Selected Quotes May '23
Posted on 03 Jun 2023 @ 11:02pm by Commander Calliope Zahn
MAY ‘23 QUOTES
The best way to get rid of a yearning was to give in to it.
[...]
He was told that the dish he wanted is considered as street food (read food for the poor), and that in days of old, their country folks had taken to eating spiders because the population was starving. Then the unthinkable happened: tourists took a liking to spider meat so it stayed on the menu.
“The situation is very different on Ferenginar,” Brek, a little irked, told the waiter. The man was as small as him, but thanks to his hair, styled in an improbable way, as if frozen on top of his head by a sudden gust of wind, he looked taller than him. “We have whole chains of restaurants dedicated to selling the best spider food in the universe.”
“This I can believe,” the waiter said with a little bow. “Although this is not Ferenginar, our food is most perfect. Unfortunately, the spider legs will have to be replicated, this cannot be helped. But the rice and vegetables will be fresh and organic.”
Brek thanked him, and it got him to wonder: would there be edible spiders on Obsidian? The planet’s climate certainly seemed favourable to the breeding of large spiders. Food for thoughts…
~A New Contract
Sibyl bit into a morning bagel and slurped some Epher-protein shake for breakfast. Everyone hated Epher-protein— the rest of the crew on her father's ship, The Third Noon, had called it 'Effing Protein'— but Sibyl's Dad had raised her on it.
[...]
While other deck hands came and went, while the ship itself had changed hands four times, Cliff was the one constant on the Virgil; he'd become such a fixture, no one seemed to notice him much, which was how Cliff preferred things.
[...]
When you got into port they soft hacked all the comms you had on you and would never stop spamming. As if anyone would ever use that much anti sag cream and hair regrowth elixir.
[...]
He was known for being a heavy sleeper, if he was known at all, and could sleep practically anywhere, anytime.
[...]
Sibyl began to type "I want to get divorced, not widowed," but then thought better of breaking the subject like that and cleared the line. She watched the cursor for a while before trying again.
~Text Alerts
Ten feet from the top, as he set the third locking clip, the face crumbled under foot and he dropped two feet before Binns caught the belay line. It was only two feet, but the fall felt like an eternity and it’d taken everything he had not to cry out. He would have never admitted it to the other two, but he was more than a little terrified to make this climb. He might have been the ranking guy, but this kind of assault was a Force Recon gig, not his.
“Don’t tell me, there was scenic cable car we could have taken instead of climbing” Steiner muttered moving up towards Johannes.
~Marshalling Action
He had to hand it to these fishes, they’d come up with a halfway decent counter attack coming at them from the sloping side of the facility rather than the beating heart of it where they’d been focused.
[...]
“Eindorf, with me. Drakes, take position here. We’ll flank them and advance. Push them back so we can board and get the hell out of here,” he said, “You unders-” he grunted, watching the rock that had just been lobbed over his cover plink to the ground. “The hell?” He asked. Had they just thrown a rock at him?
“Flash, goddamnit!” A strange voice called out from the starboard side of their engagement, the way that they’d been intending to flank.
“Thunder!” Declan called back quickly, sticking this head out from cover.
Gunnery Sergeant Johannes leaned out of his spot as well, “Oye, is this the way to the pub?”
Declan grinned, “The hell are you doing here, Solomon?”
“Sandy beaches, cold beer, at least that’s what we were told,” he quipped back.
[...]
“That’s a Pyrryx,” Declan answered. “And that’s one massive Starfleet Officer. We need him. We gotta get back to the ship, and then tag him with a iso chip so we can get the hell out of Dodge,” he said.
[...]
A minute later Steiner was following behind Johannes and Binns as they circled around the side of the building, trying to get into a position to take a shot at the ape-things on the roof. “Me and my big mouth” he thought to himself Running around in a war zone instead of chasing decent honest criminals.”
