SF Stories I’m Reading: CHARLIE JANE ANDERS “Palm Strike’s Last Case.”

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS “Palm Strike’s Last Case.” Novelet. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2014. Reprinted in The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera, edited by David Afsharirad (Baen Books, June 1915). I don’t read much of what’s offered by current publishers in the way of science fiction or fantasy, practically none all. But Charlie Jane Anders is a new author, or least she counts as such to me. She’s been writing SF and (I think) fantasy for 20 years already, and has been nominated (and won) a ton of awards, including both the Hugo and Nebula over that same time period. It was the title that caught my eye with this one. Palm Strike is the alter ego of Luc Deverux, a food agriculturist on Earth, a man who wears a mask and costume to fight a war of revenge against a mobster called the Dark Shard, blaming the latter for the death of his son. He has done so well in this regard he has been persuaded that he needs another frontier as a continued fight in…