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

Iella tried to point back toward the troopers. "But they're out there. Another
group, flanking us."
Sixtus shook his head. "The Black-claws got them all. It won't make up for the
Vratix dead here, but it should start making the Xucphrans scared." His eyes
narrowed. "When they find their people dead, they'll have a hard time sleeping."
Iella winced against the pain. "Wait."
"No, the Ashern have a base camp with some makeshift bacta tanks."
"No, not that." She shook her head to clear it. "Look, don't leave the bodies
here. Take them away, far away. Just have the troopers disappear. Not knowing
will be worse than knowing. Take our bodies, too, hide them. Don't let Isard
know how badly we were hurt."
Sixtus smiled. "That's odd."
"What?"
"Your lips are moving, but I'm hearing the kind of things Elscol would say." He
stepped over a thick gloan branch and continued down a narrow jungle trail. "I'd
not have thought you capable of thinking that kind of thing."
"One thing I know, Sixtus, is that a high body count doesn't mean victory, it
just means a lot of folks died." Iella tipped her head back toward the village.
"A lot of people died there, but not knowing the true story will give our
enemies something to think about. If they decide they don't want to fight
because of it, we win."
29
Captain Sair Yonka of the Imperial Star Destroyer Avarice looked back and forth
between the two suits of clothes the silver protocol droid held up for him. To
the right he had a conservative black suit, cut along vaguely military lines. He
knew it would make him look powerful and might even in-spire fear in some
people. That is not always a bad thing, he reflected, but not wholly appropriate
in this instance.
The other suit was completely civilian, and he would have chosen it in a
heartbeat except that it was a bright crim-son. Just what Isard wears. Despite
the fanciful styling, in-cluding the fringes at the hem of the jacket and along
the sleeves, the bloody color and memory of Isard robbed the suit of its
playfulness. That suit, because it was flashier than the black, would be more
noticed, but people might miss him altogether, remembering only the clothes.
This is not a bad thing either, and desirable right now.
He shook his head. "Let me think about it some more, Poe." He waved the droid
away, but not before he caught a distorted mirror view of himself on its breast.
Tall and slen-der, his black hair and bright blue eyes combined with strongly
chiseled features to win the admiration of many
women and the jealousy of their men. The touch of white creeping in at his
temples had prompted him to grow a black goatee-something that was strictly
against Imperial regula-tions, but not being in the Imperial service anymore, he
had no fear of flouting those regulations.
While the warped reflection did not describe his outsides, it certainly did
match how he felt inside. Yonka turned and walked out onto the balcony of his
twenty-sixth-floor suite at Margath's. Strains of music drifted down from the
27th Hour Club, but it washed over him without effect. Even the sight of three
moons hovering above the placid ocean, two ivory and one blood red, failed to
register as anything more than yet another planetary night sky.
Leaning on the balcony rail, Sair Yonka slowly shook his head. He had the