~Collapsing Line
Shaking her head, Calliope didn’t like the answer. Damn Steiner and his bullheaded refusal to follow her order to call off his search. He’d done this to himself. But that didn’t make her stomach turn any less. “No. I can’t leave them.”
“If they don’t come up with the Demophon, and the storm clears, then…” she sighed, “We’ll do what I should have to start with. We’ll take the Pathfinder down and secure them directly. If I have to drop the whole Marine detachment to get them, we’ll do it. We’re in it now, Calli. The Admiral’s orders went stale the minute I sent the first team down. They either get up on their own, or we’ll all go to get them.”
Calliope put a hand on her forehead and kicked the shuttle ramp.
~The Unknowns
As the Pathfinder angled downwards, Calliope’s stomach was dropping. It was an unnatural angle to take a full sized ship. The kind of angle that your gut told you was not going to end well as gravity had its word on the matter.
[...]
“Shit!” Grayson exclaimed, “Quickly now, Pathfinder. Open that door!” He cried out, banking hard towards the larger craft. Brightwood maneuvered the runabout so that the aft section of the Pathfinder was now visible and began to loom larger and larger on the forward glass at a speed no one was comfortable with.
~Musical Chairs
Corvus could almost feel the malice coming off that ship as it sped past the debris of its fallen compatriot, passed its listing intact friend without rendering aid, and made a straight line towards the Pathfinder and the disparate pieces of the Theseus.
[...]
“Indeed.” Lance responded from Main Engineering, where he stood with his right arm in a wrap. When the ship had entered all of the turbulence— quite foolishly flying into the hurricane!— he’d gotten the attention of the cowboy-turned-nurse, who suspended Lance’s treatment for his plasma burnt limb and cased his arm to release him back to his duty station.
[...]
“We have only a single warp core and there is no telling how many times the Pyrryx can muck about with subspace. If we eject the core, it can be sealed this once but we will have no means left to us for vacating the system.” His warning was punctuated by a static whine and a pop in a conduit overhead in engineering. It was simple arithmetic. In Lance’s estimation, the planet was already damned and there was little sense going down with it.
[...]
Corvus watched it all unfold in horror, the bottom of her stomach dropping out to somewhere in orbit behind them. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The whole point of this was to save their lives and the lives of the Korin, not to make it worse. Not to put them in a place where she had to sacrifice everyone. She looked over at Calliope and somehow, the familiar face, despite everything else that had happened grounded her.
[...]
“As evasive as you can be, Mr. Brightwood,” DeHavilland called out.
“Flopping in the mud, best I can, mum,” he replied quickly.
~A Rift Between Us
Bowdler wasn’t an overly tall or broad man. A lifetime’s obsession with running had kept his frame lean. He kept his dark brown hair shorn short on the sides and preferred a mustache over the more fashionable beard these days. Some said it gave him an air of being unapproachable, but he wasn’t concerned with what people thought. His actions spoke for themselves, and if that made him ‘unapproachable’ then so be it.
[...]
It wasn’t pretty and the inexperience in a fire fight this size was clearly showing in the skipper of the Prometheus class vessel. His ship could have easily handled the three vessels with support, but without it he would have had trouble being overwhelmed with firepower. Thankfully for him, the Pyrryx had a pretty strong flaw. One that you wouldn’t expect.
They weren’t accustomed to resistance.
~Shadow Games
Corvus shook her head, not certain what was happening. “Captain… what are you doing here?” she asked, really voicing the only question that she could, despite the fifty running through her mind at the moment.
“We were never here, Captain,” Bowdler answered, looking back to Asaam and N’vun and giving a wave. “Security protocol 786-B requires that all sensor logs and data entries be purged for the vessels covered under this measure. That includes my ship and my crew,” he explained.
“You can-,” DeHavilland started.
“You did an incredible job today, Captain,” he interrupted her. “You showed the best of Starfleet. You were about to give your life, and the lives of your crew to save that planet. A lesser person would have tucked and run, but you faced it down. I’m sorry that the rest of Starfleet doesn’t get to hear that now. That this…” he said, waving at the screen. “Didn’t happen. But those are the orders. The same holds for Captain Callum.”
