Tales of the Bounty Hunters

by Kevin Anderson

Toryn stood up. She did not want to think about that. Soldiers in a war often die. Every Rebel knew that when he or she joined the Rebellion. Still, you always expected someone else to die: not your friends, not your sister—not you, yourself. Toryn and Samoc, for all their battles, had never been this close to death.

  Toryn reached down to pull the blanket a little tighter around Samoc. “I’ll go look for something to put on your burns,” she said. “And I’ll look for something we might do to save ourselves. Who knows?”

  Samoc tried to smile.

  Other people moaned around them. The ship had been so crowded. There were probably many survivors on it, Toryn thought. She took blankets to two other people, then hurried to the instruments she saw blinking in the darkness ahead of her. One was an old-model hacker droid, adapted to record freight shipped or unloaded. Now, though, it was connected to the central computer, if that still existed in any coherent state, and from the central computer she could get information she needed.

  “Droid,” she addressed it, “access the central computer and determine whether we are in danger of further attack.”

  “Access restricted. Prepare for retinal scan preauthorization,” the droid said.

  Toryn stared into a bright light that shone out of the hacker droid’s face. She hoped the central computer’s memory was intact enough to recognize her, grant her the necessary authority, and do what she asked it to do.

  “Authorization through level eight systems granted, Controller Toryn Farr,” the droid said. “But I cannot answer your question. Data on surrounding ships, if any, is unavailable.”

  The scanners were destroyed or offline.

  “How much of the ship is intact?” she asked.

  “Freight decks one and two completely intact. Passenger deck one is 17.4 percent intact.”

  “How many survivors are there?”

  “Data on survivors is unavailable.”

  “How long will air last on the intact decks?”

  “Data on oxygen supplies is unavailable.”

  “Are we on a collision course with—anything: other ships, Hoth, the star of this system?”

  “Data on the ship’s present course is unavailable.”

  So much that they needed—information, repair equipment, air, probably—would be unavailable. Toryn thought for a moment for a question she could ask that the droid or the computer might be able to answer.

  “Are any escape pods functional and accessible from the intact decks?” she asked.

  “Three escape pods are accessible from the intact portion of passenger deck one; however, the pods cannot be fired.”

  At last some information she could use. “Why can’t the pods be fired?”

  “Data on why the pods cannot be fired is unavailable.”

  She had to get up there to find out.

  “Attempt to compute answers to all my previous questions,” she told the hacker droid. “I’m going to investigate the escape pods, and I will check in with you again shortly for answers.”

  She had to take charge of the situation and start to marshal the resources at hand. It was Rebel procedure, in a situation like this, for anyone with rank to assume he or she was in command till they met someone with higher rank.

  So she took charge.

  For now, she thought. Just for now. Surely someone else with higher rank had survived to help find a way to save everyone alive on the ship.

  She set off down the dark passage. The metal walls were colder to the touch now. The ship was cooling quickly. Freezing to death was supposedly one of the easiest ways to die, she told herself.

  Which was how she and the other survivors might die if they had to stay on this ship or if she found a way to launch the escape pods—because where would they take the pods, except back to Hoth? And how would they survive on an ice world—if they could get there and if the Empire didn’t shoot them down first?

  Find the pods, she told herself, find out if they can be launched—then find a way to survive on Hoth.

  The dark passage was crowded with wounded Rebels, and their dead. She kept stumbling over people and bodies. “I’m trying to find a way to help us,” she told the people moaning in the darkness.

  She saw four small, round lights shining yellow farther ahead. Another console, she thought, but the lights got closer and closer to her—then she heard metal feet on the metal deck.

  Droids. She was seeing the eyes of droids.

  They turned on brighter lights and shined them on her—one droid had a light that shone from its forehead, the other carried a glowtube. They both carried medical supplies. “I am surgeon droid Two-Onebee,” the tallest droid said, the one with the light shining out of its forehead. “And this is my medical assistant, Effour-Seven. We are treating the wounded.”

