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

his hair in the doubled glare of amber and scarlet warning lights. The small,
boxlike craft slid through the magnetic portal and flipped immediately down,
around, avoiding the Borealis's stabilizers, picking up speed while
interacting with a far larger vessel, which was ripping along at thousands of
kilometers per second.
Threepio clutched at the back of the empty navigator's station, circuits
momentarily jammed with alarm. Artoo let out a long, trilling wail as the
scout boat whipped by inches from the bigger ship's secondary tanks. The wake
of the flagship's magnetic field tossed and dragged the little craft like a
chip in a riptide. Marcopius's dark hands flickered and danced from levers to
joystick to toggles as huge sheets of metal and rivets rocketed past the
observation ports, alternating with slabs of interstellar blackness already
shimmering with the light-shift effects of hyperspace sequence. Then the scout
boat plunged away, spinning dizzily, stars and ships and planets reeling in a
disorienting tumble past the ports. There was a blinding flash, far too near
for comfort, as the Borealis plunged into the glimmering void of quasi-reality
that was called "hyperspace" for lack of any better term.
Far to starboard, as Marcopius stabilized the spinning scout boat, the
Light of Reason had left orbit as well, streaking toward the Nam Chorios
primary like an incandescent teardrop.
"Shall we go after them?"
"And do what?" The young yeoman's hands were trembling where they lay on
the console. "Throw spitballs at them? This is a scout boat, not an E-wing.
Besides, we're too big to make it past those gun stations they were talking
about."
He nodded toward the viewport, where the Light of Reason was diminishing
into the stars. "Just looking at that ship I'd guess it comes apart and goes
down to the planet in self-powered sections, leaving the main reactor in
orbit. It's the only way they could get enough bulk or even limited hyperspace
capability."
He guided the scout boat in a long loop, began setting coordinates, an
expression of grim sorrow aging his face. "What do you know about Pedducis
Chorios? That's the nearest civilization."
"Well, it can't really be called civilized," said Threepio judiciously.
"The local Warlords have taken on so-called advisers-ex-smugglers,
Imperial renegades, Corporate sector mercenaries, fugitives from both Imperial
and Republican justice. I shudder to think what would happen to us if we went
there, or to Her Excellency if anyone there discovered the predicament she was
in."
Marcopius nodded, and made another adjustment. "It has to be the fleet
orbital base at Durren, then." He paused, trying to draw breath, his face gray
around the lips. "Are either of you programmed to handle one of these once we
get out of hyperspace?"
Artoo, who had released himself from his takeoff cradle, let out an
optimistic trill, and Threepio said firmly, "Oh, no, sir. Upon the single
occasion that we tried any sort of piloting at all, the results were most
unsatisfactory. Certainly the more modern craft are entirely beyond our
programming capacity. I'm a protocol droid, as you know, and though Artoo is
quite a competent astromech, I'm afraid he has his limitations in other areas.
"