勢孤取和 (Influence Isolated, Make Peace)

Title: 勢孤取和 (Influence Isolated, Make Peace)
Author: John Chu
Published at Lightspeed Magazine, June 2015, Queers Destroy Science Fiction Special Issue. http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/influence-isolated-make-peace/
Description, by Lois Tilton [Locus]: "Military, or rather postwar SF. In the course of the late war, the military created cyborg supersoldiers, who aren’t considered human, even if they once were. Now the peace treaty mandates that they be decommissioned, which means eliminated. The cyborgs have other plans, but to succeed, they have to be able to fit into human society without arousing suspicion. To test himself, Jake sits down at a cafeteria table with a human soldier and engages him in conversation.      Jake discarded the sarcastic remark that headed his list of conversational alternatives. Snarking with every response was a decades-old gambit that anyone on base would recognize. Cyborgs soared through the Turing Test–they still had some human brain function, after all—but composing words was just a sliver of what he needed to do. He couldn’t merely pass for human; no one could be allowed to suspect he wasn’t.   His target turns out to be named Tyler, and he turns out to have a lot in common with Jake—they are both expert at the game of Go, they both originated in a part of China, and there is a hint of mutual attraction. But Tyler is something else, which forces a drastic change in the cyborgs’ escape plans."
Category:Best Short Story