My flash fiction story “After the War” is now available in Volume 12 of the military science fiction magazine Bullet Points. “After the War” was originally published in Daily Science Fiction on December 23, 2022.

This twelfth volume includes twelve post-combat-themed science fiction stories:

Contents:

• Bogi Takács, “Toward the Luminous Towers”: The war ends at some point—or does it?
• Joshua Mannix, “A Hollow Victory”: A wounded sailor returns from space combat.
• S. L. Johnson, “Sugar-Coated Desperation”: A retired colonel faces a test of discipline in an alien peace agreement.
• Liam Hogan, “Demob”: Administrator Jenrick must turn soldiers back into men.
• Richard Lau, “P.O.E.W.”: A POW finds what it’s like when the war is endless.
• Karl El-Koura, “After the War”: After a Martian-Terran war, a pilot tries to decide what side he was on.
• Damir Salkovic, “Ploughshares”: Caleb Bartlett enters the nullspace of his machine creation to recover from the war.
• Daniel Stride, “Prison for One”: After fifty long years, Augustus Smalls has only a war criminal for company.
• Michael A. Clark, “Dunkirk”: Hauptmann Franczak wonders what would have happened if the British Army had actually evacuated from Dunkirk.
• D. Thomas Minton, “The Schrodinger War”: You’d think after seven tries, Samuel Hohlman could get the living part right or at least be a pro at dying.
• David Stephen Powell, “Uncle Marius”: Colin learns what it means to win a war when his Uncle Marius comes home.
• Deborah L. Davitt, “Mustering Out”: When the war is over, what happens to the cybernetically-enhanced soldiers who are weapons? Are they repurposed, or scrapped?

And now a sneak peek at my story:

After the War

by Karl El-Koura

Ship about to explode, pilot gets flushed. Stripped, sealed, flooded with cryogen; all in no time. Then dreamless sleep. Maybe pilot gets picked up by scoopers roaming the solar system for living debris. Picked up by wrong side, not so nice: flushed again—without hermetic seal or cryogen in your veins. Picked up by right side, cleaned up and given a new battleship, sent back out. Not so nice either? Too bad—war not so nice.

Scoopers are saying something, but it’s hard to hear. I still feel frozen, ears to brain. Thawing.

“Terran or Martian?” I hear. “Terran or Martian?”

Classic technique. Get them to confess while they’re still groggy.

 

Keep reading by buying your copy of Volume 12 of Bullet Points.