Quotes from Michael Stephen Fuchs

the people who survived catastrophes, riots, natural disasters, ambushes… were the ones who absolutely resolved themselves to.

Yaz startled as he heard two muted shotgun blasts

Tier-1 guys operated on a razor edge of painstakingly honed skills. And every one of those skills was perishable. Either they were operating, or they were training – or they were progressively becoming useless.

Your rendezvous and evacuation point is down there, on the corner of Dead Guy Ave and You're Fucked Street.

Drake's hand snatched at his mic, what felt like a day late and many dollars short, to warn the pilots – that they had basically just brought a knife to a dogfight.

Like we'd opened a portal to some level of Hell so profane and obscene even Dante never imagined it.

Everyone hesitates – gets afraid, screws up, sometimes badly. Often with tragic consequences. The question is: after it happens, can you put down that bag of bricks and forget about it? Or are you going to carry it around, and let it ruin the rest of your day?

We are angels, spirit creatures of hope and light and possibility and love.

The world changes. We adapt to it. That's the whole way we stay ahead, survive – and prevail.

That life has never been safe from death. That the universe is overwhelmingly a dead, cold, inhospitable place – and catastrophically dangerous to life, in every form. That we, the living, have always been the outliers, the aberration. Only a freak chain of improbable accidents produced the bubble of conditions that was necessary for the rise of life, and our species, in this tiny film of air and water stuck to a rock that's whirling through the void.

Fick snorted. "And you know as well as I do – allegations count a lot more than denials. Somebody says Charlie fucked a goat, even if the goat denies it, guy still goes to his grave Charlie the Goat Fucker.

Just do your job, keep learning every day, perform at your peak and to the outside edge of your limits, never complain, and always be first to support your teammates.