“Yeah, I wish we could skip this storyline crap,” Cruz said. “Bor-ing.” “See, this is exactly why you two always get killed within the first two minutes,” I said. “You never pay attention during the admiral’s briefing.” “No, we always get killed because of you, Leeroy Jenkins!” “I’ve asked you repeatedly to stop calling me that.”

One of the few perks of driving an ancient, rusted-out shit wagon was that it took real effort to make it look any less aesthetically pleasing than it already was.

From a purely tactical standpoint, using drones made a hell of a lot more sense than using manned (or aliened) ships and vehicles to wage an interplanetary war. Why risk the lives of your best pilots by sending them into combat? Now whenever I watched a Star Wars film, I found myself wondering how the Empire had the technology to make long-distance

If these were real alien attack drones, under the control of sentient beings living in the subsurface oceans of Europa, half a billion kilometers away, why would they fly and fight exactly like their videogame counterparts?

“The Test reveals things about a species that cannot be ascertained any other way—what your Earth scientists refer to as an ‘emergent property.’ ”

‘Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.’ ” I laughed and picked up the quote where she’d left off. “ ‘I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.’ ” “ ‘And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path,’ ” she continued. “ ‘Where the fear has gone there will be

“I built the Armada,” it said. “And this entire time you were fighting against yourselves.

The icosahedron hovered in front of my ship. Then it began to speak to me. “I am the Emissary,” it said. “I am an intelligent machine created by a galactic community of peaceful civilizations known as the Sodality.”

A split second later, my view of the sky was filled with another familiar sight: a swarm of Glaive Fighters firing in all directions, including directly at me. Thanks to Lex’s prodding, mine was the first Interceptor drone to be launched. Which meant I was also currently the only aerial target for the enemy.