"Michael Stackpole "The Bacta War"" - читать интересную книгу автора

The Gand hesitated, then nodded extravagantly. "In-deed, Qrygg remembers your
using those very words. And Qrygg concurred."
"There you have it, Farl Cort." Corran opened his hands. "A hot bath and a hot
fish for each of us and we're even."
The colonial administrator smiled. "I'll see to it that you get your money's
worth."
"Liberating the bacta from Iceheart has already done that." Corran laughed
aloud. "Getting to sit in a hot bath and think about how furious she'll be will
make the experi-ence just that much more perfect."
The moment Tycho Celchu's X-wing reverted to realspace, a chill ran through him.
He had been to Alderaan-to its
Graveyard-before. He had seen and flown through the stony disk that was all that
remained of the world on which he had been born and had grown up. His last
vision of the world as a whole, cohesive ball had come when he shipped out to
the Imperial Military Academy and the pride that marked that memory now mocked
him.
He had returned to Alderaan before, but he had not yet Returned. Among the
survivors of Alderaan, Returning had taken on a reverence and importance unlike
any other tradi-tion he could recall. It seemed as if all the mental and
emo-tional energy that had been funneled into the planet's pacificistic
philosophy had been shifted and focused on a per-son's Return. Some people even
described their Return as a watershed experience, one that changed their lives
completely and profoundly, opening them to the greater truth of the uni-verse.
Those claims had been made by people wearing beatific expressions. They talked
about what should be done on a Return. They specified what should be said, what
should be offered, and what should be expected in return. They ritual-ized what
Tycho felt should be a distinctly individualized ex-perience, then encouraged
each other to share their experiences so they could mutually reinforce their
beliefs in the healing nature of the Return.
The Return had become something of an industry to ser-vice the Alderaanian
community, and Tycho had not found himself immune to its lures. After guiding
several bacta tank-ers to Coruscant, Tycho had set down on the planet and spent
some time with a few Alderaanian friends. As a result of their conversations, he
had decided to make his own Return, and then went out and proceeded to buy all
the things he would need to do it correctly.
Following the dictates of others rankled him, but he could not deny that inside
he felt a need to do some of the things bound up in a Return. He purchased a
Memorial Cap-sule, then bought little gifts for all of his dead. He picked out
things he knew they would have enjoyed-romantic holodramas for his grandmother
and sisters, wine for his fa-ther, flower bulbs for his mother, and a datacard
of the latest
recipes for his mother's father-the gourmet. For his brother, he picked up a
holobio of Luke Skywalker, knowing Skoloc would have thrilled at being able to
meet Luke and learning the Jedi would be returning to the galaxy. While part of
him rebelled at the idea of buying these things and jettisoning them to orbit
amid the Graveyard, the symbology of it satis-fied a need inside of himself to
place amid the shards of the world items that would mark the lives of people of
whom there was no longer a trace.
Choosing something to memorialize Nyiestra had been all but impossible. He had
known her all his life, and before he hit puberty, he knew he loved her and