…SPOILER WARNING…

a.88

you look guilty. Do you think this is your situation?
It could be, but you look guilty too. Why, do you have a situation?
Possibly… how dangerous is your situation?
Well, how dangerous does that look? Because this is our situation, now.

a.89

laughter. This is really weird! So weird. Whoah.
Fancy meeting you here.
Well this certainly is making the most of a visit.

…SPOILER WARNING…

a.86

A callsign request comes in over the ppcd bands
Toller quickly explains his C-D alter ego, which has developed while left alone in the cockpit
he uses the night vigilante voice effect so no one knows how young he is
Asks Wendel if he can answer
Curious, she says yes go ahead!

Toller proceeds to humor counsel and wisecrack someone into shipshape
while some of his other… fans? … chime in

a.87

this was still a strange and puzzling idea to Uixtr, and most Vedani, but it was also the basis on which they were able to co-engineer a massive covert destabilizing attack on an empire that had exhibited increasing callous aggression toward their appearances, and even done horrific things to its own people in preventing possible liaison. Wherever the power lay, the Vedani had decided it was in the wrong hands, and that they themselves were in danger because of it.

…SPOILER WARNING…

a.84

Do you think they use toilets?
If they did, they wouldn’t need to lift some from us, would they? They could get their own.
I really hope we’re not furnishing prison cells, much less our own.
What if we are?
Then we’ll do something about it, maybe. For now, second life ain’t too bad.

a.85

“Permission to capture with me onboard. Phi Protocol.” Verne ‘Bobcat’ Trosper understood that this meant the escalating golden opportunity spiral for chase/capture/kill with dependently sequential growing activation energies for each action.

…SPOILER WARNING…

a.81

add three planes and take a tangent.
now reversed reverse acceleration parabolic, RRAP, which spells Wrap, which is not done in Reverse.
– I remember.
Okay, and we have to overshoot (to use the correct traffic entry for the sidespace)
and then you take a plane, a minor tangent, and Wrap. And we call that a cloverleaf.

“I can technically do each of those things.”

“Now do them one after the other. I believe in you.”

a.82

Easy cruisin, constant movin.” Derringer had coined this phrase a while ago for certain recurring job phases, those times when he was supposed to come up with something out of thin air with no clue. Well, the air gets thinner if you lean into the wind. Inspiration can arrive more easily, so long as you keep paying attention to what you’re really supposed to be doing. That’s what he was telling himself now.

a.83

I can use any of these seven reagent powders, and then some deionized water.

I have the DI water, of course. Will it help you if I can supply a handful each of these three?

Yes, and your mixer is working?

I’ll mix them up for you. I only have a standard spouted feeder bowl…

Soleil nodded that this would be fine. “While you do that, can I use your air brush?

Sure. It’s a little big for that.” The smallest spacecraft anyone expected to service was three to four times the size of this funny little sled.