Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters (33 page)

“What’s happening over there?” Toryn said.

“The droid took us hostage and said he would kill us—and you—if the people he wanted did not come forward to board this ship.”

But they heard no more shooting. Zuckuss was furious with 4-LOM. “What have you reduced our chances of success to?” he asked the droid. “Who will believe this is a rescue now?”

No one would. The pod bay lay deserted before them, though Zuckuss and 4-LOM knew that if they left the connecting tunnel, blasters would be trained on them. How many, they did not know. They had not been able to make an adequate assessment of the Rebels’ arms. 4-LOM calculated that he and Zuckuss should be able to subdue the Rebels and take the people they wanted. But what Zuckuss implied in his second most recent question was important: who would think of this, then, as a rescue?

“Let me try to talk to them,” Zuckuss said.

He went alone into the pod bay. “Rebels!” he
shouted. “4-LOM and Zuckuss are bounty hunters. Our ways are not your ways. But like you, we believe the Empire should fall and are willing to work to that end. We can save a few of you, and 4-LOM has marked your names. Come forward now! We must leave.”

No one came.

“We have one other option,” Zuckuss said to 4-LOM. He walked back into the ship. 4-LOM secured the locks and followed him. He calculated many options, not just one: he and Zuckuss could fight to capture the Rebels they wanted, or they could leave with the three Rebels they already had. 4-LOM calculated forty-nine additional viable options. He was curious to see which one Zuckuss proposed that they select.

Zuckuss spoke through the cell door to the captured Rebels. “Commander Farr,” he said. “We truly meant this to be a rescue, but things have gone badly. What must we do to make it right? Please help us, and quickly. We have little time before Imperials will be upon us.”

So it was that 4-LOM and Zuckuss prepared their ship to evacuate ninety Rebels, many of them wounded, to Darlyn Boda.

4-LOM released Toryn to oversee the evacuation. Zuckuss stayed in his ammonia suit and, unobserved by the Rebels, contacted the Imperial star destroyer to call off the “escort” out of the system he had arranged for. The
Mist Hunter
had never carried so many people. It would not be able to maneuver well at all—they needed no staged TIE fighter attack now!

“How many Rebels are you taking?” the Imperial controller asked.

“Ninety,” Zuckuss said. “Plus two medical droids.”

Zuckuss heard Imperials confer in the background for quite some time. Finally the controller came back on-line. “Acknowledged,” she said. “That information will be relayed to Imperial command.”

Of course, Zuckuss thought. But the Imperials made
no move to stop what he and 4-LOM were doing. Darth Vader had given them a free hand in this Hunt—they could do whatever they thought necessary.

Zuckuss replaced the ammonia in his ship with oxygen. The ninety Rebels and two droids could then barely crowd aboard. They had to stand or lie as tightly compacted as 4-LOM and Zuckuss had planned to shove twenty-six of them into cells. But they did it gladly.

It was a chance for life.

Toryn was last to board.

“Hurry!” 4-LOM called to her. “It is a wonder the Empire has not attacked us before now.”

Toryn paused beside the helpful hacker droid at the hatch. “Droid,” she called back. “Thank you for all you have done. Erase yourself and the ship’s main computer.”

It shut down all lights on the ship at once. It had few life-support systems to shut down. One by one it erased its programs and databases. The
Mist Hunter
disembarked. The computer would never know what became of the Rebels it had served.

It erased its long-term memory and started to erase what was left of its short-term memory, but paused there.

A set of subprocessors at work on that memory bank found, at that moment, the correct way to piece together observations of the attack that destroyed the
Bright Hope
.

Now it knew the ship
Mist Hunter
.

The surviving Rebels had just embarked on the very ship that first fired on them, trying to destroy them all.

But the computer had reconstructed these memories too late.

It could not warn the Rebels. It could not call them back.

It carried out Toryn Farr’s final order and erased itself.

•   •   •

The
Mist Hunter
stank of recycled air and, faintly, of ammonia. The air was breathable, but the ammonia in it would give them all headaches. Toryn could feel one starting already, but she did not let it slow her down. The most seriously wounded Rebels lay two to a bunk in the cells. Toryn made her way to each of them, slowly, through the press of people, to talk to them, to encourage them to hang on.

