"Dark Lord - The Rise Of Darth Vader (James Luceno)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Luceno James)

of clarity opened in the clouds, a perforation in the veil, and Shryne
gazed on verdant forest so profoundly green he could almost taste it.
Valiant combatants scurried through the underbrush and sleek ships soared
through the canopy. In the midst of it all a lone figure stretched out his
hand, tearing aside a curtain black as night...

Shryne knew he had stepped out of time, into some truth beyond
reckoning.

A vision of the end of the war, perhaps, or of time itself.

Whichever, the effect of it comforted him that he was indeed where he
was supposed to be. That despite the depth to which the war had caused him
to become fixed on death and destruction, he was still tethered to the
Force, and serving it in his own limited way.

Then, as if intent on foiling him, the thin clouds quickly conspired
to conceal what had been revealed, closing the portal an errant current had
opened. And Shryne was back where he started, with gusts of superheated air
tugging at the sleeves and cowl of his brown robe.

"The Koorivar have done a good job with their weather machines," a
speaker-enhanced voice said into his left ear. "Whipped up one brute of a
sky. We used the same tactic on Paarin Minor. Drew the Seps into fabricated
clouds and blew them to the back of beyond."

Shryne laughed without merriment. "Good to see you can still
appreciate the little things, Commander."

"What else is there, General?"

Shryne couldn't make out the expression on the face behind the tinted
T-visor, but he knew that shared face as well as anyone else who fought in
the war. Commander of the Thirty-second air combat wing, the clone officer
had somewhere along the line acquired the name Salvo, and the sobriquet fit
him like a gauntlet.

The high-traction soles of his jump boots gave him just enough added
height to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Shryne, and where his armor
wasn't dinged and scored it was emblazoned with rust-brown markings. On his
hips he wore holstered hand blasters and, for reasons Shryne couldn't
fathom, a version of the capelike command skirt that had become all the
rage in the war's third year. The left side of his shrapnel-pitted helmet
was laser-etched with the motto LIVE TO SERVE!

Torso markings attested to Salvo's participation in campaigns on many
worlds, and while he wasn't an ARC-an Advanced Reconnaissance Commando-he
had the rough edges of an ARC, and of their clone template, Jango Fett,
whose headless body Shryne had seen in a Geonosian arena shortly before
Master Nat-Sem had fallen to enemy fire.