"Planet Of Twilight (Barbara Hambley)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

to interfere. We've got a pretty strong force at the Durren orbital base, but
I'd rather not have to use it."
Luke nodded. She stood below, looking up as Luke climbed the long,
fragile ladder up the side of the airfoil and began working the bottles and
packets into every spare cranny of the cockpit. In the days of the Rebellion,
and during the long mopping up of sporadic warfare with the various Moll} and
Governors and self-proclaimed Grand Admirals of the Empire, he'd participated
in space battles and dogfights without number. Given the presence of Imperial
Warlords and a sizable Imperial fleet still under the control of those who
longed for the old regime, he supposed he'd take part in hundreds more. But
more and more, in the back of his mind, was a growing regret, and a terrible
sense of waste.
"I'll keep an eye out," he said. He climbed back down to her, and zipped
up the light, tough fabric of his suit. "Being incognito should help." He
glanced across at the brig, its pilot still in conversation with the guards.
The dispatch of an escort vessel would rouse very little curiosity, given the
proximity of Pedducis Chorios.
"Just the fact that Callista would send that message, would come out of
hiding to send it, means there's something going on. The fact that she didn't
think it could go subspace means it's serious."
Leia shook her head, the gold finials and cabochon gems of her hairpins
flashing. "It could be.... That's something else I wanted to ask you." She
leaned her shoulder against the airfoil, which rocked just slightly in its
antigray cradle, and lowered her voice. "It isn't generally known, Luke, but
there's some kind of leak in the Council. Information's getting out to Admiral
Pellaeon and to the imperial Moffs like Getelles and Shargael over in I-
sector. Minister of State Rieekan thinks it may be through someone in the
Rationalist Party-maybe even Q-Varx himself, though I think the man's honest.
They have adherents both in the Republic and in nearly every piece of the
Empire still big enough to field a fleet."
She hesitated a moment, her mouth wry and her brown eyes suddenly older
than her years. Luke saw - in her eyes the years of bitter wrangling, the
betrayals: Mon Mothma poisoned, the Council split by factions, Admiral Ackbar
betrayed, discredited, hounded...
"Myself," she said softly, "I think it could be almost anyone. But
Callista knows something about it."
"I'll keep my ear to the ground." He checked the seals on his flightsuit
and the helmet tubes of the emergency systems-not that any system would save
anyone's life in a true emergency in vacuum.
"Leia..." He reached out a hand for hers, not entirely certain what it
was he wanted to say.
Her eyes met his. He understood the look in them. Before she was twenty
she had seen her family, her world, everything she knew, casually wiped out as
a demonstration of the Empire's might. Before he had ever met her, she had
lost some essential part of herself.
But that weary hardness in her eyes, that look of steeling herself so as
never to be surprised by even the worst...
And she knew it. She felt what she was becoming.
He said, not knowing that he was going to say it, "Keep up with your
lightsaber practice. Kyp or Tionne should be able to help you.