Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [90]
This evening, Chenlambec was celebrating offship with his liberated kinfolk. Tinian had solemnly sprinkled a ritual handful of dirt over the pelts Chen buried, then she’d danced three rounds of the circle, gripping his enormous hand on one side and a friendly stranger’s on the other; but after that, she simply hadn’t been able to keep up with reveling Wookiees.
Tomorrow—or maybe the next day, Tinian guessed from the noise outside—they would squeeze everyone on board and hit hyperspace before Io Desnand could send troops. The Hound could only manage a short jump carrying 593 Wookiees, which would be a tremendous burden on life support, but Flirt insisted Hound could reach Aida. From there, Chen’s Alliance contacts could shuttle passengers to other systems.
He had taken her aside and laid both hands on her head, declaring her apprenticeship fulfilled, asking her to stay on as his partner and friend. She had half a ship now, eighteen thousand credits, and full Hunt status. For the first time in two years, she felt wealthy.
Chenlambec gave away most of his acquisition money. Maybe she should, too.…
On the other hand, that Imperial stuffed shirt had called her a low character. She sniffed her second-best black shipsuit, the best one that still had sleeves. Maybe she ought to think about buying some new clothes.
She yawned luxuriously.
She’d decide later.
Winded, Chenlambec dropped out of the circle dance and sat down on an empty stormtrooper helmet. The Hound filled the prison yard’s center, shining like a smooth, brilliant ice floe under white prison lights. He felt vaguely disloyal about admiring it so keenly. He would miss the Wroshyr.
He extended his claws and ran them through feathery fur that dangled from his left forearm.
He didn’t think of himself as vain, but he liked his pelt. Right where it was.
Of Possible Futures:
The Tale of Zuckuss and 4-LOM
by M. Shayne Bell
“Does Darth Vader know?” the droid 4-LOM asked Zuckuss, his Gand bounty hunter partner. 4-LOM had asked that same question every 8.37 Standard minutes from the start of Zuckuss’s meditation. In two hours they would dock at Darth Vader’s flagship to accept an Imperial contract, and they had to know if they were heading into a trap.
Zuckuss did not answer. Evidently he had not yet received intuitive knowledge about Vader and the contract Zuckuss breathed through the respirator and held his breath in. Then he breathed out, and held his breath out for a moment 4-LOM noted that it was the 1,057th breath of this meditation. The Gand did not need to breathe often, but deep thinking seemed to require regular respiration.
He had observed that Zuckuss usually received intuitive knowledge between the 1,323rd breath and the 4,369th. Once it had come on the fifty-third: 8.37 minutes into the meditation, but 4-LOM calculated that that was a statistical anomaly. Still, unlike most Gands, Zuckuss maintained a 91.33725 percent chance of being correct in whatever knowledge he gained through meditation: knowledge about where an acquisition might hide, the exact numbers of a group, the intentions of others toward them.
They needed to know, now, Darth Vader’s intentions toward them.
If Vader had somehow learned that it was 4-LOM and Zuckuss who had hunted Sector Governor Nardix for the Rebellion, Vader would want revenge. The Rebellion had tried Nardix for crimes against sentients, and the trial had been a great embarrassment to the Empire. The Rebels, for their part, paid a princely sum for Nardix—and that was what 4-LOM and Zuckuss needed more of: credits.
To buy medical care for Zuckuss.
Illegal medical care. Zuckuss was not an old Gand, but he moved like one if he went off the drugs that controlled his pain, and during his respiration cycle he breathed like one: short, fitful breaths that drew air into lungs and esophogeal tissue burned by contact with oxygen after a female human acquisition, stupidly struggling after Zuckuss had hunted her into a dark alley with no exit, pulled off his helmet.