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

satellites, the Ashern team had pulled down realtime holograms of the estate and
the thermal im-ages of the guards on their rounds. They also found the
place-ment of the sensor devices in the rain forest and noted the human patrols
tended to concentrate on the side of the estate facing the mountains and the
waterfalls. After studying the specifications for the sensors in use around the
estate, they realized that the sensors on the mountain side of the estate had
been muted so the movement of water and the sound from the falls wouldn't
constantly be triggering alarms.
Entering the estate, they made their approach from the far side of the mountain
and ascended to the summit by dusk. Once darkness fell, they descended, keeping
as close to the waterfalls as they could. They sped their descent by rappel-ling
down beneath one of the longer falls, letting the curtain of water hide them
from the estate's sensors. Once at the base of the mountains, they moved in
along the fringes of the sen-sors' range, cutting a labyrinthine path through
the jungle.
The SpecNav troops led the way. Though they were as big as stormtroopers,
Sixtus's men were deceptively swift and deathly quiet. Iella was more than happy
they were on her side. As scary as facing stormtroopers might have been,
fight-ing against these men would have been worse. At one point
they had been selected to join the Imperial Navy's most elite fighting unit, and
the product of their skills proved that choice had been a wise one.
Iella heard a single click over her comlink, so she hurried forward, remaining
low. She reached Elscol's side and looked off in the direction where the smaller
woman pointed. Silhou-etted against the lights from the house she saw two
Thyferran
Home Defense Corps guards wandering along. Elscol tapped her finger twice
against her comlink and huge shadows rose up to eclipse the guards. Iella heard
no screams or shots being
fired. but another double-click played over the comlink, indicating the guards
had been neutralized.
The rest of the group moved up to the edge of the clear-
ing around the estate. Barely twenty-five meters separated them from the mansion
solarium. Iella dropped to one knee next to one of the guards and felt for a
pulse in his neck, but her hand encountered a sticky wetness that told her all
she needed to know. The sound of a stun shot being fired or the light from the
blue burst could have been seen. These men had to die.
Elscol tapped two of the SpecNav soldiers on the shoul-ders and they sprinted
forward across the lawn to the shad-ows beside the solarium. Iella found herself
holding her breath, waiting for a reaction from the house. A single click from
the comlink told her the SpecNavs felt safe. Elscol sent them a double-click,
and Iella prepared herself to run.
The SpecNavs pulled an electronic device from an equip-ment satchel and slapped
it over the solarium's door lock. Iella saw lights on the device flicker and
shift color, then five of them all burned green at the same time. They went out
after three seconds at which point one of the SpecNavs pushed the door open.
Another double-click came through the comlink, and Iella was up and running.
With each step she braced herself for a shot from the darkness, a burning red
bolt that would hit her, lift her up and send her flying across the yard. She'd
seen it happen to others before, more times than she could remember. The look of
surprise on the victim's face as confident immortality dis-solved into dismay