"Michael Stackpole "I, Jedi"" - читать интересную книгу автора

The message stopped and Whistler offered to play it again, but I shook my head. “He wants me to train. He knows it is the right thing for me to do.” I thought for a moment. “And I guess I know it, too. I always saw my service in CorSec as the utmost I could do to prevent the innocent from coming to harm from evil. That's what it was then, just as flying with Rogue Squadron became later. Now, the utmost I can do is to become a Jedi, like Luke Skywalker and my father's father. To do anything less is to be unworthy of the trust they all place in me.”
I slowly stood. “To do anything less means I fail in my re-sponsibilities to Mirax. I'm not going to let that happen.”
I walked down the hallway and into my bedroom. I slid back a false panel in my nightstand and withdrew the slender silver cylinder that had been Nejaa Halcyon's lightsaber. My right thumb punched the black button on it, allowing the silver-white blade to hiss to life. It hummed as I turned toward Whistler and wove the blade through the air.
“Luke Skywalker is looking for students, and I need a teacher.” I smiled as Whistler trumpeted triumphantly. “Keiran Halcyon is born.”
Seve emerged from the apart-ment's refresher, finished toweling off my hair as I walked toward the living room, and smiled at Iella as she came into view. “There, what do you think?”
She narrowed her brown eyes at me, then nodded. “Not a hint of green.”
“Good.” I hung the white towel around my neck, holding on to each end of it. “It's going to take a while to get used to seeing my reflection with my hair this close to white.”
She tucked a lock of golden-brown hair behind her left ear. “It makes you look older. The moustache and goatee change the outline of your chin just enough that I almost didn't recog-nize you when you called earlier.”
“You don't think the green had anything to do with that?” I snorted. “I didn't think dyeing my hair would be that compli-cated.”
“Corran, you're supposed to read the instructions on the box.”
“I did.”
“And then you're supposed to follow them.” She gave me a look of mock disgust. “Once you've ingested the metabolizing agent, you have to be very specific about how long you leave the color targeting gel on. If you get the timing wrong, you have problems.”
I plucked at the hair on my chest. “Yeah, but I was trying to do my whole body here. Slathering that stuff on takes time.”
“Which is why you take it in stages, not try to do it all at once.” She began to laugh and I blushed. “You went from em-erald to pale green at your toes. Your beard did match your eyes, though.”
“But it would have been unending trouble to accessorize.” I gave her a snooty glare, then smiled. “At least I won't need to repeat this ordeal for a year or so.”
“True, that's usually how long it takes for the metabolizer to leave the follicles, but be careful. Weird foods can affect the chemistry there.” She stretched. “Speaking of which, where are you going to take me for this lunch you promised?”
I shrugged. “You pick. Fact is that I've not been thinking much about food over the past couple of weeks.”
Iella frowned at me. “You know, I'm still a bit angry with you. I thought we were friends, but your wife goes missing and vou don't call me or tell me about it?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “I know I should have.” “You're damned right you should have.” Her voice softened and I felt her hand caress my bare arm. “You were there for me when I lost Diric. I don't think I could have gotten through it without you. I owe you a lot and even if I didn't, I'd want to help with this sort of thing.”
I opened my eyes and gave her a brave smile, but swiped at a tear with my towel. “I wanted to talk to you, but you're working for New Republic Intelligence and I didn't want to place you in a position where you'd feel a conflict between your job and our friendship. No, wait. I know you and respect you and your pro-fessionalism. I know you would have and will do what is right and in the best interest for everyone. I also know that isn't exactly what I want. I didn't want you thinking you'd failed me because you couldn't say anything.”
Iella nodded, then gave me that indulgent grin I remembered from our years partnering in CorSec. “Your squadron briefings about the Invids probably have told you just about everything I know of fact about the Invids.”
I arched a newly blond eyebrow. “But there are rumors?”
“Vague, insubstantial rumors.” She pursed her lips for a mo-ment. “On some of the early raids, when Leonia Tavira deigned to travel dirtdown and tour the ruins her people left behind, survivors have reported seeing armored figures accompanying her. Never more than one, and everyone has described them as having a Vaderish air about them; but both male and female figures have been described. With Riizolo's report to add into the mix, we think we have at least four distinct individuals.”
