Kill Code

  Kill Code

  Justin Sloan

  Elder Tree Press

  Contents

  Copyright

  Free Book?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Untitled

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Author Notes

  About the Author

  Star Forged - Sample

  What Next?

  Copyright 2018 by Justin Sloan

  This is a work of fiction and all rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Thank you team!

  Editors

  Calee Allen

  Diane Newton

  JIT/BETA

  Edward Rosenfeld

  Lois Haupt

  Kelly O’Donnell

  Tracey Byrnes

  Leo Roars

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  Grab your FREE copy of SHADOW CORPS

  1

  “It’s now or never, Banshee,” the slender woman named Glider said, glancing back at the placement of her team. She paused momentarily to grin at the face of a young boy on the other side of a window in the spaceship, and three dialogue choices popped up. The fourth option was to stay silent.

  The options were:

  “You’re bluffing. Surrender now!”

  “A truce then, if you betray your own people.”

  “Taste alien steel and die.”

  The rest of us sat there in the darkness, watching, waiting, but I leaned forward and said, “Try silent.”

  Banshee glared at the space mage, large breasts heaving.

  “You had your chance,” Glider said. She reached out and pressed the red button, sending the main character’s brother out of the now open airlock. In a fit of rage, Banshee charged the slender woman, electricity shooting out of her sword, and a hand swipe motion came up that the room of players ignored. As the game was programmed to do, this gave Glider the chance to dodge, then come back with a thrust of her glowing hand that went right through the character’s throat, sending blood flying across the screen along with the words “Game Over.”

  The holoscreen blanked and the room’s lights automatically brightened to their normal level.

  I leaned back, folding my hands over my stomach, and addressed the room. “The best way to set up the response to a choice is to have the NPC character come back with a witty response that rewards and punishes both options. Yes, even the silent one.” I was proud, leading my team of game developers through our newest section of choice-based gameplay in a much larger tactical role-playing game that I’d helped to create. “But… not like this. It’s too much, considering the low percentage of players who select silent. Setting up such a powerful event to happen from a silent choice? It doesn’t make sense in the grand scheme of this game, especially not when it affects the overall outcome so drastically.”

  The young writer with his hood pulled up over his hat glared at me, moved his mouth as if grumbling, and said, “Of course. What I’m wondering here is why we have a silent option at all.”

  “Oh.”

  I glanced around the room at the others present, all staring at me, and said, “To keep it real. Some people want the silent option, because it’s what they would do.”

  “But stats show only, like, ten percent of players click it in most story games,” Stan, our marketing guy said.

  I nodded, slowly, and then stood. “I’m gonna grab a root beer. You guys keep up the conversation if you want, take a break if you’d like. Bagel Friday! But we’re keeping the silent option, and I’d much rather focus the rest of this meeting on how best to integrate our choice moments and branching paths with the strategy, so that the choices actually matter in that context as well. Agreed?”

  Nobody argued, but then again, I was the vice president—and in a way the co-founder—of Shadow Entertainment. I smiled and headed over to grab my root beer, trying to convince myself not to also grab a second bagel of the day, but dammit, the salmon spread was so good. Of course I went for it, and then went out onto our patio that overlooked the hills of Albany, California. What a place to be located! Close enough to Silicon Valley and San Francisco to benefit from the proximity to new tech and other advancements, along with a fresh supply of excited employees, but also not so different from the years I’d spent in Southern California, mostly stationed at Camp Pendleton.

  A dull roar of yardwork carried up from the residential areas, and a breeze blew through the trees below—a wall of fog approaching from the direction of the Golden Gate bridge, just out of sight. It was the same as it’d always been, and yet so much had changed since I’d left the military behind. And I didn’t just mean the paunch of a belly I was starting to get from all those damn bagels and root beers.

  When I left the Marines to work on video games, I had no idea video game-like simulations would soon replace the world’s system of warfare. How could I have known? Although, in hindsight it seems obvious.

  The world had developed so fast, countries rising to power and building bigger and larger defenses, until it was at the point where nobody could even think about attacking one another without instant death by and for all parties. Since we, as humanity, all agreed complete destruction wasn’t the best route for us, warfare became obsolete.

  At least in the traditional sense.

  And here I was, arguing about silent options in games. What a joke. Still, it was the distraction I needed, the thrill of a life without warfare. It was the perfect job for me, in many ways.

  At the time, the death of my wife, Donica, was still recent. The Marine Corps no longer needed me in that state, and I wanted to vent my sorrow and anger into a more creative lifestyle. When my buddy Dave told me he could use my expertise in launching a virtual reality game based around old wars, I jumped at the opportunity. I’d thought he meant as a consultant, so color me surprised when he showed me to an office with my name on the door, followed by the title Vice President.

