TITLE: BOOK 16: BIG, DUMB OBJECTS
Maxim 24: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun.
NARRATOR: The mercenary warship Broken Wind teraports into Sol System.
She is just over five hundred meters long, and at least ten million years old.
Her hull, the product of a long-lost manufacturing process, cannot be valued using mundane monetary units.
IAFA: We are in and scanning, Commodore.
battleplate: *printed* POPIGAI
NARRATOR: She's not "priceless," but her replacement cost is most easily measured in large multiples of gross national product.
IAFA: The LZ is clear, but we are being very closely monitored.
CDRE TAGON: Enjoy the attention, Iafa. We're the most expensive thing here, but only for the next fifteen seconds...
NARRATOR: Why count? If you have to ask how much it would cost you to build one, you can't afford it.