"The New Rebellion (Kristine Rusch)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

holocams in the storage compartments. Lando's mouth was dry. The discomfort he
had felt when he first saw the ship was growing.
Except for the blaster scars in the rec room, he saw no signs of battle.
No real destruction, only the kind made when someone-or several someones-
searched a ship. Still, the tension in Lando's shoulders was growing.
Finally he brought the Spicy Lady's cockpit up on his screen. And then he
let out the breath he had been holding.
Jarril floated, his body bumping against the controls, the viewport, the
ceiling, the floor. Judging from the hole in his chest, he had been hit with a
weapon at very close range.
Lando closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb
and forefinger. An old friend shouldn't die like that. Especially not in the
rear-end of nowhere with no one to guard his back.
Then Lando frowned. Jarril usually had a Sullustan with him. Seluss. Had
Seluss taken the A-wing? For help? That made no sense. He would have been
back.
Unless he was followed.
But Lando had seen no other vessels in this corner of space. Very few
ships went back and forth here. There was nothing to smuggle. Lando himself
wouldn't have been here if Mara hadn't had to meet Karrde. The Republic had
little interest in the primitive planets nearby and the Empire had abandoned
hope of uniting such diverse peoples.
The Empire had long ago abandoned hope of anything.
Something nagged at the back of Lando's mind. He had seen something in
that debris. Something that didn't belong.
He opened his eyes as he panned away from the cockpit, searching,
searching, scanning the debris at close range until he found what he was
looking for.
In the galley, banging off one wall and ricocheting into another like a
puck in null hockey, a stormtrooper helmet floated.
A helmet so clean it reflected the emergency glow panels.
Stormtroopers. This far out. Perhaps Lando had been wrong about the
Empire.
With a flurry of movements, he rigged up the rest of the slave circuitry.
He'd tow the Spicy Lady to his mining operation on Kessel and then inspect the
interior himself. Maybe he could see what Jarril had been into.
Lando had a hunch he wouldn't like what he was about to find.


EIGHT

The surviving senators filled the Emperor's Audience Room in the
Imperial Palace. The senior senators, the ones who clearly supported the
Republic, were mingling with one another, and talking about substantive
issues. Leia stood beside the buffet table that lined one wall. She wasn't
interested in her colleagues. She was watching the junior senators, many of
them former Imperials, argue. Her hands still hurt from the burns she had
sustained in the blast, but otherwise she felt fine.
Except for her hearing.
She wished it hadn't returned.