Press Start to Play

by Wilson, Daniel H.

  “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 fifteen 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. 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 or 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 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 more than 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, your heart constricts at the thought of hostiles in control of a Citadel stabilizer. 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 in space. As you step off the spiral, however, the world slants and you dash for a side corridor at the sound of gunfire.

  The voice comes back without warning. You almost shoot the wall. “You made it, good,” it says. This time it’s communicating through your augment. “You’re there, right? Can you get in?” And then: “I think the senior staff—well, it doesn’t matter. You’re what’s available.”

  The way the voice wavers makes you grind your teeth. “Firefight,” you say, identifying the weapons by the percussion they make as you let the augment transmit your subvocals. “Just got here, haven’t had time to scout.”

  “I’ve been working the grid,” the voice says. “I can get in overrides, but you’ll have to work fast to take advantage before they freeze me out. And you’ll need physical access.”

  Obviously, or it would have been able to handle matters remotely. “Servitor passages for maintenance?”

  “Yes. I can open one of those. Tight squeeze, though.”

  The voice has the presence of mind to send you a newer, declassified map. At this point it’s not like either of you cares about getting into trouble with higher-ups. “Listen,” you say, determined not to give in to the awful mixture of pain and nausea despite the medical assists. “How bad is it, if the senior staff are…?”

  Brief silence. “I haven’t heard from Mikodez or any of the senior staff since the alert began,
” the voice says. “I’m lying low right now. They didn’t hire me to be brave.” Not the most inspiring thing to say, but you appreciate the honesty. “I’m hoping the other stabilizers are all right, but they’re still attempting to secure this one.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” you say.

  The next moves happen in a blur.

  Scorch blasts.

  Narrow passage. Claustrophobia and bruised elbows are the least of your worries.

  You approach the hatch. The firefight sounds like it’s died down. You’re not optimistic about the survival of your Shuos comrades. It’s hard to see through the slits and you don’t dare query local scan, lest you be detected.

  You pry the hatch open, wishing it didn’t creak so much. Most of the bodies in the control center wear Shuos red-and-gold. A few have violet eyes and are dressed in the strange articulated suits.

  The voice again. “Are you in?”

  “Yes. They didn’t stick around, though.”

  “That’s not good,” it says. “One moment.” Then: “The good news is that they couldn’t crack the stabilizer’s control system. The bad news is that there’s—there’s more of them. A lot more of them. Their swarm, fleet, horde, whatever their term is. They’ve all arrived. They’re taking out the orbital defenses before they make a move planetside, I guess.”

  It’s growing harder and harder to think, just when it’s most important. “We can use the stabilizer against them—”

  “Too many of them and not enough time. Unless—”

  You know exactly what it’s thinking of. Unmoor the stabilizer and aim it at the Citadel’s heart, where the power cores are. Turn space inside out. The whole thing would go up in a tumult of fire. It’d also scorch a significant portion of the planet, but the explosion would hurt the Taurag invaders and buy time for a defense to be mustered elsewhere.

  Just to make sure that you and the voice understand each other, you outline the idea.

  “Yes,” the voice says. “I’ll talk you through the procedure.”

  It takes you several minutes to figure out the control system even so, because the voice only has access to an outdated version of the manual and the system interface was overhauled at some point.

  You think about orbital mechanics. If you set off the power cores right now, the conflagration will singe Shuos Academy’s main campus on the planet’s second-largest continent.

  Shuos Academy comes to mind because you just graduated, naturally, but there are a lot of population centers that would be affected. It’s easy enough to access a map of the planet and the associated census, start adding up the numbers. How high would the kill count get?

  After a moment, the voice interrupts. “Have you done it? Is there a technical issue? Of all the times—”

  “I’m not doing it,” you say over the dull roar in your ears. Your hands have started shaking violently. You right the nearest chair and sink into it before your knees can give out.

  The voice’s silence is distinctly baffled.

  “Open a line to the Taurags,” you say. “Talk to them or something. The Taurags won’t hit nonmilitary targets down there. They insist on that kind of thing. If our enemy wouldn’t do it, fucked if I’ll hit the button myself.”

  “Are you out of your mind? That invasion force isn’t going to stop here!” The voice suddenly becomes frantic. “Or is it that you’re scared to die when we all go up in flames? I don’t enjoy the idea any more than you do, but we’ve got a duty—”

  “That’s not it,” you say. “I mean, I don’t want to die. But that isn’t the reason. There are better ways to win than toasting a bunch of civilians. We’ve learned that much from our enemy. Maybe it’s too late for us here to find a new strategy, but someone else will.”

  The voice drops silent, and you wonder if it’s given up on you, but after a while it resumes. “We don’t have much time left,” it says, low and fierce. “There’s another squad headed your way, they’re almost there. If you’re going to do something, you have to do it now. And—” Silence again.

  Getting up hurts. You’re sure that something’s bleeding inside. The augment confirms this, although it’s being awfully unhelpful about the nature of the injury. Under the circumstances, it’s not like it matters.

