Red Sword

About

On a disputed planet shrouded in a literal fog of war, a captured woman is forced to fight for her captors' empire. With soldiers behind her ready to kill her if she hesitates and enemies ahead trying to kill her regardless, she battles through an unknown landscape carrying a weapon she doesn't understand and serving a cause that isn't hers. Bora Chung's science fiction novella strips warfare down to its most brutal logic: the people who fight have the least say in why, and survival is not the same thing as freedom. A sharp, visceral story about coercion dressed as duty — and about a woman who discovers that the only rebellion available to her is staying alive on her own terms.