We—humanity—didn’t come this far by being afraid. Explorers and visionaries have willingly headed off to certain death for thousands of years and by doing so brought us to where we are today. No one has...

Alexis, please mind your mouth. Cursing in Russian is still cursing.

Do you love me?” His voice rang flat in his own ears, deadened and weighted with the recognition there was only one chance, and a fool’s chance at that

We won—this little conflict and a thousand like it—because we were destined to win. The universe will allow no other outcome.

Usually for the same reason you were unconscious, I think.

She didn’t want to be the savior of humanity. She never had. She didn’t want to be the vanguard—of destruction or salvation. What she had really wanted was to be a girl whose father lived...

That excuse only works until you discover the person is merely an individual like any other.

Arrest me. Torture me. Parade me about in the public square. You will have your prize catch. And you will lose everything.

If I knew that, ma’am, I probably wouldn’t need to be there.

She burst into her hotel room pulling her blouse over her head with one hand while she yanked her shoes off with the other. No way was she going to face an alien invasion in...

His whisper continued to stream a silent cacophony of warnings, kill and damage reports and pleas for assistance.He allowed himself two seconds to watch it and came away with the sense they were losing. Not...

He simply preferred the sensation of soil beneath his feet and wind in his hair, of fresh, non-recycled air which carried on it the scent and taste of life. He preferred what was solid and...

God, she was beautiful. Hair a tangled mess, clothes torn, lips pale and swollen, skin streaked in dirt. And she was so damn beautiful and flawed and perfect.

He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence...

He did not have time to wallow, to give a moment’s thought to what may have happened to her or whether she was alive.Turn into the punch, grab hold of the gun, leap into the...

Oh, Valkyrie, you have no idea.” Tell me then.

He swallowed hard, annoyed at the sudden dryness in his throat. No reason to become all emotional about it now. He had already sold his soul for a chance at vengeance, and there was no...

Deep in the recesses of her mind, she knew they were probably watching. They watched everything, after all.Let them watch. Let them see what it meant to be human. To live.Let them see what it...

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man...

Above the curving arc of the planet, a mammoth explosion plumed crimson and charcoal then erupted in a starburst of crystaline white which for a microsecond shone brighter than a sun. For the briefest moment...

She thought he might have said her name, but it was background radiation accompanying the hum in her ears and the symphony in her head——a song of quantum mechanics and trajectory calculations and astroscience physics...

Yes, she loved her ship more than she had loved him. But what she loved even more was what it gave her: freedom, and the key to the marvels of space. It gave her the...

If her daughter’s ship had been disintegrated in space there would never be evidence of it, never an answer to what had happened to her.If she stopped to ponder the implications she might break. And...

Alex, I can’t.

His punch knocked her back a meter into the wall. His fist had moved of his own volition, carrying a rage and frustration all its own. To his dismay, she didn’t fall. People so small...

I need a shielded containment box, radiation gloves and a micro welding torch. And a crescent wrench.

Just so we’re very clear. If I want to kill you, I can kill you.

She gazed at the bay of wrecked shuttles in dismay. The last of her adrenaline seeped away at the sight of the widespread destruction.It occurred to her then, for perhaps the first time in this...

I did say I came to rescue you. They were in my way.

How delusional are you, aliens in your head notwithstanding?

Time slowed as metal shards enveloped her like shattered glass. None pierced her of course, but it seemed as though she might be able to reach out and pluck one from the sky.She settled for...

He had seen many criminals in his years in Division. Dangerous men and even more dangerous women. Small-time hucksters and savvy crime lords. Spies, gangsters, assassins, insurgents and wannabe-revolutionaries. True believers and soulless mercs willing...

He wanted to grind every Federation world into dust beneath his boot as his army blazed a trail of blood and corpses all the way to Seneca.He wanted to storm their inner sanctum and fire...

As the sky began to darken she sank down in the chair. She had just watched over a thousand Alliance soldiers die in the space of less than a minute. Yet the encounter would be...

Don’t let go.

Which does not alter the fact that you are insane.

No…you can ask for a beautiful, witty, intelligent yet minxy woman in your arms every night, a mansion on a hill—or better yet in the sky—and the best bodyguards to protect you when someone does...

They flew high above savanna grassland. The sky was the deep cornflower blue of a sunny late afternoon on Earth…exactly the color of a sunny late afternoon on Earth.Only there was no sun. Whatever was...

If that’s what it takes.

We don’t get to choose what happens to us—but we always get to choose how we react to it.

Good luck with the aliens? You are such a prick.

In sum, every pore of his being oozed one thing…okay, FINE. Every pore oozed two things. The first was irrelevant. The second was dangerous.

If humanity is annihilated because we were too busy squabbling with one another to manage a proper stand, we probably deserve the annihilation.

He was terrified he was making the wrong choice. He relied on his instincts in his work but now he didn’t dare trust them. The wound of betrayal still burned raw in his chest and...

The brain represented the most complex organism ever to exist, and impossible to tame. Morality could not be spawned by tweaking a few genes or shutting off a few neurons. Not yet. So though humanity...

Guilt ripped into her like a rusty, serrated knife. It took up residence in her soul, settling in and getting comfortable so it could saw away ragged pieces of flesh and leave her to bleed.

They sit in their soundproof rooms and issue tone-deaf edicts and call themselves controlling the world. And one day they ask you to die for them.

A pulse. Beat-beating against her palm. Alive. Beat by beat the bottomless whirlwind of perceptions and data and images and sensations careening through her mind—so many how can this tiny skull hold them all—began to...

So that’s why I say ‘never have anything you can’t walk away from.’ Especially a woman. For them, because this is a dangerous life we lead and you never know if or when it will...

Possibly. But not today, I think.