  You’ve had time to survey the room, consider its layout. You settle on a position and lower yourself painfully into place. If the pistol gets any heavier, you’re going to drop it.

  Footsteps. They’re attempting to be quiet, but the slither-scale sound of that articulated stuff can’t be silenced entirely. You’ve never been more awake.

  There’s only one of you, but you might as well take out as many as you can on the way out.

  —

  There’s a Shuos joke that isn’t shared often, although most people have heard it.

  What’s the difference between a Shuos and a bullet to the back of the head?

  You might survive the bullet.

  It’s not especially funny (as opposed to Kel jokes, which everyone but the Kel agree are hilarious). But then, depending on how you measure these things, the deadliest general in Kel history was a Shuos.

  —

  You wake with a memory of shadows cutting across the door, of your jacket’s unexpected injection, of toppling sideways and the taste of blood in your mouth. You’re hooked up to a medical unit that someone has decorated with knitted lace. The sight is so unexpected (and the russet lace so hideous) that it keeps you from doing the obvious thing and accosting the instructor, who is standing subtly out of reach with a dancer’s awareness of space.

  You’re pretty sure that if not for whatever they drugged you with, you’d be in a lot of pain right now. As it stands, your thoughts feel as clear as ice in spite of the weird disconnected feeling that your mind is only attached to your body by a few silk strands.

  “The ‘Taurag attack’ was still part of the ‘game,’ wasn’t it?” you ask in a scratched-up voice. “Some of those people actually died.” You weren’t in a simulator for the second half. The smells, the hot, sticky blood, the staring eye.

  “The performers were volunteers,” the instructor says, which makes you want to shoot him more, if only you had a gun. “I had to apply to Mikodez for special permission to recruit them, because if there’s anything Mikodez hates, it’s inefficiency. But the exercise had to be real because that was the only way to make it look real.”

  “You had me kill people for a test. You killed people for a test.”

  “You’re not the first person to call me a monster.” The instructor smiles; his eyes are very dark. “I didn’t lie about the destructive potential of the weapon that we’re concerned with. It can devastate planetary populations, and they say I was known for overkill. But it isn’t a Taurag weapon. It’s our weapon. We’re building new battlemoths to make use of it even as we speak. I hear they’ll be ready by year’s end.

  “The next step will be to take the fight to the Taurag Republic. There’s a lot of potential for the war to go genocidal, for us to get locked into back-and-forth invasions until one or both of us is obliterated. We have to look beyond that. We can’t escape the fact of war—there’s too much history of distrust for that—but we can lay the foundation for whatever accord we reach afterward, because no war, however terrible, lasts forever.”

  You’re not liking the fact that you agree with this one point, because it means you’re agreeing with him.

  “I refuse to let this weapon fall into the hands of people who can use it without blinking at the deaths it will cause, or who think only of revenge,” the instructor says. “I would rather spend a few deaths now, to identify people who understand restraint—who care about the lives of civilians—than find out during the invasion proper by reading about the inevitable massacres.”

  “Tell me,” you say sarcastically. “If I’d decided to blow the Citadel up, would you have let that go through, too?”

  “No, you were only playing with a dummy system by that point,�
�� he says, “even if you had to believe it was real. If you’d hit the button, we’d still be here, only I’d be debriefing you on why you failed.”

  He rubs the back of one hand, as if in memory of scars, although you see none there. “You did well,” he adds, as if that could make up for the people you killed, those he put into harm’s way. “You passed. I hope you continue to pass. Because this is one test you don’t stop taking.”

  “You wouldn’t have passed,” you say, because someone has to.

  “No,” he says. For a moment you glimpse the shadows he lives with, all of them self-inflicted. “I’ve always been an excellent killer. It’s not too late for you to do more with your career than I did with mine. You’ll make an excellent officer. I’m recommending you for the invasion swarm.”

  You inhale sharply, and regret it when pain stabs through your side in spite of the painkillers. “I’m not sure you should”—more candor than is safe, but you’re beyond caring—“because after we deal with the Taurags, I’m coming for you.”

  The instructor salutes you Kel-style, with just a touch of irony. You don’t return the gesture. “I look forward to it,” he says.

  * * *

  Yoon Ha Lee was introduced to video games by way of a Commodore 64, became the world’s worst FPS player in high school after encountering Wolfenstein 3D, and is currently in extended mourning for the Crysis Wars mod MechWarrior: Living Legends. (Favorite mech: Shadowcat A.) He authored the StoryNexus game Winterstrike for Failbetter Games, wrote the IF game The Moonlit Tower in Inform 6 after being sucked into the genre, and outsources CRPG min-maxing to his husband. His collection Conservation of Shadows came out from Prime Books in 2013. Other works have appeared in venues such as Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Lee lives in Louisiana with family and has not yet been eaten by gators.

  THE CLOCKWORK SOLDIER