Almost asynchronous to the situation, Calliope laughed.
~A Shadow Revealed
“If you are going to continue with your rant, do it elsewhere. I don’t have the ears for it,” Brek countered. He snatched the holo-controls from Glutik’s hands, and he activated T’Ania, curious as he was to hear what she sounded like. The Tellarite tried to stop him, but he proved too clumsy for the Ferengi’s swift grasp.
Only one phrase was pronounced, guttural yet soft enough to be charming. “You are very kind. Could I offer you some coffee or cognac?” The amazing thing was, the way every word had been enounced, you could tell that T’Ania was prepared to offer a lot more than beverages, and that made Brek blink.
“I see...” The Ferengi finally said. “It looks like the three of you have had a lot of fun while I was away. You know Glutik... you need to buy one of those holo-assistants for yourself. Set it up in your quarters, and have as much fun as you dare, away from my property.”
~The Tyranny of Art
So having somewhere to go and checking in for the morning on the third day since getting her anklet was at least something. She looked furtively side to side to side as she entered the corridor and headed down to the promenade. Every corner, every person, she examined, deciding if there was a potential threat or not before ducking into the turbolift (a harrowing ride) and then off into the strange feeling of the nearly open air promenade that felt spacious and brightly lit and yet artificial and painful to her heightened senses. She checked an automated kiosk for directions and then speed walked to the Promenade Security point.
~Flight Risk: Check in
He clutched it but then reached out the other hand, opening and closing his fingers in the grasping sign that meant he wanted something. “BiBi!” Ikemba said, reaching towards Ibis on the floor.
Olivia kissed his curls like Ibis always did. “BiBi is sad,” she explained, tears running over her own grief twisted face. “She’s sad.”
~The Strength to Stand
Ibis looked down at the clothing in her arms again and began setting it out on the counter methodically, drawing her hands over each set, sized for each one of them. She just brushed the fabric, back and forth. Smooth and new. Freshly replicated. Her hand went to her mouth, and her eyes winced shut with another wave of pain. There should have been another outfit in the stack. Just one more. Just one.
~Disorientation
And here, the moment her feet found the desk of another starship, it began to buck and shift and lift and fall, in seemingly all directions once more. She was a curse, Ibis thought to herself. She was a curse and she’d brought it to this ship too. She’d volunteer to throw herself out an airlock so it would just end, except she had to be sure the kids would make it.
[...]
Porter’s rib cage was disturbingly exposed— on the opposite side of him where there should have been a list of his battle engagements from the Dominion war, there was muscle and bone and open guts. She found his arm and sought his hand, finding his big, bony fingers beyond the medical tape holding IVs into his sinewy wrist.
[...]
“We did bring a couple of them onboard. They told us about you and the Major.”
“Is that when you went looking for us? Is that how you found Wallace?”
“We found your camp, seems your Major laid it out in proper Marine fashion. That got our Marines very interested. But there was no one there, we ended up finding him half way up some damn mountain.”
Ibis smiled at that. “He ran our camp the only way he knew how. Order and discipline. We weren’t very good Marines, most of us. But we tried.”
[...]
She named the deck and the room number. With the kids relying on her, Ibis had made it a point to recall the room, even through the fog of grief. A fog that seemed to be some other kind of cloud now, dense but not quite as crushing.
[...]
Tough lady to survive down there for years Steiner mused as he jogged back to the turbolift.
~Medevac
"Hey, Fly," She greeted him with a smile, arranging a chair for herself and then butt scooting it in closer to lean in. "You've been out a bit. How was your nap?"
A flickering grin crossed Ethan's face as he ruefully shook his head. "Wouldn' know - slept through most of it." His brow furrowed as the niggling thought from before pushed against his memory, demanding attention. "What'd I miss?"
~Resurgence
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