  “There’s got to be some sort of mistake,” I’d said.

  “Ryan, you’re the best man for the job, trust me,” my friend replied, clapping me on the shoulder and commencing to walk me through the rest of the offices, open floor plans, and the snack room.

  “No more putting your life on the line, pal,” he said. “From now on, you’ll be using that brain of yours to make the world a more fun place.”

  What could I say? I liked the sound of that, and before the bagels had become my nemesis, Bagel Friday had sounded great too.

  I mean, if there was any better way to help me with my grief, I couldn’t think of it. I poured myself into my work, surrounded by creative individuals all day and having gameplay parties for happy hour—catered, of course.

  It had been great. Working in games had been a dream come true, though I was way out of touch when I started. My youth had been spent playing holoscreen games like Elder Tree Chronicles and the Honor of Valerie games, until my brother discovered the emulators for super-old classics. We lost ourselves in those ancient titles, pulling all-nighters by plowing
through the Zelda missions, tactical role-playing games (RPGs), and some of the early first-person shooters. When we beat Secret of Mana, it was like our lives had changed.

  Moving from the Marines to games forced me to really get back into the zone, and one day I had an idea for the game that would put me on the map.

  We called it Game of Shadows, and it was an epic space fantasy with various troops, death reapers, and even space dragons. A modern tactical game that could be played as a tactical RPG with VR, or on a holo-display more like a fancy game of chess.

  Suddenly I was on the face of game magazines everywhere. I was interviewed, wined and dined, and the numbers in my bank account skyrocketed and kept on going.

  Yet, in spite of all of this, I would go home every night and stare at a picture of my wife, drinking a scotch as I reminisced about our time together. All of this technology couldn’t save her from the drunk driver who’d taken her life that night—that horrible night that had started as a beautiful celebration of our anniversary. A walk along the Carlsbad waterfront, dinner at my favorite Mexican cantina, and then dancing.

  Only to have my world torn apart by some jackass who should have never been born.

  Games were fun, but my life was still lacking, still not enough.

  Imagine my confusion and curiosity when I walked back into the meeting room to discuss choice space and how it best fit into a tactical RPG, only to find that I had a call from my old colonel in the Marines, Jackson Relic. The rest of them, the writers and designers, were still at break, so I held a finger up when I saw Dave, then turned to take the call.

  “Jack?” I asked. We’d been buddies even before I got out, and since then we’d been sure to meet on the golf course more than once.

  “I just heard, are you… I mean, are you ready?” he asked, his voice lacking its normal carefree tone.

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  There was a pause, then he said, “Shit, Ryan. I’m sorry, I… have you checked your messages?”

  I frowned, holding out my phone and swiping a finger to make the messages appear, hovering before me. There was one at the top that had one word standing out from the others: RECALL NOTICE.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked, opening it and skimming it.

  “I really can’t say,” he replied. “Wasn’t even supposed to call, but I wanted to tell you you’re among friends. I’m here already, getting everything I can accomplished and set up for you.”

  “Set up… for me?” I then saw the part of the orders that mentioned reporting in to Camp Pendleton, on the Del Mar side.

  “A lot of this will be riding on you, bud,” he said after a second pause, clearly trying to figure out what he could and could not say. “But don’t worry, you just gotta be yourself, do what you do.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I looked through the orders, wondering if the antsy feeling giving my hand the shakes was excitement or nerves. Whether I was angry, or looking forward to being recalled, I couldn’t really decide without knowing more about the situation.

  We kept it brief and I said I’d see him tomorrow, as the orders stated, then went to talk with Dave to try and figure out what the company would do without me while I was gone.

  He took a deep breath and swiped his hand, moving a holoscreen so that I could see it. “Think it has anything to do with this?”

  I read the headlines about the Eastern Ascent Company, the name associated with the conglomerate of countries that now largely acted like a private corporation. The company was the result of what had once been Russia and China being combined and much of Central Asia being taken over and absorbed against their will, one of the most upsetting events in history, and at the cusp right before the wars ended. It took mass destruction for the world to see what would happen if violence continued in that trajectory.

  According to these headlines, the Great Americas were butting heads with the Eastern Ascent Company on a massive scale. The discord seemed mostly about natural resources, but also included zones in space designated for building new space stations for asteroid mining.

