Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3)

by James S.A. Corey

“Well, if we’re gonna be fair, it’s not really nothing,” Miller said, crossing his arms. “We know it ate a galaxy-spanning hive consciousness like it was popcorn, so that’s something. And we know it survived a sterilization that was a couple hundred solar systems wide.”

few people liked to paint this drive as a weakness. A failing of the species. Humanity as the virus. The creature that never stops filling up its available living space. Hector seemed to be moving over to that view, based on their last conversation. But Anna rejected that idea. If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they’d all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another’s fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She’d looked up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the swirls and eddies of a storm larger than her home world. She’d tasted water thawed from ice as old as the solar system itself. And it was that human dissatisfaction, that human audacity, that had put her there.

Heroism is a label most people get for doing shit they’d never do if they were really thinking about it.” Anna laughed at that. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that exact thing recently.”

No matter what they looked like, or what they chose to call Him, when a group of people called out to God together, they were one. Even if there was no God, or one God, or many gods, it didn’t matter. Faith, hope, and love, Paul had written, but the greatest of these is love. Faith and hope were very important to Anna. But she could see Paul’s point in a way she hadn’t before. Love didn’t need anything else. It didn’t need a common belief, or a common identity. Anna thought of her child and felt a rush of longing and loneliness. She could almost feel Nami in her arms, almost smell the intoxicating new-baby scent on her head. Nono the Ugandan and Anna the Russian had blended themselves together and made Nami. Not a mix, nothing so crude as that. More than just the sum of her parts and origins. A new thing, individual and unique.

“Just to check,” Holden said. “We’re throwing grenades into the place that controls the reactor?” “We are,” Bull said. “So the worst-case scenario?” “Worst-case scenario is we lose and Ashford kills the solar system,” Bull said. “Losing containment on the reactor and we all die is actually second worst.” “Never a sign things have gone well,” Holden said.

Anna nodded her head at the star field splashed across the wall. “So many stars,” she said. “Some of them might be ours someday.” “I wonder,” Hector replied, his voice low and sad. “I wonder if we should have them. God gave man the Earth. He never promised him the stars. I wonder if He’ll follow us out there.” Anna squeezed his hand again, and then let it go. “The God I believe in is bigger than all of this. Nothing we ever learn can be an attack on Him as long as that’s true.” Cortez gave a noncommittal grunt. “I want her to have them,” she said, pointing at the spray of light around her. “My little Nami, I want her to have all of that someday.” “Whatever she finds out there,” Cortez said, “just remember it’s the future you chose for her.” His words were full of hope and threat. Like the stars.