Armada Quotes

That cocky smile widened. “Hello, bitch,” Ansel purred. “Hello, traitor,” Aelin purred right back, surveying the armada spread before them. “Looks like you made it on time after all.

I’d spent my entire life overdosing on uncut escapism, willingly allowing fantasy to become my reality.

Shit!" I heard Diehl shout over the comm. "I just lost my gorram shields because I'm already out of frakkin' power!" "Dude," Cruz said. "You shouldn't mix swears from different universes.

I know that the future is scary at times. But there's just no escaping it.

And therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too.

The only thing crazier than hallucinating a fictional videogame spaceship would be to blame it on a frosted breakfast pastry.

If there were other civilizations out there, why would they ever want to make contact with humanity? If this was how we treated each other, how much kindness could we possibly show to some race of bug-eyed beings from beyond?

The apple had fallen right next to the crazy tree.

Aedion fell to his knees in the sand as Wendlyn’s armada spread before them. I promise you that no matter how far I go, no matter the cost, when you call for my aid, I will come, Aelin had told him she’d sworn to Darrow. I’m going to call in old debts and promises. To raise an army of assassins and thieves and exiles and commoners. And she had. She had meant and accomplished every word of it. Rowan counted the ships that slid over the horizon. Counted the ships in their own armada. Added Rolfe’s—and the Mycenians he was rallying in the North. “Holy gods,” Dorian breathed as Wendlyn’s armada kept spreading wider and wider. Tears slid down Aedion’s face as he silently sobbed. Where are our allies, Aelin? Where are our armies? She had taken the criticism—taken it, because he knew she hadn’t wanted to disappoint them if she failed. Rowan put a hand on Aedion’s shoulder. All of it for Terrasen, she had said that day she’d revealed she’d schemed her way into getting Arobynn’s fortune. And Rowan knew that every step she had taken, every plan and calculation, every secret and desperate gamble … For Terrasen. For them. For a better world. Aelin

I had been hoping and waiting for some mind-blowingly fantastic, world-altering event to finally shatter the endless monotony of my public education.

I have the heart of a man, not a woman, and I am not afraid of anything.

Now whenever I watched a Star Wars film, I found myself wondering how the Empire had the technology to make long-distance holographic phone calls between planets light-years apart, and yet no one had figured out how to make a remote-controlled TIE Fighter or X-Wing yet.

Now I feel bad,” Diehl said. “Like we’re about to nuke Aquaman. Or the Little Mermaid.…” “Pretend they’re Gungans,” Cruz suggested. “And that we get to nuke Jar Jar.

I tried to remain skeptical. I reminded myself that I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it.

I knew Armada was only a videogame, but I’d never been one of the “best of the best” at anything before, and my accomplishment gave me a real sense of pride.

That’s how you know you’ve mastered a videogame—when a bunch of butt-hurt crybabies start to accuse you of cheating in an effort to cope with the beatdown they’ve just suffered at your hands.

We were all probably stuck here for the duration, on the third rock from our sun. Boldly going extinct.

Shame on the shepherd who runs and hides when wolves are coming to harm his flock.

You know, sort of like Obi-Wan, watching over Luke while he was growing up on Tatooine.” “You’re a bold-faced liar like Obi-Wan, too!” I shot back. “That’s for sure.” Ray’s smile vanished, and his eyes narrowed. “And you’re being a whiny little bitch, just like Luke!

Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste! Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct, Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong: Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break. - Next, Please

Being forced to sit between my mortal enemy and my ex-girlfriend every afternoon made seventh-period math feel like my own private Kobayashi Maru, a brutal no-win scenario designed to test my emotional fortitude.

The exam markers must have been somewhat bewildered to be told that when the Armada appeared, Francis Drake was playing with his balls.

The Encyclopedia--the advance artillery of reason, the armada of philosophy, the siege engine of the enlightenment...

No, we always get killed because of you, Leeroy Jenkins!

This human understands enough to know when he’s being messed with.

Maybe they seeded life on Earth millions of years ago, and now they're here to punish us for turning out to be such a lame species and inventing reality TV and shit?

