by Yoon Ha Lee
There are less old-fashioned games, mediated by the computer grid. The harrowing strategic simulations from your last year of studies would have been prohibitively time-consuming otherwise. Here, the only evidence of computer aid is a map imaged above a corner of the instructor’s desk. It’s centered on the Citadel of Eyes, the star fortress that is Shuos headquarters, and the world it orbits, which you just came from. Shuos Academy’s campus is located planetside.
On the instructor’s desk rests a jeng-zai deck. A hand of middling value lies face-up next to several hexagonal tokens. You can’t help but look for the infamous Deuce of Gears, gold against a field of livid red, formerly the instructor’s emblem. But it’s said his years on the battlefield are behind him.
“Instructor,” you say without saluting—you’re not Kel military—although you feel the vast differences in your statures.
“Sit down,” the instructor says in a drawl. You almost expected at ease, given he once served as an officer in the Kel army. Was, in many ways, their best general during the time he was loaned out to their service. The Kel, another of the realm’s factions, are sometimes allies and more usually rivals of the Shuos. The Shuos share the Kel interest in military matters, but the two factions often differ on how to intervene in the usual crises.
The instructor is not a tall man, although his build suggests a duelist’s lean strength. The Shuos uniform in ninefox red-and-gold looks incongruously bright on him after Kel black-and-gold, as does the topaz dangling from one ear. He asks, “You know how many of your class came here for advanced training?”
You recite the number. It’s not large. They didn’t say much about your assignment here. “Advanced training” covers a lot of ground. But you couldn’t escape the rumors; no one could.
The war has been going on for the last two decades. You know the names of the worlds the enemy claims they “liberated” from your realm’s oppressive rule, the military bases demolished by enemy swarms. And those were only the first to fall to the Taurag Republic. They won’t be the last.
This realm is a vast one: worlds upon worlds you’ve never heard of. Some have more strategic value than others. The Taurags care a great deal about what they call honor. They make a point of sparing civilian targets. But your people are still losing.
You tip your chin up and await details.
“We’ve learned of a new weapon,” the instructor says. “Preliminary analysis indicates that it can reach kill counts in excess of anything ever seen before. We’re looking for people with the flexibility of thought to handle the weapon’s capabilities.”
He taps something next to the map. Red markers flare up. You recognize their import: attacks on Shuos space, except there are more than you had known about.
“Yes,” the instructor says quietly. “The Taurags hurt us worse than we’ve led people to believe. Worse than the Taurags themselves know. I doubt they’ll be fooled for long. We have time to prepare for their next thrust, but not a lot of time.”
You indicate that you understand.
“The training begins now,” he says. “We’ll start with a straightforward game.” He smiles a tilted smile at you, knife-sweet.
Your heart is thudding painfully. The Kel, who knew him primarily as a soldier, might remember only his remarkable battle record. The Shuos know that beyond formations and guns, his inescapable kill count, he is also a master of games.
The instructor’s fingers flicker again. A new map, this one of a space station. It unfurls simultaneously in your mind through your augment, tapping your visual and kinesthetic senses. You orient yourself, then walk the unnamed station’s skin, probe it for vulnerabilities.
“The scenario,” he says. “This station has been targeted by Taurag sympathizers. Its population is ninety thousand people.”
Ninety thousand people. A pittance, from the viewpoint of an interstellar polity, yet each of those ninety thousand names is a shout in the darkness. The augment informs you that the station is instrumental to research of an unspecified nature. Impossible to avoid speculation: presumably the government is developing countermeasures, presumably it wants to protect its next superweapon.
The station has its own security, but the researchers can’t function if it locks down. They may be close to a key breakthrough. And there’s the old paradox: you can’t defend everything everywhere for an indefinite length of time without an infinite budget. Even then someone will devise some unexpected angle of attack.
“You’ve been dispatched to handle the threat,” the instructor continues. “Assume for the exercise’s sake that you’re loyal.” He grins at you, unfunny as the joke is. “You have no such assurance about everyone else. Trust them or not, your call. You’ll have access to Shuos infantry gear.”
You’re surprised by his use of the euphemism. It’s not like he needs to worry about offending your sensibilities. The augment provides the list of available gear. The system asks you what you want to requisition, and you put in your requests.
“Any questions?”
This is a test in itself. “If the station falls,” you say, “how many will die? Beyond the ninety thousand?”
He raises an eyebrow. “The kill count is up to you, fledge. Go left out the door and follow the servitor. It’ll take you to the game room.”
THERE USED TO be a saying, which originated with the Kel, that no game could ever replicate the fear of death that accompanies real combat. It was a dig at the Shuos obsession with training games. After all, how could a simulation with numbers in a computer, with gameboards and tokens, prepare you for the possibility that you’d have to sacrifice your life? The Kel and the Shuos often work together, especially during warfare, but that doesn’t mean they always get along.
Then Shuos Mikodez, head of the Shuos, assassinated two of his own cadets for reasons never divulged. Mikodez was the youngest Shuos to attain the head position in centuries. The people who doubted that he was ruthless enough to hold on to the seat suddenly became a minority. And over the next decades the Shuos prospered under Mikodez’s guidance.
