“Is that such a bad idea?” Het Nkik asked.
Wimateeka shrugged. “It is not the Jawa way.”
Het Nkik felt as if he were talking to a droid with its power pack removed. Nothing would ever change until the Jawas saw how things might be different—until someone set an example.
He walked along between the tables, kicking up occasional billows of dust. The smell of roasted hubba gourd made his mouth water. Looking up, he searched the rim of the dunes for any sign of Jek Nkik’s sandcrawler. As he passed a table from the Kkak clan, he heard a conspiratorial whisper, unlike the entreaties by other merchants.
“Het Nkik!” the Kkak clan member said, clicking the hard consonants and sharpening his name.
He turned and saw the other Jawa reach beneath his table to a private stash of wares. “Are you Het Nkik?” he repeated. “Of Wimateeka’s clan, the one who is always talking about empowering the Jawas, about making us fight? Hrar Kkak salutes you and offers an exchange of wares.”
Het Nkik felt a ribbon of cold inside him like a long drink of rare water. “I am Het Nkik,” he said, letting suspicion curl through his body odor. It was good to let a salesman see healthy skepticism. “The opportunity for exchange is always welcome, and the time for opportunity is always now.”
“I have something for you,” the tradesman said. “Come closer.”
Het Nkik took a step to the table, and now he was honor bound to listen to the sales pitch. The Kkak clansman looked around furtively and then hauled out a blaster rifle, scarred but magnificent. A Blastech DL-44 model, more power than Het Nkik had ever held in his own hands.
He took a step backward in alarm and then forward in fascination. “Jawas are forbidden such weapons,” he said.
“I have heard rumors of such an Imperial decree from Mos Eisley, but I have received no confirmation of it,” the salesman said. “We of the Kkak clan have been wandering the far fringes of the Dune Sea, and sometimes communication of such things takes a long time.”
Het Nkik nodded in admiration of the smooth excuse. “Does it function? Where did you get it?”
“Never mind where I got it.”
Het Nkik felt ashamed for his breach of Jawa protocol. “If I’m going to purchase this …” He removed his pouch of barter credits, knowing instinctively that he had to have the weapon. He wanted it no matter what the consequences—and the salesman knew it, too. “I need to know if it works.”
“Of course it functions.” The salesman popped out the power pack. “You’ll see that the charge is on three-quarters.”
Het Nkik saw that it was a standard power pack of the type that could be used in many sorts of equipment. “Let me try it in that portable illuminator,” he said, “just to make sure.”
Both of them knew Het Nkik could not fire the blaster with all the other Jawas present. The Kkak salesman slipped the power pack into the portable illuminator and switched it on. A bright beam stabbed skyward toward the two suns. “Satisfied?”
Het Nkik nodded. “My resources are meager, though my admiration of your wares is great.”
The two haggled over price for an acceptable amount of time, though the price didn’t change much. Het Nkik hurried away with only a few barter credits left to his name—but the proud owner of a highly illegal blaster hidden under his brown robes. For the first time in his life, he felt tall. Very tall.
He spent the rest of the swap meet looking for his comrade Jek Nkik, but the last sandcrawler never arrived.
After the swap meet disbanded, the sandcrawlers toiled across the Dune Sea in different directions, laden with new treasures each clan had obtained through hard bargaining.
After an hour of relentless jabbering, Het Nkik convinced the pilot to detour along the path Jek Nkik’s vehicle might have taken, to see if they could discover what had befallen the missing Jawas. They headed toward the outlying moisture farms among which his clan mate’s group often traded.
Het Nkik worked in the engine room, coaxing the faltering reactors to function for just a few more months until the storm season when the sandcrawlers would be parked next to Jawa fortresses in the badlands. Wimateeka’s old mechanics would have to give the ion pumps and the reactors a full overhaul. Het Nkik’s companions were much more focused on their tasks now that the swap meet was over.