I’m a gamer, Zack. Like you. When I find myself confronted with a puzzle, I can’t help but try to solve it.

The bastard even refused to watch E.T.! Who doesn’t love E.T., I ask you?

CHAPTER 2: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS ALDO THE APACHE My name is Lt. Aldo Raine and I'm putting together a special team, and I need me 8 soldiers. 8 Jewish-American soldiers. Now, y'all might've heard rumors about the armada happening soon. Well, we'll be leaving a little earlier. We're gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we're in enemy territory, as a bushwhackin' guerrilla army, we're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only... killin' Nazis. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I sure as hell didn't come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross 5,000 miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin' air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be destroyed. That's why any and every every son of a bitch we find wearin' a Nazi uniform, they're gonna die. Now, I'm the direct descendant of the mountain man Jim Bridger. That means I got a little Injun in me. And our battle plan will be that of an Apache resistance. We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sooounds good?

He died when he was only nineteen years old. I was still a baby at the time, so I didn't remember him. Growing up, I'd always told myself that was lucky. Because you can't miss someone you don't remember. But the truth was, I did miss him.

I tried to slip past her again, but she blocked my path and then stomped her foot down in front of me again, pretending like she was Gandalf and I was the balrog.

You cannot escape your destiny,’ 

A mission where you have to blow up a Death Star while being attacked by two Borg Cubes inside an asteroid field?

I knew Knotcher was trying to push my buttons. Unfortunately, he'd pushed the big red one first.

Somebody set up us the bomb,’ pal,” he quoted. “Now it’s time to take off every zig for great justice.

You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.

When the Chinese Wall was built, where'd the masons go for lunch? When Caesar conquered Gaul, was there not even a cook in the army? When the Armada sank, King Philip wept. Were there no other tears?

These new helmets can read your thoughts, too,” Ray joked. “But you have to think in Russian.

I was staring out the classroom window and daydreaming of adventure when I spotted the flying saucer.

Mr. S was finally retiring this year, which was a good thing, because he appeared to have run out of shits to give sometime in the previous century.

As I watched them embrace, there on the front lawn, my heart was rocked by waves of unbridled joy. It occurred to me that up until this moment I’d only ever experienced the bridled kind.

What do you say to a warmongering emperor who has conquered many worlds and displaced thousands of refugees from their homes in the process? Refugees that sought asylum on Uhna. “It’s uh . . .” I pause. I can’t say it’s an honor to meet him when he arrived at my world prepared to blast the corruption away with his armada, along with anyone who happened to be in his way. I focus on his positive traits and say, “You have a nice beard! It looks well established. May I call you Caderyn?” Caderyn scoffs. “No.

In reality, videogames did not come to life and fictional spaceships did not buzz your hometown. Implausible shit like that only happened in cheesy ’80s movies, like TRON or WarGames or The Last Starfighter.

I'm sort of like Q in the James Bond films. Except, you know, I only get to hand out this one thing.

Many species lack the ability to defy their own animal instincts and allow their intellect to prevail.

When my father saw the jacket, he grinned wide and spent a minute looking over each and every patch.

I knew there was probably life elsewhere. But given the vast size and age of the universe, I also knew how astronomically unlikely it was we would ever make contact with it, much less within the narrow window of my own lifetime. We were all probably stuck here for the duration, on the third rock from our sun. Boldly going extinct.

What emerged from the portal was not the feared armada. Instead, it was a single ship. A familiar ship. I felt a quickening in my atoms. Clever, dangerous girl. I have been expecting you.

I had spent hundreds of hours gazing out at the calm, conquered suburban landscape surrounding my school, silently yearning for the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse, a freak accident that would give me super powers, or perhaps the sudden appearance of a band of time-traveling kleptomaniac dwarves.

My father looked as if I’d just gutted him, and I felt a pang of regret—but it was mingled with a twisted sense of satisfaction. It felt good to hurt his feelings—it was payback for the way his choices had irrevocably damaged my own.

What could possibly be worse?” Cruz asked. “A mission where you have to blow up a Death Star while being attacked by two Borg Cubes inside an asteroid field?

