We need no technological assistance. Hkh'Rkh capabilities and engineering is unsurpassed. Yaargraukh managed to keep his tongue from writing out in a… - Charles E. Gannon

Zkhee’ah Drur the Elder had once observed that while one is yet alive to complain of misfortune, the greatest of all misfortunes has not yet occurred. But this turn of affairs seemed very close to disproving that ancient axiom.

No matter which images of battle and carnage came to haunt him, no matter which specific terror rose up through them, the lessons they rehearsed were always the same:
There’s no such thing as certainty.
Control is an illusion.
Death and destruction descend the moment you forget to watch for them.
That was what two years of intermittent war had taught him. And once you learned those lessons, you didn’t just remember them: you lived them, moment to moment.

And here are the wages you must pay in order to climb the political ladder, you foolish sod. You’ve got to do the dirty work that others have ordered. I’ve done it out of dubious patriotism. Let’s see if you’ll do it out of blind ambition.