"Ann Crispin "Han Solo. Rebel Dawn"" - читать интересную книгу автора

"I know, I know, Rimrunner's awfully close to that plasma jet," Hah said. "And for us to get close, we risk gettin' our ship knocked out and joinin' Rimrunner. But Chewie... we gotta try."
The Wookiee's blue eyes narrowed with determina-tion and he roared his agreement. S'alla was a friend. They couldn't abandon her.
Hah opened a frequency on the Falcon's corem, even as he began frantically ordering his navicomputer to run calculations. "Salla? Salla? This is Han. Honey, you there? We're gonna try and get you... but you'll have to do what I tell you. Salla? Come in! Over."
He tried twice more as the navicomputer began spouting possible approach vectors. He knew the mag-netic fields, ionized gas, and plasma trails would inter-fere with communications, but he hoped that the Falcon's powerful sensors and transmitters could punch through.
"Chewie, tell Jarik to get into a vacuum suit and stand by the airlock with the magnetic grapple and the winch. I'm gonna tell her to eject, and we'll match her trajectory and pick her up."
Chewie gave Han a skeptical glance. "Don't look at me like that!" Han snapped. "I know it won't be easy! I've got the navicomputer workin' on an approach vec-tor that will keep us outta the plume's magnetic field. Don't stand there tellin' me all the stuff that can go wrong! Get movin'!"
Chewbacca made a hasty exit.
Han tried the comm unit again. "Salla... Salla, this is Falcon. Come in." He wondered whether Salla's abrupt reversion to real space had caused her to be flung against the controls. She could be lying there, un-conscious... or dead.
"Hey, baby, answer me. Come in, Salla .... "
He continued to call as he sped toward the apas-tron coordinates. The neutron star's magnetic field was so powerful that it must have blown out every active system on Rimrunner the moment Salla came out of hyperspace. That would almost certainly include Rim-runnerk sole lifepod, as that system was usually kept "on-line"-ready for an emergency ejection at a mo-mentk notice.
Salla was still moving, coasting at the same speed she had been when she'd first jumped into hyperspace, but now she had no way to brake or alter direction. Most importantly, no power to blast free of the gravity well. She'd be pulled closer and closer in an ever-tighter or-bit until her ship encountered the edge of the accretion disk, then... boom.
By the time that happened, though, Salla WOuld have been dead for ‘at least five minutes, from passing through that plasma particle jet ....
Not if I can help it, Hah thought grimly. "Salla?
Salla? Can you read me? Come in, Salla!"
Finally, he heard a crackle of static, then a faint reply. "... Hah... Rimrunner... engines out. Power gone... batteries dying... can't... goner, honey... stay away...."
Hah swore loudly. "No!" he yelled into the comm. "Salla, listen to me and do exactly what I say! Rim-runner's a gorier, fight, but not you, Salla! You're gonna have to abandon ship, and you've got only a few min-utes to do it! Was your lifepod on-line when you got hit?"
ъ .. ‘affirmative, Han... lifepod dead... no way to eject .... "
It was as he'd thought. Her lifepod was useless, its electronic systems blown.
He wet his lips. "Yes, you can eject! We're comin' to get you! Salla, you get your rear down to your aft airlock and stuff yourself into a vacuum suit! Take both suit thrust paks, hear me? When the first runs out, activate the second. Full throttleLI'm gonna try and match your trajectory, but I want you its far away froin Rimrunner and that plasma jet as possible!" "Won't work... jump?"
"Yeah, dammit, jump!" Han made a course adjust-ment. "I can be there in eight minutes. I want you blasting away from Rimrunner at full throttle on the fol-lowing coordinates..." He glanced at his navicomputer and gave her a string of numbers. "Copy that?" "But Rimrunner..." was the faint reply.
"Blast Rimrunner!" ttan shouted. "It's a ship, you can get another! Now do it, Salla! This is gonna be hard enough without you arguing! You've got three minutes to get into that suit! Go!"
He keyed his intercom to Jarikk spacesuit frequency. "Jar/k, you standing by with the magnetic grapple and the winch?"
