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

from that sharp a dive. He's going in.
Gavin braced for the explosion and fireball as he came up over a little crest,
but the Interceptor didn't crash. Instead it plunged in through the base of the
steam plume and into the chasm that was the heart of the Halanit colony.
No one gets away that easy. Gavin switched back to la-sers and brought the
X-wing up in a lazy loop that he took over the top. The black hole in the
planet's white blanket loomed before him like the mouth of a krayt dragon. He
ignored the spark of fear in his guts and evened out the power to his shields.
The people of Halanit might be defenseless, but I'm not. Now you pay for the fun
you've had.
Erisi spotted the two Lambda-class shuttles flying down. Their wings began to
retract as they prepared to land near the colony's surface entrance. She brought
her Interceptor around and vectored in toward the landing site. With the flick
of a switch she cut in her repulsor-lift coils and extended the Interceptor's
landing gear, even though she expected them to sink into the snow. Nice to have
a ship with the hatch on top.
She keyed her comm unit. "Bascome, you have command of the flight. Continue to
orbit but do not make another chasm run unless it is specifically requested of
you."
"As ordered, Commander."
The first shuttle landed and disgorged two squads of stormtroopers in their cold
weather gear. The stormtroopers dashed into the opening of an ice cavern the
colony used as a shelter for visitors' personal spacecraft. Red lights flashed
from within, bathing the snow with the color of blood, then some black smoke
slowly drifted up through the narrow opening.
Looks like they're in. Erisi waited for the second shuttle to land before she
popped the hatch on her fighter. The cold immediately cut through her
flightsuit; yet despite it, she re-moved her heavy helmet. The sweat in her hair
froze immedi-ately, but she ignored it. Climbing up out of the hatch, she slid
down the curve of the cockpit and found the snow crust sufficiently solid to
bear her weight. Leaving her blaster in the shoulder holster she wore, she
strode across Halanit's frozen face and fell in beside the black-clad Captain
Ait Convarion.
The Imperial officer acknowledged her presence with a nod she felt was
calculated to be mildly dismissive of her even though she towered over him.
Sandwiched between storm-trooper phalanxes, they wordlessly made their way into
the ice cavern and to the heat-lock beyond it. The doors had been blasted open,
and the rush of warm air filled the cavern. Steam and smoke hovered in a low
cloud, trapped by the cavern's roof.
Convarion preceded her into a rough-hewn tunnel, step-ping over the sprawled
body of a civilian. They continued on until they reached a vista point at one
end of an elevated walkway bridging both sides of the chasm. Stormtroopers held
both sides of it, with the pair guarding that end bringing -heir blaster
carbines up across their chests when Convarion appeared.
Fists planted on his hips, Convarion surveyed the dam-age. Screams echoed
through the chasm, chased by the pierc-ing whine of blaster fire. Red lights lit
previously dark
transparisteel viewports and red laser bolts reached out to knock fleeing
figures from some of the other bridges.
Convarion looked back over his shoulder at Erisi. "You were unopposed in here?"