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

The site occupied a rise and looked out onto one of the planet's many reddish-orange wastelands. The location, plus the supplies, and the cool, clean water that gushed from the recently drilled well, were sufficient to raise the colonists' spirits. Jokes were told and discussions begun. Twenty minutes later, the newly landed colonists were hard at work revising Morgan's plans, arguing over how to divide the surrounding land, and jockeying for power within a government they hadn't formed yet. Morgan smiled. Things were on the right track.
Morgan stayed with the settlers for three local days, welcomed successive waves of colonists, ensured fair treatment of the newcomers by the "firsties," helped erect temporary shelters, and guided groups into the caverns where mirrors and fiber-optic cable would be used to pipe sunlight down from the surface. Morgan was a farmer himself, and when he explained how sunlight could be combined with fertilizer and drip-style irrigation to produce healthy crops, they believed him.
Finally, when it became apparent that some of the colonists had become too dependent on his leadership and others chafed under the restrictions it imposed, Morgan knew that it was time to leave them for a while.
He borrowed a skimmer. It was more than ten years old, dented from hard use, and nearly stripped of its yellow paint. The name Old Codger had been hand lettered onto the floater's bow, and that seemed to tell the story. But appearances can be deceiving. Morgan conducted his own inspection and found that the skimmer, like all of Jerg's equipment, was in excellent repair.
The rear seats had been removed to make room for cargo, so Morgan had plenty of space to stash his borrowed camping gear, a crate full of
parts, the tools required to install them, and four five-liter containers of water. This would be more than enough if he was careful.
The natives weren't supposed to be hostile, but Morgan took a blast rifle just to be safe, along with a comm set and survival gear.
Morgan knew that as in most desert environments, the best time to travel was at night. But he wanted to see the countryside. By traveling in the morning and evening, he hoped to avoid the worst part of the heat and still see the sights.
He left so early in the morning that the stars were out, and the sentry shook his head in amazement. He figured that anyone who ventured into the badlands, and didn't have to, was out of his mind.
Morgan, who hadn't taken anything like a vacation in more than fifteen years, gloried in his freedom. The speeder hummed, the stars wheeled, and the wind caressed his face. It was fresh and carried the scent of the low-growing bushes - from which aromatic oil could be extracted if the colonists cared to give it a try - that covered much of the land.
For lack of a better destination, Morgan chose to follow the old roadbed. It took considerable resources to build such a highway . . . . So where would it lead? To a city? Full of ancient ruins? He hoped so.
Jerg's crew, none of whom looked forward to rotations on Ruusan, did what they were required to do but ventured no farther than was absolutely necessary. The initial survey, conducted years before, had revealed one low-profile sentient life form, and that was all they needed or wanted to know.
Morgan, who never tired of learning, reveled in the opportunity to explore and observe. The landscape assumed a soft, almost surreal quality as the early morning light painted it in shades of lavender and gold. The air, which was so completely different from the stale, recycled stuff available aboard ship, was fresh and cool.
The feeling of intoxication was so strong that he laughed out loud, opened the throttle, and cheered as the skimmer surged ahead. It was good to be alive!
Hours passed, the sun hung high in the sky, and Morgan looked for a place to stop. He was hungry and, more important, very, very warm. A semirigid awning had been included in his equipment, and it was time to deploy it.
Morgan scanned the terrain ahead, spotted an interesting rock formation, and angled off to meet it. The boulder, for that was what it appeared to be, looked like a half-buried loaf of bread. The sun was just past its zenith, which meant that "big loaf" threw some shade to the east. Morgan steered the speeder into the rock's protection and felt the temperature drop.
Work had always come before play in Morgan's life, and some habits are hard to break. He instructed the on-board computer to run a routine diagnostics check on the floater's power plant and tugged, snapped, and swore the awning into place. It was then, and only then, that he took time for lunch.
The cooler, which had its own power source, was extremely efficient. The beer was cold, the locally grown fruit juicy, and the sandwich filling.
Having eaten his fill and restowed his gear, Morgan decided to circle the rock. The landmark was so prominent and so close to the road that it was certain to have been noticed. Maybe, just maybe, he'd find something of interest.
Gravel crunched under his boots, an insect buzzed in his face, and beads of sweat dotted Morgan's forehead. A wave of hot, sultry air swept in from the plains, ruffled the low-growing bushes, and lost its will to live.
Fissures appeared in the rock. Some were large enough to stick his hand into, though he didn't. Patches of lichen clung here and there, and an animal scurried into its burrow. Interesting but not what he had hoped for. No graffiti, no pictographs, and no tool marks.
Finally, having circumnavigated three-quarters of the rock and concluding that it had no secrets to conceal, Morgan found the very thing he'd been looking for - signs of life.
The first thing he noticed was that while the blue-green ground cover grew fairly evenly everywhere else, this patch of earth was bare. So bare, and covered with strange, striated tracks, that he concluded it was subject to ongoing use.
of equal interest was the fact that twenty-five or thirty holes had been excavated in the area. All were shallow, and some contained scraps of semitransparent tissue that produced an unpleasant odor and dwindled in size as insects carved the treasure into bug-sized servings and carried them away. What was the stuff, anyway? And, more important, what created it? And why?
