"Aaron Allston "Iron Fist" (STARWARS. X-Wing #6)" - читать интересную книгу автора

been transferred here under false pretenses. We're a hard-luck squadron. If you're not a real screwup, we're just going to have to make you an honorary screwup. Keep that in mind."
"I will," she said, her voice solemn.
"She'll do," Phanan said.
"Even if she doesn't swoon."
"How did you get into Starfighter Command?" Face asked.
She looked between them as if evaluating them, then
shrugged. "My... owner... was a very rich man of Corus-
cant, founder of a firm that made communications equipment. Very reliable HoloNet receivers, for example. He and his pre-ferred advisers lived on an enormous yacht called the Violet Hernia reference to the Emperor's robes. Anyway, over the years I was able to persuade several of his personal pilots to teach me how to control their vehicles. Few things make a male feel as grand as the opportunity to teach a young, fasci-nated female." She opened her eyes wide in an expression of in-nocence.
Face snorted. "So you stole a vehicle ?"
"My owner was visited by a pilot with an armed shuttle. I
stole it and turned it over to the New Republic." "And the Violet Hem?"
This time her smile was not that of an innocent. "Before I left, I locked her shields down so they could not be brought up. My first combat action of any sort was to blow Violet Hem out of space."
Face suppressed a shudder and decided to change the sub-ject. "I wonder if the other new pilots are just as unaware of our true nature. Hey, Castin!"
The blond pilot, seated in a stuffed chair nearby, looked up guiltily from the datapad in his lap. "I wasn't doing anything."
Face grinned. "I'm not monitoring you. I just wanted to know what you did to end up with the Wraiths."
"I volunteered."
"Why?"
Castin looked thoughtful. "I wanted to be where things
happened. And things always happen around Commander An-tilles. I want to go after enemies like Zsinj and eliminate them.
Erase them. Overwrite them to the point that no one in the galaxy even remembers them."
"Well, that's admirable... but again, why?"
"People like Zsinj, they have to be squashed as hard and
as fast as you can. Because the next thing they do is going to be something awful. They never do anything that isn't awful, and ordinary people get killed." Castin's tone was bitter, and other Wraiths perked up to listen.
"You're speaking from personal experience."
"Oh, yes." Castin looked around blankly, staring not at
his fellow Wraiths but at some point in the past. "The day the Emperor died-what were you doing?"
Face didn't have to think back. Most people recalled ex-actly what they were doing the moment they heard that Palpa-fine had been killed at Endor. "I was in civilian flight school on Lorrd. In class studying astronautics. Why?"
"I was in one of Coruscant's plazas. A little one, couldn't have held more than a couple of hundred thousand people, way up high where only a half-dozen buildings cast shadows down on it. The word spread like fire through an old building. The New Republic HoloNet broadcast was being rebroadcast on a wide band so that every personal comlink would pick it up. All holoprojectors were showing the second Death Star exploding.
"The crowd went crazy. Loyalists were turning white.
Some of them fainting dead away. Rebels and people with Rebel leanings were going berserk. Before very long, they were actually tearing a statue of Palpatine down. A big one. It took cables and skimmers to knock it over." Castin shrugged. "And then stormtroopers came." "To restore order."
"If you want to call it that. They opened up on the crowd pulling down the statue. And their blasters weren't set on stun. You could smell the burning-meat odor all over the plaza. I was right next to a young mother who took it right in the head. I grabbed her baby on the way down so he wouldn't be tram-pled in the stampede." He shook his head, his expression bleak, and fell silent.



Face said, "The Imperial HoloNet wouldn't have trans-mitted the news of the Emperor's death over normal channels like that. Not before they'd had time to sweeten up the story and turn it into some sort of Imperial victory."
Castin shook his head, not meeting Face's eye.
"So someone else, someone technically proficient, had to have intercepted it and rebroadcast it like that. You?"
Castin nodded. "My group was one of them, yes."
"So Zsinj is another Imperial killer, and if you don't stop
him personally, it's the plaza all over again. Is that it?"
"Maybe."
"Well, that's as good a reason as any." But that was an an-
swer for Face. Castin might have volunteered for this duty without a blemish on his record, but there was still a possibility of volatility there. Now he had to wonder if Dia and Shalla were also carrying around emotional demolition charges just waiting to go off.
"Pirates," Piggy said, interrupting. The Gamorrean set-tled into a stuffed chair situated between Janson's sofa and the bar, near Donos and Castin.
"Pirates to you, too," Phanan said. "Is that a new greeting?
Something Gamorrean? 'Scabrous pirates to you this morning.'"
"'And bleeding pirates to you.' "Face gave his wingman a formal bow.
"Zsinj was negotiating with the pirates on M2398, trying to enlist their services," Piggy continued. In spite of the me-chanical simplicity of Piggy's voice translator, Face thought he could detect a contemplative quality in the Gamorrean's tones. "It's a tactic we haven't seen with him before. Is he in such dire need that he must rely on pirates? I don't think so. He's assem-bling a second navy, perhaps a disposable one."