Status Updates From Sir Dominic Flandry: The La...

Hindsight is always keen, isn't it, while foresight stays myopic, astigmatic, strabismic, and drunk.

“Well, how about a breather first, and getting acquainted? A girl who keeps a bedside beer cooler is a girl whose sound mind I want to know as well as her delectable body.”

"... but you've opened whole universes to me that I never guessed existed." He flushed. "If I ever gave any thought to such things, I self-righteously labeled them Vice.'"

"Which they are," Flandry put in. "What you bucolic types don't realize is that worthwhile vice doesn't mean lolling around on cushions eating drugged custard. How dismal! I'd rather be virtuous. Decadence requires application. But go on."

Crime is entirely a matter of degree. If you kill your neighbor and steal his property, you are a murderer and a thief. But if you gather together an army of lusty fellows in the name of honor and glory, kill a few million people, take their land, and hit up the survivors for taxes, then you are a conqueror and a hero, and your name goes into the history books.

The guard outside Walton's door was shocked. "Sir, my orders were to admit only you."

"One side, junior." Flandry picked up the marine by the gun belt and set him down a meter away. "The young lady is my portable expert on hypersquidgeronics. Also, she's pretty." He closed the door in the man's face.