The Force will be with you,” Ray said, giving my shoulder one last squeeze. “Always.

I felt like I’d just been picked last for the world’s biggest game of kickball.

Why would real aliens behave exactly like videogame simulations of themselves?

If there was a bright center to the universe, I was on the planet it was farthest from. Please pass the blue milk, Aunt Beru.

Stay frosty, everyone,

Don't be scared by the word authority. Believing things on authority only means believing them because you've been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I haven't seen it myself. I couldn't prove by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary man believes in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and the circulation of the blood on authority -because the scientists say so. Every historical statement in the world is believed on authority. None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove them by pure logic as you prove a thing in mathematics. We believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact, on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in other things as some people do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.

We were at the edge of space. The boundary I’d dreamed of crossing my entire life. I’d never really believed I’d get the chance to do it during my lifetime—let alone today, when I should’ve been in my first-period civics class.

Wearily, he swung the glasses over to the left again. Slowly, he tracked across the horizon. He reached the dead center of the bay. The glasses stopped moving. Pluskat tensed, stared hard. Through the scattering, thinning mist the horizon was magically filling with ships—ships of every size and description, ships that casually maneuvered back and forth as though they had been there for hours. There appeared to be thousands of them. It was a ghostly armada that somehow had appeared from nowhere. Pluskat stared in frozen disbelief, speechless, moved as he had never been before in his life. At that moment the world of the good soldier Pluskat began falling apart. He says in those first few moments he knew, calmly and surely, that “this was the end for Germany.

My whole life, I felt like I was destined to do something important, but I was only ever good at videogames, which I always figured would be completely useless. But it’s not useless, and neither am I. I think this is what I was always destined to do with my life. I just never knew it.

Her heartbeat was a broken metronome.

This realization allowed me to calm myself enough to heed the whispered advice of Master Yoda now on repeat in my head: Let go of your anger.

Tal como decía Belalcázar, con autorización del rey la aventura se llamaba conquista, sin ella era asalto a mano armada.

No weapons designer or engineer would build something with such an arbitrary weakness,” he said. “The Disrupter is more like something a videogame developer would come up with, to create a big challenge at the end of a level—a boss that requires a huge sacrifice to destroy.

A 389-page audit released in 2020 found that money overseen by the Mississippi Department of Human Services (DHS) and intended for the state’s poorest families was used to hire an evangelical worship singer who performed at rallies and church concerts; to purchase a Nissan Armada, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ford F-250 for the head of a local nonprofit and two of her family members; and even to pay the former NFL quarterback Brett Favre $1.1 million for speeches he never gave.

Welcome to Crystal Palace,” Ray said. “That’s the EDA’s code name for this place.” “Why?” I asked. He shook his head. “Because it’s easier to say than ‘Earth Defense Alliance Strategic Command Post Number Fourteen,’ ” he said. “Sounds cooler, too.

She whispered his name again. He was less than human now, and less than vampire. He was an animal. He’d drawn blood and now he needed to fuck, to cover her with his scent, to tell the world, She is mine. Stay away.

Watching Knotcher torment Casey while the rest of us just sat and watched filled me not only with self-loathing, but with disgust for my whole species. If there were other civilizations out there, why would they ever want to make contact with humanity? If this was how we treated each other, how much kindness could we possibly show to some race of bug-eyed beings from beyond?

Superheroes don’t use swords?” Diehl said gleefully. “What about Nightcrawler? Deadpool? Electra, Shatterstar, Green Arrow, Hawkeye—oh, and then there’s Blade and Katana! Two superheroes who are actually named after swords! Oh, and Wolverine had that idiotic Muramasa Blade made with part of his soul. Which, while incredibly lame, was still a far cooler magical weapon than Sting!

Even if alien visitors did decide to drop by this utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, no self-respecting extraterrestrial would ever pick my hometown of Beaverton, Oregon—aka Yawnsville, USA—as their point of first contact. Not unless their plan was to destroy our civilization by wiping out our least interesting locales first.

