Liam Hogan

September 15, 2023

“So you get to Alteron first,” the grease monkey said, yanking the straps that held me securely within the needle-nosed fighter, “which means you‘ll land last.”

“Huh? Wait, what?”

She smiled. Short haired, freckles—or oil splatters? Kind of cute, though insanely young. And all over me, at the moment, though purely from a professional perspective.

Kiran Kaur Saini

September 1, 2023

The text came just as Jani left the locker room for hockey practice. “I’m out front in the car. The inspector’s coming early. You have to come home right now.”

Jani punched at the phone with her thumbs. “I just laced up my skates!”

Mia Dalia

August 15, 2023

The night closed in on him. The sound of artillery had at some point became a background drone like the white noise machine he used to fall asleep to. But every so often, a bullet whizzed by in a close call, and it still jarred him. He was amazed something still had the power to jar him—he’d become so desensitized by the last few months.

Nathan W. Toronto

August 1, 2023

J. S. Dewes is working on the third installment of her Divide series. Can she get on with it already? Her first two novels in the series, The Last Watch and The Exiled Fleet, offer refreshing space opera at its finest, exploring the human side of leadership and warfare on a scale that lands somewhere between Scalzi's Interdependency and Asimov's Foundation.

Ray Daley

July 15, 2023

My leg was feeling a lot better today. I was able to walk to sick parade. Only needed one crutch too. We had a new medical officer this morning. Barely old enough to be shaving, from the number of cuts on his face. Physician, heal thyself! Poor bugger. It took all my self control to not laugh while he was asking me how I felt.

“Jimisin?”

Larry Hodges

July 1, 2023

There was another strafing run and tank bombardment as they passed Twelve at midnight, and many soldiers were killed. But the short, heavyset General Shorthand, his skin as dark as the darkest coal, raised his sword grimly and cried, “Onward!” The army marched on over the white expanse, curving to the right.

T. M. Thomas

June 15, 2023

“The bay needs to be closed, Captain,” I said for the third time. 

Ry Sobchak smiled that infamous charmer’s white smile down from the top of the bird. The big triangle of a ship was too large to crawl up after him, unless I wanted to chase him around the turrets for a half hour. He had a rag in one hand and a bottle of metal cleaner in the other as he sat astride the gun mount just forward of  the cockpit. Two empty liquor bottles were on the ground beside the cruiser, one smashed and the other just empty.

William R. D. Wood

June 1, 2023

Khalid flexed his new hand inside the gauntlet of his assault weapon. The grip’s texture was rough and the cold of the nitrogen chiller next to his thumb felt exactly as it had before the last combat drop. The docs did good work. Sometimes that bothered him.

Caias Ward

May 15, 2023

We know we lost the war, a war based around what would be considered “reality,” by seeing a history which isn’t ours. The Tallarian Empire no longer is; it never was. I do not know what is this “Rome,” or why we have a Gregorian calendar instead of the Daystar’s Ascension calendar. My familiar candy bars, the PimPam and the Hoostaloo Bites, are replaced with “Snickers” and “Kit-Kats.” I do not know many things, and my stolen neural catalog shows me an alternate reality which is all too real now.

Nathan W. Toronto

May 1, 2023

Each book in Michael Mammay’s Planetside Series has made me lose sleep and writing time. I lose sleep a lot, but writing time? That’s sacred, so when a book has me so hooked from the very beginning that all I want to do is read it, I have to give it five bullets on Bullet Points. 

Marc A. Criley

April 15, 2023

A blue-violet flash. And sparks, streams of sparks; immersing me in all-the-colors-of-the-rainbow sparks. A dull rumble punches through the helmet’s attenuators. I’m weightless, floating… and stupidly lucid. Weightless, not space weightless, but arcing through the air until the hard stop at the end weightless. Cartwheeling. Angry. Furious.

CB Droege

April 1, 2023

In the heart of the Venusberg Capitol Complex, Chairman Lee of the Sol Council stared, half-lidded, across a table of polished Venusian obsidian. He'd lost his posture over the last hour of conversation, and was nearly sliding out of the armchair.

M V Melcer

March 15, 2023

When the invaders appeared, I had no choice. I lowered my head and opened my arms to greet them. Some of us tried to fight, against my warnings, but the orbiting gunships put a quick end to the resistance. I made sure everyone learned the lesson: their ships are made of guns. You cannot stop them.

Lisa Short

March 1, 2023

The airlock seal thudded home barely a meter above Amelie’s head. The echo shot pain through her ears. She cradled her aching temples in gloved hands and scrunched up her face, free at last from Tech Sergeant Pravin’s sharply observant glare.  She had barely made it into formation before the third watch bell had sounded.

Harry Turtledove

February 15, 2023

General Fedor Tolbukhin turned to his political commissar. “Is everything in your area of responsibility in readiness for the assault, Nikita Sergeyevich?”

Nathan W. Toronto

February 1, 2023

I’ll start with a spoiler: Cassian Andor dies in the end. You already know this if you’ve watched Rogue One, which is—in my opinion—the best Star Wars movie next to The Empire Strikes Back. Andor, Tony Gilroy’s Rogue One prequel, shows how Cassian turns into the complex, dark, fascinating character who co-leads the mission to steal the Death Star plans.

JT Gill

January 15, 2023

Carlisle—the hulking guard from D Wing—wakes me with a grunt and a nudge.

“Warden needs you,” he rumbles, his black form shifting in the darkness.

I dress in the dark, Carlisle’s silhouette at the door, arms crossed. My optic reads 3:42 AM, which narrows the realm of possibilities as to what this is about… though I have a guess.

A. P. Howell

January 1, 2023

Janot’s armor no longer had that new-armor smell.

New-armor smell was different from new-suit smell; was different from new-car smell and new-carpet smell. But all of those scents pinged something in the human brain, created a sense of purity.