  We both hoped that wasn’t related to my situation, but when I headed home that evening, I had a gut feeling that was exactly what I was being called up to deal with. I was both confused and excited. Confused at the idea of war and whether that spelled instant doom, and excited at the prospect of having something real to distract me again. All of these games were fun, but at the end of the day I was always reminded that they were a means of escape, a false one at that. I needed to know I was more to this world than Game of Shadows.

  My apartment welcomed me with the scent of hibiscus trees just outside the windows and a coolness that woke my senses. Apparently I’d left the windows open, not the best idea in the Bay Area. You never knew if it would be hot or cold, because the weather changed from one day to the next—or even sometimes one hour to the next.

  The first thing I did was pour myself a scotch, then lower myself into my leather recliner and stare at the picture of Donica. Her wavy brown hair, tucked gently behind one ear, her cute freckles running along her nose, and her hazel eyes.

  “I have to go back,” I said to the picture, more than anything wanting her there at my side again. She would tell me I didn’t need the alcohol, criticize me for drinking after it had been the very thing that had killed her. I’d argue that I wasn’t going to drive, that if anything maybe this was my way of saying I was stronger than it, stronger than the substance that had taken her life. After all, it had been the man who was truly responsible, the man who had never paid for his crime… simply because he’d had enough money to fight the system.

  “Your country needs you,” she would’ve said after we argued. And then she would have straddled me, taken my face in her smooth hands, and pressed her gentle lips to mine. She would give me a reason to come home to her each night, as if I needed a reminder.

  I set the picture down, then the glass of half-drunk scotch, and leaned back. As my eyes were about to close, I realized that the phone was buzzing again.

  “Yes,” I said as the screen opened, hovering in front of me. “What is it?”

  General Fukui was staring at me with a frown.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, sitting upright. “General, I mean, I’m sorry.”

  “Major,” he said, his frown deepening. “There’s been a change in plans. We need you now, tonight.”

  I blinked, processed this, and then said, “I’ll be right in, General. I mean, it’s a six-hour drive and…” My eyes wandered over to the scotch, which he didn’t likely see.

  “We’ll be waiting.”

  He was about to hang up when I asked, “General, if I may… Why me? Why now?”

  “We can’t say much on the line, but I can tell you that this is the first war of this kind. You’ll see it on all the channels soon enough anyway, so it doesn’t hurt to tell you that. Which brings us to why you. You, Major Ellis, served us well in the Marines, and served us even better in your capacity as the creator of Game of Shadows.”

  “I’m not following,” I admitted.

  “Just… have the driver leave the screens on. You’ll see.”

  “Driver, General?”

  “To take you to the hyperloop.” He frowned again before signing off. The way he spoke to me gave me the impression he thought I was an idiot. Maybe he was right, but right then I had no room for doubts, no room for delays. If I had to be at Pendleton that night, I had to get moving.

  My mind was a blur as I grabbed some extra changes of clothes, my toothbrush, deodorant, and an energy bar for the road. His words made more sense, though, when I opened the door and a man was standing there in a black suit, a black chauffeur’s cap on his head. After quick introductions, he led me to a sleek, black floating pod. Once we both got in, he took the wheel and gestured to the large screen in front of me.

  None of this was making sense, until the screen lit up.

  At first I thought I was looking at Game of Shadows, but th
en I realized that none of the characters were wearing the flowing dark robes or futuristic space armor I had equipped into my game. My second thought was that someone had ripped me off, until I saw the general walk into view and the background fade, replaced with a room full of what looked like full-body VR simulation pods.

  “The Eastern Ascent Company has declared war on us,” the general said, as an alert flashed at the bottom of the screen that said we were at war. “Don’t be alarmed. As you all are aware, war means destruction. Or it did until now. Thanks to the advancements in simulated battles and strategy developed by the great Ryan Ellis—or I should say, Major Ellis—both sides have agreed to a simulated war. We believe this is the way of the future.” He vanished as the screen showed soldiers and Marines entering the simulation pods. The image flashed to those same men and women appearing on a massive battlefield, then pulled back to show cities, and then the world. It was Earth, and as I watched, the image rotated like a globe, various battle zones throughout history flashing on the screen. It looked like they’d programmed famous battle zones and cities into the simulation.

  “Mere examples of where future battles could be fought. This, fellow citizens of The Great Americas, is our new way of fighting wars. One that won’t see a single civilian harmed. One that won’t even see the brave men and women of our military—or theirs—harmed.” As the general went on about how the losing side would agree to pay from prearranged escrow funds, or give up land, or whatever was deemed the right payment for losing per the World Council of Justice, my mind was spinning with the implication of all this.