12

We ran through the dispensing window to the dishwasher, and from there to the kitchen boilers. Behind them, bursts of machine guns clapped, boilers rumbled around, crockery screeched. The sniper, shot through his back, fell in the washing room, broken plates fell on him, a pipe was broken above him and water was gushing. We broke into the hot shop. The machine gunner lay down in the water drain that ran along the huge digesters, and drummed bursts in the direction of the sink, forcing everyone there to lie on the floor. “You bitch, Joy,” I said angrily to my comrade, who did not warn about some of his game that ruined us. The cop looked carefully, hiding behind the refrigerator, out the window, if there were any options. It flew in from the window. Someone, not worrying, threw a grenade launcher into our window, making a “hot shop”. A cumulative grenade is a strong flash, terrible heat, and everything is drowning in darkness. I was thrown to the side hit his head on something. Out of the corner of my eye I saw how Joy was thrown against the wall and dropped behind the cauldron, leaving a bloody trail on the wall. For a couple of seconds, lying face down on the tile on the floor, feeling unbearable pain, from which it seemed my eyes would pop out, I heard the cop screaming terribly, and the machine gun from under the boilers continued to rumble.

A wild dull pain in the side - the bones are broken. Disgustingly, I felt a hot slurry on my stomach and in my pants, guts or shit came out. I screamed in pain and died.

The paratrooper escaped into the corridor behind the sink, ran to the toilets, and knocked out a painted window there, jumped into the bushes. The cop was still alive, officers approached him. He was shaking, holding his bloody belly with his hands, and howling. The officer took the gun from him. The paratrooper could still leave, but Joy was against it, and all of us. If he leaves us here, he will not receive money for killing the boss from Joy. What we told him in the chat. He reached a quiet place, where, pulling the pin, he blew himself up with a grenade. It was more difficult with the cop, who needed not to be captured. With the efforts of our fellow burglar, he rolled his eyes and gasped at the pressure surge. The officer touched his neck behind the collar with his finger and said to his friends, "Die."

We all sat together in Joy's room around a long table. My side still hurt, my head was spinning, I touched the bandages on my stomach, they were wet. The machine gunner complained that he couldn't see anything. Each such death is costly, we are not immortal after all... The game is lost, because of our corpses that fell into the hands of the boss's guards, it is easier for the customer to recognize the boss himself alive and agree with the owners of the game to play everything back. Now the boss is alive, and everything that happened today in the general's dining hall did not happen.

"You don't want to explain anything? - I asked a friend, - we all managed according to plan, what were you looking for there? We all looked at Joy, and he, pale, with bruises all over his face, clapped his fingers on the phone. When he finished, he looked at us guiltily:

- I screwed up, no problem. Now I have transferred the entire advance payment to your accounts, each of you has dropped a hundred gold. This is more than you expected in one go. On the question of what was in the sleeve - I will not answer. Now we are waiting for a week - if the customer pays, and the crackers can insert us somewhere in a normal position, we will try again. It is unlikely, of course - the guards will now be waiting for us everywhere ... But wait a week, do not scatter. Now we are dispersing, we are not looking for each other, if that I will find you all myself. Go, I suck...

Joy collapsed on the sofa, holding his side. We got up from the table to the exit. Joy called me at the door, saying that I forgot my gloves. The gloves were not mine, but my friend firmly pulled them into my hands, and I took them.

They parted in different directions. I was alone in the elevator and put my hands in gloves. In one of them was a Simka. On my floor, I went to the bar and bought a new, very simple phone. Inserted a sim. When I entered the room and lay down on the bed, I received a text message. "Deck 2, Parking 22, transport RD-862, ask Dorsen in an hour."

Somehow, while studying at Homland, I came under the development of counterintelligence. Four and a half hours I was beaten by four men, chained to a chair, I was then on the verge of death, I was 20 years old. For the rest of my life I remember that aching melancholy, defenselessness and fear. I always had this feeling when I had to get into "high-level" bindings. And now it was clearly something like that. Chills on the back, tension in the back of the head, when the neck itself retracts, and you are waiting for the next counterintelligence strike from behind the back - strong under the base of the skull, when it gets dark in the eyes and it seems that the bone will crack, and the soul will fly up through this crack.

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Joy obviously messed up something "beyond what is permitted." What was up the sleeve of the boss? I calmly walked to the elevator, went down to the 4th deck and walked along the conveyor belt to my parking lot. Passed the lock and boarded his ship. I left all my gadgets on the table except for a new phone, changed into a robe like those worn by housekeepers and engineering staff. He opened the refrigerator and took a jar of liquid hair from the drawer. He stuck a beard, mustache, patly on his head, changed the outlines of wrinkles with a gel, put soft plates on his teeth, rounding his cheeks in this way, inserted lenses, changing the color of his eyes to gray.

