"Star Wars - Dark Forces 02 - Rebel Agent(1998)(Dietz, William C & Tucker, Ezra)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dietz William)

Sweat beaded Jan's forehead. What now? She couldn't fly in circles forever. There had to be a better way. Then she saw it, a distant spire still under construction, the top twenty floors waiting for walls.
Jan bit her lip as she dived into a well-lit canyon. The first TIE fighter cleared the building, tried a deflection shot, and missed. One end of a sky bridge sagged and fell. The free end slammed into a building, severed the last connection, and disappeared into the abyss.
Jan wondered how many had died and continued to pull the Imperials away. She zigzagged between buildings, opened a lead, and struggled to extend it. A few extra seconds. That was all she needed.
The spire soared toward space, a monument to someone's ego and the perfect place to hide. Jan killed the Crow's navigational lights, put the ship into a sweeping curve, and approached the building from the other side.
It took every bit of her skill to dump the right amount of speed, guide the ship into a rectangular slot, and put her down.
The TIE fighters swept past the building, failed to spot her, and circled back. They were slower this time and more methodical but were looking for the wrong thing - a ship in flight. Jan waited, hoping to escape.
Then, one of the fighters spotted Jan - or, more likely, the heat generated by her engine - and came to investigate. Jan gritted her teeth, waited for the Imperial to fill the rectangle in front of her, and fired her cannon. The TIE fighter exploded. Flames blocked the Rebel's primary escape route.
Knowing the other ship would find her unless she moved, Jan lit the Crow's repulsors and eased her sideways. There was a grating noise as the top surface of the hull scraped against the ceiling, followed by silence as the agent made the necessary adjustment and looked for a way to escape.
Energy flared as TIE fighter number two spotted the Rebel and fired. There wasn't much Jan could do . . . . unless . . .
As in all of Nar Shaddaa's high-rise buildings, there were turbolift shafts toward the center of the spire. Large turbolift shafts, capable of transporting tons of supplies to the levels above. This building was no exception.
Jan slid the Crow into one such shaft, heaved a sigh of relief, and blasted upward. The TIE fighter, still in position and still blasting away, seemed completely unaware as the Rebel vessel emerged from the top of the building and circled down. Cannons fired, and the TIE fighter hit the side of the building, exploded into flames, and fell like a comet. The wreckage lit the canyon below.

