Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [103]
Toryn led the way—on a run—to the ladder to the deck below. As she passed the viewport in the containment shield, she saw Hoth rolling by again.
That planet had never looked so beautiful to her.
It shined with hope.
Zuckuss received intuitive knowledge 2.11 Standard hours into his latest meditation.
He knew the rough coordinates of where Han Solo would go, if he could: he would go to the Rebel’s rendezvous point. He knew why. It was not to regroup with them after the retreat. He carried passengers—a woman and a droid—vital to the Rebellion’s success. Solo wanted to deliver them safely there.
And Zuckuss knew where the Rebellion had gone—where they had been forced to flee.
The thought staggered him. He stayed in his meditation for some time after the intuition came, trying to verify it—and what he had learned seemed more and more correct.
The Rebels had left the galaxy.
They had gone to a point above the galactic plane, far from any stars—from all places where the Empire might track them. The Empire had left them nowhere else to run as an army. He guessed how truly desperate the Rebellion was, then. Ascending up out of the galaxy’s gravity well was no easy task. Many ships could not make such a trip. There would be losses in addition to those suffered here. The Empire must have been close to Hunting the Rebels into extinction. That they took this chance spoke of their desperation—but also of their courage and determination to regroup and keep fighting.
These were worthy foes, indeed.
After he and 4-LOM captured Han Solo and his companions, Zuckuss thought, he would honor them. He would still deliver them to the Imperials, but until that moment he would accord them every honor. They deserved honor in their defeat.
Zuckuss slowly brought himself back to awareness of the ship around him: his pilot’s chair, the instrument panel in front of him, the hiss of ammonia through the recirculation system. He opened his eyes and stretched—and coughed and coughed. He could not stop coughing for a time. Blood came up. He injected himself with medicine to control the cough, and he wiped his mouth.
All he could do was mask the symptoms of injury. He had no hope of healing on his own.
He looked around for 4-LOM. The droid had gone off somewhere. Zuckuss wondered if something were wrong with the ship. “Computer,” he said. “Where is 4-LOM?”
“In acquisition cell one.”
Odd, Zuckuss thought. What was the droid doing in there? Zuckuss scanned the solar system and detected little activity. Most Imperial ships had gone. They had three ships orbiting out near Hoth, probably a fair amount of troops still on the ground. One Star Destroyer had just pulled in a downed Rebel transport. It would strip down the other sixteen, one by one, Zuckuss knew. There was no sign of any other bounty hunter’s ship. He and 4-LOM were the last of them to leave the system.
“Computer,” Zuckuss said. They had installed one of the intermittently unreliable voice-activated computers from Mechis III. “Lay in a course to point 2.427 by 3.886 by 673.52 above the galactic plane. Can this ship make that journey?”
The computer did not respond at once. It was an odd request. Finally it spoke. “This ship, at its present mass, can reach the specified point in two Standard days.”
Excellent, Zuckuss thought. “Save those course coordinates,” he told the computer, and he set off to look for 4-LOM.
He found the droid sitting on an acquisition’s bunk, legs crossed, hands in his lap, metallic forefingers turned under metallic thumbs, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall.
It looked as if he were meditating.
“4-LOM,” Zuckuss said. “What are you doing?”
“Attempting meditation,” the droid said matter-of-factly, as if meditation were a normal droid activity. He did not look at Zuckuss. He kept looking straight ahead.
Zuckuss stood there dumbfounded. Suddenly he understood many things