Duel in the Dark Quotes

“Death is my wingman. He is always nearby, following me, shadowing my every move. I cannot shake him, and no evasive maneuver will break his lock on me. I cannot defeat him, no pilot can, so I have befriended him. I do not try to escape from him anymore. He will come for me in his own time…and until then, I will blast every enemy with the guts to show himself in front of me.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“Remember always the mantra, the grim verdict of the universe, that we now adopt as the central tenet of our own Alliance. Vae victis. Woe to the defeated.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“Go forth then, and be always the strongest. Attack before you are attacked. Defeat those who would be your masters. Reduce them to the servants they would make of you. Bring fear to all who would be your enemies.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“Tomorrow we may face destiny, we may fight and die and fall to the fires of perdition, but tonight is ours, and we drink and make merry.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“It always paid to be careful, even with people you trusted. Especially with those you trusted…they were often the ones who could hurt you the most.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“Olya “Lynx” Federov sat in the cockpit of her fighter. The Lightning-class attack craft that formed the mainstay of the Confederation’s fighter corps were sleek and powerful. The pilots of the fleet almost universally loved the design, save for one factor. The cockpits were too small, too cramped. But Federov didn’t care. She was slight in build, barely forty-five kilograms, and not much taller than a meter and a half. Her body was lithe, flexible. She’d wanted to be a dancer when she was younger, until she’d seen a squadron of fighters putting on a show on the vid. Flight had captured her imagination that day, and her life became a relentless pursuit of a slot at the Academy, one which saw success three days after her nineteenth birthday, when she received her billet in the following year’s class”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“I have ridden at the head of parades and stood before cheering throngs. And each time, amid the adoration and the chanting of my name, I have tried to remember those who served with me, the legions of brave men and women ignored by glory, whose only legacy for combat and struggle is pain and death.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“Yet, I question now the justice of men and women casting a nation into war when they have not themselves experienced it, or paid its terrible price. I do not long for a military dictatorship—far from it. We are surrounded by brutal regimes where freedom is a forgotten ideal. Yet, it sickens me to think of politicians who have never heard a shot fired making a decision that will send thousands of good men and women to hideous deaths.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“those too often unheralded men and women in the engine rooms and snaking access tubes…as much as any who serve, the true arbiters of victory.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark

“Yet, in the bowels of the ship, braving radiation and heat and deadly dangers, are the engineers. It is they who keep the gunners’ batteries working through damage and the stress of battle. It is they who give the captain the engine power he needs. Who ensure the admiral’s fleet is ready to do as he commands.”
― Jay Allan, Duel in the Dark