Bullet Points 2 (Digital)

War is a universal constant, a shadow that stretches from the muddy fields of the past to the airless colonies of the deep future. Whether fought with bayonets or bio-fused nanotech, the struggle for survival always forces the human heart to its breaking point. Now read stories in Bullet Points 2 that capture the complexity, tragedy, and hope of warfare through speculative military fiction:

• Joe Haldeman, "Time Piece": For a soldier moving at lightspeed, a single week of combat means four centuries of history have vanished back on Earth.
• David Drake, "But Loyal to His Own": When a government decides its elite mercenaries are a liability, loyalty to the unit becomes the only law that matters.
• Ian R. MacLeod, "Selkie": A village girl on the eve of World War I discovers a soldier from the future who holds the power to rewrite history with a single disruptor beam.
• Rich Larson, "Ghost Girl": In the ruins of a future Burundi, a young girl is protected by a decommissioned war drone that carries the haunting echoes of her rebel father.
• Eric Fomley, "Input: Memories": In a galaxy of manufactured bodies, a cyborg soldier leeches memories from the dying to find the woman he was never meant to remember.
• Jenna Hanchey, "Far From Home": Humanity is always ready for war—even when the "invaders" arriving in silver ships are actually desperate refugees.
• Tabitha Lord, "Quest Nine": On a hostile world light-years from home, two scientists risk a charge of treason to save a single comrade from a frozen grave.
• Susan Jane Bigelow, "The Radio": An abandoned synthetic soldier must choose between her standard military protocols and the civilians who actually saved her life.
• Sean Vivier, "The Tyrant’s Statue Is Still Falling": A new leader gazes into the depths of a gas giant, wondering how long it takes for a fallen statue—or a legacy—to reach the bottom.
• T. Fox Dunham, "The First Mission of Seth-7" and "Song of Seth-7": Woven from the memories of fallen heroes, a synthetic warrior leads a final stand against an organic hive that devours human worlds.
• Terri Lynn Coop, "Outside the Wire": In the artificial rain of Phobos City, two enemies from opposite sides of a terrorist war discover that some secrets are shared.
• Shannon Fay, "Fight for the Stars": To settle galactic conflicts, worlds send champions to a tournament where defeat means planetary destruction—until one fighter chooses to end the game.
• Pedro Iniguez, "The Last Great Film": As the final battle for humanity’s survival rages above his foxhole, a soldier trades his rifle for a camera to document the world’s final moment.
• Gerry Huntman, "Fred Has a Productive Day": A defense AI encounters a relic from a forgotten war and must perform the cold arithmetic of decommissioning a system with a memory.