At about midday, the lookout sounded an alarm. He had seen smoke. Normally the sight of burning wreckage made Jawas ecstatic at the possibility of a salvage claim, but Het Nkik felt a deep foreboding; none of the others noticed the change in his scent.
He left his post and took the lift platform to the bridge. In front of the wide viewport, he climbed on an overturned equipment box and stared. The smoke grew thick. His heart sank inside him as if he had just lost all his possessions in a bad trade.
He recognized the oxidized brown metal of an old ore hauler’s hull, the trapezoidal shape. The sandcrawler had been assaulted, blasted with heavy-weapons fire, and destroyed.
Het Nkik knew his friend and clan brother was dead.
The lookout chittered in terror, expressing his fear that whatever had struck the sandcrawler might still be around to attack them. But the pilot, seeing the enormous wealth of unclaimed salvage, overcame his uneasiness. He used the comm unit to transmit a message to Wimateeka’s fortress, establishing his salvage rights.
Greasy tatters of smoke curled up in the air as the sandcrawler descended toward the destroyed vehicle. Het Nkik felt a resurgence of anger bubble within him. He recalled how stormtroopers had assaulted Jawa fortresses for practice. He thought of Eet Ptaa’s settlement raided by the Sand People. Yet again, someone bigger had attacked helpless Jawas, perhaps out of spite, or for sport, or for no reason at all.
The only thing Jawas ever did was take their beatings, flee, and accept their helplessness. Nothing would ever change until somebody showed them another way.
He thought of the blaster he had purchased at the swap meet.
The pilot brought the sandcrawler to a halt facing the best escape route if attackers reappeared. The hull doors clanked open, and the Jawas scrambled out, ducking low for cover but eager to dash toward the treasure trove of scrap. The pilot scrambled forward to apply a claim beacon to the ruined sandcrawler, warning away other scavengers. Jawas swarmed into the half-open door of the wreck, scurrying to see what treasures had been left undamaged.
Several Jawas squealed as they realized they were not alone by the damaged sandcrawler. A bearded old human in worn but flowing robes stood off in the shade beside two droids that he seemed to have claimed for himself. He had built a small, crackling pyre. Het Nkik sniffed, smelled burning flesh; the old man had already begun the ritual disposal of Jawa carcasses in the purging flames.
The human raised his hands in a placating gesture. Some of Het Nkik’s cousins speculated that the old human had killed the other Jawas, but Het Nkik saw this was obviously absurd.
A protocol droid walked stiffly beside the old man. Its gold plating was a bit scratched, and it had a dent in the top of its head; but all in all the droid seemed to be in good functioning order. The other droid, a barrel-shaped model, hung back and bleeped in alarm at seeing the Jawas. Het Nkik automatically began to assess how much he could get in trade for the droids.
The protocol droid said, “I offer my services as an interpreter, sir. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication.”
The old man looked calmly at the droid and made a dismissive gesture. “Your services won’t be needed. I’ve lived in these deserts far too long not to understand a little of the Jawas’ speech. Greetings!” the old man said in clear Jawa words. “May you trade well, though I sorrow for your tragedy here today.”
Three Jawas bent close to the rock-strewn ground and spotted bantha tracks. They set up a wail of panic, suddenly convinced that the Sand People had declared an all-out war.
But something did not seem right to Het Nkik. He looked at the tracks, at the crude weapons fire that had struck the most crucia
l spots on the enormous ore hauler. He sniffed the air, sorting through layers of scent from molten and hardened metal to the burning stench of bodies, to the heated sand. He detected an undertone of plasteel armor, fresh lubricants, a mechanized attack, but he could find none of the musty smells of the Tusken Raiders or the dusty, peppery scent of their banthas.
Het Nkik pointed this out, and the other Jawas snapped at him, impatient, as usual, with his contradictory views. But the old man spoke up for him. “Your little brother is right. This was an Imperial attack, not a strike by the Sand People.”
The others chittered in disbelief, but the old man continued. “The Imperial occupying forces would like nothing better than to see a war among Sand People and Jawas and human moisture farmers. You must not allow yourselves to believe their deceptions.”