"Affirmative, Hah," Jar/k said. "Just warn me when I can make visual contact. Itk hard to see in this hehnet."
"I'll tell ya, kid," Hah said tersely. "Here% your coor-dinates for the grapple." He repeated them. "Timink gonna be critical here, so don't be slow about it. Any drift, and we'll graze the edge of the magnetic field and then we're in the same fix as Rimrunner. Basically, we've got one chance to get in and get out safely. Got that?" "I copy, Hah," Jarik said, tensely.
As Han piloted his ship toward the rescue coordi-nates, he worried that Salla% thrust paks wouldn't be strong enough to propel her far enough away from her doomed vessel. He didn't want to risk crashing into Rimrunner. The Falcon was a freighter, not designed for tight, pinpoint maneuvering of this sort. True, Han could make his ship practically stand on her head, but picking up a tiny spacesuited human while trying to stay out of the particle jet's magnetic field was risky enough, without worrying about having Rimrunner slamming into them.
Hah carefully checked and rechecked his course. He had to do this precisely, on the first try. He had to get her before she got within range of that deadly plasma. He had a brief, hideous vision of what it would be like to bring a radiation-seared corpse aboard, and made himself concentrate on his piloting. This maneuver was probably the trickiest piece of piloting he'd ever tried ....
Minutes later, Han, sweating, began entering the course corrections that would bring them to the intersec-tion point. He slowed his ship... slowed her again... then again, He didn't dare come to a dead halt, for fear that he'd drift into the magnetic field ....
He kept his eyes riveted on his sensors. Rimrunner was only about fifty kilometers away, now, growing on his screens. "Jarik, I have visual contact with Rimrun-ner. Stand by."
"I read you, Hah. Standing by."
Had Salla ejected ill time? Han tried calling her. No answer, but there was a good chance that her suit com-link wouldn't be strong enough to reach him through the interference.
The doomed freighter grew on his screens, in his viewport. Hah slowed still further, hardly daring to blink. Where is she? Did she have the courage to jump?
Salla didn't lack for courage, Han knew that. But jumping into space, with nothing between you and some very hard vacuum was a scary proposition. Han bit his lip, picturing her pushing herself away from Rimrunner's airlock and triggering that first thrust pak. Although he'd spent time in spacesuits himself, he didn't like it, hanging there, with nothing between you and in-finity in all directions. And he'd certainly never had to try and cross kilometers of space in nothing but a space-suit. The Corellian wasn't sure he'd have the courage to do what he'd demanded of Salla ....
Before she became a smuggler, Salla had spent time as a technician on a corporate transport. He hoped she hadn't lost her spacesuit skills.
Han watched the schematic on his navigation boards. There was the neutron star, with Rimrunner's projected downward-spiraling orbit marked out. Salla's ship had reached apastron. The blip that was the Falcon was closing rapidly. Thirty klicks ....
And there, marked in virulent green, was the deadly plume of the plasma, haloed with the magnetic field in violet.
Han swallowed. So close...
He was closing on twenty klicks, now. He looked up, and through the viewport made out Rimrunners mynock shape.
Where is she? he wondered, checking the schematic again. Where is-
"Got her!" Han suddenly yelled. "Jarik, I see her blip! No visual yet, but stay sharp!" He made a few mi-nor course changes so he'd exactly match Salla's trajec-tory. She was moving toward him at a pretty good clip, fast enough to stay in a straight line, not fast enough to risk losing control and going into a spin. Hah admired her suit expertise.
"Ready, Han," the youth said, then muttered some-thing under his breath... a prayer? Han was too busy to inquire.
Hah turned on his ship's intercom, "Chewie, you standing by with that med-pak?"
"Hrnnnnnnggggghhh!"
As Hah watched her blip, he kept glancing up at the port, and suddenly-
"I got her! Visual contact! Jarik... fire magnetic grap-ple on my order..."
Han counted seconds in his head. Three... two... one...
"Fire!"
A tense second...
"I got her! Activating winch!"
"Chewie, can you hear her?"
Chewbacca roared. No, he couldn't hear her, but he'd let Han know the moment he could. "Jarik, Jarik, is she okay?"