"Michael Stackpole "Rogue Squadron"" - читать интересную книгу автора

don't have the time to talk about this now."
"No time or no inclination?"
Whistler hooted something in an utterly carefree manner.
"You stay out of this." Frustration curled his hands into fists. "You're not
going to let this go, are you, Ms. Forge?"
With a smile blossoming on her face, she shook her head. "If you'd gotten this
far in an interroga-tion, would you give up?"
Corran snorted a laugh. "No."
"So, explain yourself."
He definitely heard a request for more than an explanation of his conduct in the
Redemption sce-nario in her voice. For a split second he flashed on the times at
CorSec when his human partner, Iella Wessiri, had made similar demands of him.
Iella had been a conciliator-always the one to be patching up the disagreements
between folks in the unit.
that's what Lujayne is trying to do, which means I've managed to alienate a
number of the other pi-lots trying to get into the unit.
"Concerning the exercise, I really just wanted to see how good you were. I'd
been able to figure out where some of the other pilots stood in relationship to
me, but I'd not flown against you. You know, you're not bad."
"But I'm not in a class with you and Bror Jace."
Corran smiled quickly, then covered it with a frown. "True, but you're still
very sharp. I'd like to think the rest of the pilots are going to be at least
that sharp. I'd even be set up to fly against that Gimbel kid in his Redemption
scenario tomorrow but Jace volunteered before I could."
"His name is Gavin, Gavin Darklighter."
"Gavin, then."
"And you didn't want to be following Jace's lead?"
"Would you?"
Lujayne smiled. "Given a choice, no, I guess not. Next to you, he's the most
standoffish person in the group."
Corran felt uneasy inside. "I'm not as bad as he, is."
"No? At least he has the good graces to deign to join us in DownTime for some
recreation. He's a sliced and blown datafile compared to you."
Corran turned to the left and pointed his finger at the astromech droid. "Don't
even start."
Lujayne raised an eyebrow. "So your droid thinks you should get out more, too?"
Something halfway between a snarl and a growl came from Corran's throat, but it
lacked the power to make it menacing. "Whistler has the ability, from time to
time, to be a nag. His problem is that in the time since I left CorSec I've been
in situations where I've had to be very careful. I moved through a number of
identities that didn't allow me to be
very open with people. For example, most recently, I spent over a year as the
confidential aide to a suc-cession of incompetent Imp officials governing a Rim
world. One slip, one crack in my identity, and I'd have been caught. And when
you get out of the habit of trusting folks and relaxing around them, well ..."
"I understand."
"Thanks." Corran gave her a grateful smile. "On top of that, I'm learning a lot
of new things here and I've been trying to concentrate on my fly-ing. That's not
easy-there's a whole new set of slang to get used to and people from species I
barely knew existed that I now have to work with and even share living quarters