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“The reason for the peculiar name could be found in the whimsical sense of humor of the early colonists who arrived on Deanna several decades in the past and found very little at all there to laugh at. Obsidian Crows might seem funny at first, unless you just happened to ride over one with your Jeepo five miles out of town and didn’t have a spare tire. Although there was a reasonable expectation of hitting one of these diminutive brutes on the roads, this did not happen nearly as often as you might think.”

“It did occur to him that perhaps he’d gone to the wrong Academy – the guys in the Space Fleet always had more interesting stories to tell at the spaceport bars. You know, tales about the dude who got vaporized in a plasma accident in the engineering section, or the fella who got turned into a blob of weird space jelly by some alien virus – or the time someone flew a starship into an astor-field at warp four by mistake (they were still trying to find the black box on that one). The Imperial Space Fleet’s recruiting office sure didn’t go around advertising ‘Join up, see the universe, meet interesting aliens and die screaming’, but it was known there were risks involved. It was part of the job after all, and yet somehow, they still got recruits signing up in droves. Yes, indeedy – the stories were far more interesting than his – took a load of ore to Gorda, took a load of mining equipment back to Tordrazil. Took a load of Florpavian Flame-birds to a zoo on Deanna, took a load of machinery to Salus. Picked up and dropped off a few passengers on the way. Still, Florpavian Flame-birds were a risky cargo… and damned tricky to transport – which is probably the only reason he’d had any entertainment at all on the last trip.”

“Nobody seems to know which came first; egg or chicken – except of course for agents of the Time Saving Agency – who can find out anything about, well – anything. The only trouble is, they aren’t talking – however, you can take it from me – they know. The answer to these and other puzzles are kept safe and secure behind fire-walls and thick security doors secured with, er – time-locks, where one could possibly find answers to many other troubling questions, and not all of them necessarily relating to chickens.”

“The passenger liner Ossifar Distana was one of the most luxurious of its kind in space anywhere. It ferried the cream of society across the void in opulence and style. Only the wealthiest could afford an apartment on this ship for a trip of any duration, even a short one around the proverbial block. Even the crew was obliged to pay rent.”

“Dollying the rest up is your baby. (Btw, did I mention it’s cheap?) Most of the procedures described can be done by virtually anyone with the parts currently residing on their drive-to-work banger. The rest are low-budget (cheap!) and can be carried out with household or garage tools. All of these are things that I did to one or more of the Beetles I’ve had.”

“Beetles were made from 1938, in pre-war Nazi controlled Germany. The few actual civilian cars that were produced were used as staff cars and propaganda tools. It is a well known fact that not one of the original civilian orders for the cars were ever fulfilled, at least until the 1960’s when a law suit brought about a settlement for a small number of successful claimants.”

“Corrigan crept up to the bar, cautiously moving around it. It looked like he was copying all the moves he’d seen in old cop movies and westerns, and doing it rather badly. He lowered the pistol. There was no one behind the bar. There was however, an open trapdoor. And that would mean the bounty hunter was - . “Don’t move!” Came Beck’s distant, slightly muffled, barked order. “My turn, I think!”

“Not many Ruminarii warships had ever been captured intact by any enemy, and so for those the Ruminarii “invited” aboard their vessels, this was usually a one-way sight-seeing trip. For those who really want to know, Ruminarii Hammerheads have an extensive corridor network, the interior walls are heavily decorated, savagely militaristic and inevitably, close together. He strode down one. Lesser ranks seeing him, fell to the deck and groveled like their fingernails depended on it. There was a chorus of shrieks and whimpers as he passed. When he arrived on the bridge, everyone was face down on the deck, each endeavoring to grovel lower than the next. Nothing like discipline to keep the crew in its place.”

“Sure. And you say hi to Dory, ‘k? C’mon Will – let’s get you to the Sheriff. I need a cold one.” “Yippee.” Said Will, not exactly brimming over with enthusiasm. Timaset Skooch reached across the table and packed the notes together. He counted them out too. Seven thousand credits! Then he scooped the coins and the (ugh) gold tooth into an empty glass for the waitress. Seven thousand credits! But what was the plastic slip under it all?”

“Imagine, if you will: A bright yellow star lit the darkness somewhere in deep space, accompanied by its rather dysfunctional family of nine deceptively ordinary-looking planets. During its enormously long lifetime many beings had named it from the far ends of distant telescopes, including it into numerous star clusters and constellations as they were perceived from their vantage points. Once, or maybe twice, creatures simply looked up into their own skies to name it from their own now long dead and deserted worlds. In more recent times, beings from a world that orbited a different sun far away gave it a name too – creatures that called themselves Human, who travelled here and settled on one of its inner planets. The planet they chose to make a new home on? They called that Deanna. They called the star Ramalama.”