Saturday May 17, 2003
Note: The curious ring-shaped structure in the background is not a Niven-style ringworld, a Banks-esque wheelworld, nor a Bungie-be-plagiarized Halo. It's not a super-weapon, and it does not have hordes of mutagenic semi-sophonts living on it, eager to feed themselves to the maw of the business-end of your platoon in an orgy of plasmariffic destruction™. It's a wormgate.

"What," you ask, "is a wormgate doing light-years from an inhabited system?"

The answer is simple. It's in transit. The gatekeepers are expanding their network in this region, and the wormgate was flying by as this picture of the Serial Peacemaker was snapped (err... drawn. Whatever). That glow in the middle is NOT a starfield... it's the wormgate mechanism being used to feed hydrogen into a magnetic bottle, where it is then fused, charge-coupled, and ejected as part of a crude plasma drive.

"Why," you ask, "is something with the mass of Uranus being flown with ancient plasma drive technology?"

We refuse to answer that question. You just asked it so you could use the phrase "mass of Uranus." Admit it.

Book 3: Under New Management
 Part II: Tonight's Top Story
Saturday May 17, 2003

Transcript

Jevee Ceeta:I'd have thought you'd be excited about dropping out of sight for a while.
Jevee Ceeta:No orders from high above, no ulterior motives to worry about. Just you and your thugs sneaking about, looking for ways to turn Might into Money.
Jevee Ceeta:Come on, admit it. . . This is what you really wanted. It'll be a return to your good old days of mirth and mayhem.
Jevee Ceeta:The only difference, of course, will be that I'm in command keeping the mayhem on a leash.
Tagon:And putting a choke collar on the mirth, I'm sure.