What if they’re using videogames to train us to fight without us even knowing it? Like Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid, when he made Daniel-san paint his house, sand his deck, and wax all of his cars—he was training him and he didn’t even realize it! Wax on, wax off—but on a global scale!

Arbogast had then assembled a dream team of creative consultants and contractors to help make his bold claim a reality, luring some of the videogame industry’s brightest stars away from their own companies and projects, with the sole promise of collaborating on his groundbreaking new MMOs. That was how gaming legends like Chris Roberts, Richard Garriott, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Gabe Newell, and Shigeru Miyamoto had all wound up as consultants on both Terra Firma and Armada—along with several big Hollywood filmmakers, including James Cameron, who had contributed to the EDA’s realistic ship and mech designs, and Peter Jackson, whose Weta Workshop had rendered all of the in-game cinematics.

no self-respecting extraterrestrial would ever pick my hometown of Beaverton, Oregon—aka Yawnsville, USA—as their point of first contact.

I reminded myself that I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it.

The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games. —Eugene Jarvis, creator of Defender

Now I’m in a top-secret government base somewhere in the middle of fucking Iowa, waiting to find out what the hell is happening. In short—I’m totally losing my shit.

I was going off the rails on a crazy train. You could practically hear Ozzy screaming “All aboard!” Don

She was ready to be kissed. Instead his hand touched her inner thigh.

She knew that dark place all warriors go.

This story doesn’t make any damn sense,

She might dress like them, but she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. She simply did not belong.

They may have used alien technology in these things,” she said. “But the software they installed to run it all was clearly created by humans—overworked, underpaid programmers like me who take all kinds of shortcuts. The security protocols on the file-sharing system are a total joke. It only took me about five minutes to jailbreak this thing.

This giant fleet of American warships – a modern armada – churns across the ocean day and night for a journey of four thousand miles. It moves with the inevitability of a railroad schedule. It stops for nothing, it deviates for nothing. The United States, having been surprised at Pearl Harbor and then raked in battle after battle by the onrushing forces of imperial Japan, has finally stabilized and gathered its strength. Now the American giant is fully awake and cold-eyed. It is stalking an ocean, rounding the curve of the earth, to crush its tormentor.

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once ... The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells. He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there? Seems not.

This is just great,” he grumbled under his breath. “Here I thought I was being recruited for an epic space adventure, but it turns out I’m a guest star on Love Boat: The Next Generation.” “Set course…for romance!” Shin quoted, doing such a perfect Patrick Stewart impersonation that Milo and I both laughed out loud.

We teach children from a very young age that not having a girlfriend or boyfriend is almost a problem – but happily, we also let them understand that there’s ‘still time’. But we never give them the option of not wanting one. With girls, it’s reinforced by an armada of clichés and conventions conveyed through the fairy stories they absorb, from the sleeping beauty waiting for a kiss from a prince to be brought back to life, to the lonesome wicked witch who devours other people’s children. Boys, meanwhile, grow up with a more nuanced vision, thanks to a fantasy world peopled by solitary heroes who achieve extraordinary things because of their superpowers. The message is fundamentally the same, but boys have more opportunities to develop different perspectives. They’re not so bound to this image of themselves trapped in a depressing and inert solitude. Their sense of self-worth is not conditioned by the fact of having a girlfriend or a wife. They’re encouraged to be actors in a turbulent life, to reach for their dreams, to give their all to reach the top of the mountain. Little girls, meanwhile, must wait for their Prince Charming to turn up.

He was going to win this bout, then fuck her with the unchained, debauched craving of a man condemned to die at dawn.

Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

Besides, now I was thinking there just might be a God after all—that would explain who was currently fucking with my whole notion of reality.

Like nearly every race of evil alien invaders in the history of science fiction, the Sobrukai were somehow technologically advanced enough to construct huge warships capable of crossing interstellar space, and yet still not smart enough to terraform a lifeless world to suit their needs, instead of going through the huge hassle of trying to conquer one that was already inhabited—especially one inhabited by billions of nuke-wielding apes who generally don’t cotton to strangers being on their land.

