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

would marry her. He had been as certain of that as he had been that the sun
would rise and set on Alderaan for the rest of their lives. She had agreed to
wait for him throughout his time at the Acad-emy and then even through his first
year of duty. If he sur-vived a year as a TIE pilot, then he'd get moved up in
the chain of fleet command, making it possible for him to marry and start a
family. Never had he doubted, never had she doubted he would survive that first
year, so to both of them their future had been assured.
Then the Death Star exploded that future. Another chill sank through Tycho,
puckering his flesh. Because his father was the CEO of Novacom, the largest
HoloNet provider on Alderaan, Tycho had been able to make a realtime HoloNet
call to his home on the occasion of his birthday. Everyone had been there, all
smiles and laughter. They had presents for him and toasted him with wine. Though
thousands of light-years distant from the celebration, he felt every bit a part
of it; then the transmission went down, the holographic images dissolving in a
gray-black blizzard of
static.
Tycho had just smiled. Such interruptions had happened before and in each
instance he had given his father a hard time about it. Throughout the next week
he mulled over what he would say to his father. He had looked forward to the
exchange, since matching wits with his father was a true joy in his life.
Then word filtered down through the fleet that Alderaan
had been destroyed. Blame had been placed on the Rebels, but he'd known
instantly that they were innocent. While his Imperial indoctrination had left
him no doubts that the Rebels would destroy a planet to gain their ends, he knew
it would not be Alderaan. They drew support from Alderaan, according to the
rumors, so destroying it would only make sense for the Empire. The fact that the
Emperor dissolved the Imperial Senate before Alderaan died, instead of in
reaction to its death, firmly focused blame as far as Tycho was con-cerned.
So he defected. At the next planet, Commenor, he went on leave and never came
back. He joined the Rebellion and for well over seven years had fought to
guarantee no other world would face the fate of Alderaan. And guarantee no other
man would have to decide how to memorialize the woman he had intended to share
the rest of his life with.
Part of what made the choice so difficult were the changes he had undergone
since Alderaan's death. Had he made his Return immediately after leaving the
Imperial Navy, he would have encoded a poem on a datacard and set it adrift in a
device that would have broadcast it over and over again. The comfrequency
traffic that his R2 unit scrolled across his main screen showed thousands of
others had thought of the very same thing.
It hurt deep down knowing that the man he had become would not have been a
suitable match for Nyiestra. The life they had planned together would have been
possible in a by-gone age, but only if they refused to look at what the Empire
was doing within the galaxy. Wrapped up in its cocoon of pacifism, Alderaan had
seemed insulated from things going on in the galaxy. It was as if when we
disarmed we set our-selves above and beyond the petty concerns of the galaxy,
and we thought doing so would keep us safe.
Bail Organa and his daughter, Leia, had seen the folly of that idea, but
Alderaan had been slow to awaken to their call. Many people clung to their
pacifism as if it would save them from anything the Empire could do. They had
felt that the only way the Empire would win was if it could force them to