The novella “Slow Bullets” by Alastair Reynolds was published for the first time in 2015. It won the Locus Award as the Best Novella of the Year.

Scur fought in the war between Peripheral Systems and Central Worlds and didn’t even have time to rejoice about its end that she was captured by Orvin, a war criminal. Orvin inserts a second slow bullet into Scur’s body, a memory device that adds to the one all soldiers have but without using painkillers.

Left for dead, Scur is saved but wakes up on the spaceship Caprice. The systems onboard seem to have major problems and there are soldiers on board who fought for both sides during the war. Scur discovers that Orvin is also on board but the attempts to capture him are hampered by the ship’s problems, which can only be explained if the people on board remained hibernated for many centuries.