Caliban's War (The Expanse Book 2)

Owning your own racing ship wasn’t even wealth. It was like speciation.

All of human civilization had been built out of the ruins of what had come before. Life itself was a grand chemical improvisation that began with the simplest replicators and grew and collapsed and grew again. Catastrophe was just one part of what always happened. It was a prelude to what came next.

I have a binder with nine hundred pages of analysis and contingency plans for conflict with Mars, including fourteen different scenarios about what we do if they develop an unexpected new technology. The binder for what we do if something comes up from Venus? It’s three pages long, and it begins Step One: Find God.”

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.

Ragnarok

Sepulchral.

It had been a failure, but it was a failure he understood, and that made it a victory.

She’d stopped looking tired a while ago and had moved on to whatever tired turns into when it became a lifestyle.

stippled