"Michael Stackpole "The Bacta War"" - читать интересную книгу автораbefore 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. 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 |
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