G.S. Jennsen Quotes

Children are turning themselves into monsters and, quite frankly, it is your fault. You initiated the creation of this technology, then you allowed it to slip through your fingers."

Miriam's jaw tightened. "I disagree, but now is the least optimal time imaginable for assigning blame. People are dying, and I will not stand around debating semantics with you while they are.

Individuals reacted in any number of ways to extreme stress and, relatedly, to impending death.

A non-negligible percentage of people reacted in a manner which could be summed up by, 'Screw it, I'm going out in style!

She returned his salute with a sly smile - a rare enough event that he eyed her suspiciously.

"Admiral Solovy, are you wearing a shit-eating grin because we won here today, or is there something else I should know?"

"There's something else you should know.

Evening had turned the sky a deep persimmon. The remaining sunlight enriched the colors of the ubiquitous flowers and foliage to even greater vibrancy, as if the saturation filter had been notched up several levels.

Caleb noted all this in passing as he strode deliberately forward. He didn't know how he was going to do this, only that he had to make the attempt.

Caleb reached up and slid the tie out of her hair to let it fall free. "You were crazy to do it. But I love you because you're wild and fearless, not in spite of it, and I know the price."

He sensed her cringe against him. "Which is?"

"At random and unexpected times, you terrify the life out of me.

Blood drummed in her ears and adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to move. To act. Her hands trembled against his chest.

Time vanished out from beneath her feet, one accelerating second at a time.

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness.

Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. "Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you've ever done?"

"It wouldn't be fair to rank them." Caleb gunned the engine.

Above the curving arc of the planet, a mammoth explosion plumed crimson and charcoal then erupted in a starburst of crystaline white which for a microsecond shone brighter than a sun. For the briefest moment he allowed himself to entertain the notion that they might win this battle.

Then the real battle began.

2 SECONDS

He was on her in an instant to brace her against the wall. She kicked and clawed at her unseen attacker, skin and irises ablaze in caustic gold.

She fired anew, and the point-blank shot broke through his defenses, grazing his hip. He ignored the harsh sting to bring his Daemon up between them.

1 SECOND

Her head dropped into her hands. Dammit!

She'd spent months preparing for the challenges of a war against an immortal enemy wielding vastly superior numbers. She'd spent years preparing for the challenges of leading an assemblage of disparate fleets headed by disparate personalities. But it had never occurred to her to prepare for the challenges of her dead husband walking back into her life in the middle of both.

She had no idea what to do, but she was fairly certain she was doing it wrong.

Nisi flashed his charismatic, mysterious smile. "Now, with this in mind, are you ready to take the next step?"

Despite Caleb's attempts at caution - at circumspection and even suspicion - the man's words stirred his blood. They teased the possibilities of the power within his reach, real power extending far beyond parlor tricks and personal protection to a place where the course of life itself could be changed.

"I am.

In sum, every pore of his being oozed one thing…okay, FINE. Every pore oozed two things. The first was irrelevant. The second was dangerous.

In the corner of her eye she caught her daughter's shoulders drop as Alex exhaled with uncommon soberness. "So you trust me, and you understand that I will never do anything I think might hurt you."

Miriam stopped outside the armory and pivoted to her daughter. "Alex, what have you done?

The fear he'd dared not voice until now - when it was all but too late - because when stacked alongside the survival of humanity his fears mustn't matter. "Will you be the same person when you wake up?

You ask me to make peace with the monsters who did this?"

She didn't even look around at 'this.' "Yes. The alternative is extinction. There's no coming back from that - no new weapon to fire when no one is left and you've no universe left to fire it in.

From up here, the city below looked calm. Peaceful. Serene.

It was a lie.

Mia could feel the lie in her bones, in the foreboding creeping along the fine hairs on her skin. But mostly she could feel it in her head, where preparations were underway across Romane to meet the coming chaos.

As the sky began to darken she sank down in the chair. She had just watched over a thousand Alliance soldiers die in the space of less than a minute. Yet the encounter would be considered a victory, for the enemy was vanquished. But at such a cost.

