"Timothy Zahn - Outbound Flight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

Outbound Flight

By

TIMOTHY ZAHN
1

The light freighter Bargain Hunter moved through
space, silver-gray against the blackness, the light of the distant
stars reflecting from its hull. Its running lights were muted, its
navigational beacons quiet, its viewports for the most part as
dark as the space around it.

Its drive gunning for all it was worth.

“Hang on!” Dubrak Qennto barked over the straining
roar of the engines. “Here he comes again!”

Clenching his teeth firmly together to keep them from
chattering, Jorj Car’das got a grip on his seat’s armrest with one
hand as he finished punching coordinates into the nav computer
with the other. Just in time; the Bargain Hunter jinked hard to
the left as a pair of brilliant green blaster bolts burned past the
bridge canopy. “Car’das?” Qennto called. “Snap it up, kid.”

“I’m snapping, I’m snapping,” Car’das called back,
resisting the urge to point out that the outmoded nav equipment
was Qennto’s property, not his. As was the lack of diplomacy and
common sense that had gotten them into this mess in the first
place. “Can’t we just talk to them?”

“Terrific idea,” Qennto bit out. “Be sure to compliment
Progga on his fairness and sound business sense. That always
works on Hutts.”

The last word was punctuated by another cluster of
blaster shots, this group closer than the last. “Rak, the engines
can’t hold this speed forever,” Maris Ferasi warned from the
copilot’s seat, her dark hair flashing with green highlights every
time a shot went past.

“Doesn’t have to be forever,” Qennto said with a grunt.
“Just till we have some numbers. Car’das?”

On Car’das’s board a light winked on. “Ready,” he
called, punching the numbers over to the pilot’s station. “It’s not
a very long jump, though—”

He was cut off by a screech from somewhere aft, and
the flashing blaster bolts were replaced by flashing starlines as