Hull Accent Quotes

So it wasn’t Peggy I was interested in, not her tears, her crumpled looks. She reminded me too much of myself. It was her comforters I marvelled at. How they seemed to bow down and declare themselves in front of her. What had they been saying? Nothing in particular. All right, they said. It’s all right, Peggy, they said. Now, Peggy. All right. All right. Such kindness. That anybody could be so kind. It is true that these young men, brought to our country to train for bombing missions on which so many of them would be killed, might have been speaking in the normal accents of Cornwall or Kent or Hull or Scotland. But to me they seemed unable to open their mouths without uttering some kind of blessing, a blessing on the moment. It didn’t occur to me that their futures were all bound up with disaster, or that their ordinary lives had flown out the window and smashed on the ground. I just thought of the blessing, how wonderful to get on the receiving end of it, how lucky and undeserving was that Peggy.

How will we seize Wensan’s ship?” a Herrani asked. “We’ll climb its hull ladder.” Kestrel laughed. “You’ll be picked off one at a time by Wensan’s crew as soon as they realize what’s happening.” The room went still. Spines stiffened. Arin, who had been facing the Herrani, turned to stare at Kestrel. The look he gave her prickled the air between them like static. “Then we’ll pretend we’re their Valorian sailors who have been on shore,” he said, “and ask for our launches to be winched up to the deck from the water.” “Pretend to be Valorian? That will be believable.” “It will be dark. They won’t see our faces, and we have the names of sailors on shore.” “And your accent?” Arin didn’t answer. “I suppose you hope that the wind will blow your accent away,” Kestrel said. “But maybe the sailors will still ask you for the code of the call. Maybe your little plan will be dead in the water, just like all of you.” There was silence. “The code of the call,” she repeated. “The password that any sane crew uses and shares with no one but themselves, in order to prevent people from attacking them as you so very foolishly hope to do.” “Kestrel, what are you doing?” “Giving you some advice.” He made an impatient noise. “You want me to burn the ships.” “Do I? Is that what I want?” “We’ll be weaker against the empire without them.” She shrugged. “Even with them, you won’t stand a chance.

I need to name you,” I tell the rock. “The hell you do.” “I’m thinking . . .” “Already got a name,” the rock says. “. . . oh, but that’s too obvious.” I laugh. I laugh hard. It’s the first time I’ve laughed in so long that all my emotional triggers, which have only known sobbing, mix some tears in with the laughter. “Don’t you fucking dare,” the rock says. “I’m going to call you . . .” “I’VE GOT A NAME!” “. . . Rocky.” Rocky stares at me. It’s more of a glare, really. I start laughing again. Damn, it feels good. “You’re the worst human I’ve ever met,” Rocky says. I wipe the tears from my cheeks. “I think maybe when the supply shuttle comes, I’ll just keep you. Not tell the labcoats about you.” “That’s called kidnapping, you sadistic ape.” This makes me laugh some more. It’s the accent. It kills me. “Are you stoned?” Rocky asks. And this is too much. I double over and clutch my shins, there in the command pod, not a stitch of clothing on, laughing and crying and wheezing for breath, fearing I might not be able to stop, that I’ll die like this, die from so much joy and mirth, while debris from a destroyed cargo ship peppers the hull and cracks into the solar array, and ships full of people navigate through space at twenty times the speed of light, narrowly avoiding this great reef of drifting rocks, and all because I’m here, because I’m holding it together, this trained and hairless monkey in outer space.