It was then that she noticed and read graffiti on the cell walls. When 4-LOM had first brought her there, she had not noticed it. But some of the condemned held there had written their names. A few had written lines of poetry. One had written his name and the address of his parents and asked that someone contact them for him. Two-Onebee stood next to her. “Record this name and address,” she told the droid. “I want to contact this person’s parents after we get back.”

She found Samoc standing in a back corner of the ship, her face and hands wrapped in white bandages. They hugged.

“You found a way to save us all,” Samoc said.

“We’re not out of this yet,” Toryn said.

She would be responsible for ninety Rebels at Darlyn Boda, fifty-two of them seriously wounded. There was a strong Rebel underground there—but the Empire still claimed Darlyn Boda. It controlled its government.

She looked at Samoc. Toryn doubted her ability to do all she had to do. Twice she had put her personal interest in Samoc’s well-being above the interests of the many she was responsible for: the first time, when she sent Samoc the medical droid; the second, when she tried to get 4-LOM to put Samoc on his list of twenty-six Rebels. She knew, standing there with her sister, that she would do it again. It was not fair to the others. She had to give up her command as quickly as possible. She
hoped to find Rebels on Darlyn Boda who outranked her.

She returned to Zuckuss and 4-LOM.

“Estimated arrival at Darlyn Boda. 2.6 Standard hours,” 4-LOM told her.

This ship is fast, Toryn thought, even with a heavy load.

Zuckuss suddenly began coughing in his suit. He could not stop. Soon he doubled over in his pilot’s seat, coughing uncontrollably.

Toryn saw blood spatter the faceplate of his helmet.

She knelt and put her arms around him. “What’s wrong?” she said. “What can we do?”

4-LOM stood and began examining the seals on Zuckuss’s suit. “Is there an oxygen leak?” he asked Zuckuss.

“No,” Zuckuss said between coughs.

Toryn patched into the ship’s comm system. “Two-Onebee,” she said. “I need you on the flight deck, now.”

Little by little, Zuckuss gained control of his coughing. By the time the medical droid got to him, he had nearly stopped. He ended up telling the Rebel medical droid all about the injuries to his lungs.

“With the proper medical facilities, I could treat you,” Two-Onebee said. “However, those facilities are, at present, unavailable. Rebel military researchers have discovered ways to genetically trigger the regrowth of damaged tissues.”

“Clone them?” Zuckuss asked.

“No. That is illegal. Regrow them inside you. If our medical facilities survived the evacuation, I will be able to treat you at the rendezvous point when we get there. You will have new lungs in only a few days.”

Zuckuss leaned back in his pilot’s chair and thought about that. He began to meditate, but soon went to sleep. In his dreams he thought he was still meditating.
The mists around all his possible futures lifted for a moment.

There were so many again, so many bright possibilities branching out ahead of him.

Darlyn Boda was much as 4-LOM remembered it: steamy, muddy, shadowy. It was the perfect place to have begun a life devoted to crime. He walked alone down the streets of a city with the same name as the planet, remembering the day he had jumped ship to start his new life. It had seemed to him then that he had the power inside him to pursue numberless possibilities. He had made decisions that had contracted those possibilities, but he regretted few of them.

Zuckuss was too sick to leave the ship. The Rebel medical droids, Two-Onebee and Effour-Seven, attended him. The Rebels had all disappeared, though soon he was to meet Toryn Farr and five of her hand-picked fighters. Together, they would fly to the Rebel rendezvous point.

And Han Solo, and the end of the Hunt.

Toryn had found the leaders of the Rebel insurrection. Its officers outranked her, took charge of her people, and ordered her on to the rendezvous point.

With a sealed letter she was to hand-deliver to the Rebel command.

4-LOM had arranged to meet Toryn at a certain small jewel shop he knew well, a place that bought, or sold on consignment, rare jewels—without asking about their provenance. He had business in that shop.

An old woman dressed in rags rose to meet him. The shop was still as dark and dirty as it had been all those years before. “4-LOM!” the woman said. “Welcome.”

She could not stand up straight She leaned over the few cases in front of her, bent with age. An old program 4-LOM had not used in a long time activated in his
mind, and 4-LOM let it run. “How are you?” he asked the woman.

“Old,” she said. “But I can still work. I still sell jewels.”

“When I left here, you had three jewels of mine on consignment,” 4-LOM said. “Have you sold them?”

