Dreadnaught Quotes
"Innumerable stars like brilliant diamonds carelessly flung across endless space shone upon the hull of the civilian passenger ship."
"He just wished he knew what that meaning of it all was."
"The life spans of human creations were often less than a century."
"The scene conveyed two very different sensations, one of awe at the scale of humanity’s achievements."
"‘Lawful’ is a qualifier. Even a dumb sailor like me knows that."
"The government thought it was creating an illusion."
"The next time the government tries to create a hero to motivate and inspire the population, they’ll probably try harder to make sure that hero is really, absolutely, positively dead."
"You’re a bit biased when it comes to the commanding officer, but her crew is the best."
"Don’t worry about me. I’m a bad-ass battle cruiser captain."
"The honor is mine, to have served with him, and now to be in the service while you are as well."
"I have tried to imagine what I would do. I don’t know. All my life I’ve trained to fight, and I have fought. It’s what I know."
"The honor has been mine to be offered the chance to fight alongside ships and crews such as yours. I’ll always be grateful for the contributions that your republic and federation provided for the victory we all fought to achieve."
"The problem with the court-martial charges originated at fleet headquarters. I dealt with it. Everyone should have trusted that I would do so."
"In the long run, the government has to be trusted again."
"We can’t have people believing that I’m the only one who can do things, that I have to be in charge. I can’t be indispensable because I do make mistakes, because I can’t be everywhere, and because the day always comes when all of us leave our lives and join our ancestors."
"I thought that we’d agreed I shouldn’t visit you there for the sake of appearances."
"I’m still waiting to hear the good news. Where am I supposed to put twenty-one civilian experts on nonhuman intelligent species who have never actually heard about or read about or encountered an actual nonhuman intelligent species?"
"You’re getting better at this. Let’s put it this way. Since neither Charban nor I holds elective office, we can’t be voted out of power while in the middle of a voyage, something that would cast our legitimacy as representatives in doubt if it did happen."
"Long-term problems can be confronted when they get here, with more cheap and easy short-term solutions that push the problems further down the road for someone else to handle someday."
"The government, all of the governments in the Alliance, are in survival mode right now. They’re afraid of you, but they also need you."
"Yes, it is sort of the same thing, isn’t it? But you are alive, and capable of doing all sorts of things."
"The gratitude of the people tends not to extend very far."
"So you lost the election because you insisted on being honest."
"Suspicions don’t excuse treating those crews that way after all of their courage and sacrifice!"
"Everyone underestimates you. Everyone but me."
"If it doesn’t, I’ll drop a rock on his head and let the lawyers argue about whether that’s a violation of the treaty."
"Your leader is playing with your lives in an attempt to extort money from this fleet."
"To the honor of our ancestors. Captain Tulev, out."
"These are not the negotiating tactics of civilized people, and surely the living stars look upon these actions with disfavor."
"They’re still gaming us because those Syndics think the humanitarian and honorable Black Jack won’t blow them to hell."
"My being an honorable man does not mean that I am an easy mark or that extortion is a viable tactic against the Alliance."
"We have to limit our actions to those justified by the treaty."
"An important secondary objective of this operation is to drive home to anyone holding Alliance prisoners of war that those prisoners cannot be employed as bargaining chips."
"We’re doing this right. Not because of what the Syndics might say about our actions but because this fleet does things right."
"The dead come back to life. You. My cousin. The war ends."
"For the sake of the man he once was, I will continue trying to reach him."
"A cage is a cage is a cage. But freedom will be hard for them to adjust to."
"The hardest part is going to be waiting for a few days after the launch, then turning this fleet around to go past the asteroid’s orbit again, all the while not knowing if the Marine scouts made it and are accomplishing their mission."
"We had to succeed this time because we can’t do it again."
"Is it accomplishing anything? At least we got those people freed."
"All units in Task Force Lima, maneuver independently and engage the enemy!"
"If any of the aliens come within range of my weapons, I’ll remove any options from their futures."
"The great Black Jack knows how badly post-traumatic stress can impact someone."
"None of those liberated admirals understand tactics."
"Badaya isn’t stupid, and he knows that Tulev has enough seniority to challenge him if he veers off course."
"I volunteered, after receiving an offer I could not refuse."
"We’ll do our best to look out for them, but they’re all free human beings, so in the end the decisions will be theirs."
"Our mission isn’t to kill them. Though we’ve taken out plenty of them up to now."
"Internal borders. Internal defenses against other members of their own species."
"The aliens are not unified any more than humanity is."
"We had to fill in blanks, and they were very big blanks."
"The enemy. The alien race. Simplified emotionally, too, didn’t it?"
"We promise to leave them alone? Ignore them completely, never try to penetrate their territory again."
"Demonstrate that military force cannot succeed in that, and it may make a difference."
"We confront anything from the perspective of wanting to know more about it."
"We want to know more, and they don’t want anyone knowing anything."
"A mission of exploration, to learn things about them. That’s a normal desire for us, but to the enigma race it must look like the ultimate act of aggression."