Bullet Points 6 (Paperback)

The hardest battles are often the ones that begin after the shooting stops. For those who return from the front lines, the war trails off in wisps of cordite and spent steel, only to reignite as personal struggles that others cannot see. Now read stories in Bullet Points 6 that explore the heavy weight of the "after-battle":

• KM Rider, "The Owl’s Last Call": Haunted by the golden eyes of a best friend lost in an explosion, a veteran finds his civilian life disrupted by an owl’s deep call and a final, desperate chance at redemption.
• DL Shirey, "The Imidor": A United Nations data specialist marks his birthday by sifting through "maneater" craters to recover the digital identities of the fallen from the charred remains of their lives.
• Garth Upshaw, "Retaliatory Strike Force": A veteran of the Martian wars discovers that even on a driverless city bus, the trauma of Olympic Mons remains an ever-present enemy waiting to strike.
• Gerry Huntman, "Last": Dying as his electronics arc and fail, a being who remembers no name discovers a horrific secret about the human radius and ulna hidden within his titanium alloy arm.
• Tyree Campbell, "Autumn Corn": Inside a dimly lit tavern on the eve of an alien invasion, an old soldier faces the dawn and the elusive hope of winning just once.
• Kellee Kranendonk, "The Shauns": As mysterious clouds close in on a beach, a young girl discovers that her family and her very identity are fragments of a suppressed memory from a galactic purge.
• Mike Sharlow, "The Coldest Ride in the Dead of Winter": A simple bicycle run for food in a world broken by scarcity turns into a violent homestretch struggle against the starving eyes of the desperate.
• Review: Rogue Sequence, by Zac Topping: This gritty thriller follows a genetically modified mercenary through a world of cynical corporate interests and the authentic, lingering horrors of combat.