The music seemed to fade into silence. It was just the two of them. He could kiss her, or he could bite her. Both possibilities were equally tempting as she looked up at him from under her long, dark lashes.

I spent a few more minutes puzzling over the timeline before turning my attention to the notebook’s first page, which contained a pencil drawing of an old-school coin-operated arcade game—one I didn’t recognize. Its control panel featured a single joystick and one unlabeled white button, and its cabinet was entirely black, with no side art or other markings anywhere on it, save for the game’s strange title, which was printed in all capital green letters across its jet black marquee: POLYBIUS. Below his drawing of the game, my father had made the following notations: No copyright or manufacturer info anywhere on game cabinet. Reportedly only seen for 1–2 weeks in July 1981 at MGP. Gameplay was similar to Tempest. Vector graphics. Ten levels? Higher levels caused players to have seizures, hallucinations, and nightmares. In some cases, subject committed murder and/or suicide. “Men in Black” would download scores from the game each night. Possible early military prototype created to train gamers for war? Created by same covert op behind Bradley Trainer?

Well, it was nice to know absolute hell awaited them and that the information about Maeve’s armada was correct. But then Rowan added, “And I missed you like hell.” She smiled despite what he’d told her, pulling back to look at him. Untouched, unharmed. It was more than she could have hoped for. Even with the news he’d delivered. Aelin decided she didn’t particularly give a shit who was watching and rose up on her toes to brush her mouth against his. It had taken all her wits and abilities to avoid leaving traces of her scent today for him to detect—and the shocked delight on his face had been utterly worth it. Rowan’s hand on her arm tightened as she pulled away. “The feeling, Prince,” she murmured, “is mutual.

When she moved away from him now it didn’t stink of retreat. Instead it felt as though she had seized the high ground as she sat gracefully on the ledge of the window. She crossed her long legs and her short dress hiked up another inch. The night sky — vast and open without any tall buildings blocking its reach — seemed to both swallow her and retreat from the immensity of her presence.

about his origins from the holographic ghost of his own long-dead father. But now I was thinking of a young Jedi-in-training named Luke Skywalker, looking into the mouth of that cave on Dagobah while Master Yoda told him about today’s activity lesson: Strong with the Dark Side of the Force that place is. In you must go, mofo. So in I went. When I unlocked the front door of our house and stepped into the living room, Muffit, our ancient beagle, glanced up at me sleepily from where he was stretched out on the rug. A few years earlier he would have been waiting for me just inside the door, yapping like a madman. But the poor guy had now grown so old and deaf that my arrival barely

Siempre hay un rey sobre un caballo en las viejas ciudades; lo custodian las fuentes y los niños y un insólito pájaro. Cuando los veo, pienso que la muerte mira de las estatuas armada hasta los dientes, con sus ojos de bronce clausurado. Si pregunto por ellos, me describen galopes y batallas. Nunca al caballo libre en las praderas ni al señor en su casa. Todos cuentan la historia por las guerras en las viejas ciudades y por más que pregunto nadie sabe describir la morada donde amasaba pan el panadero y su mujer hilaba. La historia que nos cuentan es la historia de una que otra batalla, pero jamás nos dicen que, entretanto, el labrador sembraba y que, segando el trigo de la vida, los jóvenes se amaban mirándose a los ojos, como miro la paz en tu mirada, mientras paseamos por la antigua plaza con un rey a caballo donde juegan los niños y las fuentes son catedrales de agua. La paz, amor, es ese pájaro insólito que, a veces, se posa en las estatuas.

