Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters (28 page)

The Empire was taxing, extorting, confiscating, and stealing the wealth of its countless citizens on their numberless worlds, creating an unlimited, glittering flow that enriched the Empire’s coffers and showered its officials with luxury.

It was this flow Zuckuss and 4-LOM would tap into.

If they were not heading into a trap. Zuckuss still could not intuit Darth Vader’s intentions. They lay clouded before him, carefully guarded.

Zuckuss breathed in again, and held his breath in.

The 1,088th breath, 4-LOM noted.

Toryn Farr was the last person to leave the Rebel command center in Echo Base on Hoth. She was Chief Controller there, responsible for communicating orders to the Rebel troops. Princess Leia’s final orders had been the ones Toryn had dreaded hearing: “Give the evacuation code,” Leia said, “and get to the transport!”

Han pulled Leia down the hallway, and the remaining staff ran after them, carrying any movable piece of equipment they could, while Toryn broadcast the evacuation code: “Disengage! Disengage!” she said. “Begin retreat action!”

She jerked her console free from its connections and rushed with it down the icy passageway toward the transport. Echo Base was collapsing on them. Ice shards pummeled her head and back with each concussive explosion on the surface—explosions that came one after the other. Lights in the passageway flickered and went out. They did not come back on. After a
moment of darkness, dim emergency lights glowed to life. Their light was barely enough to run by. She passed a branch of the main tunnel completely choked with tons of collapsed ice.

“The princess went that way!” someone ahead of her said.

Toryn tapped her headset to actívate it and accessed the retreat channel just in time to hear Han say he and Leia were still alive. “Han and the princess are alive and heading for the
Falcon
,” she called out to everyone ahead of her.

They hurried on and came to the hangar with its last transport, the
Bright Hope:
their only hope for escape in this rush of retreat—and Toryn stopped in horror at the sight there.

The flight deck around the
Bright Hope was
filled with wounded soldiers. Medical droids moved among them, trying to stop the most seriously wounded from bleeding to death.

And more wounded were being carried in.

We will all die here, Toryn thought, or worse: the Empire will capture us alive. She never once thought that any able-bodied Rebel would desert wounded comrades, and she saw no way to load all the wounded onto the transport before snowtroopers would be upon them. They were already reported in the ice fortress itself.

A blaster shot slammed into the back of the man who stood next to Toryn. He fell dead on the ice, and Toryn and everyone near the tunnel scrambled for cover behind crates stacked by the door.

Snowtroopers—behind them in the corridor!

Toryn returned fire. Only then did she realize she had taken cover behind crates of thermal detonators. Her first thought was to run for safer cover.

But she did not run.

She tore open a crate, activated three grenades, and threw them up the tunnel. The grenades emitted
clouds of smoke, and for a few brief seconds she saw the feet of snowtroopers kicking the grenades around the tunnel-floor ice—trying to boot them back out into the hangar.

But they did not have time. The grenades exploded and brought down tons of ice in the tunnel, choking it shut.

And buying the Rebels precious minutes to save their wounded.

“Get these soldiers on board!” she shouted, and she rushed to help carry the wounded to safety and escape.

“Does Darth Vader know?” 4-LOM asked Zuckuss after another 8.37 minutes.

“Yes,” Zuckuss said. He straightened his legs and opened his eyes.

4-LOM immediately began programming the ship for a second, desperate jump away from their destination. They could not change course in hyperspace, but their ship could execute a second jump so quickly it would appear for only a brief moment on the Imperial’s screens. He calculated that it would be a brief enough appearance for them to escape.

Zuckuss put a hand on the droid’s forearm. “This is not necessary,” he said.

4-LOM continued his programming. The last four words Zuckuss spoke made no sense—the “logic” of nonmechanical sentients often made no sense to 4-LOM: of course they had to flee to safety.

“Darth Vader knows what Zuckuss and 4-LOM have done, but he does not care,” Zuckuss said, as usual referring to himself in third person. “The acquisitions he sends us to hunt matter more to him—to the Empire—than one hundred Governors Nardix: and the Empire needs our help. They know that. Zuckuss and 4-LOM are safe in accepting this contract and the
Empire’s credits, for now. But if success is not achieved …”

Zuckuss did not finish his sentence—an annoying habit of most nonmechanical sentients. It made accurate communication difficult. 4-LOM quickly computed seventy-six variant endings to that sentence, all with a probability of better than 92.78363 percent of being what Zuckuss might have gone on to say, all predicting the Empire’s wrath and their doom.

