Early Days

“You’re adorable.”

Her laughter rang through the bridge like the tinkle of ice on silver bells.

“You worked so hard on that speech. I can tell. And you’ve been putting so much effort into trying to get it right. You’ve been cleansing populations left and right, and enslaving your subjects, and torturing, raping and slaughtering your way across half a continent. You’ve broken just about all the rules of civilized warfare, all while screaming to the heavens about your inevitable victory and your love of dying for it. And now you’re going to start burning people alive if we don’t break orbit immediately? Someone has been studying the ways to look and feel like terrifying, ruthless, unstoppable badasses… from second-rate cliché-ridden watchvids.”

“And yet here I am, and it turns out I don’t have to feel anything at all to depress this one… little… switch.”

– from the bridge logs of CS Inclement,
Lt. Cdr. Caliéne Sargas-ith-Sargas commanding