Terms Of Enlistment Quotes
"You should go see your father," my mom says from the kitchen.
"You’ll be in training for months, Andrew. With the way his cancer is going, you’ll probably never see him again."
"He’s still your father. You’ll never get another chance to speak to him again."
"Guns are illegal, especially in welfare housing, but just about everybody has one anyway."
"You can stay mostly dry if you use the awnings and building overhangs as cover, but I’d rather get wet."
"Tomorrow, I’ll be off to Basic Training, and if I don’t wash out, I’ll never see this place again."
"Keep your nose clean. If you get arrested, they’ll fill your slot with someone on the waiting list."
"I’m nothing like you, Dad. Nothing like you."
"You will smartly step off this bus in single file."
"You are among the ten percent of applicants accepted into the Armed Forces of the North American Commonwealth."
"If you fail to obey an order, you will wash out."
"You may think that this makes you special in some way. It does not."
"The rest of you are dumber than an acre of fungus."
"I’ve read the novel a dozen times or more, but I don’t want to leave it unfinished now."
"Everyone dies," I say. That particular piece of wisdom sounds pompous even to my own ears.
"Don’t throw your life away for a bank account."
"You may think that, because you made the initial cut, we will put in a lot of effort to shape you into soldiers, and help you overcome your individual weaknesses. We will not."
"If you find those odds troublesome, you may turn around and board the bus behind you once more."
"You may help yourself to anything you see without asking permission."
"You will not talk, fidget, or scratch yourselves while you do this."
"That’s real meat. It’s got texture and everything."
"There are four other recruits at our table, all engaged in trying to figure out how much food they can squeeze into their mouths without dislocating their jaws."
"I’m sure they’ll make us sweat for every bite later on, but right now I am resolved to enjoy my meal."
"If you’re wondering why none of you have washed out yet, the answer is simple. You have not begun your training yet."
"My name is Staff Sergeant Gau. I am not one of your drill instructors, so don’t get too used to my face."
"We don’t expect anyone to actually land the ship, you know. We’re just trying to figure out which of you even have the talent to begin proper flight training."
"It’s not like they’d let me refuse the shots, anyway."
"The lesser services don’t eat ’til the real soldiers are finished."
"We’re nine TA troopers, and the crowd surging towards us numbers in the hundreds."
"Playing with guns, blowing up stuff, picking fights, and getting paid for it."
"Take whatever self-defense measures you consider necessary."
"There’s not a thing wrong with the Territorial Army."
"The crowd is now mostly in disarray, but it looks like some of them still have a fight on their minds."
"The rest of the place must be a complete dump, because the street in front of us looks worse than the nastiest part of my old neighborhood."
"Don’t drink too much at once. The patchwork in your abdomen is still tender."
"We’re supposed to protect and defend the citizens of the NAC."
"There’s a relief tube on the right side of your bed. Use it at your convenience."
"I’m guessing you don’t want me up and running around."
"We have two dead bodies, Sergeant Fallon and the drop ship pilot can’t walk."
"If only half of ‘em got guns, we’ll never make it across."
"I didn’t have time to read labels, sir."
"I don’t like the transition to Alcubierre. When the ship enters the chute and turns on its Alcubierre drive, every bone and muscle in my body suddenly develops a low-level discomfort."
"Navy ships are at Combat Stations when they go in and out of Alcubierre chutes because their entry and exit points are fixed in space."
"We transition back into normal space a mere twenty light minutes from Capella A, and forty-two light years away from Terra."
"Out of curiosity, I check the navigational plot. The exit point of the Alcubierre chute into Capella A is much closer to our destination than the chute’s entry point from Earth."
"All hands, secure from Combat Stations. The watch schedule will now resume. Welcome to the Capella system."
"The ship lurches to the side so hard that I lose my footing and stumble against one of the databank racks."
"The overhead lights flicker and switch to the red-orange combat lighting scheme."
"Power circuits are out--everything down to the tertiary. That’s not supposed to happen, ever."
"The Abandon Ship order came twenty fucking minutes ago."
"I only realize how close the alien has come to our position when I see its head digging a furrow into the ground a mere fifty yards at most from the landing pad."
"Fire at will!" the Sergeant shouts, and the space in front of the administration building turns into the Seventh Circle of Hell as a dozen Marines start firing their weapons at the same time.
"At this range, the huge form is impossible to miss."
"Down below, the alien creature lies motionless, sprawled out in the mud just a few dozen yards in front of the admin building."
"That was too damn close," she says, echoing my thoughts.
"With only fourteen troops split up into three teams, and three quarters of our ammunition already expended, I know at once that we don’t have a chance of stopping this new assault."
""Don’t you fucking miss with that rocket," Corporal Harrison tells his MARS gunner."
"I scramble to my feet and pull Halley along with me."
"We thunder down the stairs like a herd of spooked animals."
"The run back to the access door seems to take a lot longer than the dash out when we arrived up here, even though it feels like I’m running about twice as fast."
""Gee, thanks, Navy," she says with a cough. "What the hell did they just drop?""
"Because if this is a victory, I’d really hate to see what it looks like when we get our asses kicked."
""It’s getting a little unfriendly down there," Commander Campbell tells the lead Marine."
""I have had my fucking fill of near-death experiences today," she says."
""If you think they’re going to let us back to Earth, you’re in for some disappointment. They’re going to keep a lid on this until they’ve figured out how to break the news to the folks back home.""
"Now here we are, in our first real bug war, and we’re the bugs."
""You managed to get on the right ship, after all. And we didn’t crash or get sucked into space. I’m pretty sure I’d be a charred spot on the ground down there if I hadn’t ditched Rickman after my watch and come to hang out with you.""
""Stay safe," I tell her, and she laughs her dark, cheerful laugh."