"Michael Stackpole "The Bacta War"" - читать интересную книгу автораThe capsule itself was really the heart of a probe droid. Stripped of the armor
and devices necessary to let it enter an atmosphere and operate in a hostile environment, the droid took up a minimum of space and could easily function on batteries for a dozen hours. Its mission was simple: pinpoint the location of the system in which it was dropped, locate a hidden HoloNet transmission station, and pulse out a tight-beam message conveying that information to the station. The automated station would, in turn, deliver that information through the HoloNet to Fliry Vorru within seconds of its reception. With the sensors, it mapped the sky and compared the configuration of stars with what would be available at vari-ous systems in the galaxy. While a complete catalog of sys-tems would have required far more storage than the probe droid possessed, Vorru and his people had ruthlessly elimi-nated systems that lacked habitable worlds, had settlements that were insufficiently developed to help maintain the Rogues and their ships, or that otherwise appeared to be in-appropriate. Within an hour of beginning its mission, the probe droid found a match in its star catalog. It knew it was in the Yag'Dhul system. It oriented itself so it could pulse its mes-sage out to a clandestine HoloNet transmission site, but found an obstacle in its way. It did pick up comm frequencies emanating from the obstacle and also saw how many stars it blotted out of the sky, but had no way to identify it as a space station. It did catalog the item's presence, then it jetted up to a point where it could locate the relay station. Once it found its target, the droid pulsed its message out. It continued to do so for the next three standard hours before a meteorite shattered the Wedge looked out over the assembly of pilots in the station's amphitheater. They all looked eager, which was good, but that surprised him. When he began the briefing he expected their hungry expressions to melt into disappointment. "So, there it is: within the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours we anticipate the arrival of Isard's Lusankya and Virulence here at Yag'Dhul. We've already begun an evacuation of the sta-tion, with our ships taking up a position on the edge of this system. Their position provides a clean exit vector to Thyferra, which is where you will be going along with them. Is that understood?" Nawara Ven raised a hand. "Forgive me, Commander, but do you think having all of us fighters scramble and then run away will fool the Thyferran commanders?" Bror Jace turned in his seat to look at Nawara. "If they were Thyferran commanders it wouldn't, but these are Imps. They're used to imagining that Rebels run at the sight of them." Wedge smiled at Jace's answer. "Just as you've been sim-ming a lot of antiship attacks, we've been simming the likely reactions on the Thyferran command level. We're pretty cer-tain they'll believe our retreat, especially when we jump to lightspeed on a vector bound for Thyferra. Captain Drysso will assume, in our desperation to save the station we're go-ing to strike at Thyferra. Because our snubfighters are twice as fast as the Lusankya, we'll have twelve hours there to bat-ter Thyferra unopposed. He knows he can't beat us back there, so he'll finish our station off, then come after us." Corran frowned. "What if his people pick up on the fact that we rendezvous with our freighters before we head out?" "Still no cause of alarm for him. The Lusankya still out-guns our entire fleet. |
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