Of Possible Futures: The Tale of Zuckuss and 4-LOM

"Of Possible Futures: The Tale of Zuckuss and 4-LOM" is a short story written by M. Shayne Bell and featured in Tales of the Bounty Hunters, which was published in December 1996 by Bantam Spectra. It concerns the backstory of the bounty hunters Zuckuss and 4-LOM.

Plot summary

Zuckuss and 4-LOM are hesitant to answer Darth Vader's call for bounty hunters, for they have claimed a Rebel bounty on an Imperial officer in the past. But they need the credits for a surgical procedure to restore Zuckuss' severely injured lungs. Hoping to curry favor with the Imperials en route to the summons, the bounty hunters blast apart a Rebel transport fleeing the Battle of Hoth.

After receiving the assignment to hunt the Millennium Falcon, Zuckuss' ancient Gand findsman rituals grant him a vision of the Rebel fleet rendezvousing at a point beyond the galactic periphery. He intuits that the Falcon could be found there, so Zuckuss and 4-LOM plan to infiltrate the Rebellion. To integrate themselves with the Alliance, they return to the battle wreckage above Hoth and rescue the stranded crew of the Rebel transport they had previously destroyed, the Bright Hope. Rebel controller Toryn Farr negotiates passage for all ninety survivors aboard Zuckuss' crowded ship to the planet Darlyn Boda.

Their time with the Rebels changes the outlook of the bounty hunters. Zuckuss comes to learn that Rebel medics can regrow his lungs. The hunters return the Rebels to the Alliance fleet and learn that Han Solo has already been captured by Boba Fett. Farr is prompted to commander, and the hunters receive special recognition from General Rieekan, who offers them positions in the Rebel Alliance Special Forces.

Continuity

The story spanned a month, from the Battle of Hoth to the reunion of the Rebel fleet seen at the end of The Empire Strikes Back (1980). This was unusual specificity about the length of the time encompassed by that film, something that Lucasfilm had been reticent to set down firmly. A writers' guide produced by West End Games in 1995 had an internal estimate of eight months covered by Empire, to account for Luke's training on Dagobah and what is presumably a very slow journey undertaken by the Millennium Falcon, but this length has never been backed up by published sources.^[1]

The character backgrounds of Zuckuss as a Gand findsman and 4-LOM as a former ship's purser came from Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back (1989) from West End Games. Gand physiology, including ammonia-breathing lungs, differs in this story from what was presented in the contemporary X-Wing novel series in 1996. In those books, the Gand Ooryl Qrygg does not have lungs and does not even need to breath, drawing what nutrients and metabolic fuels he needs from his food. Subsequent sources explained the incongruity by stating that isolated pockets of evolution on the Gand home planet resulted in the physiologically disparate subspecies. Zuckuss' quirk of referring himself in the third person was echoed in Ooryl's speech patterns, but Zuckuss dropped this characteristic in The Bounty Hunter Wars novels (1998) by K. W. Jeter. The Essential Guide to Alien Species (2001) chalked up this discrepancy to Zuckuss suffering from multiple personality disorder. This story spelled the droid 2-1B's phonetically rendered name as “Two-OneBee,” as opposed to the standard “Too-OneBee,” and his partner was misnamed "Effor-Seven", rather than Effex-Seven.^[1]

In the film The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa ordered a male controller in the Echo Base command center to "give the evacuation code signal. And get to your transports!" However, in the story, the line read differently: "Give the evacuation code, and get to the transport!" Additionally, Toryn Farr was the controller who ordered the retreat to the troops still fighting during the story, which suggests the order was directed at her, and not at the male controller. The final transport to leave the planet, the Bright Hope, was stationed inside a hangar of the base, and not assembled on the South Slope, as Organa explained while debriefing Rogue Squadron prior to the battle during the film.

Of Possible Future was one of the sources that suggested the Rebel Alliance left the galaxy at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. The story also introduced a man named Darklighter who escaped aboard the Bright Hope. It was unclear if this man belonged to the Darklighter family of Biggs and Gavin Darklighter.