She considered what Alex had asked of her…and began to understand.

You have business and pleasure to attend to. As an expert in both, allow me to advise you to put them aside for the next ten minutes. Why?

"Because the world is about to transform, and you will want to be able to say you saw it happen. The axes of our little universe are about to flip, and you'll want to get your magboots set.

They flew high above savanna grassland. The sky was the deep cornflower blue of a sunny late afternoon on Earth…exactly the color of a sunny late afternoon on Earth.

Only there was no sun. Whatever was lighting this planet, it wasn't a star.

He had seen many criminals in his years in Division. Dangerous men and even more dangerous women. Small-time hucksters and savvy crime lords. Spies, gangsters, assassins, insurgents and wannabe-revolutionaries. True believers and soulless mercs willing to kill children for the right price.

I wouldn't be your best and most marvelous friend in the galaxy if I didn't point out there might be a few negative consequences from all…" she gazed upward and twirled her hand in the air "…this.

Her perception was propelled backward, as if it were being pulled into a vortex. She slammed into her body, and her eyes flew open with a gasp.

"Alex?"

She sat straight up in the chair and grabbed Caleb by the shoulders. "We have to save them.

The alien reached out her hands to hold Alex's tightly. "Please. Some of what I want to express, it may be difficult to locate the right words."

"Of course."

Pure alabaster eyes stared back at her. "Child, there is a hole in your mind.

He did not have time to wallow, to give a moment's thought to what may have happened to her or whether she was alive.

Turn into the punch, grab hold of the gun, leap into the arena. Attack.

He had to move. Now.

Solum invoked a sensation akin to lingering déjà vu in the wake of a dream.

It was not Earth. Its city-planet architectural stylings hid the outline of continents that might have otherwise been recognizable and altered the vibrant blue-and-green color palette enough to erase any familiarity in its silhouette.

Yet if you tilted your head just so and let your gaze unfocus a little, you could almost see Earth. Its echo, its memory.

The Idoni Primor's gaze fell on Eren immediately. Her head tilted in idle curiosity while a fingertip dipped into a crystal bowl beside her. "I know your face, anarch."

She brought her fingertip to her mouth and sucked it dry of gods only feared what hypnol. "You have been a most troublesome little asi of late. Have you come here to repent, to fall to your knees and beg to be allowed to return to the fold? Fair warning - you'll be on those knees for a while.

So that's why I say 'never have anything you can't walk away from.' Especially a woman. For them, because this is a dangerous life we lead and you never know if or when it will blow back on those close to you."

"And for you, because trust me when I tell you there exists no greater perdition than the guilt of causing the death of someone you love.

She climbed into the shuttle and got in his personal space. "Who are you working for?"

The man spat in her face.

She rolled her eyes and wiped the spittle off her cheek. Then she punched him square across the jaw before grabbing him by the throat. "WHO are you working for?

He was terrified he was making the wrong choice. He relied on his instincts in his work but now he didn't dare trust them. The wound of betrayal still burned raw in his chest and another cut might be the killing blow.

But it was the end of the world and there may be no more second chances.

He wasn't going to be able to deactivate the field, which meant there was only one choice.

He'd realized early on that his arcane, profoundly alien passenger came with a cost, possibly one too high to pay and get out the other side free and clear. He'd pay it nonetheless and without complaint if the diati would only come through for him now.

Caleb closed his eyes.

He simply preferred the sensation of soil beneath his feet and wind in his hair, of fresh, non-recycled air which carried on it the scent and taste of life. He preferred what was solid and real, where if you could see it you could touch it, feel its texture between the tips of your fingers. As far as he knew, no one had ever touched a star. Not even her.

In the space of a breath he had crossed the distance separating them and spun her around into a vise grip from behind. Somehow, the gun was out of her hand and in his. He locked her arms between them and raised the gun to her temple. His voice resonated low and dangerous at her ear. "Just so we're very clear. If I want to kill you, I can kill you.

No matter what comes, we will persevere. It's not over until we win."

