"Survivors Quest (Timothy Zahn)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

"But of course I should have," she continued, turning to face Huxley
again. "This place is littered with old droid parts. Stands to reason someone
would have scraped together enough pieces to make a reasonable copy of a
droideka to scare people with."
Huxley's eyes hardened. "You try something cute and you'll see how good a
copy it is." He looked over at the group of casual observers to his right, and
his eyes locked on someone in the crowd. "You?Sinker!"
A kid maybe sixteen years old stepped out from a knot of older men. "Yes,
sir?"
Huxley gestured toward Mara. "Get her lightsaber."
The kid goggled at Mara. "Get?uh??"
"You deaf?" Huxley bit out. "What are you afraid of?"
Sinker made as if to speak, looked furtively at Mara, swallowed visibly,
then stepped hesitantly forward. Mara kept her face expressionless as she
watched him approach, his nervousness increasing with each step, until he was
visibly shaking as he stopped beside her. "Uh... I'm?I'm sorry, ma'am, but?"
"Just take it!" Huxley bellowed.
In a single desperate motion Sinker ducked down, unhooked her lightsaber
from her belt, and scampered backward with it. "There," Huxley said
sarcastically. "That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"
"Wasn't so useful, either," Mara said. "You think that's all it takes to
stop a Jedi? Taking her lightsaber?"
"It's a start," Huxley said.
Mara shook her head. "It's not even that." Looking over at Sinker, she
reached out with the Force.
Abruptly, the lightsaber ignited in his hand.
Sinker's startled squeak was mostly lost in the snap-hiss as the
brilliant blue blade blazed into existence. Rather to her surprise, he didn't
drop the weapon and run, but held gamely on to it. "Sinker, what the frost are
you doing?" Huxley snapped. "That's not a toy."
"I'm not doing it," Sinker protested, his voice running about an octave
higher than it had been before.
"He's right," Mara confirmed as Huxley drew in another bellow's worth of
air. "He's not doing this, either."
She reached out to the lightsaber again, making it weave back and forth
in Sinker's grip. The kid wove back and forth with it, hanging on with the
grim air of someone who's found himself astride an angry acklay with no idea
how to get off.
The rest of the crowd was probably feeling much the same way. For those
first few seconds there had been a mad scramble by everyone near Sinker to get
out of range of the weapon bobbing in his hands like a drunken crewer. They
had mostly stopped moving now, though a few of the smarter ones had decided it
was time to get out entirely and were making tracks for the exits. The rest
were watching Sinker warily, ready to move again if necessary.
"Knock it off, Jade," Huxley snarled. He wasn't smiling anymore. "You
hear me? Knock it off."
"And what do you plan to do if I don't?" Mara countered, continuing to
swing the lightsaber even as she kept an eye on Huxley's blaster. The others
wouldn't shoot her without orders or an immediate threat, she knew, but Huxley
himself might forget what his goals and priorities were here.