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

"Really? You up for a game tonight?"
"No, I've learned my lesson."
The stormtrooper settled back, his posture one of
disappointment.
Moments later, the skimmer slowed. Wedge heard a verbal exchange between the pilot and what must have been the gate guards, but he couldn't make out the words. Then they were in motion again.
It was a long minute before they slowed once more. Then the skimmer's repulsorlift depowered and the vehicle settled to a hard surface.
The door beside Wedge opened. They appeared to be in a vehicle hangar, and a few steps away was a table where a uni-formed officer and another pair of stormtroopers waited. The officer, a man with graying hair and hard lines to his face, looked bored and irritable. "Move them out. It's time for in-stant justice."
Wedge waved the real stormtroopers and their prisoners to proceed while his people got their unconscious prisoners up.
Then the Wraiths moved out. Wedge was the last one out of the vehicle.
"Papers," said the officer in charge. Wedge tensed. But the stormtrooper he addressed handed him standard identity cards bearing the likenesses of the prisoners in his charge. Wedge glanced at Face, who discreetly held up the handful of identity cards taken from their own prisoners. Wedge turned away again.
The officer looked over the identity cards. "Facts?"
The stormtrooper in charge said, "Drunk and disorderly
at Ola's."
The officer grimaced. "You two idiots ought to find a bet-ter class of drinking establishment. Charges?"
The stormtrooper in charge shook his head, the motion exaggerated by his helmet. "None."
"Well, that's not too bad." The officer glanced up at the two prisoners. "You two are confined to base for six days."
The prisoners looked relieved.
"That's three days starting now," the officer continued,
"and three days starting next payday." He ignored their ex-pressions of dismay and gestured for them to be on their way. "Next."
Wedge stepped up. He reached over without looking. Face put the identity cards in his hand and he presented them to the officer. "Drunk and disorderly at Rojio's. Brawling with civilians."
The officer gave him an I-don't-want-to-believe-you look.
"They're all unconscious. They lost to civilians?"
"Yes, sir."
"How many?"
"Two."
The officer looked pained. "Five of them against two civil-ians, and they're too drunk to make a good accounting of them-selves. They'll pay for letting the unit down." He frowned. "Five. Say, these are Captain Wanatte's drinking buddies. Where's the captain ?"
Face spoke up: "Before he passed out the last time, Lieutenant Cothron said the captain had found some compan-ionship for the evening."
"Ah. Well, then. Let's see the damages."



Wedge said, "One of the civilians paid for the damages
before we dropped them off with the city authorities."
"Commendable. All right. I think these five will be im-proved by doing a few days of cleanup and breakdown work for the next morale event. Get 'era to their quarters."
Wedge saluted smartly and headed off in the direction the other stormtroopers had taken to leave the hangar. He heard the Wraiths fall in step behind him and the dragging noise of their prisoners' boots scraping against the duracrete. Then he heard the skiminer's engines start up again.
He breathed a sigh of relief. The pilot of the skimmer hadn't noticed that eleven footsore stormtroopers had boarded the skimmer, but only ten had emerged. Janson had taken Shalla's place and was working with Castin to carry a pilot. Now, if this base followed standard Imperial procedure, that pilot would take this skimmer back to the military police mo-tor pool.
Then it would be up to Shalla. She was still in the skim~ mer's enclosure, and her job was to prevent the pilot and his guard from talking to anybody.
Her first job. She had other things to do as well. Wedge was reluctant to assign so much responsibility in a commando mission to a newcomer to the squadron, but Kell had spoken in such glowing terms of the Nelprin family's formidable skills that he'd decided to go ahead with this approach.
Outside the hangar, he took a moment to get his bearings, and silently cursed the restricted field of vision afforded by stormtrooper helmets; lacking peripheral vision, he had to turn in a slow, complete circle to acquire a mental picture of his sur-roundings. He had a fair idea of the base layout from the re-connaissance they'd clone on the hilltop, but not an idea of where in the base they now were. When he had his bearings, he headed straight toward the group of dome-topped buildings he'd earlier decided were officers' quarters.
They'd never make it there, of course. They'd dump the unconscious pilots in the first dark alley or trench they found and go about their mission.
Lara Notsil, originally Gara Petothel, flinched as pair after pair of TIE fighters broke formation and dove, their engines screaming, toward her and her wingmates. A good mannerism, flinching, she decided. fithey're observing me, they'll log it.
Her wing leader's voice came over the comm unit: "Gold One to Gold Squadron. Break by pairs and engage."
Lara keyed her own comm unit. "Gold Seven?"
"I'm your wing, Eight."
She rolled to starboard, getting clear of the main forma-
tion of X-wings, and saw other paired fighters also break-
ing off.
Then the first blasts of green Imperial laser fire fell among them. Lara's X-wing was rocked by a stern hit; her aft shields were knocked partway down and she reinforced them with en-ergy from her forward shields. The pair of TIE fighters raining laser fire down on both her and Gold Seven slid neatly into killing position behind them.
"Dive for cover, Seven," Lara said, and nosed the stick for-ward. The terrain below, a sprawling city in ruins, grew larger. She and Gold Seven dropped into a debris-littered street, flying lower than the tops of the surrounding buildings, but their pursuers never lost sight of them and stayed tucked behind. Lara's snubfighter was hit by another pair of laser blasts and its aft section slewed slightly to port; she corrected with a deft ap-plication of etheric rudder.
Up ahead, the road forked left and right. She knew from seeing the area from above that the two forks turned toward one another farther on, rejoining after only a couple of kilo-meters. That should have been her tactic: send Gold Seven to starboard while she went to port, then fire upon Seven's pur-suer while Seven fired upon hers once the roads rejoined.