Oh, how she wanted to believe him. How she wanted to believe that her father not only had all the answers, but the power to make everything okay. Once upon a time she had believed it; then he hadn't come home. "Why are you so sure?"

"Because I didn't cross universes to return to life, simply to die again.

The Novoloume gazed in interest around the cabin. "So the whispers are true - Kats, SAIs and Humans have come to join with the anarchs in a quest to save us all."

Felzeor returned to Caleb's outstretched arm and leaned in to nuzzle his nose. "What a grand quest it's sure to be!

Caleb!" The sharp, forceful tone demanded he halt.

He found he had complied, but did not turn around. His voice sounded low and hoarse, likely because he couldn't breathe. "Alex, I can't.

Expect an army of Vigil drones, nearly as a many Praesidis guards, a Machim ground detachment of super-soldiers and at least one Inquisitor. Oh, and security barriers everywhere. Possibly some of those mechs we met on Helix Retention, too. You Humans have kicked off a shitstorm of epic proportions."

Alex spread her arms wide in an exagerrated shrug. "It's one of our best skills.

She didn't want to be the savior of humanity. She never had. She didn't want to be the vanguard - of destruction or salvation. What she had really wanted was to be a girl whose father lived to show her the stars.

Instead she had been left to wander them alone. Until she discovered someone who saw the stars as she did.

You're insane."

"It'll work."

"Which does not alter the fact that you are insane.

She skidded around a corner, slamming her shoulder into the wall and bouncing off of it without slowing.

Caleb?

Silence. Forty-six meters. A long stretch of hallway. She pushed faster, harder. Twenty meters.

She burst into the room in unison with a deafening crash of metal shearing metal.

Mia stood between the bed and the broken window, holding an active plasma blade at waist-height in front of her. A thick coat of blood stained the plasma nearly from hilt to tip, hissing as it dribbled from blade to floor.

"Are you all right?"

Mia gave her a wan, distant smile. "It's okay. I've done it before.

Glacier blue plasma rippled and sparked across the interior of the portal. "It seems keeping secrets is what you do."

"Secrets are merely the necessary means. Survival is the end goal. Survival of ourselves, survival of species who do not deserve to be eradicated from the universe. Survival of the universe itself."

"Survival's noble and all, but what good is it without the freedom to live as you choose?"

"A question you have the luxury to ask because you survive.

His punch knocked her back a meter into the wall. His fist had moved of his own volition, carrying a rage and frustration all its own.

To his dismay, she didn't fall. People so small as her always fell.

No tears pooled in her eyes; instead they flared golden amber as she rubbed her jaw and pushed off the wall to stand rigid straight. A peculiar smile danced across her lips as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and down her chin.

The ceiling shattered, and the vacuum created yanked her into the air. Her face grazed a shard of the ceiling as it broke off. Then she was in space.

Her left hand unlatched the breather mask and slid it on while her right felt for the helmet trigger.

Her finger slipped past it, fumbled back for it.

Found it.

Pressed it.

I'll gloss right over the implication in what you said that the Reor are sentient entities - for now. Dare I ask why they gave you a copy of their universal decryption key?"

Alex and Caleb shared a look, and she shrugged. "We can only speculate, but it's possible they want us to win."

Miriam dropped her elbows on the table. "Hmm. Okay. In that case, I welcome the minerals to our side of the fight.

She placed a hand on his arm. "It's not our fault, not truly. It's theirs. The killers. They're the ones who - "

"Get down!" Caleb collided with her back, sending her crashing to the floor hard enough to knock the air from her chest. The windows shattered and the sounds of a city overtaken by chaos rushed in.

He swallowed hard, annoyed at the sudden dryness in his throat. No reason to become all emotional about it now. He had already sold his soul for a chance at vengeance, and there was no getting it back.

He pointed to the burning building as sirens heralded the approach of emergency personnel. "This is your job - this is your life. Blood and death and pain and vengeance and justice. And sometimes it sucks, but it's worth it."

Caleb sighed, but not in resignation. "I know this is the job, and it is worth it. But I refuse to believe it's my life. Not only and not forever."

