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

And now Corrupter has tracked me here, so I repay their hospitality with death.
Gavin growled incoherently, then stopped and forced himself to think clearly. He
thumbed on the comlink clipped to the lapel of his flightsuit. "Jawaswag, give
me a system start, now!"
His R2 tootled something back at him.
"I don't care, just do it. Turn on the fuel pumps and suck their synthesizer dry
if you have to. Gavin out." He lifted Cort away from his slump against the wall
and set him on his feet. "Get me to the utility hangar, now!"
Cort's brown eyes unglazed. "Utility hangar, yes. Come, it's on the other side
of the chasm."
Cort led Gavin from the apartment he'd been given and out into one of the
subterranean corridors running toward the chasm. Screaming people had.begun to
fill the corridor, but the small man deftly cut through them. Gavin shouldered
his way through the thickening crowd and caught up with Cort as they reached the
walkway across the chasm.
Gavin grabbed the back of Cort's cloak and yanked him
back out of the way of a green laser bolt. More of them played out in a line
across the walkway, chasing down and burning the legs from a running man. The
man's screams were swallowed by the whine of a TIE Interceptor as it streaked
past and he rolled from the walkway to fall to obliv-ion.
"Now, go!" Gavin's shout carried above the screeching of the other Interceptors
strafing the chasm. Gavin started running, letting his long legs devour the
distance. He let every ounce of panic he felt fuel his run, and he knew he was
run-ning faster than he ever had before. His lungs burned and his breath
steamed, but the echoed whines of Interceptor engines wouldn't let him stop
until he reached the far side and the safety of the tunneled corridor.
Cort arrived two steps after he did, adrenaline having lent him speed enough to
almost match the taller man's pace. Cort moved into the lead, cutting and
weaving through corri-dors and down ramps until they came out into a huge
subter-ranean cavern with a huge steaming lake, two bacta-storage cylinders, a
variety of old Zenomach and other tunneling de-vices, and Gavin's X-wing.
His fighter had been painted gold, with light red-orange crescents creating a
scalelike pattern. Near the front of the fighter, a mouth had been painted with
large, white, dagger-like teeth; the proton torpedo launching ports had become
the pupils of eyes. When asked how he wanted his X-wing decorated, he'd chosen
to make it over in the image of a krayt dragon, the most fearsome predator on
all of Tatooine.
He turned back to Cort. "Look, this is my fault. They're here after me. I'll
take off and lead them in a chase away from here. Get your people into
defensible positions and hold out. These tunnels will make it tough on
stormtroopers, so they'll withdraw when I'm gone."
Cort shook his head. "We have no weapons."
The plaintive tone in his voice punched Gavin straight in the heart. "I never
should have come here." He drew his blaster and pressed it into Cort's hands.
"Take this, do what you can. I'll do something."
Gavin ran to his X-wing and clambered up on a mole-
miner to boost himself into the cockpit. Cort disconnected the refueling lines,
then backed away and tossed Gavin a salute. Gavin returned it, then pulled on
his helmet and fastened his restraining straps. He left his life-support gear on
the floor of the cockpit, disdainful of the time it would take to pull it on. If