"Timothy Zahn - The Mandalorian Armor" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

the whole Empire gunning for them; now they'd have the
late Jabba's extended clan after them as well. Dengar
shook his head-he would've thought that Skywalker and his
pal Han Solo would have, at the least, an appreciation of
the Hutt capacity for bearing grudges.
Even without Jabba's obese form rotting under the
thermal weight of the suns, the debris zone stank. Dengar
lifted a length of chain, the broken metal at its end
twisted by blaster fire. The last time he'd seen this
hand-forged tether, back at Jabba's palace, it'd been
fastened to an iron collar around Princess Leia Organa's
neck. Now the links were crusted with the dried
exudations from Jabba's slobbering mouth. The Hutt
must've died hard, thought Dengar, dropping the chain. A
lot to kill there. He'd gotten an account of the fight
from a couple of surviving bodyguards that had managed to
drag themselves back to the palace. When Dengar had left,
to come out here to the Dune Sea wastes, most of the
remaining thugs and louts were busily smashing open the
casks of off-planet claret in the cool, dank cellars
beneath the palace, and getting obliterated in a orgy of
relief and self-pity at no longer being in Jabba the
Hurt's employ.
"Yeah, you're free, too." Dengar picked up an
unsmashed foodpot that the toe of his boot had uncovered.
The still-living delicacy inside, one of Jabba's favorite
trufflites, scrabbled against the ceramic lid embossed
with the distinctive oval seal of Fhnark & Co., Exotic
Foodstuffs-we cater to the galaxy's degenerate appetites.
"For what it's worth." His own tastes didn't run to the
likes of the pot's spidery, gel-mired contents; he hooked
a gloved finger in the lid's airhole and pried it open.
The nutrient gases hissed out; they had sustained the
delicacy's freshness, all the way from whatever distant
planet had spawned it. "See how long you last out there."
The trufflite dropped to the sand, scrabbled over
Dengar's boot, and vanished over the nearest dune. He
imagined some Tusken Raider finding the little appetizer
out there and being completely perplexed by it.
One substantial piece of wreckage remained, too big
for the Jawas to have carted away. The hardened durasteel
keelbeam of the sail barge, blackened by explosions that
had destroyed the rest of the craft, rose at an angle
from where the stern end was buried beneath a fall of
rocks. Dengar scrabbled aboard the curved metal, nearly a
meter in width, and climbed the rest of the way up to
where the barge's bow had been, and now only the exposed
beam was left, tilted into the cloudless sky. He wrapped
one arm around the end, then with his other hand unslung
the elec-trobinoculars from his belt and brought them up