Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [109]
“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