"Michael Stackpole "I, Jedi"" - читать интересную книгу автора

I nodded as she started shoving clothes into a satchel. УFirst, I think the apprentices who are vulnerable to Exar Kun are those who have had some brush with the dark side in the past. Streen once asked me about something I considered minor, but it might be the vector in for Exar Kun. Can't confirm that about Gantoris or Kyp, but it would make sense since those who have fallen once can more easily be lured back to old paths of behav-ior.Ф
Leia paused for a moment. УThat would put Kam at risk.Ф УHe's pretty tough, but, yes, there's a chance.Ф I glanced down. УStreen remains a risk. Can't pinpoint any others, though Brakiss has an Imperial background that would make him prey.Ф
УRight. What else?Ф
УWe have a basic problem if we're going to figure out a way to deal with Exar Kun. If we exclude everyone who is suspect, he could know something is afoot because of that fact.Ф
УAnd he could use any paranoia that develops as a way into those who aren't yet tainted.Ф She zipped up her bag. УSo is there a solution to this problem, or do we evac Yavin?Ф
УWith Kyp running around in an invincible ship? No way. We're all that can stand between him and his returning with a way to move Exar Kun off this ball.Ф
УEvac is out. The problem still stands then.Ф She watched a smile grow on my face. УI hate it when a Corellian smiles like that. Usually means Han's about to lose the Falcon to Lando in some sabacc game.Ф
УWell, it's Exar Kun's chance to lose this time, because he overplayed his hand.Ф My smile broadened. УYour brother identified an ability in me, one to project thoughts into others. How well I know them, the degree of contact I feel for them, determines how much I can pump through. Exar Kun came to me last night, after I helped take Streen down by projecting into him the idea that he'd succeeded at what he tried to do. Kun tried to bring me over to his side, but I resisted. He got a good read on me and tried to play me.Ф
Leia smiled and it became easy for me to see why thousands of Rebel hearts had been broken when she married Han Solo. УAnd while he was playing you, you got a good read on him.
You can track him, when he's active?Ф
УI think so. I also think these displays take a lot out of him. I think he'll be keeping a low profile, probably tapping in on Streen, to find out what we're doing.Ф
She nodded. УAnd you can feed enough back through that connection to deceive him?Ф
I nodded. УGiving us time to find a way to deal with him.Ф УGood, very good.Ф Her eyes sharpened. УI can't leave you in charge-he'd notice the change in routine and spot you as a danger.Ф
УRight. I'll have to keep a low profile, too. I'll keep quiet unless things aren't going to work or start going really badly.Ф I moved from the doorway as she headed out toward the turbolift. УI know I can buy us time, but not much. At the rate he recovers, Kun should be ready for something tomorrow, maybe tonight.Ф
УI know you'll do what you can.Ф She stopped at the turbolift and offered me her hand. УMay the Force be with you.Ф УAnd you.Ф
УI hope so.Ф She smiled at me grimly as the turbolift doors closed. УI have a feeling we'll both need it.Ф
spent the rest of the day work-ing on tile Headhunter, finishing the repairs. I asked Streen to help me. I didn't need the help, I just wanted to keep him close. Some of the other students were shunning him, and given what had happened, that came as no surprise. By having him help me I could keep an eye on him and gently monitor him in case Exar Kun tried to influence him again.
I also offered Kun the Headhunter as bait through Streen. The old gas prospector knew enough about flying a ship that he was able to hover the fighter and bring it into the hangar proper from the landing pad, but he didn't seem able to work the weapons. Mara's ship no longer had the standard weapons package it had been built with. The concussion missile launch-ers had been scrapped and replaced with a center-mounted ion-cannon. Each wing still sported a triple-blaster, but they were hardwired for dual-fire mode, which isn't a choice I'd have made.
I told Streen enough about the weapons to make him think he could work them, but I didn't tell him about having installed a command override code that was required to use them. If weapons were engaged without the code, the Headhunter would cut thrust to zero, click in the repulsorlift coils, and hover. The onboard computers also had the Great Temple des-ignated as a passive flight zone: there would be no running it up to speed and slamming into the Temple. The navicomp would just take over and land the ship in the face of such an obvious pilot error.
