Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1) by Vasily Mahanenko

area. Second team, you’ve got the exam hall. Third team—you take the mess. Fifth team—lecture rooms.”
    “Those boys are not playing around,” Lestran smiled again. “Come on. The general’s office is empty.”
    “Why this is just paradise,” whispered Lestran, as soon as he stepped into the office. “How things have changed in here!”
    My new partner’s astonishment was justified—we really had found a nice place. The ubiquitous gray walls of the Training Sector were covered bookcases. I could already see pacifiers, blasters and energy cells strewn about their shelves. There weren’t any force fields, so Lestran instantly dashed to the weapons rack and grabbed the first blaster he could get his hands on.
    “Now we can play war for real,” he said satisfied. I, however, stopped in my tracks: What if my partner decided to use his weapon against me and then give me up to the locals, claiming that I had taken him hostage?
    “Chill,” Lestran laughed seeing me hesitate. “I don’t betray my friends.”
    A desk covered in papers and a holographic screen occupied the center of the office, so while my partner armed himself, I took a seat in the general’s plush chair, causing it to wince beneath my armor’s enormous weight, and commenced with some industrial espionage. Unable to understand the value of each separate paper, I photographed everything that got underway with my PDA, having first plugged my comm cable into the desk’s data port. The office computer wasn’t password protected, so I simply tasked my PDA with copying whatever it got its little hands on. Thank god I didn’t have to worry about the device’s memory—the player’s PDA had seemingly limitless resources.
    “Check out what I found,” Lestran whispered to me loudly. His voice was so happy that I was forced to give up photographing the papers for a second. “This is an access key to a frigate!”
    “And?”
    “My escape plan had been to hide in the hold of a cargo ship or transport—one of the ones in the hangars below—but now, we can fly out of here on our own! With our own ship!”
    “Do you know how to fly it?”
    “Why sure! I’ve done the Training Sector eight times already, trying to get in with the pirates!”
    “How many crew does a frigate need?” I again restrained myself from asking why Lestran was so eager to join the baddies. As far as I understood it, he had decided for himself that I was motivated by the same purpose and therefore could trust me.
    “That’s the beauty of it! The two of us will be enough!”
    “There’s one problem though—I never took the classes…”
    “You know your colors, don’t you? You can check out how to do it right in real life later. Oh boy!” my partner exclaimed once more upon opening a wardrobe.
    “What now?”
    “Oh—no big deal…Just, here—catch!” A symbolical bag of money came flying in my direction—the developers of Galactogon , it seems, had decided to implement the transfer of money between players in a manner that was universally recognizable. Being utterly symbolic, the bag could contain anywhere from one credit to several billion. The symbol here mattered more than the size.
     
    Acquired credits: 15,339 GC.
     
    “That’s exactly half, I swear,” added Lestran. “When you’re done with the data, change your clothes.” My partner indicated another wardrobe: “There are some pretty good class-C clothes in here—with high resistance stats. Plus several medkits, grab them too. I’m gonna check out that safe, for the time being.”
    Acknowledging my partner with a wave of my hand, I turned my attention to my PDA’s display, which had projected a strange notification: “General, you requested information that has been classified as ‘Secret.’ Please enter your access code…”
    It seems that my PDA had already copied everything that there was in the office computer and had begun to send its little tentacles further out, where, of course, it