Attention, aboard the shuttle! You are under arrest! Surrender immediately! Come out slowly, in single file, with your hands behind your heads! Leave all weapons behind. Comply and your lives will be spared!

— Christina Engela

Beaming into the thick of a tree without becoming a lifelong tree hugger was a tricky business. A precision job. Scooby’s job at the Time Saving Agency was a tough one. Billions of lives depended on him not screwing up. Literally billions and billions. Once, he’d screwed up in only a very small way and people wore those little yellow smiley faces on t-shirts for decades afterward – and that was just a small screw up. He sighed. Here he sat, in the branches of an apple tree in an apple tree orchard – and without a single apple in sight. Below him, Isaac was waiting to get bonked on the noggin with an apple so that he could fulfill history by toddling off to invent gravity and shape scientific and mathematical principles for generations to come. Only one problem – no apples.

— Christina Engela

Be assured, a God who spoke the universe into existence would not need grains of dust to fight holy wars for him.

— Christina Engela

Beauty... Is what you are after a lifetime of struggle in the face of hostility, surviving, and standing scarred and unafraid, triumphant before your enemies.

— Christina Engela

Because freedom and liberty and equality are as vital as breath, we only notice their absence when we are left gasping when the colors of diversity and individual liberty are drained from the world around us.

— Christina Engela

Before We Begins Your Bug A nice clean original car that looks almost like it left the showroom yesterday? P.S. All work should be carried out in consultation with a reliable workshop manual with regard to torque settings, gaps, procedures, sequences disassembly, reassembly, where to hide the leftover parts, etc. I will accept no responsibility for anything resulting from you or anybody else trying anything as described in this document whatsoever – but if it works, or you end up with some amusing stories to tell someone else’s grandchildren, please feel free to drop me a line. (No death threats please.) Sincerely, Christina Angela

— Christina Engela

Being captain of such a vessel was not a stressful job, despite the sheer size of the thing. Everything was automated, and this meant that this behemoth could be efficiently handled by a far less seasoned captain. Besides, hiring mature skippers with actual experience would cost real money. And hey, the computers ran everything anyway – and that’s how Bran Johansen enters this story – as a fine young inexperienced graduate of the Merchant Space Academy in Mars City, who only got his Executive Officer’s ticket four short years ago.

— Christina Engela

Being the commander of a Luminaria war vessel meant that he had risen to the rank by means of assassination and ruthlessness and was therefore implicitly distrusted by the Tishri MAH’k’HAI (Naval Command, that is The Queen Of Such Herself.) He was expected to mete out, in generous portions, brutality to conquered subjects and to act swiftly and mercilessly in dealing with alien encounters. In short, he was expected to be a bad example.

— Christina Engela

But it’s a hundred and twelve years old!” He protested.“She still works pretty good.” Dare maintained. “Star drive gets a mite twitchy at warp 4, but that’s just a dodgy plasma injector.

— Christina Engela

But not all kids are exactly the same, Even when they share the same name.

— Christina Engela