My thinking was that Kun, still taxed from his having fun-neled enough power through Streen to create that cyclone, would take the chance at having Streen use the Headhunter to kill Luke. I tried to make it easy for him by giving Streen little flying tips and telling him Rebellion pilot stories, but Exar Kun never took the bait. I felt a bit disappointed in him at that, but didn't push the issue for fear of tipping him to our connection.
It wasn't until that evening, as I was trying to drop off to sleep, that I realized Kun wasn't quite as sophisticated as I had expected. Alarms triggered by Artoo, who was stationed in the Grand Audience Chamber, jolted me out of bed. I stretched out my senses and caught spiky impressions of creatures that just felt wrong up at the ziggurat's pinnacle.
I didn't even think about hitting the stairs or waiting for the turbolift. I sprinted to the Headhunter, punched in the ignition code and enabled the weapons. I overrode the passive flight directives and cruised out of the hangar into the orange twilight of the night. I looped and rolled the fighter and took a pass above the Temple, but all I could see was the hint of a triangu-lar wingtip slipping through one of the skylights.
Frustration rippled through me, but I shoved it away. Those c'rcatures are not rny problem right now. Exar Kun is. Stretching out my senses, I discovered slender ebon threads of influence, three of them, linked to the creatures the Dark Lord had sent to kill Luke Skywalker. The creatures were mindless beasts, far easier to control than Streen, affording Kun maximum destruc-tion with a minimal amount of energy expended.
I overshot the Temple, then killed my thrust and cut in the repulsorlift coils. This left me hovering four hundred meters above the ground. Using the Headhunter's etheric rudder, I twitched the ship around until the nose pointed off toward where I felt Kun's influence originating. I hit a button on my console, locking in that heading.
Nudging the throttle forward, I rolled to starboard and cruised back past the Great Temple by a kilometer. I killed thrust again, hovered and pointed the nose off in the direction I felt Kun's influence coming from. I logged those coordinates in the navicomp.
My comm unit beeped and an Уall-clearФ signal from Artoo appeared on my main screen. I smiled and felt the little link tendrils withering and retreating back to Exar Kun. I pushed my feelings, focusing them tightly, hoping to pick up a flash of anger or disappointment from him, but I got nothing of the sort. Instead I found four more of the anomalous lifeforms winging their way to tile Great Temple from deep in the jungle.
I allowed myself a low laugh. The one problem with starfighter targeting systems is that they are built around a sen-sor package that recognizes the durasteel and other compo-nents that make up other starfighters or ships or anything else that can legitimately be classed as a target. Additional software uploads can define new targets, allowing systems to be updated as new foes and new equipment come online. And while these creatures did have metal claws, they actually had less metal content than the average civilian strolling around on Coruscant. As far as the Headhunter was concerned, they just weren't really targets.
As a Jedi, I found them to be big fat targets.
They flew in toward the Temple, no more able to recognize the Headhunter as a threat than it was able to recognize them. The huge creatures were easily as tall in body as a man, with a huge wingspan of ugly, fleshy wings. They had two heads, each with a low enough cranium to only be sporting a cubic centime-ter of brains. They also each had a muscular tail that ended in a nasty crystalline stinger. Decidedly scary and lethal. Unless you're a pilot in a starfighter.
My first shot crisscrossed twin blaster bolts in the thorax of the lead creature. Flesh boiled and scales melted, then the bolts burst out of its back and flew on only slightly spent. The crea-ture's heads curled inward, looking down at the smoking hole in its chest, then the wings collapsed. The creature dropped to the ground with the speed of a droid ejected from a fighter. It impaled itself on the branches of a massive Massassi tree be-low.
My shot at the next beastie came fast and much sloppier- only one bolt hit. The single energy projectile did the job, how-ever. It burned a wing off the one it hit. The creature flapped furiously with the one good wing, but to no discernible benefit. Screaming, the beast spiraled down and smashed into the Tem-ple's stone base.
