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

The 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
transparisteel flask and reduced the droid to so much junk orbiting Yag'Dhul.
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.