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“I can’t fight pirates without coffee.
“They’re all fucking men,” she said. “Excuse me?” Soren said. “The generals. They’re all fucking men.” “I thought Souther was the only—” “I don’t mean that they all fuck men. I mean they’re all men, the fuckers.
Errinwright’s eyes shifted, like he was reading in the air. It was something he did when he was thinking hard.
He wore his age like a statement that fighting the ravages of time and mortality was beneath his notice.
She shifted to look at the Buddha. “Fat lot of help you were, you smug bastard,” she said. The statue, being only a statue, didn’t reply.
put his hand terminal on the desk beside it. “You could just send me a fucking copy,” Avasarala said. “More dramatic this way, ma’am,” Soren said. “Presentation is everything.”
Do not underestimate his capacity to fuck things up.”
“These cunts are digging into my grandma time,” she said. “The price of power,”
Avasarala looked up, rage-faced. Kiki stood in the doorway leading to the yard, caught between fear and delight. “Did you just make a mess in my house?” Avasarala asked. Pale-faced, the girl nodded. “Do you know what happens to bad children who make a mess in their nani’s house?” “Do they get tickled?” “They get tickled!” Avasarala said, and bolted for her.
“Um. Amos?” Holden said. “Did you just give him a loaded gun?” “Doc needs to go, Cap’n,” Amos said with a shrug. “So I’m thinking he should probably go.” Prax saw the look that passed between Holden and Naomi. “We might want to talk about that decision-making process, Amos,” Naomi said, shaping the words carefully. “You betcha,” Amos said. “Soon as we get back.”
A world no longer of the haves and the have-nots, but of the engaged and the apathetic.
His tragedy was just one among dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. By the time the cascade had run all the way out, maybe millions. When death grew that large, it stopped meaning anything.
“Political briefs never capture the really important things,” the bobble-head said. “Tell me what you think.” I think you haven’t read the fucking briefs, Avasarala thought. Not that I can really complain.
“You’re doing fine work, Avasarala. Damn fine work.” “I can’t tell you what that means coming from you, sir,” she said with a smile. “You’d fire me.”
For Holden, the most awful part was how calm she was. She never raised her voice, never sounded angry. Instead, infinitely worse, there was only a resigned sadness.
Before, she could comfort herself with the idea that the universe was empty of intent. That all the terrible things were just the accidental convergences of chance and mindless forces. The death of the Arboghast was something else. It was intentional and inhuman. It was like seeing the face of God and finding no compassion there.
“Anything that kills me has already killed everyone else. I was born to be the last man standing. You can count on it.”
“Bobbie,” Avasarala said, her face not quite a frown. “Are my stories about my beloved grandchildren boring you?” “Yeah,” Bobbie replied. “They really are.”
“She’s got a fine daddy, Doc. You give a shit, and that’s more than a lot of people ever do.”
It had been a failure, but it was a failure he understood, and that made it a victory.
War. Slaughter. Death. All the violence that Errinwright and his men—and she felt certain they were almost all of them men—were embracing, they were drawn to because it was comforting. And they were scared.
“And what’s with the potty mouth?” “Part of her charm,” Bobbie said.
“I’ve read your psych profile. I know all about your ‘everyone should know everything’ naive bullshit. But how much of the last war was your fault, with your goddamned endless pirate broadcasts? Well?” “None of it,” Holden said. “Desperate psychotic people do desperate psychotic things when they’re exposed. I refuse to grant them immunity from exposure out of fear of their reaction. When you do, the desperate psychos wind up in charge.”
The mechanic, Amos Burton. Implicated in several murders, indicted, never tried. Took an elective vasectomy the day he was legally old enough to do so.
“If life transcends death, then I will seek for you there. If not, then there too.”
He was waiting for her on the landing pad in his best suit with a spray of fresh lilacs in his hand.
“My parents are racists,” Holden said to Naomi later that night. She lay curled against his side, her face against his ear. One long brown leg thrown across his hips. “Okay,” she whispered.
