Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [113]
And they were talking about Han Solo. 4-LOM’s enhanced auditory sensors easily picked up their voices.
Boba Fett had already captured him. The details were unclear, but apparently Fett was taking Solo to Jabba to collect that crime lord’s additional bounty.
The Hunt was finished. He and Zuckuss had failed. Darth Vader had likely placed bounties on their heads already. But other possibilities occurred to him.
He found Zuckuss in a special ammonia chamber, attended by droids he did not recognize. They were clearly just medical droids. He detected no hostile activity in the sickbay at all. Zuckuss did appear to be safe here. The droids admitted 4-LOM to the chamber. “Leave us,” he told them.
“Not now. Our procedures must be monitored.”
“Leave us now!” 4-LOM shouted. Zuckuss nodded to the droids and they left quickly.
“Zuckuss already knows,” Zuckuss said before 4-LOM could speak. “Two-Onebee was called to attach a new hand to an old patient of his: Luke Skywalker. Before Two-Onebee left, he told me how Skywalker came here.”
“I calculate Darth Vader and the Empire might yet forgive us—and pay a handsome bounty,” 4-LOM said, “if we take them this Luke Skywalker and one other I heard speaking with him: Leia Organa.”
“But what of Zuckuss’s lungs?” Zuckuss said. “In only a few days, if Zuckuss is monitored here, they will have regrown and Zuckuss will have his health again.”
“Days!” 4-LOM scoffed. “Our odds diminish with each minute.”
Zuckuss said nothing. 4-LOM calculated that Zuckuss’s present condition kept him from active participation in probably any Hunt amongst these Rebels—even if Solo had been here. It was up to 4-LOM. His chances of success alone were low—48.67 percent, he calculated—but worth taking.
If they did not try, if they waited with the Rebels while Zuckuss healed, there would be no going back. Their motivations would always be suspect.
“If you can get yourself to the ship, I will bring the acquisitions,” 4-LOM said.
“Zuckuss can do that,” Zuckuss said.
“Tonight then,” 4-LOM said. “I will make observations and determine a time.”
“Now!” 4-LOM said. It was late evening. The droid stood, blaster drawn, in shadows. “The acquisitions are standing in the sick-bay solarium, watching friends leave to rescue Solo. Those friends will need more than luck to accomplish that goal—and soon others they know will need rescue.”
Zuckuss sat up slowly. “There is another way, 4-LOM,” he said.
“Tell me quickly, then.”
“Zuckuss has meditated since you left him, and he has had intuition about what will happen to us. We will not capture Skywalker and Organa. We will end up with a golden, bumbling droid and the two medical droids we brought here, and their bounties will not buy Zuckuss’s lungs, nor will turning them over to the Empire clear our names. Both Rebels and Imperials—and the other bounty hunters—will Hunt us. Zuckuss is sick, and will not survive long without treatment. He has decided to stay here.”
4-LOM did not know what to say. He calculated ten quick responses that ranged from attempting the kidnapping on his own to simply taking the Mist Hunter and leaving. But one fact loomed before him. He himself had calculated only a 48.67 percent chance of successfully kidnapping Skywalker and Organa. He preferred working with better odds.
Before 4-LOM could complete his calculations and decide on a course of action, someone entered their part of sick bay.
It was Toryn Farr. She walked up to the ammonia chamber and spoke to Zuckuss through an intercom in the glass wall. “How are you?” she asked.
Before Zuckuss could answer, she saw 4-LOM standing in the shadows, blaster drawn. “What are you doing, 4-LOM?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
How quickly humans give their trust. 4-LOM thought. She had come to them unarmed. He put down his blaster. “I am doing nothing, now,” he said.
But there were many things wrong, many things he could not explain to her. All the choices he and Zuckuss had made had brought them to this point. They