David Weber
45 Quotations from David Weber
| armorplast n. | 1993 On Basilisk Station xxviii. 347 Kilgore’s ears rang as a rifle bullet spanged off his armorplast helmet. |
| astrogation n. | 2005 We Few 46 Stars’re all you got to go by when you’re out in the beyond. And later, we had astrogation in school. Miners don’t always have beacon references to go by. I can pilot and steer by stellar location. |
| countergrav n. | 1999 On Basilisk Station 273 I’ll drop one of them with your main force, then use the counter-grav to swing the other north. |
| countergrav n. | 2015 Hell’s Foundations Quiver 46 The APCs were smaller and more readily concealable than assault shuttles, but they were also much slower. Even on counter-grav, they were uncompromisingly subsonic, capable of only about five hundred miles per hour, and Merlin preferred to have a supersonic dash capability in hand, just in case. |
| countergravity adj. | 1999 On Basilisk Station 111 The Admiralty Building was over a Manticoran century-and-a-half old and little more than a hundred stories tall, a modest little structure for a counter-gravity civilization, but that fireplace’s chimney bored up through thirty-odd stories of air shafts and ventilation ducting. |
| cyborging n. | 1997 In Death Ground iv. 57 His Orglons represented the obscene end-product of the unrestricted cyborging on which humankind had turned its back after some bad experiences in the twenty-first century: flesh and metal, neurons and silicon, blended into a soulless amalgam created long ago by a race that no longer knew or cared what its own original organic form might have been—if, indeed, that race could still be said to exist at all, after having merged its identity into that of its machines. |
| dirtball n. | 2002 Shiva Option 78 Until the last frigging Bug on that dirt ball is dead, we assume their defenses are at one hundred percent. |
| dirtside adv. | 2002 War of Honor lxix. 852 And can we really afford to have you sitting in a dirtside office as First Lord instead of in a fleet command? |
| dirtside adv. | 1996 Honor Among Enemies xxix. 381 At least she wasn’t forced to spend much time dirtside. |
| dirtsider n. | 1998 In Enemy Hands 463 Dirtsiders tended to think of starships as solid chunks of alloy wrapped around passages and compartments, but any professional spacer knew better. |
| empath n. | 1993 On Basilisk Station (1999) 8 'Cats rated a point-eight-three on the sentience scale, slightly above Beowulf’s gremlins or Old Earth’s dolphins, and they were empaths. Even now, no one had any idea how the empathic links worked, but separating one from its chosen companion caused it intense pain, and it had been established early on that those favored by a 'cat were measurably more stable than those without. |
| empathic adj. | 1993 On Basilisk Station (1999) 8 'Cats rated a point-eight-three on the sentience scale, slightly above Beowulf’s gremlins or Old Earth’s dolphins, and they were empaths. Even now, no one had any idea how the empathic links worked, but separating one from its chosen companion caused it intense pain, and it had been established early on that those favored by a 'cat were measurably more stable than those without. |
| energy weapon n. | 1996 Honor Among Enemies (1997) 488 Another light-second and a half, and she could bring the Manty under fire with her energy weapons. |
| galactography n. | 2006 In Fury Born lii. 667 Alicia couldn’t conceive of any rational reason to choose to live here, and not even Imperial Galactography knew why anyone had. |
| graser n. | 1999 On Basilisk Station 21 ‘How much broadside armament did it cost us?’ she asked after a moment. ‘All four graser mounts,’ McKeon replied, and watched her shoulders tighten slightly. |
| gravitics n. 2 | 1995 Flag in Exile (2001) 393 Once their drives burned out, the incoming missiles would be impossible to track on gravitics, and even Manticoran radar had a maximum detection range of little more than a million kilometers against such small targets. |
| impeller n. | 1993 On Basilisk Station ii. 27 The impeller drive created a pair of stressed gravity bands above and below a ship—a wedge, open at both ends, though the forward edge was for deeper than the after one—capable in theory of instant acceleration to light speed. Of course, that land of acceleration would turn any crew to gory goo; even with modern inertial compensators, the best acceleration any warship could pull under impeller was well under six hundred gravities, but it had been a tremendous step forward. |
| in-system adv. | 1997 In Death Ground (prologue) 7 Argive had been in-system for over six days now without detecting anything but lifeless worlds and what might be a second warp point just over three light-hours from the star. |
| light-century n. | 1998 Echoes of Honor xxxiii. 463 And that was what made the nervous serpent shift and slither in his belly as the digital display counted down towards the translation, because after a voyage of over a light-century and a half, it would take an error of only one five-millionth of a percent to give them all an egg’s-eye view of that stone wall. |
| light-hour n. | 2002 War of Honor 489 ‘Here’ proved to be a spot in space approximately five and a half light-hours from an unremarkable looking, planetless M8 red dwarf. |
| light-minute n. | 1996 Honor Among Enemies (1997) 269 Unfortunately, the bogies, whoever and whatever they truly were, were now only five light-minutes back. |
| light-second n. | 1996 Honor Among Enemies (1997) 488 Another light-second and a half, and she could bring the Manty under fire with her energy weapons. |
| light-week n. | 1996 Honor Among Enemies (1997) 334 I figure we'll clear the planetary hyper limit, pop into h-space and move a couple of light-weeks out, then come back in the same way we did for Sharon’s Star. |
| normal space n. | 1997 In Death Ground (prologue) 3 Survey Command lost more ships to accidents in normal space than on exploration duties. |
