“The people who have power over you are weak too. They shit and bleed and worry that their children don’t love them anymore. They’re embarrassed by the stupid things they did when they were young that everyone else has forgotten. And so they’re vulnerable. We all define ourselves by the people around us, because that’s the kind of monkey we are. We

IF LIFE TRANSCENDS DEATH, THEN I WILL SEEK FOR YOU THERE. IF NOT, THEN THERE TOO.

There was no better way to seem trustworthy than to be liked by a dog, and there was no better way to convince a dog to like you than bribery.

Chrisjen Avasarala was dead.

A hundred people, more or less, waiting for a tube car on a moon above a planet that circled a sun that hadn’t born them, and jockeying to be the first ones through the door so that they could get a good seat. Maybe the most human thing possible.

Dreams were fragile things to build with. Titanium and ceramic lasted longer.

In a fight like this, unless you’re willing to lose everything to win, you lose it all by losing.”

Hundreds of drive plumes arced in shallow curves or wide, spreading like dust in a high wind. The siege of Laconia had begun.

Everything they were trying to interact with here had been waiting since humanity had been a kinky idea that two amoebas came up with.