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

"Alliance weapons should have us in target lock by now," Salvo said as
the gunship continued to descend.

Other assault ships were also punching through the cloud cover, only
to be greeted by flocks of incoming missiles. Struck by direct hits, two,
four, then five craft were blown apart, flaming fuselages and mangled
troopers plummeting into the churning scarlet waves of Murkhana Bay. From
the nose of one gunship flew a bang-out capsule that carried the pilot and
copilot to within meters of the water before it was ripped open by a
resolute heat seeker.

In one of the fifty-odd gunships that were racing down the well, three
other Jedi were going into battle, Master Saras Loorne among them.
Stretching out with the Force, Shryne found them, faint echoes confirming
that all three were still alive.

He clamped his right hand on one of the slide door's view slots as the
pilots threw their unwieldy charge into a hard bank, narrowly evading a
pair of hailfire missiles. Gunners ensconced in the gunship's armature-
mounted turrets opened up with blasters as flights of Mankvim Interceptors
swarmed up to engage the Republic force. The anti-laser aerosols scattered
the blaster beams, but dozens of the Separatist craft succumbed to missiles
spewed from the gunships' top-mounted mass-drive launchers.

"High Command should have granted our request to bombard from orbit,"
Salvo said in an amplified voice.

"The idea is to take the city, Commander, not vaporize it," Shryne
said loudly. Murkhana had already been granted weeks to surrender, but the
Republic ultimatum had expired. "Palpatine's policy for winning the hearts
and minds of Separatist populations might not make good military sense, but
it makes good political sense."

Salvo stared at him from behind his visor. "We're not interested in
politics."

Shryne laughed shortly. "Neither were the Jedi."

"Why fight if you weren't bred for it?"

"To serve what remains of the Republic." Shryne's brief green vision
of the war's end returned, and he adopted a rueful grin. "Dooku's dead.
Grievous is being hunted down. If it means anything, I suspect it'll be
over soon."

"The war, or our standing shoulder-to-shoulder?"

"The war, Commander."