habiendo algunos fanáticos en el valle de Shah-i-Kot, en la provincia de Paktia. Una vez más la información era inexacta: no eran un puñado, sino centenares. Al ser afganos los talibanes derrotados, tenían a donde ir: sus aldeas y pueblos natales. Allí podían escabullirse sin dejar rastro. Pero los miembros de Al Qaeda eran árabes, uzbekos y, los más feroces de todos, chechenos. No hablaban pastún y la gente del pueblo afgano los odiaba, de manera que solo podían rendirse o morir peleando. Casi todos eligieron esto último. El mando estadounidense reaccionó al chivatazo con un plan a pequeña escala, la operación Anaconda, que fue asignada a los SEAL de la Armada. Tres enormes Chinook repletos de efectivos despegaron rumbo al valle, que se suponía vacío de combatientes. El helicóptero que iba en cabeza se disponía a tomar tierra, con el morro levantado y la cola baja, la rampa abierta por detrás y a solo un par de metros del suelo, cuando los emboscados de Al Qaeda dieron el primer aviso. Un lanzagranadas hizo fuego. Estaba tan cerca que el proyectil atravesó el fuselaje del helicóptero sin explotar. No había tenido tiempo de cargarse, así que lo único que hizo fue entrar por un costado y salir por el otro sin tocar a nadie, dejando un par de boquetes simétricos. Pero lo que sí hizo daño fue el incesante fuego de ametralladora desde el nido situado entre las rocas salpicadas de nieve. Tampoco hirió a nadie de a bordo, pero destrozó los controles del aparato al horadar la cubierta de vuelo. Gracias a la habilidad y la genialidad del piloto, pocos minutos después el moribundo Chinook ganaba altura y recorría cuatro kilómetros hasta encontrar un sitio más seguro donde proceder a un aterrizaje forzoso. Los otros dos helicópteros se retiraron también. Pero un SEAL, el suboficial Neil Roberts, que se había desenganchado de su cable de amarre, resbaló en un charquito de fluido hidráulico y cayó a tierra. Resultó ileso, pero inmediatamente fue rodeado por miembros de Al Qaeda. Los SEAL jamás abandonan a uno de los suyos, esté vivo o muerto. Poco después de aterrizar regresaron en busca de Roberts, al tiempo que pedían refuerzos por radio. Había empezado la batalla de Shah-i-Kot. Duró cuatro días, y se saldó con la muerte del suboficial Neil Roberts y otros seis estadounidenses. Había tres unidades lo bastante cerca como para acudir a la llamada: un pelotón de SBS británicos por un lado y la unidad de la SAD por el otro; pero el grupo más numeroso era un batallón del 75 Regimiento de Rangers. Hacía un frío endemoniado, estaban a muchos grados bajo cero. La nieve, empujada por el viento incesante, se clavaba en los ojos. Nadie entendía cómo los árabes habían podido sobrevivir en aquellas montañas; pero el caso era que allí estaban, y dispuestos a morir hasta el último hombre. Ellos no hacían prisioneros ni esperaban serlo tampoco. Según testigos presenciales, salieron de hendiduras en las rocas, de grutas invisibles y nidos de ametralladoras ocultos. Cualquier veterano puede confirmar que toda batalla degenera rápidamente en un caos, y en Shah-i-Kot eso sucedió más rápido que nunca. Las unidades se separaron de su contingente, los soldados de sus unidades. Kit Carson se encontró de repente a solas en medio de la ventisca. Vio a otro estadounidense (pudo identificarlo por lo que llevaba en la cabeza: casco, no turbante) también solo, a unos cuarenta metros. Un hombre vestido con túnica surgió del suelo y disparó contra el soldado con su lanzagranadas. Esa vez la granada sí estalló; no dio en el blanco sino que explotó a los pies del soldado.

It will be long before everyone is wiped out. People live in war time, they always have. There was terror down through history - and the men who saw the Spanish Armada sail over the rim of the world, who saw the Black death wipe out half of Europe, those men were frightened, terrified. But though they lived and died in fear, I am here; we have built again. And so I will belong to a dark age, and historians will say "We have few documents to show how the common people lived at this time. Records lead us to believe that a majority were killed. But there were glorious men." And school children will sigh and learn the names of Truman and Senator McCarthy. Oh, it is hard for me to reconcile myself to this. But maybe this is why I am a girl - - - so I can live more safely than the boys I have known and envied, so I can bear children, and instill in them the biting eating desire to learn and love life which I will never quite fulfill, because there isn't time, because there isn't time at all, but instead the quick desperate fear, the ticking clock, and the snow which comes too suddenly upon the summer. Sure, I'm dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, into my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Perhaps that would help, to synthesize my ideas into a philosophy for me, now, at the age of eighteen, but the clock ticks, ah yes, "At my back I hear, time's winged chariot hovering near." And I have too much conscience, too much habit to sit and stare at snow, thick now, and evenly white and muffling on the ground. God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint.

