“There are no nasty surprises,” Swift said, “only degrees of unpreparedness.” — Alastair Reynolds

Believe me, Kanu—the one thing you don’t do in emergencies is think things through. Thinking things through gets you a headstone and a nice epitaph. She thought things through. See how that worked out for her.

We have all made mistakes. The mark of intelligence is to learn from them, and not be bound by the errors of the past.

“And when do we abandon negotiation and start hitting each other with increasingly large sticks?” Ru said.

“Only when we’ve exhausted all the other options,” Vasin said.