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

"They'll pay, Cort, they'll pay dearly for this." Rolling out to port, he
pointed his fighter west and began his run home.
Erisi pulled the Interceptor's hatch shut and dropped into the pilot's seat as
the X-wing jetted up and out through the shield hole. She pulled on her helmet
and strapped in, then went for an engine start. Both refused.
Diagnostics scrolled over her primary monitor. Reactor chambers are too cold for
a start. She punched up a directory of systems software, then worked her way
down through a hierarchy of choices until she got to a list of emergency
over-rides. She glanced at her weapons display, then picked a pro-gram that
drained the energy from her lasers into the reactor cores to warm them enough
for a restart. She waited until the temperature had climbed sufficiently, then
restarted the en-gines.
The twin ion engines roared to life and sent a gentle thrum through the cockpit.
Erisi shunted energy back into recharging the lasers, then cut the repulsor-lift
generators in, retracted the landing gear, and throttled up to head after the
X-wing. Coming up and around, she dropped her Interceptor on his tail, but saw
he already had ten kilometers worth of lead over her. Even with the
Interceptor's greater speed, I won't catch him before he escapes the atmosphere
and goes to lightspeed.
Erisi reached over and punched up a broad band fre-quency selection for her comm
unit. "Fleeing X-wing, this is Commander Erisi Dlarit of the Thyferran Home
Defense Corps. Land at once or be destroyed."
"Erisi?"
She recognized the voice immediately. "Gavin? Listen to me. You have to stop. If
you don't, they'll get you."
"Don't you mean you'll get me?"
Erisi smiled. "No, the Imps will get you. Surrender to me and I can protect you
from them."
"How should I do that? Give you my override codes so I end up like Corran?"
Gavin's laughter stung her ears. "You want me, come get me."
"I would if you weren't so intent on running." By shunt-ing more energy to her
engines, she could increase her speed, but her lasers would have no power to
shoot Gavin when she caught him. If I had proton torpedoes, on the other hand .
. . Iceheart is a fool. "I never would have thought you a coward, Gavin."
Gavin laughed again. "A year ago, maybe even three months ago, you could have
gotten me to turn back with that
taunt, but not now. I'm not nearly as stupid as you'd need, for me to engage you
while Corrupter comes around and cuts me off."
"Rationalize your cowardice any way you want, Gavin." She knew she couldn't get
him to turn around, so she tried to hurt him as their ships left Halanit's
atmosphere. "Run away so you can come back later. Know you've doomed the people
of Halanit. And know I'll kill you when next we meet."
"You'll pay for what you've done here, Erisi." Emotion filled Gavin's words,
pinching their tone. "For you, getting out of this alive will be impossible."
"Impossible is what Rogues do best."
"Yeah, but you were never really a Rogue, were you?"
Kilometers began to scroll up impossibly quickly on Er-isi's range finder as the
X-wing ran up to lightspeed and en-tered hyperspace. Erisi watched it vanish,
then pulled back on the Interceptor's yoke and looped the fighter back toward
Halanit. No, / was never a Rogue, Gavin. I never relin-quished my grip on