“Sagan, you menace. How hard would it have been to show up as yourself?” The guard was grinning. It was my old mentor, Colonel Beridze.
“I never show up as myself,” I said, raising one eyebrow. “It’s unprofessional.”

I examined her calculations. Below was a diagram, as if she thought I needed it in actual pictures to understand it. There was the boxy launch approaching on the tangential trajectory. There were Foulet and me, two stick figures in bubble helmets, continuing on the same line while the launch peeled away. And in the last picture, both figures were grabbing onto the station with their hands.

Maggie 🥰

“Whatever you’re planning, give it up. You’re walking out of here with knowledge nobody else has, which can do your station good. Be content with that.” “I don’t work like that, Pidge,” I said. “I need to get even with somebody.” She cocked her head. “Do you live rent free in their head?” What an Earther expression. Everything they said somehow circled back to money. “No. So that’s why my fist needs to live rent free in her face. Ideally.”

😂😂😂

“You think Earth Force is going to let you,” he made dramatic air quotes, “‘poke around’?”

God I love Marron 😂

Uncorked, the water swirled down the sink. That had been too easy. The guard was still standing outside the bathroom, and I hadn’t had the slightest chance to go looking for Brit’s father. “This is a bad one,” I called through the door, as I started taking apart the sink’s U-bend. “It’ll be a while.” The woman let drop an oath. After a minute she put her head in. “Don’t go wandering around,” she said. “The minute you’re finished you come to me. I’ll be in the office by the back door.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said quickly. Did Earthers say ma’am? She narrowed her eyes. “You’re a funny one, aintcha?” “They tell me so, ma’am.”

Lucy is bad at a lot of things (chief among them getting the girl) but she is so hilariously good at handling disgusting messes and also having The Audacity.

“What would you give me, if I could somehow get him out?” I blurted. “What?” she asked, incredulous. “Ten thousand Earth dollars was beyond my resources. But I’ve been involved in a prison break before.” By some definitions of involved, if you counted present but mostly trying to sabotage it. “You could pay me in intelligence.”

I'm cackling in an unseemly manner

Sagan's character arc currently: "Gotta do everything my damn self around here."

I stood, arms folded, wondering if she was actually coming back out. At last she reemerged with one hand full of metal bits and the other full of potatoes. I raised an eyebrow. “You’ll see,” she said, and started laying things out on the table. I moved closer, intrigued despite myself. I felt she was trying to offer me a gift, though I couldn’t fathom what kind of gift metal bits stuck into potatoes might make. She lined the potatoes in a row, stabbed each twice with different metal bits, and then attached each tortured potato with wires. The last wire wrapped around a tiny light bulb, the kind batteries use to show they’re charged, and then back to the first potato. When the last wire went on, she looked up at me and beamed. Faintly the light bulb began to glow. The hair rose on the back of my neck. The most forbidden thing there was, coming out of a row of potatoes. I shook my head in confusion. “But—how?” “It isn’t magic,” said Pidge. “Well. I lie. It is. But magic is in everything. There is energy, potential, life in a potato. In the sun or a hill or a piece of candy. We transmute it into electricity to make it usable, no different than turning a log into a fire. There’s electricity in your heart, in your brain. But they treat it like it’s evil.” Her lips pursed.

How can you not love her??

Pidge is also the best. Sheila is cursed by her own talents in this regard because her beta readers get super attached to characters who are supposed to be one-offs. 😂

“That’s the trouble with selling information. You have to buy it sight unseen, because once you’ve seen it, you no longer have to pay.”

disgrace myself by showing it. “Didi sent me,” I said, by way of introduction. “Lucy Prescott.” She raised an eyebrow, surveying me. “Prescott-Chin, I think.” My lips thinned. She was Earth Force intelligence, of course she knew things, but I didn’t like it. “Is that important?” “Wanted for high treason, mutiny, desertion, hijacking, piracy, assault on a superior officer, and incitement to revolt.” She frowned slightly. “What’s the difference between mutiny and hijacking?”

