"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 he allowed himself to entertain the notion that they might win this battle.Then the real battle began."

"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 arena. Attack.He had to move. Now."

"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 getting it back."

"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 abate in time to the rhythm of not her pulse, but his."

"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 considered a victory, for the enemy was vanquished. But at such a cost. She considered what Alex had asked of her and began to understand."

"Caleb! The sharp, forceful tone demanded he halt. He found he had complied, but did not turn around. His voice sounded low and hoarse, likely because he couldn't breathe. "Alex, I can't."

"The Artificial's speech pattern was an idiosyncratic mix of awkward and colloquial. It was unexpectedly endearing. "I just have good instincts. Mostly I love being in space. But you are not 'in' space. You are in your starship and your starship is in space. It is not so different than being on a planet. "Oh, Valkyrie, you have no idea. Tell me then."

"Crushed sandstone sifted through Caleb's fingers, insubstantial as dust. A breeze caught the debris mid-fall and spirited it away before it could join the ashes blanketing the ground. He stopped in the middle of what had once been a street, his arms pulled in at his sides, his fists balled in barely restrained fury."

"He was on her in an instant to brace her against the wall. She kicked and clawed at her unseen attacker, skin and irises ablaze in caustic gold. She fired anew, and the point-blank shot broke through his defenses, grazing his hip. He ignored the harsh sting to bring his Daemon up between them."

"Her weight settled on her back foot as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, now legitimately baffled."How delusional are you, aliens in your head notwithstanding?"

"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 another cut might be the killing blow.But it was the end of the world and there may be no more second chances."

"We don't get to choose what happens to us-but we always get to choose how we react to it."

"Blood drummed in her ears and adrenaline coursed through her veins, driving her to move. To act. Her hands trembled against his chest.Time vanished out from beneath her feet, one accelerating second at a time."

"From up here, the city below looked calm. Peaceful. Serene.It was a lie. Mia could feel the lie in her bones, in the foreboding creeping along the fine hairs on her skin. But mostly she could feel it in her head, where preparations were underway across Romane to meet the coming chaos."

"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 was lost it was never regained.So he took his son fishing and strolled along the river and pretended as though the galaxy wasn't on fire."

"Expect an army of Vigil drones, nearly as a many Praesidis guards, a Machim ground detachment of super-soldiers and at least one Inquisitor. Oh, and security barriers everywhere. Possibly some of those mechs we met on Helix Retention, too. You Humans have kicked off a shitstorm of epic proportions.Alex spread her arms wide in an exagerrated shrug. "It's one of our best skills."

"He checked her over while mentally checking himself. "Environment suits sealed up. Breather masks in hand. Daemons. Blades. Transmitters. Healthy respect for the adversary-you've got that, right?One corner of her mouth curled up. "Absolutely."

"You have business and pleasure to attend to. As an expert in both, allow me to advise you to put them aside for the next ten minutes. Why? "Because the world is about to transform, and you will want to be able to say you saw it happen. The axes of our little universe are about to flip, and you'll want to get your magboots set."

"Evening had turned the sky a deep persimmon. The remaining sunlight enriched the colors of the ubiquitous flowers and foliage to even greater vibrancy, as if the saturation filter had been notched up several levels.Caleb noted all this in passing as he strode deliberately forward. He didn't know how he was going to do this, only that he had to make the attempt."

"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 conquered the very stars, it remained unable to conquer the darkness within."

"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 lost and not soon, but losing."

"Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. "Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you've ever done?"It wouldn't be fair to rank them. Caleb gunned the engine."

"You ask me to make peace with the monsters who did this?She didn't even look around at 'this.' "Yes. The alternative is extinction. There's no coming back from that-no new weapon to fire when no one is left and you've no universe left to fire it in."

"I believe my judgment has never been clearer. I have seen firsthand their potential, their strength of will, in a way you have not."You have loosed a chaotic, unstable variable into the Mosaic. They will destroy everything."It is a risk. They also may save everything."

"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 heels and silk."

"You're insane."It'll work."Which does not alter the fact that you are insane."

"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 for whom vengeance had devolved into madness."

"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 Admiral Miriam Solovy did not break."

"She settled back in the chair and draped one leg casually over the other, her hands coming to rest together on her knee."Arrest me. Torture me. Parade me about in the public square. You will have your prize catch. And you will lose everything."

"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."

"He steadied himself by resting one palm on her thigh and the other on the armrest, and rose to his knees. "I'll be damned."Possibly. But not today, I think."

"What emerged from the portal was not the feared armada. Instead, it was a single ship. A familiar ship. I felt a quickening in my atoms.Clever, dangerous girl. I have been expecting you."

"After all,'I've been thinking' meant she had previously identified the parameters and analyzed all the branching considerations."

"It was killing him, seeing her this way. She was not meant to be uncertain, timid or fearful; the woman he knew exuded confidence so fiercely it might as well be a damn spiritual aura. He needed to fix this. "It's time to adjust your perspective. You want to show the politicians on Earth they don't rule the galaxy? Well, let's show them."

"As soon as he had departed she directed her attention to the others."I need a shielded containment box, radiation gloves and a micro welding torch. And a crescent wrench."

"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 ever told us 'no' and succeeded in making it stick for long.We accede to these aliens' demands and we'll wither away. It may take centuries or even millennia, but we'll be so busy cowering in fear we'll forget to move forward.I say we fight."

"Mia stood between the bed and the broken window, holding an active plasma blade at waist-height in front of her. A thick coat of blood stained the plasma nearly from hilt to tip, hissing as it dribbled from blade to floor."Are you all right?Mia gave her a wan, distant smile. "It's okay. I've done it before."

"There were things she wanted to say, but they were all jumbled up in her head and if she tried they'd come out backwards and mixed up and wrong. There were things she needed to say, but she was hanging on by a fraying thread and feared if she tried the thread would break, sending her plummeting alone into the abysm.There were things she would have to say, but they should wait for later. After."

"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 there was anything the last year had taught her-if there was anything Caleb had taught her, the Metigen War had taught her-it was that perspective was everything. If you wanted to understand your enemy, you must understand that they were the hero in their own story."

"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."

"Because we were the good guys. We were in the right. The universe looks out for people who act with honor in furtherance of an honorable cause. It must, or we never would have gotten this far as a species."We won-this little conflict and a thousand like it-because we were destined to win. The universe will allow no other outcome."

"Three men sat around a table. All were muscled and similarly greasy and easily identifiable as scum. As he breached the entrance all three were moving, drawing their own guns in surprise.Only one got off a shot."

"Semantics, Admiral. I'd appreciate an honest answer."I'd appreciate a multitude of honest answers, but I rarely expect to receive them. Miriam sighed; the verbal tete-a-tete was growing tiresome. Time to bring an end to it with, ironically, honesty."

"I'll do whatever I can to help guarantee this plan succeeds, and I'll try to make sure I'm in the right place at the right time. "The right place and time for what?"If I knew that, ma'am, I probably wouldn't need to be there."

"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 lighting this planet, it wasn't a star."

"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 to show her the stars.Instead she had been left to wander them alone. Until she discovered someone who saw the stars as she did."

"Caleb shoved back from the table and stood to retreat to the kitchen. "No. Find another plan."There is no other plan. This isn't even a plan, merely a nugget of an idea for the start of a plan that's certain to fail and end in your deaths."

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

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