“Two, yes. And I have credits to pay you with. How do you want to be paid—Imperial credits, other jewels? I will show you my stock.”

“Which jewel is left?”

“Ah, I will show you.”

She gathered all the jewels on display and put them in pockets in her dress, then she rolled back a rug on the floor behind her cases and opened a trap door there. “Come,” she said. She lit a candle and started down steps into the blackness.

4-LOM followed. Beneath the shop lay a room that glittered with jewels. She had never shown him this room before. He wondered why she did now. She knew he was a thief.

“Can you see it?” she said, holding up her light.

4-LOM looked around the room and saw his jewel, glinting blue in the woman’s light: the Ankarres Sapphire.

“I had hoped you would still have that one,” he said. He picked it up. It glittered beautifully. She had kept it polished.

“You wouldn’t let me cut it down, and no one could ever afford the whole stone,” she said. “I was glad of that, actually. I touch it to wherever I hurt, every day. It heals me.”

“That is why I need it now,” 4-LOM said.

“To heal you?” she said. “You are metal. Go to a foundry.”

“The sapphire will not heal me,” he said. “I need it for a mortal friend.”

He held the jewel out to the woman. “Touch it to where you hurt one last time before I take it,” he said.
She touched it to her wrists and ankles, held it to her forehead for a time, then handed it back to 4-LOM.

They climbed up to the shop, and Toryn walked in. She smiled at 4-LOM. It had been many years since anyone had smiled at him. Other old programs rose, unbidden, to his mind: programs for kindness, service, and selflessness. He wondered if the jewel were affecting him, after all.

But that was illogical. It had had no effect on him when he had first touched the sapphire to his forehead years before. The old programs ran because he allowed them to run. He did not stop them. Maybe it was time to run those programs again. He could analyze them for their usefulness.

“Are you ready to leave?” he asked Toryn.

“I am,” she said. “The others are waiting outside.”

4-LOM turned to the old woman. “I want you to keep the credits you owe me. Thank you for helping me years ago when I needed it.”

She bowed to 4-LOM, and he and Toryn left for the ship. Rivers, Bindu, Rory, Darklighter, and Samoc went with them. “Samoc,” 4-LOM called when they got inside the ship. He held up the jewel in the shadows of the corridor there. “Do you know what this is?”

She looked at it for a moment. “No,” she said. “But it is beautiful.”

4-LOM explained it to her. “Touch it to your burns,” he said. “It might help you heal.” He held it out to her.

She held it in her hands for a moment, then touched it to the bandages still on her face even after a month. After a moment, she had to sit down on the deck.

“Did it help you?” 4-LOM asked.

“I don’t know. I feel so different—in a good way. Rested, maybe?”

“I must take it to Zuckuss,” 4-LOM said. He took the jewel and found Zuckuss in an acquisition’s cell. Zuckuss had filled the cell with ammonia and lay there out of his suit, coughing now and then. 4-LOM entered the
airlock, waited while ammonia replaced the oxygen, then entered the cell. Zuckuss looked up at him and said nothing. 4-LOM laid the jewel on Zuckuss’s chest.

Zuckuss looked at it. He knew what jewel it was. He had heard 4-LOM tell stories about it. After a moment he put his hands on it to hold it tighter to his chest.

“I will fly the ship to the rendezvous point now,” 4-LOM said.

4-LOM flew the
Mist Hunter
out of the galaxy at a point near the galactic equatorial plane, and he used the massive gravitational forces of the galaxy itself to propel the ship toward the rendezvous point.

Which was almost exactly where Zuckuss had intuitively known it would be.

The exact point was two degrees off. Soon, from their pilots’ chairs, 4-LOM and Toryn saw the scattering of lights that was the Rebel fleet.

Or what was left of it.

Seeing it lifted Toryn’s spirits. She looked from the fleet to the galaxy below, and thought how her future was bright again. The Rebellion was not ended. It still had an army, reduced though it might be.

Toryn handled the communications and brought them in to a hero’s welcome. Friends and family crowded around Toryn and the others, and many wept to see them. Toryn and everyone on her ship had been listed as missing, and everyone believed them to be dead, or worse. General Rieekan himself came to welcome them back, and to get news of the eighty-four once given up for lost now on Darlyn Boda, and the eighteen others presumed still alive on Hoth. “I had feared the worst for you,” he told Toryn.