Our probable futures have shrunk to this, Zuckuss thought: he and 4-LOM had this one chance to redeem themselves. If they succeeded, the Empire would forget their involvement with Governor Nardix. If they failed, the Empire would stop at nothing to exact its revenge. He and 4-LOM would have to use all their combined skills to hide for a time, create new identities, and survive.

Zuckuss smiled. Days lived under threats like these were days worth living.

Among the last soldiers waiting to be carried aboard the transport, Toryn found Samoc, her younger sister. Samoc was one of the Rebel’s best snowspeeder pilots. That her ship had gone down meant the fight outside was truly horrific. Samoc’s red hair was mostly burned away. Her face and hands were burned. No one had treated her or helped her at all, except to bring her here.

She was conscious. She blinked up at Toryn, through lids that now had no eyelashes, and she tried to reach a hand to Toryn.

“Imperial walker shot me down—” she whispered.

A blaster shot slammed into the ceiling and showered them with ice: snowtroopers, rushing into the docking bay itself from across the ice fields outside the fortress.

Toryn picked up her sister and ran with her to board
the transport. “It must hurt to move you like this,” she said. “But there’s no other way!”

Shots echoed around them.

They were among the last to board. The docking bay now lay empty of wounded Rebels, but scattered with tons of vital equipment abandoned to make room for the unanticipated casualties.

The hatches closed despite explosions of snow-trooper fire. The six X-wing fighters waiting to escort the transport took off, and the transport itself blasted out of the hangar and past the atmosphere to the black cold of space.

We waited too long to take off, Toryn thought to herself. Our compassion for the wounded will have killed us all.

She found one empty seat near the hatch and strapped Samoc into it. She knelt to hang on to Samoc, and braced herself against the shock of hits their ship was certain to take before they could make the jump to hyperspace.

Imperial Star Destroyers filled space above Hoth, she knew, waiting to attack Rebel ships.

4-LOM and Zuckuss exited hyperspace into the Hoth system and found themselves in the middle of battle. A Rebel transport the bounty hunters’ computer identified as the
Bright Hope
streaked past them, and one of the transport’s six escort X-wing fighters fired at them. The concussion of the shot shook the bounty hunter’s ship.

“Raising shields,” 4-LOM said.

No one had warned them of the posibility of battle at the rendezvous point. But then, no one had told them accepting an Imperial contract would be easy, either.

Their screens showed a confusion of ships, Rebel and Imperial, scattered throughout the solar system. But
the Rebel ships were blinking off-screen, disappearing into hyperspace—full retreat. “Zuckuss tracks sixteen destroyed Rebel transports,” the Gand said.

He did not have to add: within close range. They could see them out their viewports—shattered hulks showering sparks into space, lights shining from a few still-intact viewports. The bounty hunters quickly plotted the careening trajectories of the derelict ships so they could fly past them.

“Let’s give our Imperial friends a seventeenth ship,” Zuckuss said.

Such a gift would salve the wound of Governor Nardix.

“Plotting attack trajectory,” 4-LOM said.

They sped in pursuit of the
Bright Hope
. Their screens showed no other transports leaving the surface of Hoth, only the occasional X-wing fighter: acquisitions too small to impress the Imperials, acquisitions certainly not worth pursuing. The
Bright Hope
was apparently the last big ship attempting retreat. It was late in the battle to attempt such an escape.

The bounty hunters quickly closed on the transport It was smaller than the other downed transports, but still bulky and slow—slower, at least, than the bounty hunters’ lean ship. The transport probably carried the last support staff from the Rebel base, Zuckuss thought: a fine gift for the Imperials.

“Approaching firing range,” 4-LOM announced. He pressed buttons that activated the weapons systems. Both 4-LOM and Zuckuss prepared to fire. An Imperial Super Star Destroyer—the largest ship Zuckuss had ever seen—was also closing on the transport. The crew of the Rebel transport itself must have been working frantically to plot retreat coordinates and disappear into hyperspace. It was a race to see which crew—Imperial, Rebel, or bounty hunter—would reach its goals first.