  “There are so many,” Toryn said. “Do you have any idea how many?”

  “We have encountered forty-seven nonmechanical survivors so far,” Two-Onebee said. “Apparently we are the only intact droids.”

  She told them what she was doing, took the glowtube from Effex-Seven, and set off down the passage. But after a moment she stopped and looked back at the droids.

  “Two-Onebee,” she called. “One of our pilots, Samoc Farr, is strapped in a chair at the end of this passage. She has been terribly burned. Her burns are not treated, and she is going into shock. See what you can do for her.”

  “Effour-Seven contains excellent burn-treatment programs,” Two-Onebee answered her. “I will send him at once.”

  Effour-Seven started off while Toryn watched. She knew it would pass all other wounded Rebels, however much they needed help themselves, to go directly to Samoc. But she did not amend its orders. If there was a way to survive, she wanted Samoc to survive. Her mother had made her promise that she would take care of Samoc—the youngest in their family, always the most beautiful, the happiest, the one with the most promise. She hoped sending help directly to Samoc would not hurt anyone else.

  Toryn turned back into the blackness ahead. The droids had counted forty-seven survivors. She had passed twenty or thirty on this deck alone. The escape pods, if they could launch them, would carry six people apiece.

  Eighteen people from a battered ship that held many times more that. She froze for a moment, unable to imagine how they would decide who would go if they could launch the pods. But she made herself start moving again.

  Find the pods first, she told herself. Find a way to launch them. Then find other options for all of us they will leave behind, if you can.

  Darth Vader had assigned four other bounty hunters besides 4-LOM and Zuckuss to this hunt—and each bounty hunter was furious because of it. None had been told other bounty hunters would be involved. 4-LOM could not calculate Darth Vader’s reasons for hiring six bounty hunters. The group included Dengar, an angry Corellian with a damaged head and without any impressive Hunts to his record; IG-88, an assassin droid, though 4-LOM had been under the impression that Darth Vader wanted the acquisitions he was sending them after alive; Bossk, a renowned Hunter of Wookiees; and, most impressively, Boba Fett. It was an odd assemblage.

  4-LOM calculated that Vader was sending them after odd—and extremely wily—acquisitions. He searched his Imperial Most Wanted list, with its thousands of names and files, but found no one individual who should require such measures to Hunt down.

  The bounty hunters stood together in a waiting room, eyeing each other and not speaking. Bounty hunter law forbade killing another bounty hunter, but 4-LOM calculated a 63.276 percent chance that at least three of the six bounty hunters there were considering murdering other members of the group to increase their own chances of success in this Hunt.

  It was imperative that Zuckuss show no weakness now. 4-LOM studied his partner. Zuckuss stood fully erect, alert, breathing easily in his helmet. No one could detect his injuries, 4-LOM calculated.

  Vader summoned them at once. The bounty hunters strode quickly down corridors, almost outpacing their guide. Imperials o
f all ranks made way for them—and stared after them. Processors in 4-LOM’s mind analyzed the faces and voices of the people he passed, matching them to the Imperial Most Wanted List and his guild’s list of posted bounties. 4-LOM always did this when he walked through crowds of people. The odds of a chance encounter with someone worth credits were low, and in the short time it took his mind to match a face to a posted bounty a person could disappear—but he had taken seven acquisitions off streets that way: unexpected, but welcome, credits earned while Hunting other prey. Wouldn’t it be interesting to unmask a Rebel spy here, on this flagship, and turn him or her over to Darth Vader?

  But 4-LOM identified no Rebels in those corridors. All sentients present were apparently actual Imperials. He picked up most of their whispered comments: “Those bounty hunters are carrying blasters in the open!” “Who called them here?” “The Republic tried to control their kind, but the Empire should have abolished them.”

  It amused 4-LOM to think what consternation the mere presence of six bounty hunters caused among professional soldiers—supposedly the Empire’s best and most fearless. 4-LOM calculated that fear of six bounty hunters affected the actions of 98.762 percent of all Imperials they passed in that corridor.

