crap.")
And if it counts as SF, the launch of astronaut Ladate into space in the middle of a border war, in Wings of Honneamise. (Sorry about the spelling, no Firefox, no easy access to Google)
More Niven shock and awe:
The final moments in the story Borderland of Sol, where Beowulf severs the gripper arm and the chunk of black hole drifts into the asteroid base. Everything and everyone not tied down falls upward into the savage gravity of the hole and disappears for good.
If anyone could capture this story and this moment in a well-done movie, I’d be the first to stand up and cheer.
Actually I was referring to the whole scene, including the part you mention. And what’s the shame in enjoying an awesome revenge scene?
From Honor of the Queen, the Manticoran assault on Blackbird Base during the Third Battle of Yeltsin, culminating in the Masadan officer defiantly unloading his firearm into a powerarmored Marine officer, who calmly walks up to him before literally (and casually) smashing him into the deckplates with an armored fist.
From the same book, Captain Yu and his Havenite officers and crew serving as “advisers” aboard a battlecruiser loaned to the Masadan Navy, after the “Bounty” conversation. It’s the first time we get to see anyone in the Havenite military in combat first hand, and they’re shown to be very good at what they do, violently pre-empting an imminent armed mutiny, temporarily disabling the ship, destroying the Marine armory and power armor facilities, and finally escaping in a Pinnace amidst the confusion.
From one of the Worlds of Honor books, the short story From the Highlands, baby-faced State Security operative Victor Cachet, versus the “Scrags”, a group of thugs descended from the discarded supersoldiers of the last great war on Earth, in the caverns and tunnels of Old Chicago. He’s armed only with the element of suprise and a fully-automatic drum fed flechette gun, going on a killing frenzy that earns him the nickname “The Iron Fist of the Revolution”
On further thought, any scene with Victor Cachet in the HH series, starting with that one. In one of the later books (either War of Honor or At All Costs, this Havenite spy turns up in Admiral Harrington’s briefing room aboard her flagship to let her know that there is a third party at play in the renewed Manticoran-Havenite war.
Oh, definitely. He’s one of my favorite characters.
Two other good scenes from the HH series, from Honor Among Enemies. The scene where Honor produces her concealed replica .45 pistol ( which the bad guys missed completely, since they checked for power sources, not chemical explosives ) and proceeds to kill Warneke’s guards and take him prisoner. Then she kills his pilot. Then she nukes the ship the other pirates are escaping in.
The other scene being the one where Wanderman provokes Steilman into attacking him, and then delivers a quite satisfying beatdown.
From We Few by David Weber and John Ringo. Prince Rastar’s last stand, where he holds the palace gates against the armored mercenaries trying to retake them. Using four pistols ( he has four arms, being Mardukan, and is an inhumanly good shot with all four ), repeatedly shooting them in the one spot in their armor thin enough for his pistols to punch through, he holds the gates long enough for his comrades to get there.
And bonus points for the aerial portion of the attack being ordered by his fellow Mardukan Honal with a semi-quote from Theoden in Lord of the Rings :
I’m going for the Doctor in “The Girl In The Fireplace”: Madame du Pompadour is in a ballroom at Versailles, being menaced by clockwork androids from the future. There’s the sound of hooves, and suddenly the Doctor, aback a white horse, crashes through a mirror: he’s ridden on horseback through a time portal to save her. He circles the ballroom, triumphant, and then gives her the sauciest wink.
That was a stand on the chair and cheer moment, and God bless Stephen Moffat.
Didn’t she then introduce him to her boyfriend, the king of France, and he responded with, “I’m the Lord of Time” or something like that? Great line.