Quotes from Martha Wells

so the plan had been to get into the hostile ship through its lock and then run around getting shot and murdering my way through whoever was aboard until I could get control. (I hadn't used those exact words during the planning process with Indah and Aylen, but we all knew what we were talking about.)

I know I said SecUnits aren't sentimental about each other, but I wished it wasn't one of the DeltFall units. It was in there somewhere, trapped in its own head, maybe aware, maybe not. Not that it matters. None of us had a choice.

It took a tremendous effort for me not to rip his arm off, and I'd like that noted for the record, please. He said, "Its comm is down.

I had a plan, but it was mostly "keep the hostiles off the ship," which is not so much a plan as a statement of hopeful intent.

I guess you could pay off the management to let you bring in a SecUnit and weapons and do a hostage exchange, but they drew the line at giving you free feed access.

I didn't know what that meant, but it was a good job title and honestly it made me a little jealous.

No, I impersonated my client. My imaginary client. That I impersonated." I was caught in a loop for a second there.

I have a plan." This was true. "I just don't know whether it will actually work or not." This, unfortunately, was also true.

Freehold meant it had been terraformed and colonized but wasn't affiliated with any corporate confederations. Basically freehold generally meant shitshow so I hadn't been expecting much from them. But they were surprisingly easy to work for.

You know, if you don't want to be manually eviscerated with your own energy weapon then maybe you shouldn't go around killing research transports and antagonizing rogue SecUnits.

I know this sounds suspiciously like a rationale I had come up with to keep from doing something I didn't want to do anyway, but hey, I can't help that.)

Sometimes people do things to you that you can't do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.

In the creche, our moms always said that fear was an artificial condition. It's imposed from the outside. So it's possible to fight it. You should do the things you're afraid of.

Along with the horror of what had just happened, there had been the dawning realization that they had fallen into thinking of their SecUnit as a faceless machine, a convenience, an interface with their security system. But it had taken a sentient being who understood fear and pain to talk its way through Volescu's blind terror.

The company is like an evil vending machine, you put money in and it does what you want, unless somebody else puts more money in and tells it to stop.

I have small energy weapons built into both arms, but the one I went for was the big projectile weapon clamped to my back. The hostile that had just exploded up out of the ground had a really big mouth, so I felt I needed a really big gun.

Not every problem can be solved by you trying to get yourself killed.

I had stopped watching it when the mutants dragged off the group's biologist to eat him. Seriously, this was exactly the kind of situation I was designed to prevent.

It could be one more weird anomaly in this unending cycle of what the fuck.

Mensah sent me a private message through the feed: I hope you're all right. Because you need me. I don't know where that came from. All right, it came from me, but she was my client, I was a SecUnit. There was no emotional contract between us. There was no rational reason for me to sound like a whiny human baby.

The Cordans believed the women needed men to provide for them; Moon had no idea why. He knew that Selis in particular was perfectly capable of chasing down any number of grasseaters and beating them to death with a club, so he didn't see why she couldn't hunt for herself.

Kai groaned under his breath. He had been hoping for one dramatic masterstroke that would take down the whole bridge and maybe make him feel better about his continued existence.

You don't have to thank me for doing my stupid job. But it is nice.

We walked up to the first rack and I paid with another hard currency card and -Wow, that was three times the price of my last transient hostel. It's a good thing I don't have to eat.