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

abandon pacifism. Being sacrificed to preserve their beliefs
was not too great a price to pay-an attitude especially easy to hold when no one
believed the Empire could or would destroy a planet.
Tycho had long since seen the error of that philosophy. Pacifism for the sake of
pacifism is the height of arrogant selfishness when that belief prevents you
from acting to save others from harm. While he had no more love for war than any
other Alderaanian, he had chosen to go into the military to be in a position to
influence and change the military. And when it became necessary to destroy it, I
became a Rebel.
In the Rebellion, he had seen and done things that Nyies-tra could not have
understood. He knew she would have done all she could have to support him and
comfort him and help him deal with everything, but the fundamental changes in
him meant that they would no longer have been suited to each other. At the most
basic level, he accepted as true a concept that Nyiestra would have resisted
with every neuron in her brain: There are some people who are so evil and
capa-ble of creating such misery, that killing them is the only way they can be
dealt with. Grand Moff Tarkin, the Emperor, Darth Vader, Warlord Zsinj, Ysanne
Isard, General Derricote, and Kirtan Loor were all beyond reasoned arguments
de-signed to make them repent and abandon their evil ways.
The same events and experiences that would have sun-dered him and Nyiestra bound
him and Winter. In many ways, his relationship with her astounded him because it
was so wholly different from the one he had enjoyed with Nyies-tra. Whereas they
had done everything they could to mini-mize their time apart, he and Winter
simply sought to make the most they could of the time they had together. Both of
them had duties that kept them occupied and apart-and would continue to do so
more often than not for the foresee-able future-yet the fact that each knew the
other was out there somehow staunched what would otherwise have been a hideous
emotional wound. He knew both of them-and probably everyone else from Alderaan
that had been left alone-feared getting too close to someone in anticipation of
losing them again. Despite that fear, they had grown close and provided an
incredible amount of support for each other.
Ultimately, it had been Winter who suggested to him the perfect gift to
memorialize Nyiestra, a woman she had never met or known.
Tycho found and purchased a perfect crystal sphere onto which had been acid
etched the continents of Alderaan. Into the heart of this idealized version of
the world he had called his own, he had Nyiestra's hologram imbedded. From
within the depths of the world she had loved, Nyiestra smiled out at him,
forever preserved, unchanging, and beautiful.
He keyed the comm unit and flicked on his IFF transpon-der. "I am Tycho Celchu,
son of Alderaan, now orphan of the galaxy. I have come to this place of my birth
to pay homage to who I was and those I knew. And those I loved and love still.
It is my wish that when life abandons me, I am returned here to be among you, so
that for eternity we may be together as we should have been in life."
He punched a button on his console, opening and purg-ing the storage compartment
in the X-wing's belly. Under the control of the R2 unit, the memorial capsule's
compressed air jets pushed it forward till it emerged from beneath the nose of
the snubfighter. A lump rose to his throat as the black oval capsule slowly
began its trip into the swirl of stone that once had been Alderaan.
Tycho cleared his throat. "These gifts are but insufficient tokens of the love
for you all that still burns within me." He hesitated for a second, then