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

before you. Either way, living as long as possible and doing the most you can is
the only way to go. I decided I didn't want to be known here or in the afterlife
for having quit. I don't think you do, either."
Iella frowned. "You're right, but sometimes the pain . . ." She clutched her
hands against her breastbone. "Sometimes it hurts too much to live."
"Nonsense." Elscol's dark eyes sharpened. "Pain's the only way we know we're
alive."
"What?"
"If the afterlife is supposed to be special and wonderful and blissful-and there
aren't many theologies that suggest otherwise-then it follows that pain's the
only way you know you're alive. Not letting the pain get to you, not
surrendering to it, that's the way you continue living." Elscol brought her
hands together, then glanced down at the floor. "It still hurts me, too, at
certain times of the year, but I don't let it over-whelm me."
"I haven't let it overwhelm me, either."
"No, you haven't. You're strong, Iella, real strong." El-scol gave her a
half-grin. "It's just that as things get going tougher, in the moments when
stress is off, you'll start to feel the pain. Fight it."
Iella slowly nodded. What Elscol had said made perfect sense to her. While
involved in an operation, the stresses of the operation would push everything
else into the back-ground. When the stress slackened, she tried to recover a
sense of well-being, and would invariably harken back to her time with Diric.
The joy would melt into melancholy, then that would congeal into sorrow and
pain. I'd come to a point where surrendering to the pain would be more simple
than fighting the Imps and everything else.
She realized that she'd not faced this problem before be-cause when Diric had
been taken by the Imps there was al-ways a chance that he would be released and
they would be
able to continue their lives together. Hope had shielded her against despair and
the pain of her loss. Circumstances are different now, but I'm also a different
person than I was. I will survive and fight the pain.
She looked up and was about to tell Elscol the same thing, when a howling shriek
filled the air and sent a tremor through her tower room. No mistaking that for
anything else-TIE fighters are coming in. She dove for the doorhole and lying
there on her belly stared out at the Vratix village. Other brown-gray towers
were all but invisible in the thick foliage of the rain forest until green laser
bolts illuminated them and began setting trees on fire. The bolts hissed through
the air, igniting a rain of flaming branches and leaves falling on buildings and
the forest floor.
Elscol hunkered down beside her with blaster in hand as the TIEs made another
pass. Trees split as if they had been struck by lightning. Their boles exploded,
spraying the rain forest with fiery hardwood splinters. Impaled Vratix and
kny-tix twitched on the ground or limped along, black blood streaming from their
wounds. In other spots, heavy bits of tree fell, crushing Vratix and pulverizing
the walls of houses.
"Sithspawn!" Elscol bounced a fist off the floor. "We've got nothing that can
stop them. They're just slaughtering Vra-tix for the fun of it."
"It's not fun for the Vratix." Iella watched as the Vratix began to flee. The
whole tableau took on an unreal air. Part of it came from the Vratix leaping
high into the branches of trees surrounding the village to escape. If Iella had