Samuel pinched the bridge of his nose and waved dismissively with his other hand. "F***ing romantic.

The Anadens have a somewhat different perspective on death."

"On account of not having to deal with it, sure. Personally, I think their little immortality contrivance has destroyed the value of life for them."

"It brought you back."

"Thus I reserve the right to be hypocritical on this particular topic.

God, she was beautiful. Hair a tangled mess, clothes torn, lips pale and swollen, skin streaked in dirt. And she was so damn beautiful and flawed and perfect.

There were things she wanted to say, but they were all jumbled up in her head and if she tried they'd come out backwards and mixed up and wrong.

There were things she needed to say, but she was hanging on by a fraying thread and feared if she tried the thread would break, sending her plummeting alone into the abysm.

There were things she would have to say, but they should wait for later. After.

The universe is not ordered, and it will not become so simply because one wishes it. The universe is chaos made manifest. The military does a fine job of creating an illusion of structure, of dependable rules to provide an answer for every situation.

"But it is only an illusion, one which on its best days holds the chaos at bay.

After all,'I've been thinking' meant she had previously identified the parameters and analyzed all the branching considerations.

Alexis, please mind your mouth. Cursing in Russian is still cursing.

We have a very short window in which to accomplish a great deal, one measured in minutes rather than hours.

"We succeed, and we will have freed dozens of galaxies and species from tyranny. We succeed, and we will have saved our home, our friends and our loved ones from the looming threat of annihilation. We succeed, and everyone has a future. So let's get it done.

I frankly expected a far more negative reaction from you on discovering…" she glanced around the lab "…the situation. Why are you helping?"

"I'm not helping - I'm merely not hindering in as strenuous a fashion as I am able.

She and Kennedy both dove for the power connector; Kennedy reached it first and yanked out the connection as Alex landed on her stomach beside it.

The air settled down until the fine hairs on her arm no longer stood on end. Alex dropped her forehead to the platform and started laughing. "Just like university, isn't it?"

"Almost - nothing's actually blown up yet.

Why? Why did you kill them?"

He laughed, recognizing it bore a frightening coldness. "Because you walked through the wrong door, and they paid you to do it. You will be a testament to the terror that arrives the moment you or anyone else crosses the invisible line you didn't know existed until tonight. Spread the word.

The Artificial's speech pattern was an idiosyncratic mix of awkward and colloquial. It was unexpectedly endearing. "I just have good instincts. Mostly I love being in space."

But you are not 'in' space. You are in your starship and your starship is in space. It is not so different than being on a planet.

"Oh, Valkyrie, you have no idea."

Tell me then.

She thought he might have said her name, but it was background radiation accompanying the hum in her ears and the symphony in her head -

- a song of quantum mechanics and trajectory calculations and astroscience physics and where to go, where to go, where to…

If humanity is annihilated because we were too busy squabbling with one another to manage a proper stand, we probably deserve the annihilation.

Do you love me?"

His voice rang flat in his own ears, deadened and weighted with the recognition there was only one chance, and a fool's chance at that

Laches faded away, leaving Miriam standing facing Hyperion, the Metigen who had orchestrated the slaughter of over fifty million people a short year ago.

There were limits to even deals with the devil, lines which should never be crossed…but she was beginning to wonder when she might find one.

Time slowed as metal shards enveloped her like shattered glass. None pierced her of course, but it seemed as though she might be able to reach out and pluck one from the sky.

She settled for stretching out an imagined hand, palm upturned, and letting a shard fall through it untouched like the ghost she had become.

Her pulse raced, pounding in her ears above the howling wind. A wave of dizziness crashed over her with the rapid flood of adrenaline. She gasped in a breath. "Don't let go.

If there was anything the last year had taught her - if there was anything Caleb had taught her, the Metigen War had taught her - it was that perspective was everything.

If you wanted to understand your enemy, you must understand that they were the hero in their own story.

She gazed at the bay of wrecked shuttles in dismay. The last of her adrenaline seeped away at the sight of the widespread destruction.

It occurred to her then, for perhaps the first time in this long nightmare, that she was going to die.