Mi padre era un hombre decente. O, por lo menos, eso que llamaríamos un hombre decente: alguien que, en las pequeñas circunstancias de la vida, prefiere no complicarse con las molestias de la indecencia. Uno que, por ejemplo, si al salir de la panadería desecubre que se lleva, además de las facturas, pebetes y miñones, un cuarto kilo de cuernitos sin pagar, vuelve al local, compone una sonrisa tímida, turbada - que le sale perfecta- e intenta un chiste malo para decirle a la dueña que ha vuelto porque es un hombre decente: -¡Vengo a denunciar un robo! Le dirá, por ejemplo, y que él es el delincuente que acaba de llevarse el cuarto de cuernitos sin previo abono de su precio estipulado. O sea: mi padre era un hombre cómodo, que nunca quiso tomarse el trabajo de ver qué haía un poco más allá de la decencia, de la conveniencia, de los buenos modales y las reglas morales. La decencia, en general, es cuestión de falta de imaginación o de pereza, y mi padre tenía, por lo que sé, bastante de las dos. Aunque, por supuesto, no sé qué habría pasado si alguna vez la tentación de la indecencia lo hubiera asaltado en serio, armada de una buena recompensa. Es fácil ser decente cuando te cuesta un cuarto de cuernitos; de allí en más se hace más y más difícil, hasta que llega al punto en que cada cual encuentra su temperatura de fundido. Si no hay metal que resista el calor pertinente, ¿por qué habría hombres o mujeres? Es - si existen tales cosas - una de esas verdades innegables; sabiéndolo, ¿no es preferible ahorrarse el fuego de decenas, cientos de grados celsius, y fundirse cin tanto despilfarro?

Pongámonos de acuerdo en qué es la igualdad, pues si la libertad es la cima, la igualdad es la base. La igualdad, ciudadanos, no es que toda la vegetación esté enrasada, una sociedad de hierbas largas y de robles bajos; un vecindario de envidias que se castren entre sí; es, en el ámbito civil, que todas las aptitudes tengan las mismas oportunidades; en el ámbito político, es que todos los votos valgan lo mismo; en el ámbito religioso, es que todas las conciencias tengan los mismos derechos. La Igualdad tiene un órgano: la instrucción gratuita y obligatoria. El derecho al alfabeto, por ahí es por donde hay que empezar. La escuela primaria obligatoria para todos; la escuela secundaria brindada a todos, ésa es la ley. De la escuela idéntica sale la sociedad igual. ¡La enseñanza, sí! ¡Luz! ¡Luz! Todo viene de la luz y todo va a la luz. Ciudadanos, el siglo XIX es grande, pero el siglo XX será feliz. Y ya no pasará nada que tenga que ver con la historia vieja; no tendremos ya que temer, como ahora, una conquista, una invasión, una usurpación, una rivalidad a mano armada de naciones, una interrupción de la civilización que dependa de un matrimonio de reyes, de un nacimiento en el seno de las tiranías hereditarias, de un reparto de pueblos obra de un congreso, de un desmembramiento porque se hunda una dinastía, de un combate entre dos religiones que choquen de frente como dos carneros del reino de la oscuridad, en el puente de lo infinito; no tendremos ya que temer la hambruna, ni la explotación, ni la prostitución fruto de la desesperación ni el desvalimiento, ni la miseria fruto del paro, ni el patíbulo, ni la espada, ni las batallas, ni todos los robos de salteador del azar en el bosque de los acontecimientos. Casi podríamos decir que ya no habrá acontecimientos. Los hombres serán felices. El género humano cumplirá su ley como cumple la suya el globo terrestre; se restablecerá la armonía entre el alma y el astro; el alma gravitará en torno a la verdad igual que el astro en torno a la luz.