He left the ship without passing through the airlock, confidently found a hatch from the cable container in the ceiling, pulled himself up, climbed into it and crawled along a narrow chute towards the ventilation passage above the deck. There he jumped into the corridor already far from his parking lot and went to the inter-deck elevator. A dirty iron container, along with a dozen other workers in overalls similar to mine, lowered me to the 2nd deck. From the hustle and bustle, I immediately found a transporter. Huge crap was going through a full charge, resupply and inspection. There were a lot of people around here. And inside the transport workers there is a lot of space that is not really controlled by the station's security - therefore, in addition to the workers, homeless people stick out on such ships, people hiding from the guards sell drugs. Understandably, in general. One transport takes off, another arrives. But there is always such a place at the station.

I confidently walked past the main gangway, went out to the ladder, which went into a small hatch under the belly of the transporter. Dorsen? I asked the man standing near the stairs. So what? Dorsen asked me, apparently after all. - I have a meeting right here.

Dorsen pointed at the hatch and said "straight and to the right." I climbed inside and walked along the narrow passage between the thick cables. At the end of the passage, on the right, was the server room - it was dry, warm, barely light, and the electricity was rhythmically noisy.

Joy nodded to me and told me to throw myself on the couch, he himself sat on an iron stool at the table. He uncorked a bottle of whiskey, took a sip from his throat and handed it to me:

- This is the story, Br. I got into it completely. Dump quickly and far away, do not remember anywhere what happened here. In the game, they don't identify you, it's not real. Guys don't know you. If you don't make a mistake yourself, no one will take a bite. But just in case, for the next three months, be careful and do not trust any random meetings or events.

- It doesn’t work, Joy, - I lay down on the couch, already warmed by the whiskey, - tell me what was up your sleeve, what it threatens you with, how I can help you. Do not writhe - we are from Homland, we are Jedi, we are closer than relatives. Don't be afraid, I'm not a hero, if you're really in the ass, and there's nothing you can do, I'll fuck off and won't stop you from dying. But silently blame you have no right. It's a shame even - do not respect or what?

I hoped with all my might that Joy would laugh it off and send me. I understood, or rather felt, that he was on the edge of the abyss, and what a lie - I wanted at that moment that he stepped there alone and preferably silently. I just have to act like a Jedi, which is why I offered to help...

- There are codes for the Play Galaxy shell program, - said Joy.

Everything inside me fell, I realized that I was already standing next to him at the edge of the abyss. Play Galaxy is a software shell not only for most games, it is a shell in which almost all the programs that surround us are created. All maps of the MAP Galaxy, most of the media and social networks in MEDIA Galaxy, and much more. Browsers are also tied to it, and also banks, exchanges ... you can’t list. But I knew Joy - he doesn’t need banks and stock exchanges ...

- The boss has a flash drive in his sleeve, it contains codes, passwords, logins, a closed part. The programmers saw that I knew about it and saw that I tried to take it. The programmers believe that the Jedi have no right to get into this. This is a verdict,” he explained the situation to me.

I began to understand what hackers are really for (and programmers who want to be considered hackers are considered hackers, if it suits them), why hacker programmers actually inserted our sonder team into the game. It is clear that they do not need some lousy boss, for whom the customer-loh paid a thousand in gold. The boss got in the wrong place. Perhaps the uprising against him began because of this. But now the red-haired psychonaut has climbed where he shouldn't have. Yes, we were brought up from youth that programmers are not a decree for us, that we are free and the galaxy is free ... Programmers are servants, etc. But life has developed in such a way that the galaxy is covered with software shells like a basin, which means that programmers rule this world. This, of course, is not advertised, but everyone who knows, reconciled. We Jedi are now just something between pea jesters and crazy mercenaries. Don Quixotes gouging, eternal vagabonds of the universe. We have not been the conscience of the world and not a spiritual landmark for a long time ...

So, Joy wanted to steal their sky from the gods... I looked at my pale, frightened friend, sucking whiskey from his throat, in the smoke of a cigarette not extinguished in a can, and melancholy gnawed.

In the first summer of training in Homland, in the first camp gathering in the forest fortress, when we were just getting to know each other, learning discipline and the basics of military affairs ... Endless hours of combatant on a huge parade ground, to round-the-clock drumming ... Fizeau to the point of exhaustion and very meager rations - toilets they sparkled with the whiteness of bleach, since no one of us ever shit the whole month of this collection. Sleepless nights on guard duty, patrols or in the kitchen... Constant shrieks of commanders and punishments, punishments...

Somehow, at the very beginning of the gathering, our general, passing in front of the formation and scattering curses and threats, yelled: “And no AWOL, no booze, no Easter Island! I'll rot if I find out that again! I'll send you out right away - to the soldiers, to the space base! Into black holes, damn...!”

Of course, we had to find out what the hell Easter Island is. And found out...

