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

off the wall with her right hand, then brought the blaster around to
spray shots at the troopers crouching twenty-five meters away. Her hastily
snapped shots didn't hit any of them, but they dove for the ground as if she
were a Star Destroyer com-mencing a planetary bombardment.
As she raced forward, cutting right and left, she waited for a target to show
himself so she could drop him with a clean shot to the head or belly. Belly
would be better. He'll scream. She waited for the screams, waited to hear the
troop-ers she was approaching start to scream in terror. She started to scream
herself, hoping to spark her foes into panic.
Suddenly one of the troopers did stand. She brought her pistol around, but he
leveled his blaster carbine at her and triggered a burst before she could shoot
him. She saw a trio of sizzling scarlet energy darts fly at her and for a second
consid-ered it nothing short of miraculous that they had missed. Then she felt
the tug on her left thigh. Her world whirled, and her chin dug into the moist
loam at the base of a gloan tree. She snorted dirt from her nostrils and
wondered what had happened, then the first wave of pain hit her.
Iella rolled onto her back and glanced down at her left thigh. Crusted black
flesh surrounded a hole oozing blood. Biting back a scream, she unbuckled her
blaster belt and pulled it off. She pressed the holster against the wound, then
wrapped the belt around her leg and refastened it. Pulling it tight almost made
her faint, but she struggled against the darkness nibbling at the edges of her
sight.
She didn't think she'd blacked out, but as the world light-ened again she found
herself looking up at a trooper standing over her. He was saying something, but
she couldn't focus on the words. All she could notice was that the armor seemed
over-large on him, with the breastplate covering half his stomach and the helmet
resting firmly on the armor's collar.
The trooper gestured with his blaster carbine, but Iella still wasn't able to
understand him. She tried, but an odd whirring sound eclipsed his words. An
angular shadow dropped down behind him. Iella heard a horrid snapping and
crunching as the trooper began to telescope down toward the ground. He twisted
around, his legs going limp, allowing Iella
to see the ragged parallel wounds slashed down through the back of his armor.
Standing behind him, with claws dripping blood, a black Vratix warrior drew his
arms in toward his thorax. His head bobbed once, then his powerful hind legs
straightened, pro-pelling him up and out of her sight. If not for the ravaged
corpse of the soldier at her feet, she would have had no proof of his
intervention.
Her mouth hung open as she looked at the trooper's body. Those claws sliced
through that armor with the ease of a wampa filleting a tauntaun. No way all the
bacta on this world could close those wounds. She leaned back against the trunk
of the gloan tree, somehow finding comfort in the roughness of its bark. She
heard screams that sounded far distant, more whirring, and other crisper sounds
she never wanted to identify.
"Iella!"
She looked up. "Sixtus! Have you found Elscol?"
The large man nodded, then bent and scooped her up in his arms. "She twisted her
ankle and got pinned down. How are you?"
"Hurt, but I should live."
"Good. I'll get you clear."