  Fear was a valuable feeling to instill in acquisitions one Hunted: it clouded their logic and made most nonmechanical sentients actually run—a predictable, if usually fatal, choice. The instinctual programming inside nonmechanical sentients—the desire to flee or fight when confronted with danger—still haunted them, still made it difficult for them to react with complete, calm logic.

  But fear was not a good quality to note in one’s allies. It meant they had weaknesses anyone without fear could exploit.

  4-LOM questioned the wisdom of alliances with the fearful, and he questioned his alliance with these Imperials now. They were unimpressive allies, at best.

  But, of course, they had credits.

  Zuckuss stumbled only once on the way to Vader. 4-LOM helped Zuckuss stand.

  “You fawning, motley-minded Imperials—can’t you even keep deckplates nailed down!” 4-LOM yelled at the soldiers making way for them.

  None of the other bounty hunters broke stride. None seemed to notice Zuckuss stumble. His and Zuckuss’s secret remained a secret, 4-LOM calculated. The walk soon ended. They arrived at the flight deck, and Darth Vader strode at once to meet them.

  Imperial officers standing nearby whispered together about the bounty hunters before Vader reached them. “Bounty hunters—we don’t need that scum!” 4-LOM heard one officer say to another.

  4-LOM calculated contempt in that comment, but he calculated that fear motivated contempt 62.337 percent of the time. Contempt and fear are closely allied. So fear was probably present even here—even on the flight deck of Darth Vader’s flagship. It disgusted 4-LOM. He began to calculate weaknesses he could exploit in these Imperials.

  Vader started speaking before he even reached the bounty hunters. He had no fear. “There will be a substantial reward for the one who finds the Millennium Falcon. You are free to use any methods necessary—but I want them alive! No disintegrations.”

  Vader turned back at once to his business at hand. The bounty hunters scattered to their ships.

  It was Han Solo—they were being sent after Han Solo!

  4-LOM could calculate reasons, now, for Darth Vader to have called each of the bounty hunters assembled here. He programmed a set of microprocessors in his mind to calculate each bounty hunter’s chance of capturing Solo and his companions, whoever they were.

  Zuckuss stopped in the doorway and turned around. 4-LOM did not know why. It was illogical to dawdle in front of Imperials. 4-LOM turned around to see what had caused this odd behavior in his partner and saw Darth Vader looking at them.

  Zuckuss bowed. Vader turned away. Zuckuss and 4-LOM started back down the corridor.

  4-LOM did not have to ask Zuckuss how he had known Vader was looking at them. Intuition had told him. And he knew why Vader had looked at them: acknowledgment that he knew about their involvement with Governor Nardix, a subtle warning to succeed in this venture or face Vader again under different circumstances.

  4-LOM knew these things without calculating them. The knowledge was suddenly present in his mind.

  In that moment, intuition began to assemble itself into a process in 4-LOM’s circuitry. All the variables were not in place. He did not understand it completely, but he began to sense the beginnings of a grand equation inside him: the equation of intuition.

  Once he had that, he would have intuition itself.

  4-LOM felt himself on the verge of accomplishment—the way he felt just before he laid hands on an acquisition he had Hunted, or the way he felt the exact moment he reached out for a jewel he had long worked to steal.

  Imperials ran after them, asking what they needed. Could they provide fuel? Weapons? Anything at all that might help them succeed in the mission Darth Vader had sent them on. Credits? Do you need credits?

  Yes, they required vast sums of them.

  And 4-LOM did not hesitate to ask for it, in the form of portable items of value stored on their ship, not in electronic credits that could be seized. In their fear, the Imperials rushed to give them what they wanted.

  4-LOM’s calculations on the bounty hunters’ probable success ended.

  He knew who had the best chance of capturing Han Solo.

  He and Zuckuss did.

  His calculations indicated that. The other bounty hunters had various skills and abilities, but none had what Zuckuss brought to this Hunt.

  None of them had intuition.

