Steve Perry

Why is it people like us have to be the galaxy’s conscience?”

“If you can see a problem, and you have the ability to fix it, it becomes your responsibility. It’s always been that way.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it sucks.”

“You didn’t create it, you just pointed it out. If I thought shooting the messenger would fix it, you’d already be bleeding out.”

Well. You were allowed to be young and stupid, when you were young and stupid, and if it didn’t do you in, you might get older and wiser.

Okay, I need to go places and shoot people.

Desire, she realized, was a thick fog that could completely obscure reality.

War had a way of making carpe diem seem valid no matter what you wanted to seize...

Jo nodded. The Vastalimi were stoic about many things, death notwithstanding. People came and went, that was the way of it, and there was no need to be overly disturbed; nothing could be done to change the general pattern, only the individual ones. Everybody got onto the hoverbus, and eventually, everybody got off; the questions were, how long was the ride, and how did you leave?

The good old days always seemed better in distant memory than they had actually been at the time.

But was it not you who used to tell me that the more you knew, the better? That knowledge was the sharpest fang?

“So here we have the basic ingredients in the art of distraction,” Gunny said to Singh, as they walked toward the rendezvous point. “When in doubt, wait until dark, turn off the lights, and blow shit up.”

When you worked in a profession whose tools included guns and bombs, death was always on the menu; only a matter of time until the order you placed arrived...

Old enough to look as if he knew what to do, young enough to look as if he could do it.