Salvation Lost (Salvation Sequence #2)

by Peter F. Hamilton

The kind of thing that used to happen a hundred years ago, before asteroid mining and starflight turned rare materials into just plain old materials.

For all hir manners and smarts, sie was brittle and needy, which was a dangerous combination.

sure as whale shit fell deep,

It meant he went through sex partners like he was upgrading corporate-issue software. None of them ever lasted more than a couple of weeks before he was back hunting fresh meat.

They didn’t just talk; sentences were shrieked out with vocal cords turned up to eleven.

That belonged to something ancient, and not particularly benign.

Back then he’d been so much more decisive; age wasn’t turning out to be wisdom, just uncertainty.

Kohei knew it was completely hopeless, but even so, you followed procedure, did the job, and told yourself someone further up the command chain knew what the hell they were doing.

It was ritual for Gwendoline; she was always late. Proof of a full and rich life, just like employing humans as house staff. There was very little that Turings and robotics couldn’t do, and cheaper, but then it was never about cost. Gwendoline’s position meant she had a certain status to maintain.

The bleak gulf of depression inside was still there when he finished, threatening to pull him down.

Kandara pressed down on a smile. Callum’s basic decency made him such an easy read for her.

something it was never designed for.’ Johnston smiled faintly. ‘Sounds half-arsed to me.’ ‘Yeah, but half an arse is better than no arse at all, which is what Alpha Defence has now.

Without him realizing it, the fate of the old had crept up on him, and now he’d become the one who provided strategy and expected others to implement it – the one they all rightly bitched about in the pub after work. When did this happen to me?

A whole range of smartarse replies played across Dellian’s thoughts, but he resisted.

You can’t help the terminally stupid. If people hate government so much they don’t listen to official advice, they can’t expect government to bend over backwards to help them.’

Oooh, very relevant when I read that in 2020.

Callum just remembered in time not to try a handshake in zero gravity.

But that’s flat-earth-level science, complete garbage.

It was a bold plan. If your definition of bold is plain batshit crazy.

Splash icons showed that her neurochemistry was under control, but its grip on her deep daemons was loosening.

There was a long pause. ‘I do not think I fully comprehend human psychology,’ Fintox announced. ‘You and me both,’ Dellian muttered.

shrinks like a naked dick at the North Pole.’

Like all the houses on Lichfield Road, Claudette’s boundary incorporated all the requisite safeguards to assuage the middle-class fear of interlopers and their street violence.

‘We’ve talked. We’ve argued. We’ve drowned ourselves in angst. Now it’s over.

‘I have no reason to carry on without him.’ ‘Whoa! Damn, that’s dark. What have you all become?’