Shards Of Earth Quotes
"Nothing had changed. Earth would always be the same now."
"Sometimes just surviving is your definition of a win."
"In the sculpture’s exacting workmanship, its eye-leading symmetries, there was a plan."
"We are the pride of the galaxy, the shield of humanity, the armoured fist, the banner unfurled."
"Unspace travel while awake wasn’t a death sentence; it wasn’t guaranteed to drive a person into a stage of permanent madness either."
"The entire fugitive culture had been living from day to day for decades on a barter-economy."
"You’d think you didn’t want to serve humanity. You don’t want people to take you for a betrayer, do you?"
"Fear not the gun but the finger on the trigger."
"The doom that the Essiel had been waving at humanity was not a threat, but a warning."
"The Essiel were the benevolent autocrats our ancestors had sought but never found – human nature being too flawed."
"Their rule was peace and love, order and harmony."
"Nobody was even sure if what they spouted really represented what the Essiel and their Hegemony intended, filtered as it was through layers of mistranslation."
"I haven’t slept properly since they did what they did to me."
"When you’ve built the latest in superior military hammers, surely all your problems start looking like inferior Colonial nails."
"The only human force that could even slow an Architect to give a planet a chance at evacuation."
"I won’t be owned. Not by the Magdans, not by Hugh, not by the Parthenon. Or anyone else who wants to buy me."
"His voice was very small. She wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, but he was slumped in the seat, hunched in on himself."
"Except nobody stayed in the Cartography Corps for long. You got out after a tour or two, wild-eyed and trembling."
"Rollo’s ‘fancyman’ was the Hegemonic ambassador’s enormous barge."
"Huei-Cavor was a big win for the Essiel, a prosperous colony."
"The universe is wonderful and full of never-ending variety."
"Life gave her two choices then. Get off-planet or spend her days fending off challenges and assassins."
"The absence of knowledge is a wound that will not heal."
"When humanity travels to the stars and welcomes the alien with open hands."
"There are those who would do everything in their power to throw up hard barriers between humanity and its neighbours."
"There would be nothing more fatal to the Nativist, pro-human bloc than proof that the Architects have returned."
"If the Architects come back, as I believe they have; if the Architects keep coming back, what is best for humanity?"
"To ignore the rest of the galaxy and sing stories of our greatness, until our last world is just some monstrous sculpture commemorating our end?"
"Losing a ship was a disaster that you literally could only walk away from."
"I don’t do government work anymore. I’ve served. I’ve earned the right to be left alone."
"Seems kind of mad that being a soldier made me right for something completely different."
"My point, Menheer Mundy, is just that, and if you do pass this shocking news on to your audience, you’d be acting in their interests."
"We might happen upon a planet with Originator ruins, allowing us to keep the monsters away from only that world."
"But the Hegemony can ward their worlds at will."
"Each bullet exploded on impact. Unarmoured, she’d have been a bloody mist by now."
"You couldn’t dodge something as fast as an accelerated round, any more than you could see a laser before it hit."
"It’ll be drugs, gems... some stupid thing a crime lord would sacrifice his minions to secure."
"They look down from on high, knowing that they’re hated by dumb, regular, inferior humans."
"You know, maybe this time I’ll stick in orbit. Where I won’t suddenly lose contact with my fucking legs."
"We do not fear the tyranny of state nor brook the bite of laws."
"It was, after all, the most recognizable piece of space junk in the Colonies right now."
"Assuming these relics are genuine, which they may not be."
"The rage and bitterness in the room could have been bottled and sold as poison."
"You put that in a respectful way, you hear? Because I do not know the dance steps around here."
"Her hands moved about one another without touching."
"Most colony planets had their own version – a vaccination and antidote combination."
"Solace had kept in touch with Trine after the war, across the decades, when she wasn’t in the freezer herself."
"Each time she discovered that Trine had clung on, still the same."
"'Can’t you just lay cable or something?' she asked the acned operator, who shrugged."
"‘Well, then we’ve both had a promotion,’ came that precise voice."
"You can’t see me right now, but I’ve put on a tiny festive hat and am blowing on a little streamer."
"‘I don’t want to bring yet more trouble to the others,’ she thought."
"‘Should I call those Hugh marines over, Patho?’ he asked."
"‘You’re killing us. Stop killing us’, basically."
"You’re serious about this? There’s a squad of bloody gunmen on their way?"
"We can’t stay here, people are going to get hurt. It’s not their fight."
"‘Mockery of an ecosystem, this bloody place,’ Robellin went on easily."
"‘Is that the Joan now?’ Kris was saying. ‘I wish all these fucking monsters would shut up for a second.’"
"I’m telling you nothing. Not one word. On advice of my lawyer."
"This is where you give me at least the cover story of why you linked up with these reprobates."
"‘It’s what everyone will tell each other. That one fluke doesn’t mean they’re back.'"
"Just tell me what you know about the Oumaru and what happened to it."
"‘They want the Vulture,' he said. ‘Can we run?’"
"I can’t be bothered with this nonsense talk."
"We are foes, yes, but on an abstract, philosophical level."
"We need something to refocus them on the truly important things."
"The mistake is to characterize Hegemonic systems as if they were human ones."
"Joining the Hegemony is for the best, you know."
"You wouldn’t understand," Olli shouted over her shoulder.
"I think my arm is broken," Solace said, truthfully enough.
"They don’t tell you about the pain," he explained conversationally.
"But the Unspeakable understands. He hurts you until nothing hurts anymore."
"I guess this is where you tell me how much better the Pathos are, for not getting themselves into trouble like this."
"Fuck you," Olli replied, barely able to get her words out past all the anger.
"The Sách vé faim, they’re stories that celebrate difference."
"It’s like that, is it? And I bet you’re already in your shiny tin suit with that hole-maker in your hands, right?"
"You’re both crazy! You know what happened to the Oumaru! The damn Architects are back, and this is what you’re arguing about?"
"And I appreciate your efficiency in setting this meeting."
"Fuck. Actually, hate to admit it, that’s not a bad pitch."
"Gravity without mass, because its cause was on the other side of the membrane. In unspace."
"The jabber of the news mediotype had become no more than static."
"I am knowing you served aboard our name ship in this system."
"You let anything happen to him, I’ll be back for you."
"I am detecting a new modulation from within the regalia!"
"They’re coming back. Maybe here, maybe elsewhere... and soon too."
"We are in dire need of Intermediaries, a new class to protect our worlds against the Architects."
"He has agreed to come with us and help us with our Intermediary Program. With conditions."