The road my elders dictate is a narrow one, and I no longer believe it to be the road to wisdom. I choose my ow road. I choose to do the right thing, as you call it. I would not choose another companion for that road, and should you choose to walk that road with me, it would be... ,” his voice faltered, unable to put words to Alain’s feelings, but he met her eyes, trying to let his feelings show. Perhaps he succeeded this time, because once again Mari blushed and bent her head.

I never liked cows,” General Carabali added. “I like heavily armed cows even less. And I like at least thirty billion heavily armed cows least of all.

I respect you far too much to think that empty pride is the only motivator you could call on. I think what you call pride is something much more than that. Belief in yourselves, perhaps, or perseverance in the face of adversity. Those are things to be proud of. That’s not the same as being proud.

Fine.” Desjani sighed. “Admiral, I recommend we get our intelligence officer up here to see if he can craft lovely poems for the singing spider wolves.

Mari took one more look at the Mechanic boiler, bit her lip, then looked at him. “I’m going to say this because in another minute we may be dead, and I don’t want to die not having told you. I love you.

Sagas wouldn’t be interesting if terrible things didn’t happen to the people in them.

We should have suspected that nonhumans were involved right from the start when the activation process didn’t involve a lot of arcane commands that had to be done in just the right order, and the destination was displayed as a name rather than using some counterintuitive code. No human software engineer would produce a device that easy to use.

Deplorable practices adopted during the last century were repeatedly declared necessary if regrettable in order to win the war. Oddly enough, we’ve yet to win. You’d think somebody would have asked before this why the regrettable but necessary measures haven’t actually produced the promised results.

Sir, winning is usually a matter of making one less mistake than the enemy or just getting up one more time than you get knocked down.

There are things we don’t do. From this moment forth, let us all ensure our every action reflects well on us and our ancestors. Let us live to the highest standards, lest we win this war only to find ourselves staring in the mirror at the face of our late enemy.