A couple of kilometers from the camp, there is a long, relatively steep, like a wall, cliff of a hill, not visible from the camp, but very noticeable from the side of the Chaka River. Phalluses hewn from mighty logs were hammered into this cliff, as if into a wall. Lovingly sanded to a soft velvety, brightly dyed with beige, and where necessary scarlet or purple. Eggs, as bases, they were fastened in the soil of the cliff of the hill. Proudly and indomitably looking at the sky with red tops. Under each of these works of art, tablets were hammered with the years when each of the phalluses was installed - from the year the Academy was founded, excluding only two years of the Galactic War, - to the present day. The latter was designated last year - it was driven in by our sophomores, and then the frightened newcomers like us at the first camp were the same. Further into infinity was empty space.

More guys joined. At night, they secretly made their way here, quietly (imagine how slowly it is) sawing a tall pine tree. We decided by voting that “ours” would be thin and long, and the prickly beauty went into action. Branches were sawn off, leveled with a rasp, then sanded, the relief was hollowed out with a chisel. As it began to get light, they hid the product in the bushes, and crawled into the barracks. Just to have time to undress and go to bed, so that on the rise to jump up with everyone.

Accomplices were very carefully brought to the case. The commanders were talking about something, informers were peeping at us and they had to be deceived. Then ours began to be caught and interrogated. When they caught me, I said that I went out of the barracks at night to smoke, I was sentenced to three days in the outfit. One of us was seized by sergeants in the woods and beaten, but the boy did not confess. We saw how the doctors took him to the infirmary in the morning. Through interrogations, they began to drag the entire course - who heard and saw what. “Expulsion”, “disbat”, was constantly heard from behind the door of the office of the company commander. Every time I rushed into the forest to our "Hren Pavlovich" (in honor of our general Anton Pavlovich), I shook if a branch suddenly cracked, or a crazy, alarmed bird suddenly flew.

When Palych was ready, Joy and I had to "give birth" to the paint. The moonlit night was inopportune, but there was no time to wait for a darker hour. We made our way to the windows of the warehouse, hiding from the patrol. With this movement, Joy pressed the glazing beads off the windows with a bayonet-knife, carefully taking the glass over himself. We climbed inside, shining flashlights, found the right colors. They turned off the flashlights and lay down while the patrol passed nearby. Then they climbed out with cans of paint. With a broom they swept behind them both in the warehouse, and on the window, and on the cornice. They put the glass in the window and quietly nailed the glazing beads back with the handle of a bayonet-knife. Sweep behind them on the pavement under the window. This is theft, there is a real dispute for it, they don’t joke with it.

I still remember the face of Joy at the moment when we, with cans of paint and a broom in our hands, pressed ourselves into the ground under the bushes, when an officer patrol again walked past, very close, five paces away. Pale, frightened, stubborn, ready that now he is a khan, but not ready to retreat, confident that "this is how it should be." We could not leave behind an "empty place" there - on Easter Island. We couldn't let the timeline break...

Joy had such a face now, as if so many epochs had not passed since that night ... I thought, now I will let out a tear, it hurt so much inside. Then, after a lot, a lot of time, we learned that Easter Island is a pedagogical game, that the 30 people expelled after the camp are just those who split and betrayed us. That the officers knew our every step and diligently entered into personal files ... On the other side of the Chaka River was Anton Pavlovich's dacha. And when we finally scored X ... where necessary, the general and senior officers admired the window from the dacha and drank vodka. But those were our officers, old combat Jedi. And Play Galaxy is a strange pack, we are enemies for them, this is not a game ... Joy stood in the face of death.

Joy, bl ... what have you done, - I said, taking him by the shoulder. He kept smiling with his wide smile, did not say anything, realizing that I understood that he was right.

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We decided that he was weighing anchor and flying to Aldebaran - a system more or less familiar to us. I carefully and imperceptibly fly after him at a distance. He will be something like bait - and I will be the catcher. I will watch for anything unusual that meets him. And either I will intervene when they attack him and save him, or at least I will see the ends - the programmers, their schemes, maybe I will take the language ... Then I will connect or connect our reliable ones, and unwind the tangle. We Jedi do not claim galactic power, but we will make them reckon with us. Joy flies out tomorrow, and I mean the day after tomorrow.

I returned to my ship in the same roundabout ways, made sure that the batteries were fully charged, 100 gold were added to the account for going to the boss and another 300 gold - all the money of Joy that I undertook to spend on his rescue or on the investigation of his death. Joy now considered keeping money on his account frivolous.

I remembered how I was going to creatively replenish supplies on the ship, bypassing all the stores on 45th, ordering delicacies and fruits, good liquor ... Now there was no time for all this. I went to the online store and quickly clicked with concentration - I grabbed simple vegetables, cereals, coffee, bread, condensed milk in bags and boxes, meat and fish in briquettes, boxes of booze ... Plus delivery. Before the full consumption of the 5 gold planned for this business, there were some little things left, I threw a bag of tangerines into the purchase, and pressed the order.

Another 5 gold had to take any chemistry. Cylinders for water and air mixture on the ship, additives for appliances, oils and special compounds for the ship's mechanisms, and finally, cleaning products and medicines for the first aid kit. Without further ado, in fact, I ordered everything exactly what I had before in the kit.