Things changed, and they didn’t change back. But sometimes they got better.
The thinking behind each decision was lost now in a tangle of database hierarchies and complex reference structures. Finding something interesting was easy. It was all interesting on some level. Findi...
The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He’d read a poem many years before called The Death-Self, and he hadn’t understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his ps...
She was on their bed, her knees curled up toward her chest, her eyes closed, her hair spilling over the gel. She snored a little, soft animal sounds of peace and contentment.
Professionalism, Fred said. Building rapport. Establishing trust. She’s halfway convinced him that whoever he was working for was willing to crack the station open with him still inside it. Once he’s...
Ouch. Fuck. What’s that, Chief? Alex asked. Nothing. Just went a hundred kph when twenty would have done,
Need help on your way out? the guard asked. Naw, Amos replied and hoisted the box over one shoulder. I’m good at leaving.
Maybe he should have rallied, risen to the occasion like the rest of them. The truth was the thought made him tired. Shaddid
Lost cause. Amos will be murdered by space hookers, but at least he’ll die the way he lived.
Lopez reached into his pocket, took out a small packet of white lozenges, and popped one into his mouth. He didn’t offer one to Holden. Lopez’s pupils contracted to tiny points as he sucked the lozeng...
I’m rich in interpretation and poor in datasets,
If you fuck with him after this, I will end every piece of you.
High-functioning sociopaths, Dresden said with a nod. He seemed pleased to explain it. And extremely curious ones. As long as we kept them supplied with interesting problems to solve and unlimited res...
He looked at the cop. He’d known the man less than a day, didn’t trust him, and wasn’t sure he much liked him. And this was who he’d die with.
Frederick Lucius Johnson. Former colonel in Earth’s armed forces, Butcher of Anderson Station. Thoth Station now too. Unelected prime minister of the OPA. He had faced his own mortality a dozen times,...
Conspiracy theories come up whenever people feel like the universe is too random.
Cioran, bureaucratic heart of the Empire. Or if not heart, kidney. Maybe small bowel.
An idealist. The most dangerous kind of man there was.
We’re all going to lose each other eventually, and that’s been true since before we were a crew. That’s what being born means. Everything else is just specifics.
Things change, Alex said. And they don’t change back, she