The Museum of Modern Warfare

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

When the Ambassador to the Dylft System—a veteran of the Dylft Wars—receives orders to lead a diplomatic mission to Craznaust, she wonders at the wisdom of accepting the assignment.

Still, when she arrives at the controversial Museum of Modern Warfare, she believes herself prepared to face the past and address whatever diplomatic issue she might find there.

But nothing could prepare her for what she finds deep within the museum. Something long buried. Something that could change everything she thought she knew about the war.

Winner of the 2015 Analog Anlab Award for Best Short Story.

"As I always seem to say, another great story from Kristine Kathryn Rusch."

—SFRevu

"I am in awe of an author who is able to distill an entire story down to a single thought. … As Heinlein put it, 'a great artist… can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be.'"

—Tangent Online

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: May 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386458289

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

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The Museum of Modern Warfare

The Museum of Modern Warfare

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing

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The Museum of Modern Warfare

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About the Author

The Museum of Modern Warfare

Flew into Craznaust on an orbit-to-ground vehicle. I don’t plan my own schedule so I had no idea we’d be traveling in an upgraded C-73. I would have protested more if I knew.

The guts of the C-73 are completely different nowadays, and—they say—so’s the interior. But the advance team used the C-73 because of its innate stability, something any vehicle needs around Craznaust.

Craznaust, the central island in the largest chain on Gephherd, has its own microclimate. Daily winds of 80 kilometers per hour, sustained.

Drove us crazy when we deployed there forty years ago. I still remember the grit in my hair, on my tongue, in my nose. The wind left my skin chapped and my ears raw. Hats didn’t help, nothing helped, and the goggles we had to wear over our eyes, they left their marks too.

I still have a tiny white scar from those goggles beneath my right lid, puckering the skin slightly. Doctors always touch their right eye, and nod toward me silently to tell me they can repair that scar with the brush of some magical medical device. I always walk away from docs like that. They’re younger than me now, and they don’t understand badges of honor.

I got that scar before the Battle of Craznaust, and consider the scar my badge because living on Craznaust day to day was harder than that battle, and in its own way, more devastating.

I’ve lived through dozens of battles, lost hundreds of friends to combat, but none of it haunts me like that year before the Battle of Craznaust broke out, when we were training the locals, coping with the wind, and pretending that nothing was going to happen to us.

I told my husband (the first one) when I finally left active duty (the first time) that the waiting was the hardest. He was career military too, but admin mostly, and he just looked at me like I’d grown a third head.

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