For the last two monsters I switched to the ion cannon. The initial shot from it caught the third monster in the pelvis. The blue ion bolt shattered into hundreds of little lightning tendrils. The bolt fired all of the creature's nerves at once, making the creature's limbs spasm. Its tail jerked backward and forward so violently that it stabbed itself. The creature's heads struck at its own tail, tearing great jagged hunks out of it, then its wings folded in on it and the falling beast splattered itself down the pyramid's north side.
The last beast proved more agile than the others and, freed of Kun's waning influence, wheeled through the sky and dove at the Headhunter. I got the nose up and flicked on the shields in time to intercept its attack. The beast rebounded off the for-ward shield, but stabbed out with one clawed foot and snagged hold of the Headhunter's nose. Sparks shot through the cockpit as the forward shield failed, and the short circuit killed the ion cannon. The beast grabbed the nose with its other foot, dura-steel screaming as it sank its talons in. It hunched forward over the fuselage, its wings wrapping the }leadhunter in an embrace, as its heads snapped at me in the cockpit.
The blasters couldn't hit it and the ion cannon wouldn't fire. I could have hovered the craft, opened the cockpit canopy and engaged the monster with my lightsaber, except I'd left it back in my room. As one thrusting head ricocheted off the trans-paristed canopy, I knew it was only a matter of time before the canopy gave way.
УFine.Ф I smiled. УYou want to play? Let's play.Ф
I pointed the nose up and kicked the thrusters in full.
At top speed it only took a handful of seconds to reach the edge of the atmosphere. Air pressure slammed the beast against the hull and kept it laid out there like a blanket. The friction heated up the ship's durasteel hull, causing bits and pieces of the creature's wings to fry. When it tried to rear back and unfurl its wings to get them off the hot metal, the air pres-sure snapped both of them and swept them in around the mon-ster, then pitched it forward and smashed it down on the hull again.
Once outside the atmosphere, a different problem presented itself for the creature. The vacuum of space effectively cooled the hull, sucking all the heat out of it. It did the same thing for the creature, leaving the angry and fearful expressions on both of its faces frozen there for an eternity. I killed thrust as the beast cooled, letting the Headhunter drift as my nose ornament chilled rather quickly. I was quite relieved to see the beast wasn't suited to surviving in space's cold void, but then I'd not thought anything originating on Yavin 4 would be.
Finally, when I thought it had gotten cold enough, I hit the right rudder hard. While the ship's inertial damper field kept me and the Headhunter from feeling any of the effects of such a violent maneuver, the creature was not so lucky. Its body sheared off at the ankles and started a rolling tumble off toward the gas giant, while I looped the Headhunter and started back down toward the Temple.
Kam met me in the hangar as I brought the Headhunter to a stop. I popped the cockpit canopy and hopped down to the deck. Kam regarded me with cold eyes as I swung under the fighter's nose.
УThere was an attack on Master Skywalker. Where were you?Ф
I smiled, then reached up and plucked a talon from where it had lodged in the Headhunter's nose. I tossed it to him. УTarget practice.Ф
УThat's not the sort of thing you should do on your own.Ф I frowned at him. УIt was the only thing I could do, Kam. I couldn't get up there fast enough to help inside, so I stopped Kun's reinforcements.Ф
УYou don't know it's Kun.Ф
УI know.Ф
Kam shook his head and jerked a thumb toward the audience chamber. УBut we just learned that, from Luke.Ф
УLuke's awake?Ф
УNo, but his nephew and niece can hear him. He said Exar Kun was behind the trouble.Ф Kam's face darkened. УWe have to defeat Kun if we are to get Luke back. We're pre-paring a council of war right now to figure out what we're going to do.Ф
УCouncil of war, good. Right now, not good.Ф I sighed. УKun has been defeated tonight. He's not going to be coming back right away.Ф
УHow do you know that?Ф Hints of betrayal and confusion arced through Kam's question.