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

the bit the other way, he felt proud
to be heir to one. He felt as if he had the right to wear it. At first he
thought doing so might show disrespect for his grand-father, but then he
realized Rostek Horn had risked his own career and life to protect Nejaa
Halcyon's wife and child from Imperial Jedi hunters. Not only had he valued them
for who they were, but he had valued them in memory of his fallen friend. /
think grandfather would be happy to see me wearing this lightsaber and that's
all the reason I need to wear it.
Corran hooded his eyes with his hand as he emerged into the harsh twin-sun noon.
Gavin waved him over to the land-speeder. To Corran it looked a lot like the old
SoroSuub XP-38, but the normally compact, dart-shaped craft had been heavily
modified. The passenger compartment had been boosted forward by the addition of
more seating and cargo space between it and the engines. More disturbing than
how the addition had destroyed the fine lines of the vehicle was the fact that
beneath the dust Corran saw a pink and puce paint job.
Corran hooked an arm over Gavin's shoulders. "You know, the womp rats you
bull's-eye in a thing like this might be color-blind, so they don't care what
your speeder looks like, but, really, look at this thing."
Gavin smiled wryly and spun out from beneath Corran's arm. "It beats walking,
which was the other alternative given our operational budget. Get in. This baby
will still hit three hundred klicks per, despite the modifications, and the
krayt dragons don't see the color scheme as edible. We'll be there in no time."
The trip actually took half a standard hour, which wasn't "no time," and
speeding through trackless wastes actually seemed close to forever. If it
weren't for the cloud of dust billowing out from behind them, Corran would have
been hard pressed to cite evidence that they were going anywhere at all. The
Jundland Wastes mountains became a heat-warped stain on the horizon, and nothing
else came even close to serving as a landmark.
Despite the lack of signposts or other waymarkers, Gavin got them to his uncle's
estate without incident. The brief
glimpse of it Corran had gotten from the Pulsar Skate as they came in had not
prepared him for what it really looked like. From above it looked fairly
normal-a compound surround-ing a number of buildings including a tall tower.
From the ground what became apparent was that, aside from the entry-way and the
tower itself, the buildings he'd seen were all constructed below the planet's
surface. Gavin slid the land-speeder to a stop near the entryway beside several
other land-speeders and then led Mirax and Corran down through the stairs to the
compound's main courtyard. The stark white color of everything aided the suns in
producing glare, but Corran realized that white absorbed far less solar energy-
too much of which already made Tatooine unbearable as far as he was concerned.
A slender, gray-haired woman emerged through one of the arched doorways and
immediately smiled. "Gavin Dark-lighter, how you have grown!" Boiling out around
from be-hind her came a number of small children, ranging from toddlers to
curious preadolescents.
"Aunt Lanal!" Gavin trapped the woman in a hug, then freed her and performed
introductions that included her and the half-dozen cousins. Corran shook hands
all around, but immediately lost track of names.
Lanal explained that she was Huff Darklighter's third wife and all of the
children were hers. "Biggs's death shook Huff. He decided he wanted more heirs.
His second wife de-cided she wasn't interested in having any more than the one