Book 2 - Tales of the Bounty Hunters by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson [Anderson, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Star Wars, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553568165
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1996-11-02T07:00:00+00:00

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. 4-LOM secured the acquisition, then tried to help Zuckuss put his helmet back on, but before they could Zuckuss had taken three reflexive breaths of poisonous oxygen.

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.

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