At first, Morgan thought the holes were too symmetrical to be the work of animals, but that was before he remembered the nearly identical nests that Sulon's flatwings liked to construct and realized his assumption was wrong. He had no reason to believe that sentients were associated with the holes, but that was the way it felt. Such feelings Morgan had fought to suppress his entire adult life.
Morgan had always been aware of the Force. As a child, with no one to guide his actions, he had used his abilities to animate toys, to entertain his baby sister, to nudge people in the direction he wanted them to go and, finally, in an act that changed the rest of his life, to push a bully off balance. Not much, just a little, so his first blow would be more effective. And the stratagem had worked. How could Morgan know that the bully would stagger backward? Would trip over a root? Would fall ten meters to the rocks below? Would die as a result?
No one knew what had actually taken place that day, and no one ever would, except for Morgan. And what he knew, or thought he knew, was that he was too weak, too flawed to be trusted with such an ability, a talent that never ceased to plague him, to convey information he didn't want to receive, to remind him of that terrible day.
Suddenly paranoid, Morgan looked up and scanned the horizon. The desert shimmered and, with the exception of a single wind rider, was empty of life. Or so it appeared. But the Force said otherwise.
Morgan returned to his skimmer, his steps not quite as deliberate as he would have liked them to be, and was pleased to see everything just as he'd left it. The decision to abandon the original plan and travel during the worst part of the day suddenly seemed natural.
The next few hours were as unpleasant as the first few had been pleasant. In following the roadbed, Morgan was forced to face the sun. The goggles helped but failed to eliminate the glare. The sun screen provided shade but couldn't counter the heat.
Still, time passed, and the kilometers unwound. Sunset found Morgan at the point where the desert gathered itself into dunes. The road had disappeared by then, lost below tons of drifting sand. Morgan steered the floater between a pair of wind-sculpted mounds, found a U-shaped harbor, and brought the vehicle to a stop.
The Rebel knew there might be, and probably were, better camping sites back in the foothills, but finding them in the dark would be difficult if not impossible, and he was tired.
It took the better part of an hour to secure the skimmer and find the equipment he needed. Dinner consisted of stew and an ice-cold beer. It was refreshing, but the temperature dropped while he was drinking it, and that caused him to shiver. He donned a jacket, emptied the can, and started some tea.
The sun disappeared behind a mountainous dune while Morgan washed his dishes and laid out the makings for breakfast. He found the utility lamps, connected them to the skimmer's distribution panel, and flipped a switch. The darkness took a sudden jump backward.
The wind shifted and blew from the north. Morgan shivered, shoved his hands into his pockets, and felt something approach.
Under normal circumstances, he would have refused the Force. But this was different. He was alone, a long way from help, and extremely vulnerable. The talent and the information it provided were suddenly welcome.
The Rebel tried to appear casual as he strolled over to the Codger, killed the work lights, and grabbed the blast rifle. The metal felt cool and reassuring as the human fumbled for a glow rod and moved away. Intruders, if there were any, would approach the vehicle, and lie had no intention of being there when they arrived.
Sand shifted under Morgan's boots as he climbed the side of the dune. Perhaps he'd be able to see who or what the creature or creatures were from a higher vantage point.
Ruusan had three small moonlets, which Jerg's crew referred to as "the triplets." The first satellite popped over the eastern horizon as Morgan arrived on the dune's wind-sculpted summit. The breeze made his collar flap.
The moonlight cast a surreal glow over the desert, and Morgan used it to reconnoiter. Something, or an entire group of somethings, had entered the area. He couldn't see them, but he knew they were there.
Then, just as a second moon joined the first, he saw what he had come for. The natives were shaped like medicine balls. There were fifty or sixty of them, all told, rolling before the wind, headed his way.
The very idea was threatening. Morgan raised the blast rifle, sighted on the lead organism, and knew he couldn't fire, not without provocation. He lowered the weapon, felt for the electrobinoculars, and switched them on. Though larger, the creatures appeared as little more than green blobs when viewed on infrared.
The third moon appeared, adding even more light to the scene. Now Morgan realized the natives were possessed of specialized flaps of skin that acted as vanes. The natives could navigate in whatever direction they chose by raising, lowering, or turning their flaps.
The indigs, for he had no other name for them, had a ghostly quality. They ran before the wind and tacked as a group. They sought out minor obstacles such as boulders, hit them in a manner that threw their bodies high into the air, and tried to float as far as they could.
Something about the manner in which they moved communicated such freedom that Morgan wished he could be among them, rolling through the night, bouncing with joy.
It was that behavior more than anything else that caused Morgan to smile and sling the blast rifle over his shoulder. He was halfway down the dune before the risks associated with such a course of action occurred to him.
The bouncers, for that name seemed more fitting, deployed wind vanes, wheeled to the right, and rolled toward the dune. By the time
Morgan reached the bottom, the natives were a hundred meters away and starting to slow.
Morgan wasn't clear on the dynamics of the process but watched in mute fascination as tentacles appeared from within, curved back over globe-shaped bodies, and writhed when they touched the ground. Morgan theorized that the subtle manipulation of the tentacles, plus friction with the sand, allowed them to brake.
The ball-shaped beings coasted to a halt, stood on gathered tentacles, and opened their enormous, light-gathering eyes. It was then, as the Rebel looked into their immense pupils, that he realized the creatures were nocturnal. One of the natives "walked" forward on its tentacles, made a series of whistling noises, and waited for a response.