"Denning, Troy - Forgotten Realms - MoonShae 3 - Darkwell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Denning Troy)

"Can," Tully said in a small voice. "Ship be ##."
Translation-sputter.
"Captain," Hilfy said, "he's got to go out now. Got to." His mind was at risk. "Go to sleep," Pyanfar said, never looking around; his back would be mostly to her anyway, the bulk of the seat in the way.
"Not trust human," Tully said suddenly.
"Go out," Hilfy said sharply. "You want me to put that into you? Do it.''
While the chronometer got closer and closer to jump. "Tully," Pyanfar said. "Good night."
"I go," he said.
"He's got it," Tirun said. "He's all right."
"We're on count," Haral said.
"You give me com we come through," Jik said.
"Aja Jin has its orders." They had talked through that matter already. Jik made a last try. And: "You got anything last minute you want to own up to?" she asked. "Jik?"
"I damn fool," he said.
"Count to ten," Haral said, and the numbers on the corner of the number-one monitor started ticking away.
"Take her through," Pyanfar said. They did that, traded off; and she suddenly decided on the stint at exit.
"Got it," Haral said. That section of the board that pertained to jump was live. "Referent on, we got our lock."
Star-fixed and dead-on. It was a single-jump to Meetpoint from dusty Kefk, with its armed guardstations and its grim gray station-
-to the white light and opal subtleties of a stsho-run station.
If that was what was still there.
"Going," Haral said.
Down. . . .
They stopped being at Kefk.

. . . .Gods save us, Pyanfar thought, which thought went on for a long long timestretch.
She dreamed of ships in conflict in their hundreds, burning like suns.
Of strange gangling beings that had walked the dock once at Gaohn, sinister in their numbers and their resemblance to a creature she had befriended (but too many of them, and too sudden, and with their Tully-like eyes all blue and strange and malevolent). They carried weapons, these strangers; they talked among themselves in their chattering, abrupt speech, and laughed their harsh alien laughter out loud, which echoed up and down the docks.
What do they want? she asked Tully then, in that dream.
Look out for them, he said to her. And one of them drew a Hun and aimed it at them both.
What does it say? Pyanfar asked when it spoke.
But the gun went off and Tully went sprawling without a sound; in slow motion the tall figure turned the weapon toward her-


Chapter Five

...it went off.
The Pride made the drop into realspace and Pyanfar blinked, gasped a breath, and felt an acute pain about the heart which confused her entirely as her eyes cleared on The Pride's boards and blinking lights and her ears received the warning beeps from com: Wake up, wake up, wake up-
Meetpoint?
Her eyes found the data on the screen, blurred and focussed again with a mortal effort. "We're on," she said around the pounding of her heart, "Haral, we're on."
And from elsewhere, distant and echoing in and out of space: "Chur, do you hear me? Do you hear?"
From still another: "We've got passive signal. Captain! We're not getting buoy here. They've got Meetpoint image blanked!''
''Gods and thunders. Geran!''
"I'm on it, I'm already on it, captain."
-Hunting their partners, who could make a fatal mistake in a jump this close, looking for the first sign of signal, and themselves rushing in hard toward Meetpoint, into crowded space, where the scan's bounce-back could only tell them things too late and passive reception might not have all the data. They were blind. Meetpoint wanted them that way. It was somebody's trap.
"Priority," Hilfy said. "Buoy warning: dump immediately."
"Belay that," Pyanfar said. With two ships charging up behind them out of hyperspace, she had no wish to have herself slowing down in their path. Collision to fore was an astronomical possibility; behind was a statistical probability.
And the kif who gave them orders meant business.
Acquisition," Geran said, "your one, Haral."
"Your two," Haral said; and id chased the image to Pyanfar's number two monitor. Aja Jin was in.
"What've we got here? Geran-"
"I'm working on it. We got stuff all over the place on passive, nobody outputting image, lot of noise, lot of noise, we got ships here-"
"Mark," Haral said, "less twenty seconds."