James S. A. Corey

Just once I’d like to be rewarded for my optimistic view of humanity.

If Fred couldn’t build himself a peace treaty, the OPA would never win against the discipline and unity of an inner planet navy. But they would also never lose. War without end.

Well, what was history if not that?

And how would having the stars change anything?

From where he was, the fear had stopped being an emotion and turned into an environment.

I hate that it breaks down that way. Your side and mine. One of my teachers back in school always used to say that contagion was the one absolute proof of community. People could pretend there weren’t drug users and prostitutes and unvaccinated children all they wanted, but when the plague came through, all that mattered was who was actually breathing your air.

Some things stayed secrets even when you told them.

They fought and worked and devised intricate plans to buy more time. Basia had no doubt that they’d work just as hard to keep each other alive for even a few more minutes. It wasn’t something he’d ever had to think about before. But it did seem to be a microcosm of everything in life. No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get. Bought a little more with a lot of hard work.

Dead’s not good, but at least it’s simple.

“Still. Maybe some good can come out of it.”

“I admire your psychotic optimism.”

But, like so many things in life, when you come to the spot where you’re supposed to do the rituals, you do them.

Everything was an artifact of its function. That’s what made evolution so gorgeous.

That was the danger of being old and a politician. Habits outlived the situations that created them. Policies remained in place after the situations that inspired them had changed. The calculus of all human power was changing, and the models she used to make sense of it shifted with them, and she had to keep reminding herself that the past was a different place. She didn’t live there anymore.

“They say revenge is empty.”

“This is my first try at it,” Holden said. “Forgive me if my opinions on it are fairly unformed.”