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

"It was a great shot, Tycho. If I couldn't get her, well, your claim predated
mine."
"Corran, we got her. That's all that counts." Tycho's X-wing came into view as
Corran headed his X-wing back toward Thyferra. "I don't see any more squints,
Tycho. You got a workout."
"I got my share, but Ten vaped the bulk of them. He accounted for six
Interceptors all by himself." Tycho chuck-led lightly. "And it looks like the
Lusankya isn't shooting anymore."
Corran smiled. "A tyrant dead; a traitor dead; a Super Star Destroyer dead; and,
if Elscol, Iella, and the Ashern have done their jobs, a planet liberated. Not a
bad day at all."
41
"Looks different, doesn't it, Corran, when you're walking on the ceiling?"
"Yeah, but not any better." Despite having the lights strung throughout the
Lusankya prisoners' quarters, the war-ren's rough-hewn walls still pressed in on
Corran. He turned toward Tycho Celchu as he climbed over the low wall into what
had been Jan Dodonna's cell. "It's very strange to have mounted this whole
operation to try to get Jan and the other prisoners out, just to get in here and
find Isard had them shipped out by shuttle to other places months ago. Deep down
she must have known we'd win, so she did this to frustrate us."
"You've got it all wrong, my friend." Tycho patted Cor-ran's right shoulder with
his left hand. "When you escaped from the Lusankya, you ruined it for her. She
could no longer view her little prison without thinking about how you beat her.
Whereas anyone else would have beefed up security, she decided to scrap the
whole facility. And it's just as well, be-cause this section of the ship lost
atmosphere-everyone would have died in here. Had Isard really been on her game,
she would have let them die that way and would have us
blaming ourselves for killing a bunch of the rebellion's heroes."
Corran nodded slowly. In the week since the battle for Thyferra he'd waited for
repair crews to restore atmosphere to the prison area on the ship. To the others
that had seen it, the whole area was just part of a ship where the bulkheads had
been lined with rock. The fact that the primitive latrines had drained into a
zero gravity vacuum, then the waste set-tled wherever it had drifted when
gravity and atmosphere had been brought back, did not help things. Everyone who
visited the facility could see very clearly why he hated it
But the stink and the crudity of its manufacture wasn't why he hated it. Corran
frowned. "It feels to me as if despair and failure have permeated these walls.
The men who were in here didn't dare try to escape, and yet most of them could
have, I'm certain. Jan could have come with me, but he didn't because he felt a
responsibility to the others. That made him more a prisoner than these walls."
"But what you saw as a prison for him was not what he saw for himself. Jan knew
he was keeping people alive by leading them. He hadn't surrendered, so they
couldn't quite do it themselves." Tycho brushed fingers across the rocky
sur-face of the walls. "What he was doing, by staving behind, was as much a part
of him as your need to escape was a part of you. I don't remember much of my
rime here, but I felt certain I was going to die here. It's a terrible thing to
come back to your senses after having been out of it, to find your-self in a
place where you think you're going to die. Jan told me I wasn't, and I didn't."
"And you escaped from the place where she sent you after you left here."
"Right." Tycho smiled. "We have to hope the others will be able to do that,