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

That real scar made things a little difficult. Every disguise he wore had to conceal it or incorporate it. A simple, if somewhat pricey, cosmetic skin abrasion and hacta treatment would elimi-nate it. But it was part of him now, a constant reminder of the debt he would never he able to pay off. As a child star of holo-dramas, he had unknowingly helped boost Imperial morale, promote Imperial projects, even improve Imperial military re-cruitment. Crimes he'd never be able to erase. The scar was the living sign of those crimes. Look at me. I know what I did.
Regardless, all the extra scars, the false ones, made a good disguise, but they itched. And itched. While the same music played over and over again.
His sensor board lit up as an eighth blip suddenly joined the seven waiting there in space. Barderia had arrived, within range of his guns, of Wedge's.
His comm crackled as he reached for his yoke. "This is One, targeting engines. Shields still down. Firing!"
As Face brought his interceptor around, he saw the bulk of Barderia, a boxy Corellian freighter about a hundred meters long, below him and to his starboard. Green laser fire from a point in space nearly two klicks away was dancing across its stern. Face marveled at the speed of Wedge's response; the commander hadn't been any closer to or oriented any better toward the freighter's arrival.
Face got his guns lined up on the freighter, saw a turreted turbolaser swinging around to aim in on Wedge. He gritted his teeth, but that was not the ship's most dangerous remaining system. He ignored the gun and targeted the ship's communi-cations array. He fired, his first shot scoring the ship's hull, the second turning the comm gear into molten metal and escaping gas in a minor explosion. Then, as he accelerated toward the vessel, he belatedly linked his lasers to quad fire and opened up on the turbolaser.
This blast was larger and much more satisfying, eliminat-ing the turret completely. His interceptor and Wedge's crossed one another in flyovers of the crippled vessel as they visually surveiled the damage.
"This is One. Engines out. No sign of atmosphere venting.
Hull integrity seems to be fine."
"This is Eight. Comm antenna down. Main weapon
down. I'd call this definitely a strong negotiating position. I'm
opening communications." He switched his comm frequency
to a wide band including the range normally used by personal
comlinks and jumped his power setting up so personal systems
would be likely to receive him. He cleared his throat in a deep
growl that was his mnemonic for this character's vocal man-
nerism, then said, his voice a gravelly rumble, "Barderia, this is
General Kargin of the ttawk-bat Independent Space Force. We
are seizing your vessel. We are businessmen and will do no
harm to surrendering crew members, to whom I guarantee safe
passage into the hands of this system's rescue forces. But we are



rather short-tempered businessmen and any crewmen offering resistance will be brought back to our base for a debriefing ses-sion they will never forget... much less survive. Surrender your vessel and prepare your docking ports for boarding... or prepare to breathe vacuum."
His response was not long in coming. A man's voice, raspy and dismayed, replied, "This is Captain Rhanken of the inde-pendent cargo vessel Barderia. I surrender my vessel. Port and starboard docking ports standing by."
It seemed like such a small boarding party. Face, Castin, and Phanan, wearing only gray versions of the standard TIE-fighter pilot's uniform, arrayed against whatever forces occupied the cargo ship. But five sets of starfighter guns in the hands of the other Wraiths kept Barderia in their sights, and the freighter, lacking engines to power its shields, stardrive, and weapons, would be easy prey to any one of them.
The Wraiths, led by a visibly trembling navigation and communications officer, the very man who had inadvertently given Face the information he'd needed for this act of piracy, entered the freighter's spotless bridge. Waiting there were other members of the bridge crew: the captain, a middle-aged, gray-ing man with the look of a former Imperial officer about him, and a younger chief pilot whose hard look and demeanor sug-gested that he was also the ship's master at arms and would like nothing more than to eradicate the pirates.
Face took off his helmet, revealing his gloriously horrible makeup job, and was rewarded with sudden intakes of breath from the two younger officers. "I am," he said, "the glorious General Kargin, founder and leader of the Hawk-bats." He kept his voice low, gravelly. "Captain?"
The freighter's master did not salute, but he straightened with pained formality. "Captain Rhanken of the Barderia." "Captain?" Face injected a note of menace into his voice.
"And I am obliged to surrender this ship to you."
Face extended a hand. "Cargo manifest?"
The communications officer, jolted into action by the de-
mand, searched his uniform pockets increasingly frantically until he found the object he was searching for-a datapad, which he handed to Face.
Face handed it in turn to Castin. "Two, slice into their master computer and find the cargo manifest there. If it does not agree one hundred percent with this list, we execute them all." Face turned his gaze back to the captain. "Though I can be forgiving. If you anticipate any errors in your list, you can tell me about them now and avoid unpleasantness."
Captain Rhanken met his eyes unflinchingly. "I anticipate no problems. If my crew has done its customary good work." He glanced at the communications officer. "Will there be a problem, Lieutenant?"
The communications officer, no master of concealing his emotions, went pale. "I d-d-don't recall whether I called up the final inventory-match manifest or used last week's projected manifest, sir."
"Get the final manifest and give it to him. Just to be sure."
"Yessir." The officer bent to his task.
Interesting. Face had to work to keep both amusement and contempt from his expression. The captain wanted to play the unerring officer and was willing to let his subordinates as-sume responsibility for a tactic that had to be the captain's own decision. Depending on the pirates involved, that could have led to the lesser officer's death.
Long minutes passed while the officer brought up the cor-rect manifest and Castin verified it byScutting through the com-puter's defenses and slicing his way down to the original file. They matched and Face and Castin looked through their win-nings while Phanan kept the bridge officers under guard.
"Look at this," Face whispered. "Halmad Prime, shipped by the ton. Halmad's best and most expensive grain alcohol. You can't get it on-planet except through the black market; they ship it to other Imperial worlds as one of their major ex-ports. Various medicines. Duracrete sprayers. Prefabricated shelters. We'll take all the Halmad Prime and a cross section of the medicines; that's about all we can load on Sungrass. See anything else we need?"



"TIE fighter and interceptor parts."
"What ? Where ?"
Castin turned his datapad so Face could see the screen. It showed a different inventory list. "I pulled this off their com-puter when I was verifying the current manifest. It's an esti-mated inventory from the second leg of their voyage. We could really use some spare parts and maintenance gear."
"True, but our little raid here is bound to change their schedule for the rest of their mission."
"But if we can figure out what they'll change it to..."