"Michael Stackpole "The Bacta War"" - читать интересную книгу автора

rescued."
Wedge switched over to the escape pod frequency and repeated his offer of
rescue, then arranged with Quelev Tap-per for his ships to pick up as many pods
as they could and exact whatever ransom they wanted from the passengers. Tapper
sounded more interested in getting the TIEs and their pilots, but Wedge declared
them "prisoners of war" and re-fused to let Tapper have them.
"Okay, Antilles, I'll let it go, but only because I know you'll be buying spare
parts for those TIEs from us before too long."
"That's probably truer than I'd like to admit, Tapper. Have a safe trip home."
Tycho's voice broke through on the comm frequency. "Wedge, I have a situation."
"Yes?"
"Remember that cruiser that took a piece out of the Cor-rupter?"
"Kind of hard to forget it, isn't it?"
"Well, it was the source of the IFF queries earlier on. It appears to think I'm
the Another Chance. It has identified itself as the Valiant, and now it wants to
know where we're going to go from here."
Wedge brought his X-wing around so he could see the light cruiser again. There
it hung in space, three hundred me-ters of lethal Starship. Having it as part of
our fleet would be very good, but how can we convince it to join us? "Tycho, any
sign of intelligent life on board?"
"Ah, Wedge, it thinks I'm an Alderaanian war frigate, so I think we can rule out
intelligence. If I had to guess, I'd assume this cruiser was slaved to Another
Chance as an es-cort. They got separated and it returned here to wait for
An-other Chance to show up. I arrived with the IFF code, started broadcasting
targeting information, and it did its job."
Wedge nodded. "I copy. I think I need you to take it back
to our base. Emtrey, if I recall his introductory monologue, is supposed to know
the rules, regs, and procedures of over six million military organizations past
and present. Perhaps he can figure out a way to communicate with the Valiant so
we can make full use of it."
"Got it. Do I leave now, or wait and escort the rest of you back?"
"We'll go together." Wedge smiled. "Victory like this de-serves a parade, and
I'd be happy to have you and your cruiser in the lead."
25
Corran Horn dropped into the seat beside Mirax at the black round table in the
briefing room. He felt bone weary from the fight at Alderaan, which surprised
him because he'd actually not shot down any of the eyeballs. Because he had been
wait-ing for fire orders to send proton torpedoes at the larger ships, all he
could do was evade their attacks. While the pilots had been clearly green-a fact
that 66 percent losses on their part made abundantly clear-their lasers still
burned hot and could have vaped him had he not outflown them.
He took Mirax's left hand in his right beneath the edge of the table. "Sorry I
couldn't cover the Skate out there."
Mirax gave him a smile that helped energize him. "I'd have felt safer, but that
would have spoiled Booster 'One-Man-Army' Terrik's fun. He manned the laser
cannon and was a general hazard to any eyeball peeking at us. He says he winged
a couple of them."
Corran gave her hand a squeeze, then looked up and saw Booster glowering at him
from the other side of the table. If looks were lasers, he'd be more than
winging me right now. "I'm glad there weren't more in the way of complications.