| outworld adj. | 2013 Shadow of Freedom xxiv. 285 And if I should happen to turn all suspicious and hand your out-world ass—if you’ll pardon my language—over to the Marshal Service with the recommendation that they just purely investigate the hell out of you? |
| planetless adj. | 2002 War of Honor 489 ‘Here’ proved to be a spot in space approximately five and a half light-hours from an unremarkable looking, planetless M8 red dwarf. |
| planetside adj. | 1993 On Basilisk Station (1994) 106 Merchant houses started establishing local planetside offices to manage their part of the network as it grew. |
| precog v. | 2015 Sword of South xi. 231 ‘That’s ridiculous! Wizards can’t pre-cog, Lentos, and not even a mage could pre-cog that far ahead! Or are you saying he fooled us about that, too?’ ‘What I’m saying is even more disturbing. He never outright lied about his ability to touch the mage talent, but he did say—and I quote from the records—“not even a wild wizard has the power of precognition.”’ |
| pressor beam n. | 1999 Hard Way Home (2000) 313 Lift towers locked down and threw up barrier panels of their own, and immensely powerful presser beams snarled to life. No one could have built an effective wall of pressers all around the resort, but the designers had stationed the generators at strategic points. |
| space v. 2 | 2001 Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington in D. Weber & E. Flint Changer of Worlds (2002) 86 She remembered all the times she and Academy friends had teased one another, humorously threatening to ‘space’ someone for some real or imagined misdeed, and it was no longer funny. |
| space dock n. | 2002 Ms. Midshipwoman Harrington in Changer of Worlds 42 As Captain Bachfisch’s after-dinner conversation with Commander Layson had suggested, much of War Maiden’s crew was new to the ship, for the cruiser had just emerged from an extensive overhaul period, and the Bureau of Personnel had raided her pre-overhaul crew ruthlessly while she was laid up in space dock. |
| spacehound n. | 1999 Apocalypse Troll i. 4 And there were barriers, still imperfectly understood, between the bands that meant cracking the wall was always risky. If a ship hit the wall just wrong or with the slightest harmonic in her translation field, she simply disappeared. She went acoherent, spread over a multitude of dimensions and forever unable to reconstitute herself, a thought which broke a cold sweat on the most hardened spacehound, for no one knew what happened inside the ship. Did the crew die? Did they go into some sort of stasis? Or did they gradually discover what had happened... and that they had become a galactic Flying Dutchman for all eternity? |
| Standard n. | 2001 March Upcountry (2002) 263 As long as they used Standard, no one was going to be able to know what they were talking about. |
| star system n. | 1993 On Basilisk Station (1997) 104 Under the terms of the Act of Annexation the Kingdom claimed the star system as a whole and established a protectorate over the Medusans but specifically renounced sovereignty over their planet. In effect, this entire planet is one huge reservation for the natives, with the exception of specific sites designated for off-worlder enclaves. |
| star system n. | 1996 Honor Among Enemies (1997) 222 I'd handed them over to the local governor and he'd assured me they'd be dealt with; eleven months later, they had a new ship and I caught them looting an Andy freighter in the very same star system. |
| stasis field n. | 1996 Heirs of Empire 158 ‘Those might be stasis emissions.’ She sounded unhappy at suggesting that, and Sean grunted. No stasis field could maintain itself from internal power, and there wasn’t enough available from the powered-down plants of the other facilities to sustain that many fields with broadcast power. |
| stun-gun v. | 2016 Shadow of Victory xxx. 293 Her damned dog was the only survivor—the bastards just stun-gunned it! |
| sublight adv. | 1996 Honor Among Enemies (1997) 152 They’d made the centuries-long voyage sublight, in cryo, only to discover that the original survey had missed a minor point about their new home’s ecosystem. |
| suited adj. | 1993 On Basilisk Station 313 Huge, blue-white sparks spat and glared about her, silent in the vacuum of the shattered drive compartment, and Boatswain MacBride grabbed one of her suited repair party and literally dragged the man into position. |
| tractor n. | 1993 On Basilisk Station (1997) 69 Her pilot completed his final approach, and the cutter shivered as Warlock’s tractors captured it. It rolled on its gyros, aligning itself with the heavy cruiser’s internal gravity as the brilliantly-lit cavern of Warlock’s boat bay engulfed them, then settled into the docking cradle. |
| unsuited adv. | 1994 Field of Dishonor (1997) 126 It'll simplify our boat traffic enormously, and with pressure in the bay galleries again, we won’t have to worry about the integrity of the emergency seals on CIC. That means the yard dogs can work unsuited in the compartment, which should cut a few days off the schedule for that, too. |
| vac-suited adj. | 1993 On Basilisk Station (1994) i. 15 Yard mechs swarmed over her in the dock’s vacuum, supervised by vacsuited humans, but most of the work seemed to be concentrated on the broadside weapon bays. |
| vacuum suit n. | 2002 Excalibur Alternative xi. 258 One of the Navy’s main construction docks dominated the scene, and Mugabi could just make out the bright, color-coded vacuum suits of the yard workers as they hovered about the mile-long hull of what would have been a new battlecruiser. |
| vessel n. | 2002 War of Honor 381 All of his vessels’ parking orbits had been carefully arranged to avoid any problems with wedge interference if it was necessary to bring up their impellers quickly. |
| vibroblade n. | 1999 What Price Dreams? in Worlds of Honor (2000) 155 She was the youngest person ever to discover an alien sentient species. She is also the only human ever to face a hexapuma armed only with a vibroblade belt knife and survive. |