Just before the bounty hunters’ instruments confirmed
firing range, intuition told Zuckuss to fire, and he did. His shot exploded into the transport, taking out the entire forward command deck. The transport would never reach hyperspace now, however close it had been to that jump. The Star Destroyer blasted into it from the other side and laid open three entire decks.

The six X-wing fighters escorting the transport disappeared into hyperspace, blinking off-screen one by one. The pilots in them saw they could do nothing more here. The ship they guarded was destroyed. They could not even attempt to rescue survivors, if any.

“Incoming Imperial message,” 4-LOM announced.

After a moment of static, the bounty hunters picked up the crisp, precise voice of an Imperial controller on the star destroyer. “… arrival was expected, and on time. Your assistance in destroying the Rebel transport will be relayed to Imperial command. Proceed to the in-system rendezvous point.”

Coordinates appeared on screen.

“In the system’s asteroid belt?” Zuckuss said.

4-LOM studied the coordinates. “Barely outside it,” he said.

Yes, no one had told them this would be an easy contract to accept.

4-LOM piloted the ship to the rendezvous point. Zuckuss hurried to shoot himself full of drugs that would keep his pain manageable in front of Imperials and other bounty hunters. He could show no weakness then.

4-LOM allowed himself a few moments to try to calculate how Zuckuss had known when to fire—before their instruments had registered firing range. The instruments were functioning perfectly. 4-LOM had checked them himself before takeoff, and he checked them again now.

“Intuition,” Zuckuss muttered as he walked painfully away to his medicines.

The concept of intuition fascinated 4-LOM. Other bounty hunters called Zuckuss the “uncanny one” because of his intuition: an intuition so often completely correct.

4-LOM wanted that same ability. That was one reason he worked with Zuckuss: to observe him, to learn from him. 4-LOM felt confident he could program himself to do anything a living being could do, if he had all necessary information.

Hadn’t he learned to steal? Hadn’t he learned to value wealth and its power like any other nonmechanical sentient? Surely he could learn to meditate to develop intuition and function much like Zuckuss. Then he would be unstoppable indeed.

It had always been like this for 4-LOM, ever since he had overridden his own programming to become a thief, then a bounty hunter—4-LOM had always worked to upgrade himself, program new skills into his “mind,” challenge the boundaries of what a droid could be.

It had started innocently enough: he had worked aboard the passenger liner
Kuari Princess
as a valet and human-cyborg relations specialist, and he began to worry about the safety of valuables the humans brought on board. They were so careless with them. Even an incompetent thief had chances again and again—each day—to take all the credits and jewels he could carry. 4-LOM decided it was his duty to analyze the many ways each item of value might be stolen to anticipate the actions of thieves and foil them.

On the next flight, Dom Pricina booked passage.

She was exactly the kind of human 4-LOM dreaded: careless, wealthy beyond avarice, possessor of valuables she had not worked to acquire but which had been handed down to her. She owned, and traveled with, one jewel of great price: the Ankarres Sapphire, a jewel
fabled for its supposed healing powers—humans and other sentients traveled uncounted distances to touch that jewel to their foreheads and be cured of disease and injury. Dom Pricina charged them dearly for each touch.

That night, Dom Pricina complained loudly at dinner, between her third and fourth dessert courses, that the bracelet she wore, made of five hundred rare pink Corellian jiangs, was too heavy: it made lifting her fork to her mouth a chore, not a pleasure. So she took off the bracelet and set it next to her wineglass.

And left it there when she finally rose from the table.

4-LOM quickly returned it to her, and she thanked him and even hugged him. In the morning she left two diamond toe rings on the marble shelf next to the steam bath. “Oh, 4-LOM,” she panted when he returned them, “How can I ever thank you? Would you take them and have them enlarged one—no, two—full sizes? I find it harder and harder to put them on my toes. I’ll have to stop eating desserts for breakfast—that’s it! That should keep my toes at a manageable size.” When 4-LOM returned from the ship’s jeweler he found her necklace of emeralds and garnets dropped in the passage outside her door.