Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

by Becky Chambers

I did not understand them fully. I did not see myself in them, and therefore it did not matter.

But as soon as he got his stripe, he turned into one of those people who equated being in charge with being outwardly stressed out.

She smiled – the kind of smile you gave someone when the circumstances sucked but you appreciated them being there.

He’d learned, in the past few tendays, that deciding ahead of time how a thing was going to go was setting yourself up for a faceplant.

If it was a matter of either getting his hopes up or glooming himself to the edge of going home – well then, hopes up it was.

Nothing had made him ready for the tangible presence of this once-mighty homesteader, torn to shreds by something so seemingly simple as one moment of air meeting vacuum.

The little bastards had shoved her in a cargo drone port, closed the door, and made her think they were going to pop the hatch.

She’d spent several days after trying to make Ky stop gleefully chanting ‘son of a bitch’

Aya took a breath. ‘I fucking hate them,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna kick all their asses.’

Someone had thrown Sawyer away. Like garbage. Like a thing unwanted, used up.

learn nothing of your subjects, and you will disrupt them. Learn something of your subjects, and you will disrupt them.