“That’s the worst thing about having chakaare like us around. We just wander off, find someplace you don’t know about, and hole up in it and get into all sorts of mischief that you know nothing about. And then we bill you for it. Dreadful.”“Dreadful. Is this the kind of thing that CSF might notice?”“Were we to get out of hand, I imagine very senior officers in CSF might need to be reassured, but not by you.”“Dreadful. Hypothetically, anyway.”

“Do we get to do assassinations?”“If we do, they never happened. You imagined them.”“Whoops. My trigger finger just slipped, Sarge. Honest.”

“Touch me again, chakaar, and I’ll ram this into your carotid artery.”“I haven’t got one.”“Then I’ll have to keep stabbing you until I find somewhere else that bleeds copiously.”

“Is it better to not get to know them?' 'No. It's not. It's sharking your responsibility, and it's disrespectful. Get to know them, and then you fully understand the price you're asking them to pay.”

“We have an understanding. I don’t laugh at his skirt, and he doesn’t rip my head off.”-Fi Skirata”

“Your boys okay?”“Tired, edgy, but giving it all they’ve got. One of ‘em has sworn to get Vau, another is having a love affair with a woman he shouldn’t even look at, I’m collecting waifs and strays like an animal shelter, and we nearly killed a treasury agent. But if I told you the really bad stuff, you’d think I have problems.”

“Scorch: "I think Sev might have an anger problem." Sev: "I think you have an intelligence problem.”