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

heritage?
The droid chirped out a question.
"No, Whistler, save the message. Now's not the time to look at it."
"Why not, Corran? We've got time to kill."
"Because, Mirax, I don't have time to consider all of the questions it might
raise."
"Such as?"
"Such as making me reconsider my answer to Luke Skywalker. Perhaps what my
father has to tell me in this message will make me realize I should be learning
to become a Jedi Knight. That decision would force other decisions, and some of
them I don't want to make-primary among them a decision to leave you to go off
and study the ways of the Force. My other responsibilities-to the squadron and
the prisoners we're going to free-likewise make such a decision difficult. Right
now I need to be able to focus on what I'm doing."
"So you won't play the message?"
Corran shook his head. "Not right now, certainly not until the Thyferran
situation is over."
"What I hear in your voice, Corran, is that you might not ever play it."
"You know me very well, love." Corran closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed
against the lump in his throat. He reached up with a hand and pressed the gold
Jedi Credit against the flesh of his breastbone. "This hologram is the last
thing my father has left me, but he never would have done it if he thought it
would completely disrupt my life."
"Can you be sure of that?"
"Yeah. If it was something I had to hear, for my own good, Whistler would never
have been instructed to wait until I asked to hear it." Corran laughed, and that
eased the tight-ness, in his throat. "My father trusted me to make my own
decisions and deal with the consequences."
"That trust, Corran, is the last thing your father left you. It's a most
precious gift indeed, and one well suited to you."
"Thanks, Mirax." Whistler shrilled a warning, prompt-ing Corran to look at his
monitor. A dozen ships popped in from hyperspace in an arrow formation and
headed straight
for the Rogue escort. "Whistler, pull manifests from each of the ships, then see
if stated mass and performance profiles match." He hit a switch on his comm
unit, bringing him on-line with the Rogue's tactical frequency. "Three, Five,
and Six, fan out and pull life scans on the ships. If any of those ships are
packed with more crew than we expect, I want to know about it."
Corran waited five minutes for the other X-wings to gather the data and for
Whistler to crunch it all down. The various freighters appeared to be massing
about as much as they should for their stated cargoes, and none of them was
loaded down with troops, so Corran assumed the convoy was legitimate. "The
convoy is secure from my standpoint, Mirax."
"I copy, Nine. This is Pulsar Skate to Empress's Diadem. You've been cleared for
continuation of the journey."
"I copy, Skate. Feed us the coordinates and we can get this thing moving."
"Coordinates for exit vector, jump duration, and speed on their way."
Corran watched the data stream flow across the bottom of his monitor and
wondered what Melina Carniss was mak-ing of it. He imagined she'd be
disappointed because the first jump was just a short hop to a dead system. From