I scratched at the back of my neck. “When you say 'Vader-ish,' are we just talking masks, cloaks and heavy breathing, or are they doing the virtual-garrote thing or other Force power displays?”
“Nothing more solid than image, though Riizolo insists they were special. I don't know to trust his reports, though. I think he's telling us a lot of what we want to hear so we'll find him a hole to hide in.” leila shrugged. “From everything we know about Tavira, it would be just like her to cultivate a Vader im-age for her henchmen, making her appear to them as the Em-peror was to Vader. All reports seem to agree that she may be smart, but she's also decidedly vain.”
I nodded. “Interesting information. Thanks. So, where do you want to eat?”
She slapped a hand playfully against my belly. “We should find a place to fatten you up. You've lost weight.”
'Tve been in training. It's been almost two weeks since I decided to join the Jedi academy and took my leave from the squadron.” I tossed my towel on a chair, not really caring that the cleaning droid would notify Whistler and he'd scold me for it. “You remember how the Corellian Security Force academy training went, and I got through that when I was a kid. Physical training at dawn, long runs, classes, more runs, exercises, stand-ing watch. We're going to have all that and more in the Jedi academy.”
Iella smiled. “You will be the elite of the elite. Think you're up to it?”
“I hope so. I'm Master Skywatker's age and probably in as good physical shape as he is, but I'll bet he's going to be bring-ing in a bunch of kids. I'll really have to push myself. Gotta do it, though, because Mirax is counting on me.”
“You'll do fine, Corran. Or should I call you Keiran?”
“Corran will do.”
“Okay. How do you feel about eating Ithorian?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Food's good, but I want something with a bit more animal protein.”
“There's a new Twi'lek place that opened up a couple of sectors down and away from here.” “Car'ulorn's Kavsrach ?”
She nodded. “I think that's the place. I heard they do some-thing special with mynock.”
“If I'm eating mynock, it will have to be very special.” I winked at her. “Nawara said the food was good there, so it looks like that's a go. Let me pull on some real clothes and we're out of here.”
While I changed leila consulted the Imperial City directory and discovered the restaurant was actually closer than either one of us thought it was. We decided to walk there and slipped into the easy gait we'd used when walking patrol duty together back on CoreIlia. A lot of years seemed to melt away as she pointed out the things she knew I'd find amusing and I did the same for her.
I elbowed her gently in the ribs. “You ever figure we'd end up on Coruscant back when we were partners?”
Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then she shrugged. “Maybe on vacation, though I can think of hundreds of worlds where I'd rather go. Diric always wanted to come here, to see the hub of the galaxy. Back then I thought of it as too urban.” “And now?”
“Once you get here you find out that it's not all one big city, but it has neighborhoods and little city-states. It's not just one big uniform block of grey.” She shot me a sly grin. “I'd still like to head out to some place like Alakatha.”
I stopped abruptly as two small RodJan children went racing past me, and leaned heavily on Iella for support. “You might ask General Cracken to send you there to check out how Ri-izolo picked his target.”
“Thought of that, but I'd have to haul that piece of pirate Huttpuss along with me, so I don't think it's an assignment I want.”
I smiled. “Talk to Wedge. He could use a vacation.” “There's an idea.” Iella slipped ahead of me as the walkway we were on became more crowded. She slipped past a knot of Whiphids, then pointed at a small ball of lurid red light a cou-ple of levels down. “That's the place.”
We hurried on over and down. Car'ulorn's Kavsrach had quite a crowd in it already, and most of them Twi'leks. We took this as a good sign, even though we found it somewhat unset-tling as we were led on a twisting path to a small table back near the kitchen. Because Twi'leks use the twitches and shakes of their braintails-more properly, lekku-the way humans use their hands to emphasize things they say, the whole room was alive with serpentine writhings.
I looked over at Iella through the holographic projection of the menu. “Remind me, I don't want anything with noodles.”
She laughed and pointed to an item three down from the top. “Mynock Coronet City. A spicy combination of marinated my-nock strips with vweilu nuts and Ithorian chale, in alum sauce.”
“Sounds good, but the roast gornt sounds better to me.” I smiled at her. “Reminds me of a joke I heard from Wedge the other day.”
“Not the Bothan and a gornt in a cantina?”
“You've heard it? You talked to Wedge?”