Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [91]
This was cause for significant embarrassment to Zuckuss, because had he retained sufficient presence of mind, he could have ceased his respiration until a more convenient time.
Parts of his lungs had burned away that day, and what was left functioned poorly. Zuckuss needed new lungs. New lungs could be grown only in illegal—hence, expensive—cloning vats.
So the Empire’s credits tempted 4-LOM and Zuckuss with the hope of new lungs.
Another 8.37 minutes passed.
“Does Darth Vader know?” 4-LOM asked.
Again, Zuckuss did not answer.
Zuckuss, deep in meditation, found it difficult to sense Darth Vader’s intentions. A swirl of possible galactic futures masked them. Zuckuss always sensed galactic futures when he meditated in hyperspace. It was the ideal place to meditate on the probable course of events in the galaxy. Meditate in a city, and you sense where the actions of its millions of citizens lead it. Meditate in orbit above a planet, and you sense where the cultures of an entire world are heading. But meditate in hyperspace and, no matter what knowledge you meditate for, you first sense the underlying feelings that motivate the majority of sentients and through them glimpse the destiny of the galaxy.
Those feelings, and the futures they could create, had changed. The fabric of the galaxy felt different to Zuckuss.
There was less hope in it, now.
Zuckuss had felt hope ebbing away for many years, but in this meditation Zuckuss sensed, on all the worlds in all the systems he passed, an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. From one world rose the realization of having no place to run; from another, the ache of endless separation; from many worlds the intense pain victims of Imperial torturers felt moments before death.
Yet with this growing lack of hope rose another feeling, constant now in the galaxy. It quickened the Gand’s pulse.
He felt the movement of wealth.
The Empire was taxing, extorting, confiscating, and stealing the wealth of its countless citizens on their numberless worlds, creating an unlimited, glittering flow that enriched the Empire’s coffers and showered its officials with luxury.
It was this flow Zuckuss and 4-LOM would tap into.
If they were not heading into a trap. Zuckuss still could not intuit Darth Vader’s intentions. They lay clouded before him, carefully guarded.
Zuckuss breathed in again, and held his breath in.
The 1,088th breath, 4-LOM noted.
Toryn Farr was the last person to leave the Rebel command center in Echo Base on Hoth. She was Chief Controller there, responsible for communicating orders to the Rebel troops. Princess Leia’s final orders had been the ones Toryn had dreaded hearing: “Give the evacuation code,” Leia said, “and get to the transport!”
Han pulled Leia down the hallway, and the remaining staff ran after them, carrying any movable piece of equipment they could, while Toryn broadcast the evacuation code: “Disengage! Disengage!” she said. “Begin retreat action!”
She jerked her console free from its connections and rushed with it down the icy passageway toward the transport. Echo Base was collapsing on them. Ice shards pummeled her head and back with each concussive explosion on the surface—explosions that came one after the other. Lights in the passageway flickered and went out. They did not come back on. After a moment of darkness, dim emergency lights glowed to life. Their light was barely enough to run by. She passed a branch of the main tunnel completely choked with tons of collapsed ice.
“The princess went that way!” someone ahead of her said.
Toryn tapped her headset to actívate it and accessed the retreat channel just in time to hear Han say he and Leia were still alive. “Han and the princess are alive and heading for the Falcon,” she called out to everyone ahead of her.
They hurried on and came to the hangar with its last transport, the Bright Hope: their only hope for escape in this rush