Any Earth Alliance military personnel who, whether through affirmative acts or by inaction, assist these seditionists are guilty of treason and will be held accountable. To all present military personnel: you have five minutes to respond accordingly."

She chuckled. "Bet more than one scuffle just broke out on board those ships."

"Any second thoughts?"

Her head shook tersely. "We're all traitors now."

"It's not traitorous to want to be free.

A wispy murmur in the blackness. Blackness, where before there was only nothingness. It was dark, inky and thick, but there now existed the palpable sense of tangibility.

She gasped in alarm, but no sound came out of her throat.

"Where am I?," she shouted, but no words made it past her lips.

He steadied himself by resting one palm on her thigh and the other on the armrest, and rose to his knees. "I'll be damned."

"Possibly. But not today, I think.

Alex peered behind her to see Noah fussing over a scrape on Kennedy's cheek. "Unless someone's bleeding to death, first aid will have to wait. You'll want to strap into the jump seats.

"This could get interesting, and that's before we get clear of the station.

Don't talk. Don't sputter out a solitary protest or it will be your last. Take me to them."

"Who the f**k are you?"

He palmed the man's forehead and slammed his skull against the wall. "I said don't talk, and you want to do as I say. I'm the one thing monsters like you and your kind fear. I'm what haunts your nightmares and hunts you in the darkness.

As soon as he had departed she directed her attention to the others.

"I need a shielded containment box, radiation gloves and a micro welding torch. And a crescent wrench.

It was killing him, seeing her this way. She was not meant to be uncertain, timid or fearful; the woman he knew exuded confidence so fiercely it might as well be a damn spiritual aura. He needed to fix this.

"It's time to adjust your perspective. You want to show the politicians on Earth they don't rule the galaxy? Well, let's show them.

Her weight settled on her back foot as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, now legitimately baffled.

"How delusional are you, aliens in your head notwithstanding?

He wanted to grind every Federation world into dust beneath his boot as his army blazed a trail of blood and corpses all the way to Seneca.

He wanted to storm their inner sanctum and fire a laser into the skull of their Field Marshal while their Chairman watched, then fire a laser into the skull of their Chairman.

He wanted to burn their bodies on a pyre and carry the ashes back to Deucali and spread them on his mother's consecrated grave.

Chaos that closely resembled panic awaited.

Shuttles raced to the presumed safety of the planet below while fighters crisscrossed the perimeter of the station. Platoon-sized formations of frigates and several cruisers formed up and accelerated away. To where the approaching attackers were located?

She didn't give a damn what her mother said in public. This was a bona fide insurrection.

People feared what they did not understand, and they without a doubt did not understand her. Those who believed they did least of all.

She was something new.

If her daughter's ship had been disintegrated in space there would never be evidence of it, never an answer to what had happened to her.

If she stopped to ponder the implications she might break. And Admiral Miriam Solovy did not break.

Coordinates streamed into her mind while she yanked on her environment suit, foregoing every safety check she'd ever learned.

'Alex, we will try to help him together, but it is far too dangerous - '

She grabbed the module she used to access the circuitry of the ship, bypassed Valkyrie and fired up the Caeles Prism.

'Alex - '

She opened a wormhole in the middle of the cabin, set its exit point at the coordinates Valkyrie had provided, and ran through it.

His whisper continued to stream a silent cacophony of warnings, kill and damage reports and pleas for assistance.

He allowed himself two seconds to watch it and came away with the sense they were losing. Not lost and not soon, but losing.

Alex thrust her hand and half her arm into the labyrinth of light.
Her stare blanked, and in the halo of the matrix her eyes and glyphs blazed so radiantly she looked as if she were being consumed by a primordial fire.

"She just stuck her hand into Machim Command's central server matrix!"

Caleb smiled, watching on in blatant awe. "She does that.

An eerie, chilling voice interrupted him to reverberate through the house.

"You believe you are safe, but you will never be safe from me. My reach is limitless, my capabilities legion. Sleep fitfully and avoid the shadows, for know that I am coming for you. When I arrive, you will pay for what you did.