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

"What becomes of the Jedi then?"

"We'll do what we have always done: follow the Force."

"And the Grand Army?"

Shryne regarded him. "Help us preserve the peace."

2

Murkhana City was visible now, climbing into steep hills that rose
from a long crescent of shoreline, the sheen of overlapping particle
shields dulled by the gray underbelly of the clouds. Shryne caught a
fleeting glimpse of the Argente Tower before the gunship dropped to the
crests of the frothing waves and altered course, pointing its blunt nose
toward the stacked skyline and slaloming through warheads fired from
weapons emplacements that lined the shore.

In a class with Mygccto, Muunilinst, and Neimoidia, Murkhana was not a
conquered planet but a host world-home to former Senator and Separatist
Council member Passel Argente, and headquarters of the Corporate Alliance.
Murkhana's deal makers and litigators, tended to by armies of household
droids and private security guards, had fashioned a hedonistic domain of
towering office buildings, luxurious apartment complexes, exclusive
medcenters, and swank shopping malls, casinos, and nightclubs. Only the
most expensive speeders negotiated a vertical cityscape of graceful,
spiraling structures that looked as if they had been grown of ocean coral
rather than constructed.

Murkhana also housed the finest communications facility in that part
of the Outer Rim, and was a primary source of the "shadowfeeds" that spread
Separatist propaganda among Republic and Confederacy worlds.

Arranged like the spokes of a wheel, four ten-kilometer-long bridges
linked the city to an enormous offshore landing platform. Hexagonal in
shape and supported on thick columns anchored in the seabed, the platform
was the prize the Republic needed to secure before a full assault could be
mounted. For that to happen, the Grand Army needed to penetrate the
defensive umbrellas and take out the generators that sustained them. But
with nearly all rooftop and repulsorlift landing platforms shielded,
Murkhana's arc of black-sand beach was the only place where the gunships
could insert their payloads of clone troopers and Jedi.

Shryne was gazing at the landing platform when he felt someone begin
to edge between him and Commander Salvo, set on getting a better look
through the open hatch. Even before he saw the headful of long black curls,
he knew it was Olee Star-stone. Planting his left hand firmly on the top of
her head, he propelled her back into the troop bay

"If you're determined to make yourself a target, Padawan, at least