“Get on the line to every squadron around the world. Tell 'em how to bring those sons of bitches down!”
in honor of Robert Loggia, who died last week at age 85.
Colonel, take it down! Straight down! Then hit your retros!
Our need was too great to risk rejection.
“Now we don’t even have prisons. The organ banks are always short. As soon as the UN votes the death penalty for a crime, most people stop committing it. Naturally.”
“So we get the death penalty for having children without a license, or cheating on income tax, or running too many red traffic lights. Luke, I’ve seen what it does to people to keep voting more and more death penalties. They lose their respect for life.”
“But the other situation was just as bad, Gil. Don’t forget it.”
“So now we’ve got the death penalty for being poor.”
So now you know. My secret is out, my crimes laid bare. I await execution.
What? GORDON’S ALIVE!
“Well I just wanted to say this, Honor,” Henke said quietly. “And I’ll only say it once. *But don’t you *ever do that to me again! Do you read me on that, Lady Harrington? I never want to go to your funeral again!”
Heart to brain: THUD! What’re you doing? You’ll get us all killed! I knew we should never have put you in charge of things . . .
Hmm, we seem to have mutual control over our body.
We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear.
You never had control, that’s the illusion!
There are always men like you.
“I am fully aware that you have no intention of forgetting this incident. Neither, I assure you, have I. Nor will I forget your threats. I am a Queen’s officer. As such, I will react to any personal attack upon me only if and as it arises, and for myself, both personally and as a Queen’s officer, I dislike the custom of dueling. But, Mr. Hauptman, should you ever attempt to carry through your threat against my parents—” her eyes were leveled missile batteries and the tic at the corner of her mouth jerked like a living thing “—I will denounce you publicly for your contemptible actions and demand satisfaction. And when you accept my challenge, Mr. Hauptman, I will kill you like the scum you are.”
“Believe it, Mr. Hauptman.”
Just a quick battle report, boys. Your father’s groggy but still fighting gamely.
No, I am your father.
And then there was no more room for thought. Not coherent ones, anyway. She was fifty-four T-years old, and that didn’t matter at all as she stepped away from Benjamin Mayhew, holding out her arm to her mother through her blinding haze of tears.
“Momma?” she half-whispered, her soprano hoarse, and she tasted salt on her lips as her parents came towards her. “Daddy? I—”
Her voice broke completely, and that didn’t matter, either. Nothing in the universe mattered as her father reached her and the arms which had always been there for her went about her. She felt the crushing strength of Sphinx in them, yet they closed around her with infinite gentleness, and her visored cap tumbled to the floor as her father pressed his face into her hair. Then her mother was there, as well, hugging her and burrowing her way into the embrace Alfred had widened to enfold them both, and for just a moment, Honor Harrington could stop being a steadholder and a naval officer. She could be simply their daughter, restored to them by some miracle they did not yet understand, and she clung to them even more tightly than they clung to her.
She’s using The Voice.
I make few errors in judgment as to voice. I honestly thought I could help you. I cannot.
I wear a veil to keep from view what many are pleased to call my disfigurement. I do not wear it as a courtesy to such people, but as a judgment on the quality of their hearts.
People laugh at you.
People hate you, but why do they hate you?
Because they are jealous.
Look at that boyish face.
Look at that sweet smile.
Do you wanna talk about physical strength?
Do you want to talk about sheer muscle?
Do you want to talk
about the Olympian ideal?
You are a god!