Kyle stood knee-deep in ore, ducked to avoid a cross brace, and stared up through the gloom. He blinked as the rain hit his eyes. What was that structure, anyway? A cover - or something a good deal more ominous? Whatever it was made a lot of noise, as if the ore was being crushed, or forced through some kind of sorter.
Much as the agent had enjoyed the ride, he had no desire to get tangled up with the machinery. He waited for the next cross brace, jumped as hard as he could, and managed to get a grip. He did a chin-up, threw one leg across the girder, and pulled the rest of his body over the top.
A quick scan revealed a catwalk twenty meters away. All Kyle had to do was walk the length of the beam and climb aboard. He made the mistake of looking down. It was a long, long way. Lights bobbed as his pursuers climbed a maintenance ladder.
The Rebel swore, scooted along the beam, and transferred to the catwalk. It was a good decision, one that allowed him to travel faster. The catwalk led Kyle to a ladder which gave access to a maintenance platform and a nearby freight lift. Finally! Something he could rest on.
A wave of fatigue rolled over Kyle, and without the constant flow of adrenaline to keep him going, he collapsed in a corner. The lift stopped occasionally to allow a droid on or off, but there were no signs of pursuit. Did that mean what Kyle hoped? That he had worn em down? That the chase was over?
The platform slowed, the words "roof access" appeared on t e indicator panel, and the lift came to a stop. Kyle struggled to his feet, waited for the doors to open, and peered outside. Nothing. He felt for the earpiece and the comm unit that it served. Both had disappeared, lost in the darkness below.
The doors started to close and buzzed when Kyle used his blaster to keep them apart. They sensed the resistance, opened, and allowed him to pass. The attack came without warning as a blaster bolt drilled a hole through Kyle's shoulder. He staggered and tried to respond but felt very, very tired. The blaster seemed so heavy that he could barely lift it. The bounty hunters were little more than a blur. He backpedaled, felt his shoulders hit the door, and waited for the shot that would end his life.
A voice sounded inside his head. "Go to the peace within. Nothing can touch you there. The Force will protect you."
Kyle had heard of the Force and instinctively knew that what he thought of as "the gun trick" relied on an energy source external to himself. That knowledge, plus extreme desperation, caused him to listen.
Kyle called on the Force, became one with it, and felt events start to slow. There was time now, plenty of time in which to assess the bounty hunters arrayed before him, raise his weapon, and open fire.
The Rebel felt removed somehow, like a witness to someone else's life. He watched as a Rodian toppled, a Gamorrean fell, and a human collapsed.
A feeling of smug invincibility settled over Kyle as his enemies fell like wheat before a scythe. No one could stand before him! No one was as smart, as powerful, as . . .
Suddenly, and without warning, the slow, almost dreamy battle snapped into fast forward. An energy beam sizzled past Kyle's head and he understood his mistake. The Force was the source of his protection, not . . . A grenade exploded, the deck disappeared, and his head struck metal.
Jan had landed on the platform three hours before but had been forced to leave as other ships arrived. Astronomical fees, levied by the minute, left her no other choice.
That being the case, the Rebel had returned every half hour or so, landing when she could, scanning the area and calling over the radio when she couldn't.
It was a boring, frustrating duty - the kind she always wound up with - all because the only thing worse than working with Kyle was working without him.
The Crow was on final approach when the grenade went off. Jan saw the flash of light and guessed the rest. Kyle had arrived, and someone wanted to stop him. She goosed the drives and tried the comm. "Crow to Kyle - do you read me? Over."
Silence.
Jan felt her heart beat faster, brought the Crow's weapons on-line, and pronounced a death sentence on anyone who tried to stop her.
The bounty hunters, those still standing after Kyle had thinned their ranks, heard the ship and turned. There were three of them, and they, plus the body slumped against the elevators, were all Jan needed to see.
Blasters winked as the Rebel kicked the ship to the left, fired the bow cannon, and swung the nose to the right. Coherent light stuttered out, punched holes through the bounty hunters' chests, and scorched the deck beyond. They staggered, spun, and fell, all without coming anywhere near Kyle's motionless body.
The Crow settled over the bounty hunters' bodies like a bird on carrion. The ramp fell, and Jan exited holding a blaster in each hand. A bounty hunter, the only one still alive, saw the expression on the agent's face and continued to play dead.
Jan, careful to keep an eye on her surroundings, made her way over to Kyle's still-unconscious body, stuck one of the blasters in its holster, and used her free hand to check his pulse. It was thready but steady. As with many blaster wounds, the hole had been cauterized as the energy bolt passed through it, and while caked with blood, Kyle's skull seemed intact.
Jan gave a sigh of relief, stuck the remaining blaster into her waistband, and grabbed Kyle under the armpits. Her partner's head flopped up and down as the agent dragged him to the ship and up the ramp. He was bigger than she, and Jan was forced to stop occasionally to regain her strength.
Finally, with the ramp retracted and Kyle secured in a bunk, she lifted off. The Crow swung out over the abyss, rose toward the blackness of space, and left Nar Shaddaa behind. Kyle needed help - and Jan would find it.


CHAPTER FOUR

The hospital ship Mercy, an antiquated Dreadnaught, two assault frigates, a squadron of Corellian gun ships, and assorted support vessel orbited a recently devastated world. Cities of colored glass, now reduced to rubble, merged with plains of heat-fused earth. This was just one of the many planets laid to waste during the last few years.
The Mercy, which had been "liberated" while still under construction, was enormous. More than two kilometers long and a quarterkilometer across, she could accommodate up to five thousand patients plus the equipment, droids, and staff needed to operate and maintain her.
In spite of her considerable size however, the Mercy was badly overcrowded. More than six thousand Rebel casualties were crammed into her hull. They filled her wards and spilled out into the passageways, where they stood, sat, or lay on improvised beds. Even worse was the fact that patients who should have been immersed in one of the vessel's 4,250 bacta tanks were forced to wait.
It meant older, less effective medical procedures had to be brought into play. And that meant some of the wounded would suffer permanent disabilities since the longer bacta therapy was delayed the less effective it became.
Jan felt a lump in her throat as she threaded her way through packed corridors and caught glimpses of bodies cut in half, heads without faces, and beings so burned she couldn't determine whether they were human or members of another species.
The fact that she wasn't immortal, that she could have been one of them, made her stomach queasy. Jan knew she'd never forget the Mercy
corridors, the sacrifices her fellow Rebels had made, or the true price of freedom.
It took fifteen minutes to reach bacta ward 114. Three replacement units had been pressed into service and placed out in the corridor. They contained what remained of a gun ship's twelve-person -crew. The ship, the GS-138, had been ambushed while on a top-secret raid. Debris and some life pods were all that remained when help arrived.
The survivors - including a man, a woman, and a male Mon Calamari were suspended in bacta and mercifully unconscious. Medals hung from the jury-rigged cables that connected their tanks to the ship's computerized monitoring systems. Notes, drawings, and snapshots were taped to the tanks. A tired-looking medic turned to greet her. He was balding and slightly overweight. "Yes?"