Calling occupants of interplanetary craft.
Calling occupants of interplanetary, most extraordinary craft.
In order to increase efficiency and better serve customers, the Interplanetary Shuttle shall henceforth serve only planets. Nonplanetary routes will be served by our partners, Asteroid
Adventures, Saturn System Support, Kuiper Rambler, Cometary Connection, and the Jovial Taxi.
Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth. The terror moved slowly through the gathered crowds as if they were iron fillings on a sheet of board and a magnet was moving beneath them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing panic, but there was nowhere to flee to. Observing this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said: “There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”
Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle station!
The explosion became a rumble. The light seemed to run together into a circle on the ceiling, leaving everything else black.
But* Ivan IV* was the lucky one; her forward fusion plants went into emergency shutdown in time. Subutai’s and Yavuz’s didn’t, and the two of them vanished into blinding balls of plasma with every man and woman of their crews.
No one living saw that battle though the fleet was quick to leave.
When they reached the site they found a scene no sane man could believe.
Dead in space lay three light cruisers, cut to ribbons all around,
But no sign of Dawson’s Christian could be found.
DD: Love that song.
In play:
“Both of you together wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to what happens to us,” Alvarez said harshly, “but if we hit them head-on—" Matthews saw his bared teeth even through his visor. “Commodore, these assholes have never seen what a Manticoran destroyer can do.”
They attack against insane odds. They defend what cannot be defended. Outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, hopeless, they will still fight, fight, fight until they are each and every one dead…You see Visser, a human forced to fight can be brave to the point of madness…
I could not help feeling that they were evil things-- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss. That seething , half-luminous cloud-background held ineffable suggestions of a vague, ethereal beyondness far more than terrestrially spatial; and gave appalling reminders of the utter remoteness, separateness, desolation, and aeon-long death of this untrodden and unfathomed austral world.
“But it’s a false premise!” protested the commander. “They cannot contravene natural laws. They are still bound by the physical order of the universe.”
“Jeanie, entropy can decrease locally, of course it can. Don’t you remember the laws of thermodynamics?”
“You’re not expecting to take losses on this Op, are you, sir?”
“No, but somebody is bound to dent something. Entropy always wins.”
“First, though, I’m going to kick back one million to ImpSec, for their services the last four months.”
“Nobody gives money to ImpSec!”
So, listen, I’m gonna need your buyer’s coordinates.
“I’d be willing to bet you’re looking for me, Mr. Houndstooth.”
The crew assembled at the table watched as the outline of a tiny foot pressed at Adelia’s shirt. She pressed a hand to it. “Shhh, mija. Mama’s working.”
I’m not a baby; I’m a tumor.
“This is my son,” she repeated more softly, speaking only to LaFollet, “and I name you guardian and protector. I give his life into your keeping. Fail not in this trust.”
“I recognize him,” he said, his voice soft yet clear as he spoke the ancient formula, “and I know him. I take his life into my keeping, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone. Before God, Maker and Tester of us all; before His Son, Who died to intercede for us all; and before the Holy Comforter, I will stand before him in the Test of life and at his back in battle. I will protect and guard his life with my own. His honor is my honor, his heritage is mine to guard, and I will fail not in this trust, though it cost me my life.”
“So listen to me when I say that love isn’t something that we invented. It’s… observable, powerful. It has to mean something.”
“Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing…”
One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.