The saying withered after that, not least among the Shuos themselves.
YOU FOLLOW THE instructor’s directions exactly. Not to say that it’s always optimal, but your instincts tell you that this is not one of the exercises where they want you to play hooky. Once you’re outside, a spiderform servitor, all skittering angles and lens-eyes, escorts you through the corridors.
Your first stop is to pick up your equipment. The weapons aren’t real, though the masks, armor, and medical supplies are. The former are marked with the horrific ninefox red that indicates that they’re simulation gear. The worst thing you could do to someone with the fake scorch pistol is break their nose with it. (Well. Not the worst thing. The worst polite thing.)
Next the servitor leads you to an unmarked lift, although it doesn’t follow you in. From here you’re on your own. The lift’s interior is decorated in sea-green rather than the florid Shuos colors. There’s a juddering sensation as it takes you through the Fortress’s levels, and then the doors whisk open.
The simulator is more advanced than the ones you’re accustomed to. You enter the designated sim chamber and hook yourself up to the monitors, heart pounding. You’ve never enjoyed the next part, where the augment overrides real sensory stimuli in favor of programmed ones. It’s a pity that you’re weighed down with the gear, but you’re expected to take your equipment seriously, and it comes with additional sensors to record everything.
Your senses jitter as the scenario calibrates itself to you; your old roommate described it as the sensation of your eyeballs turning inside-out in a dark room. Then a garden replaces the simulator’s interior. Under other circumstances you’d appreciate the forsythia and the red-and-gold carp swirling lazily in a pond.
You spot eight people around you straight off—no, make that nine. The scenario dumped you into a vine-covered nook near an engineer complaining about a fungal infection to two people who look like
they’re trying to think of excuses to be elsewhere. You have also been provided with an absurd tall glass of something lavender-orange topped with iridescent foam. You hope it’s not based on anything real.
You need information, and it’d be nice to get access to the station grid. You have credentials appropriate to a low-level technician, which is what you’re pretending to be. You’re no grid-diver, but the point isn’t outsmarting the computers, it’s outsmarting the people the computers serve.
For the first hour—simulated time; you’re painfully aware that your internal clock has been screwed with—you circulate around the garden to get a sense for what’s going on. Not a bad insertion: stressed people gravitate toward gardens. You eavesdrop and learn that scoutmoth patrols have glimpsed ambiguous signals from the direction of the Taurag border. People are skittish.
It’s here that the game changes.
The augment has an alert for you: Target active. Scenario timer engaged. Target’s kill count: 0.
As if agents get such certainty in real life. Still, that number won’t go down. Maybe they expect the counter to rattle you as it changes.
Time to move.
You dispose of the lavender-orange drink without tasting it—you’re afraid of the scenario authors’ imagination already; what were they thinking?—and make your way toward Medical. It occupies one of the innermost levels. The people you pass talk about everything from debugging ecoscrubbers to failed affairs. There’s a discussion of ways to improve a recipe for honey sesame cookies. The banality of their concerns is almost enough to convince you that they’re real people. You’d even feel bad if you failed to save them.
You’re ambushed by a tall woman and a demure-looking alt in a quiet corridor on the way. Which is alarming, because clearly they knew you were coming. In the scenario’s context that can only be one thing: a warning. It’s impossible not to try to anticipate the scenario author’s intent for clues.
Twist and joint-lock and the quiet-loud crunch of bone. They’re down before you have time to panic over the implications, for which you’re grateful. One of them is still alive, which means that you can—
The alarm goes off. Not a scenario alarm—it’s impossible to graduate Academy without enduring at least one botched scenario—but a priority-one Citadel-wide alert. You only recognize it because of the briefing you received on the way to the Citadel. You assumed it was the standard orientation, although you memorized it as a matter of course, without expecting the information to become relevant during your training.
The inside-out eyeball feeling recurs. The visuals, the sound, everything freezes. Worse is being dumped back into Citadel time without the usual precious moments of adjustment.
A databurst sears through the augment. Most of it’s too high-clearance for you; you’re informed that you’re authorized to know that there is an alert, but that’s all. Honestly, you’re impressed that Shuos bureaucrats have left something out of contingency planning. But sending newly graduated cadets to the Citadel itself for advanced training is a rare occurrence. You almost can’t blame them. Assuming this, too, isn’t a continuation of the scenario. You’re betting that’s what’s going on.
“Listen,” a voice says into your augment. It’s tense and rapid, and—this makes your spine prickle—seems to be coming from outside the simulator. “The experienced infantry are elsewhere, so you’ll have to do. They haven’t cracked this channel yet, they’re focusing on high-priority shit like isolating Mikodez and the senior staff. I’ve updated your map with the current layout and given you the highest clearances I can without triggering the grid’s watchdog sweeps, which I think they’re monitoring. Get to Armory 15-2-5, grab some basic armaments. Link up with—” Static.
‘They’ who? “Requesting update on situation,” you say. For all you know the damn scenario has crashed and the voice belongs to a completely different game. “I’m here for training, I don’t have access, I don’t know the situation.”
