Monday November 29, 2010
Book 12: Force Multiplication — Part I: Black and White

Transcript

TITLE: BOOK 12: FORCE MULTIPLICATION

Hand-delivery of a wedding invitation drops Schlock, Bunni, Para, Legs, and Tailor into the middle of a drug war.  They didn't start it, but they just might end it.

NARRATOR: He sees scattered leaves behind him, each leaf a memory, a loose page in the book of his life.

NARRATOR: Captain Kaff Tagon, career mercenary, hasn't the poetry in him to describe memory as blown leaves, though he has shredded a book or two in his day.

The haphazard fluttering mimics what passes for an index in his mind.  Memory is ordered not by chronology, but by relationships.

The drawing of a weapon is related to every other unholstering.

NARRATOR: The loss of one friend contains the essence of the loss of every friend.

NARRATOR: Military life is long stretches of boredom punctuated by brief bursts of panic.  Mercenaries adjust the panic-to-boredom ratio in favor of more panic.

Naturally, the panic is remembered more vividly.

NARRATOR: He may be no poet, but Tagon does see the patterns in his memories.

TAGON: Does my memory have a budget problem?  Some of those panels were in black-and-white.

PETEY: Good.  You were paying attention.