😂😂😂

I want to quote all the funny and interesting things about the President of the Maldives but that would be an entire chapter. 😂

She has always had tiny chainsaws in her heart

I had been to Luna before—a utilitarian, cheerless place—but Earth’s orbital station was nothing like that. The place was painted in bright colors, with advertisements on every available surface. Some of them were purely ugly: giant hamburgers big enough to see the globs of grease, sushi rolls the size of hay bales.

A speech bubble that says "I am average American man I work fifteen hours in hamburger mine to buy one rock and roll disk" above a picture of Kirk and Spock in the time travel episode The City On The Edge of Forever

I took a drink of the tea. It was ghastly, oversteeped and bitter. “Did you make this yourself, my prince?” He shook his head. “No. My valet brought it.” “Fire them,” I said shortly. “One of the highest servants in the land, and they can’t make tea?” “He came highly recommended,” the prince ventured. “That person hates you.” I got up, went inside, and poured the tea in the bathroom sink. Then I started searching the prince’s bedroom for clues. I wasn’t here for this, but a spy never really goes off duty.

Still one of my favorite meet cutes of all time

I love Moira's voice so much. Massive L for Lucy managing to fumble this bad bitch.

NSA Brad is currently grappling with his recent ADHD diagnosis, which he got by being stuck in the whistle chat after being forced to follow the romance authors there.

he would like to get back to the monster fucking, I'm sure.

As the launch ducked under a shredded piece of sail, I caught the name and flag on the side. Mauna Loa, an Earth ship. “Hope her batteries are the same as ours,” I muttered.

Apollo 13: never forget 😂

I thought that over. I knew a lot of Founders were fussy about intermarrying with commoners, but I also knew Founders tomcatted around as much as anybody else. Hell, half the planet was surely descended from Founder byblows at this point.

CORDELIA YOU CAN'T JUST SAY THAT AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

"Let me guess. You went to the village school and finished at sixteen. The teacher told you there was no point in applying for college. The highest math you got was how to keep an imaginary budget, in which your pay was twice what you've ever gotten and your rent was half what you've ever paid."

Excuse me, waiter, there's social commentary in my speculative fiction! 😂

He wheeled his chair backward half a turn, taking his elbow off my desk. “I won’t,” he said. “No good has ever come of a third person coming along to carry tales.”

Those are some very selective scruples 😂😂😂

“I don’t arrange my love life for your benefit,” I said tartly, keeping my eyes on the telegram I was supposed to be writing.
“Well, you sure don’t seem to be happy either.”

I love Marron

“I know why you feel like you have to try. Just—think of me for a moment. Think how I would feel if something happened to you, and me not there to cut to pieces the person that hurt you.”

do what you need to do to cope xo

Screenshot of a Facebook messenger conversation. Blue text on the right reads: I keep wanting to look things up on the Imperial Mars fandom wiki so I can keep track of minor characters (laughing emoji reaction) This is a threat White text on the left reads: Oh my god I want a wiki (laughing emoji reaction)

“I’ll take Lucy with me,” he said. “She saved me last time. You know I’ll be safe with her.”
I sighed. She did have a record of adequately looking after my husband for me.

And Stephen King says not to use adverbs 😂😂😂

"I leaned over, tucking his long hair behind his ear so I could read over his shoulder."

Sagan is such a fake idgafer. Bestie, I can see you yearning.

"I took the battery from him. It was a smallish package, about the size of a book."

Moira Singh 🤝 Gideon Nav 🤝 Me

Believing in our hearts that the platonic ideal of a book is about a half folio

A book cover reading Imperial Mars Book Three Under False Colors Sheila Jenné The gold text is overlaid on an image of a planet with sort of pearlescent continents and light blue oceans.

My bestie, @jennelikejennay.bsky.social, recently published the conclusion of her Imperial Mars trilogy after many trials and tribulations. I did a live read of the first two books over on The Site Formerly Known As Twitter, but it's only gotten worse in the last couple years so here we are.

Two kittens are snuggling on an unmade bed

Caturday cuteness

I've been holding the line on the kitchen counters so far 😅