A mere four days later, Doob stood in the bed of a rusty pickup truck with a random assortment of space rednecks, hoisting a longnecked beer bottle into the sky in emulation of the rocket lifting off from the pad. They all hooted and screamed as they watched it arc gracefully downrange and take off in the general direction of Boise. And the next morning, when they had all sobered up, they got busy building another rocket.
“What were they thinking? 'It’s an alien apocalypse! Quick, grab the beer!”
He shrugged and waved his Old Tillman enthusiastically, and Honor used her stein to hide a smile as she sipped her own beer. She remembered rather clearly an inexperienced, overly anxious, bumbling, but extremely talented junior-grade lieutenant who’d suddenly found himself acting tactical officer aboard the elderly light cruiser Fearless. There was very little of that young man’s anxiety or lack of confidence in the relaxed, handsome, competent-looking captain sitting across her coffee table from her, but the bright-eyed eagerness she also remembered was still very much in evidence.
Once you are in the line of command, you must be ready instantly to assume higher command. If you are in a one-platoon team–quite likely in the present state of the war–and you are assistant platoon leader when your platoon leader buys it…then…you…are…It!"
Maxim 69. Sometimes rank is a function of firepower.
But there are matters that must be discussed first only in private, and among those of the highest rank. Matters of extreme importance. There is no time to lose.
It is very unfortunate that he happened to be drawn into the public eye when so much depends upon–secrecy.
“I… am… a little… disappointed. And if there… is one thing… I do not like… it is to be… disappointed.”
“I’m sorry, sir. This will never happen again.”
“I know.”
BOOM!
This makes me very angry, very angry indeed!
Honor watched those intolerable pinpricks spall the visual display. She listened to the reports from CIC as the tide of destruction rolled through the birth system of the humanity and knew she had just become the most hated woman in Solarian history.
And she didn’t care.
I am sure, in the miserable annals of the Earth, you will be duly enshrined.
History is just a way of keeping score, but it doesn’t have to be who we are.
The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.
The Empire needed no new weapons. It built the greatest weapon in the history of the galaxy. Twice. It did not need new battle stations. It needed new leadership.
The nature of the Solarian League itself, dominated by the permanent bureaucrats who actually ran it rather than the political leadership (which had long since lost any power to rein in those bureaucrats), was another factor. As with the civilian bureaucracies, the naval bureaucracy had become immovably entrenched, and the internecine warfare between competing departments for limited funding had been both intense and brutal.
“I might take a liberty in adding one piece of information,” Fagin said. “There has been another dive since our meeting, Jacob, and on that dive, we are told, only the first and more prosaic species of Solarian was observed. Not the second variety which has caused Dr. Kepler so much concern.”
The ice had been retreating. Humanity had sprung back swiftly, expanded, fought its small wars, re-industrialized, tripping constantly over reminders of what the species had previously achieved.
Not that I haven’t leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It’s sustaining the altitude that defeats me.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Only a fool fights in a burning house.