The Sins of Our Fathers (The Expanse #9.5)

by James S.A. Corey

Forty years could be a long time. Or it could be hardly any time at all. Most often, it was both of those at once.

Once, he’d tried reading about the experience of child soldiers and the paths they’d taken through the trauma of their adult lives. Before he’d even finished the first half of the book, he’d descended into panic so deep that the ship medic had put him on antiseizure medications. He’d never tried again.

When the apocalypse came, bullets and liquor would be the only currency that mattered.

He’d gotten to where living without the safety of a ship didn’t panic him, but something about the cloud banks made the scale of planetary life harder to ignore. It was odd, the way that living in an emptiness infinitely vaster than the distance between him and even the tallest cloud could feel comfortable if there was a thin bubble of metal around him.

lay burdens on us, all without meaning to, that we’ll have to carry around for the rest of our lives and there’s nothing we can do about that. But you and I still get to decide how we carry those burdens.”

“And when I tell you to fuck off? When I tell you your rules don’t matter anymore, and I do what I want, then what, Mose? When I’m like Jandro, what do you do? How do you stop me? Because we both know there’s no union behind you anymore, and don’t fucking mistake me for one of the gentle locals, coyo.”

“What if we just go on like people always have? The same bullshit. Give the same bullies and liars power like we did before. Cut all the same corners. Put up with all the same hypocrites. Make everything here into more of the shit that got us here. That seems worse. For me? That’s worse.”

“Thank you, but I don’t deserve any mercy.” “Of course you don’t. That’s why they call it mercy. If you deserve it, they call it justice.”