  That gave Zuckuss and 4-LOM an invaluable edge. Solo himself represented an interesting combination of logic and intuition—which meant he and Zuckuss were ideally suited to Hunt him.

  As he walked toward the ship, 4-LOM decided to do one thing that would give them an additional edge in the Hunt for Solo.

  He would attempt intuition himself.

  What was left of passenger level one had no lights, not even dim emergency lights. Toryn shined her glowtube out the viewport in the containment shield that had crashed down to stop depressurization. The hull of the ship past that point had exploded away. She saw stars reeling as the ship turned, then Hoth itself, far away, shining so bright and white she could almost not look at it, then more stars.

  Then bodies. A few bodies lying still.

  The containment shield had not saved many lives on that deck. The depressurization had been quick—explosive—and it had blown most people out into space.

  Toryn turned away quickly and started down the passage behind her. But after a moment she stopped and made herself go back. She looked through the viewport till Hoth reappeared, and she noted the time on her chrono. When Hoth came back around, she noted the time, again: four Standard minutes, forty-three Standard seconds. She had the beginnings of an equation on the rotation of what was left of the ship. It could come in handy. In the next few hours, any bit of information about their situation could come in handy.

  She hurried down the passage. There were lights ahead, from one, maybe two, glowtubes, casting dark shadows on the walls and ceiling. She found seven people at work on the escape pods. They had torn up the deckplates in front of the pods and were working in the crawlspace there.

  “Power couplings tore loose in the attack,” one told her.

  “If we can reconnect them to the emergency power supplies, we can launch the pods,” someone else said.

  Toryn shined her light on the escape pods. They stood in a row there. All the viewports were dark.

  “Can you shine your light here?” someone called to her.

  Toryn hurried to help with the work. It was cold work. Toryn could see her breath now. The tools were cold to handle.

  “This should do it—” one of the men below her said.

  The emergency lights snapped on around the passage edges. The small, round doors to the pods were suddenly backlit with green, and bright light s
hone out the viewport in each door, too bright to look at.

  Then all the lights snapped off.

  “Of all the—!” someone muttered in the sudden darkness. Toryn had to sit down on a stack of torn up deckplating, disappointed.

  “The power cells on this level may be damaged,” someone said.

  “We may have to route power up from the lower decks—Toryn, you say both decks below us are intact?”

  Someone hit something, and the lights flared back on.

  Everyone looked at each other and laughed.

  Toryn hurried to one of the pods. Its readouts said it was functioning perfectly. They could fire it as soon as they were ready. “Pod one completely operable,” she said.

  “Same here,” someone said at pod two.

  “Pod three, operable status.”

  Everyone looked at each other again. No one knew how to start the next part of the process. No one knew how to decide who would get the chance to go. Toryn outranked everyone there. She realized it was her duty to start making decisions and that the others expected her to do it.

  “I got a count of at least sixty-seven survivors on freight deck one,” Toryn said. “I could not get a count on deck two, but there are survivors there. I heard them.”

  They could all add in the eight of them standing there. More than seventy-five people had survived on this ship. The pods could carry away eighteen.

  To an uncertain future.

  If the pods made it to Hoth, the people in them would have to find ways to survive on an ice world without adequate supplies, fight off the wampa ice creatures that would Hunt them, evade capture by Imperial forces who would surely Hunt them.

  If they got to Hoth.

  The Empire could shoot down the pods first.

  “Is the battle still going on out there?” Toryn asked.

  No one knew.

  “Let’s split up,” she said. “Find different viewports and conduct a visual reconnaissance. Report back here in ten Standard minutes.”

  Ten minutes would let the ship roll around twice. They could get a good look at space around them.

  Everyone rushed down passages and into rooms, looking for viewports. Toryn found herself back at the viewport in the attack door. She grabbed the comlink at her waist and contacted a dedicated hacker droid mounted to the console in the wall. “Droid,” she said. “This is Toryn Farr. Have you calculated answers to my last questions?”