Sublime

“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” I am sorry that I killed the fish though, he thought. Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have the harpoon. The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only

“I, Nicholas Martin Davis, Scion and heir of King Arthur Pendragon of Britain, the son of Uther Pendragon, wielder of Caledfwlch, the blade Excalibur, and first-ranked of the Round Table in the Shadowborn holy war, accept your Oath on behalf of our ancient Order.”

Shrunk from thirty teams to four after World War II, the UDTs’ narrow role of beach reconnaissance and demolition had devolved into a collage of extracurricular Navy assignments: collecting postblast radioactive water samples; exploding ship paths through Antarctic ice; even ignominiously standing duty as base lifeguards. Given this misuse—misuse

That’s not who he is. He’s defiant.

Chapter 2 The Sidelining of the Army’s Amphibious Soldier-Scouts and the Call-up of the Navy’s Second-String Sailors