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

Drysso turned and pointed to a holoprojector pad to his left. "Please, Ensign
Yesti, route it here." As the image began to resolve itself into that of a tall
man with one artificial eye, Drysso raised himself to his full height. "This is
Captain Joak Drysso of the Lusankya. Your fighters have deserted you."
"I sent the fighters off to play with something more their size." The tall man's
hologram posted its fists on its hips. "I'm Booster Terrik, and this is my
station. Your rate of clo-sure puts you five minutes out from your preferred
range for this sort of operation. I'll give you those five minutes before I
destroy your ship."
"You're rather bold, Terrik, for having a station with minimal shields, a
half-dozen laser cannons, and ten turbo-laser batteries."
Terrik's image laughed. "We've made some modifications to the station." The
figure nodded to someone outside the image area.
Drysso felt the Lusankya rock a bit. He immediately sig-naled for Yesti to cut
off the transmission, then he snarled at his aide. "What happened?"
"They powered up a gravity well projector. It's project-
ing a cone of energy in our direction. It can't hurt us-the bump was just our
own gravity-keeping generators adjusting the gravity on the ship. We have no
damage or injury reports coming in."
Drysso frowned. The only thing the gravity Well projec-tor did was prevent them
from turning and going to light-speed while still in the cone. "Lieutenant
Rosion, compute hyperspace solutions for me."
"That will be difficult, sir. Because of Yag'Dhul's density, the array of the
moons, and the gravity cone, we're severely limited in our choices. All we can
do is run away from the plane of the elliptic until we escape the current
constraints on us, then head out. If you want us to return to Thyferra, our best
bet would be get free, take a short jump to the edge of the system, and then
head back on our entry vector, since that is the fastest route to Thyferra."
Something else is going on here. "Lieutenant Waroen, shift assets to scan the
edges of the system along our entry/ exit vector."
"Yes, sir."
Drysso turned to watch his red-haired aide work. The young man's pale complexion
drained further of color. "Sir, I have a small taskforce on the system rim. It
is composed of snubfighters and freighters and maybe a larger ship."
"An ambush?"
"Perhaps, no, wait. Sir, the ships are outbound toward Thyferra. Exit speed is
consistent with that of the freighters or our own ships."
Drysso nodded, then turned back toward the viewport. His assessment of
Antilles's tactics had been correct: the man opted to send part of his force to
Thyferra. The fact that the freighters had been waiting at the edge of the
system indi-cated that Antilles had indeed anticipated their strike. Even with
freighters and the War Cruiser in support of his opera-tion, he can do little to
hurt Thyferra. His troops will be tired because of the journey and unable to
fight well. Moreover, once I destroy this station, I can return to Thyferra. I
will arrive shortly after he does and pounce on his forces, destroy-
ing them. The gravity well will buy him some time, but not enough.
Drysso pointed to the holopad. "Yesti, open a comm channel with the station.
Lieutenant Rosion, bring us to range and have us hold there, please."
"As ordered, Captain. Engines, all stop."
Terrik's image appeared again on the Lusankya's bridge. "I notice you have