More static, swearing. “Look, this isn’t—” You tell yourself the voice’s tremor is a fiction. “Look, I don’t do this real-time shit, I’m in logistical analysis; I study food. You have to get out of there. There are hostile infantry running around and a squad on Level 15 is heading for the spatial stabilizer and I can’t raise local security, they might have been taken out, please—”
The voice drops out, no static this time, nothing. You wait for an interminable minute on the off chance that it will return. No luck.
You’ll play along. You manually kick the scenario, and your nerves flare with phantom pain as the simulator drops the inputs. You extricate yourself from the chamber, dumping all the red weaponry except the (dull) knife, which you could theoretically use to stick someone in the eye. Then you head for the armory by the most direct route, since speed is your ally.
Like most larger stations, the Citadel routinely uses variable layout, which allows spatial elements to be rearranged for more rapid travel between them. You worry that someone will switch variable layout off and leave you spindled between here and nowhere. The technology has an extremely good safety record—if you don’t take hostiles into account.
The Citadel is vast. Even the updated map is obfuscated due to security issues. The artificially induced vertigo, another defensive measure, is maddening. Only the medical countermeasures you brought with you keep you upright. You slam up against the armory without warning. The doors are open and there’s smoke. Nice to know that you didn’t bring a mask for nothing.
The augment won’t tell you whether anything’s in there, since you don’t have even that much clearance. With your luck, you’ll be hit with tranquilizer clouds the moment you go in, and that’s the best-case scenario. But you have to give the game your best shot.
You plunge into the armory, armed with knife and bravado. Even with the augment it’s difficult to see past the smoke.
A subliminal slither-scale noise, then a hiss, catch your attention. You duck low. Someone’s here, an unfriendly someone. The hiss comes again, and with it a knife-line of stinging pain just shy of your left shoulder.
You have no idea what they’ve rigged the security protocols to do if you use even fake guns, so it’ll have to be the dull-edged knife. It won’t do you much good if you can’t close the distance, however.
You hear the unmistakable click of a splinter grenade’s pin being removed and sprint for cover. You glimpse the grenade as it thunks solidly against a wall of boxes labeled HANDLE WITH CAUTION—SUSCEPTIBLE TO FIRE, CONCUSSION, AND STUPIDITY. (The only surprise is that STUPIDITY isn’t listed first.)
The grenade goes off and you’re deafened. It’s a fucking grenade and are you ever grateful for the instinct that yanked you to the safest place in the geometry of the fucking armory, sheltered partly by the edge of a locker, partly by a bin that someone didn’t put back properly. Even then you take splinters through your side and right arm, but you still have your left, and the medical foam is bubbling up from your jacket’s circulatory systems to seal the wounds even if it’s not doing anything for the agony.
Your brain catches up to that glimpse: the grenade wasn’t red.
It wasn’t red. They just tried to kill you with the genuine article.
This isn’t a training game anymore.
Despite the pain, you locate an intact weapons bank and scrabble to open it. The credentials the unknown voice provided you are genuine. You snatch up a scorch pistol.
You whip out of the armory and around the corner firing. The hostile, wearing a foreign-looking articulated suit, attempts to retaliate with the pain-scourge of whatever-it-is. Your aim is true, your reflexes better; the scorch hits her full-on. She screams.
You’re far enough back that the grenade at her belt shattering into a thousand thousand pieces doesn’t do more than sting. The damage is probably worse than it feels. You can assess that later.
There’s not much left of a body to inspect. It’s not the only one, either. The blast caught some others.
The smell, charred metal and meat and shit, makes your gorge rise. You force yourself to look at the red smears on the floor, the walls. The worst part is a chunk of face with a full eye almost intact, staring lopsidedly at a shredded piece of lung.
No. That’s not the worst part. You wonder that you almost missed it, but you’re not thinking very clearly right now. A shiver of revulsion passes through you. The eye’s iris is vivid violet.
Taurags have eyes like that.
You were right the second time. This has stopped being a game.
YOU HAVE NO idea who to link up with and it’s likely that Citadel security will mistake you for an intruder yourself, Shuos uniform notwithstanding. But if there’s any chance your information is useful, you have to pass it on. The Citadel’s population is classified, along with other useful things like the number of toilets, but you wouldn’t be surprised if it housed over half a million people. The thought of them being in danger, strangers though they are, makes your stomach twist.
Your best bet is to head for the spatial stabilizer. Now that you realize the threat is real, the thought of hostiles in control of a Citadel stabilizer makes your heart constrict. They could separate the Citadel’s spatial building blocks, rearrange them to disadvantage the Shuos, even—if they crack the controls entirely—destroy the Citadel.
It’s not reassuring that this is the same technology you’ll have to rely on to reach the stabilizer, since it needs to be isolated from realspace. There’s no help for it. You hurry toward the next path.
This one requires you to climb up and down an elegant spiraling ramp that changes color from auburn to gold and then sly amber. Your knees feel unsteady, and you hate yourself for it. You keep expecting the ramp to vanish into a massless knot of nothing and strand you. As you step off the spiral, however, the world slants and you dash for a side corridor at the sound of gunfire.