Captain, Amos said with mock surprise. Have you actually learned from your past? Is this a new thing you do now?
But, Bobbie? Really, really don’t die out there. No one lives forever, sir, Bobbie said, but as long as it doesn’t compromise the mission, I’ll try to live through it. Thanks.
But always there was the voice at the back of his head telling him that by joining the Rebellion he’d become less of a rebel than he’d ever been. Flying off to assault yet another impossibly well-defe...
But after a few decades, you come to a place where you realize that there’s really no difference between trying and not trying. I still travel. I still talk to people. Sometimes we talk about Jesus Ch...
Burton’s misfortune was to be born where and when he was, in a city of scars and vice, in an age when the division in the popular mind was between living on government-funded basic support or having a...
Bobbie kept talking. Seriously. Get me a gun, I'm a soldier. Get that suit for me, I'm a superhero.
Bobbie ignored the macho posturing. Everyone dealt with pre-combat jitters in their own way. Bobbie preferred obsessive list making. But flexing and threats were good too.
Belters had been a structural underclass fighting to have people on the inner planets even notice when they were dying.
Because we’re human, and humans are mean, independent monkeys that reached their greatness by killing every other species of hominid that looked at us funny.
Anyone can kill a planet from orbit, Holden replied. You don’t even need bombs. Just push anvils out the airlock. That thing out there could kill… Shit. Anything.
And the moral high ground is a lovely place, Marwick said, as if he were agreeing. It won’t stop a missile, though. It
And for a moment, he was tempted. In that hesitation between drawing breath and speaking, part of him wondered what would happen if he shed the patterns of history and spoke about himself as a man, ab...
Alien superweapons were used, Alex said, walking into the room, sleep-sweaty hair standing out from his skull in every direction. The laws of physics were altered, mistakes were made.
Alex took a high stool and ordered a whiskey. Little early in the day for celebration, the barkeep said as he poured. What’s the occasion? It turns out, Alex said, exaggerating his Mariner Valley draw...
Alex said. This is Medina Station under occupation by a bunch of splinter Martian military expats. It’s not Baltimore. Amos’ smile was as placid as always. Everywhere’s Baltimore.
Alex leaned forward, grabbing Basia’s hands in his own. It’s still on you. I will never live down not being the person my wife needed after she spent twenty years waitin’ for me. I can never make that...
A flock of softball-sized spiderlike things crawled through the corridor, leaving a slick sheen of glowing slime behind them. It wasn’t until he paused to knock one off the cart that he recognized the...
A few people liked to paint this drive as a weakness. A failing of the species. Humanity as the virus. The creature that never stops filling up its available living space. Hector seemed to be moving o...
A decent idea now is way better than a brilliant plan when it’s too late. I
When you got right down to it, humans were still just curious monkeys. They still had to poke everything they found with a stick to see what it did. The