“Who are you?” Het Nkik asked him. “How do you know our funeral customs, and why have you claimed no salvage for yourself?”
The old man said, “I know of your customs because I try to understand the other people who share my desert home. I know the Jawas believe that all their possessions are forfeit to the clan at death, but your bodies are borrowed from the womb of the sands, and their elements must return to pay the debt you owe for your temporary life.”
Some of the Jawas gasped at his eloquent recital of their own intensely private beliefs.
“If you understand us so well,” Het Nkik said brashly, “then you know that no Jawa would ever strike back at a Tusken Raider, even for such a blatant assault as this. The Jawas are all cowards. Nothing will make them fight.”
The old man smiled indulgently, and his pale blue eyes seemed to bore through Het Nkik’s robe, seeing deep into the hooded shadow of his face. “Perhaps a coward is only a fighter who has not yet been pushed far enough—or one who has not been shown the way.”
“General Kenobi,” the golden droid interrupted, “Master Luke has been gone far too long. He should have had ample time to get to his home and back by now.”
The old man turned to the Jawas. “Your salvage claim is safe here, but you must warn the others of the tricks the Imperials are playing. The garrison in Mos Eisley has just been reinforced with many more stormtroopers. They are searching … for something they will not find.”
The two droids stood huddled together.
“But the Prefect and the Imperial Governor will continue to foster turmoil between the Jawas and the Tusken Raiders.” Then the human turned and looked directly at Het Nkik. “The Jawas are not powerless—if they do not wish to be.”
Het Nkik felt a lance of fear and realization strike through him. A memory returned to him like a stun bolt. He recalled with the vividness of a double desert sunset a time—less than a year before his coming of age—when he had scanned a crashed T-16 speeder out in the rocky twists of an unnamed canyon. Wanting to claim the salvage for himself, Het Nkik had not asked for Jawa assistance, not even from Jek Nkik.
When he found the ruined vehicle, he spotted a young human male sprawled dead on the rocks, thrown there by the crash. Apparently, the T-16’s repulsorlifts had been unable to counteract a sudden thermal updraft; the landspeeder had crashed and skidded, leaving a knotted tongue of smoke in the otherwise empty air.
Het Nkik had pawed at the mangled controls, ignoring the broken body that had already begun to attract moisture-seeking insects from crevices in the rocks. He had suddenly looked up to discover six young and vicious Tusken Raiders, their faces swaddled with rags, hissing through breath filters. They were angry, ready for a heroic adventure they could tell about around the story fires throughout their adulthood. The Sand People raised their sharpened gaffi sticks and uttered their ululating cries.
Het Nkik knew he was about to die. He could not possibly fight even one of the Sand People. He was unarmed. He was alone. He was small and defenseless—a weak, cowardly Jawa.
But as the Sand People attacked, Het Nkik had found the T-16’s still-functioning security system, and triggered it. The sonic alarm sent out a pulsating screech loud enough to curdle dewback blood. Startled by the noise, the Raiders had fled.
Het Nkik had stood trembling in his brown robes, paralyzed with fear and astonishment. It took him many moments to realize that he alone had scared off the Tusken Raiders. A weak Jawa had driven back an attack by bloodthirsty Sand People!
It had been a warming revelation to him: Given the right equipment and the right attitude, Jawas could be different.
And now he had a blaster rifle.
“I know we are not powerless,” Het Nkik said to the old man who continued to watch him, “but my clan members do not realize it.”
“Perhaps they will,” the old man said.
As the other Jawas scrambled over the wrecked sandcrawler, Het Nkik knew what he had to do. He went to the pilot and forfeited his entire share of salvage in exchange for a single functional vehicle that would take him alone across the desert to the human spaceport … where the Imperials were headquartered.
• • •
Het Nkik’s sand vehicle broke down twice on his trek to the sprawling, squalid city of Mos Eisley. Standing under the pounding heat of the suns as the burning wind licked under his hood, he managed to use his skill and meager resources to get the vehicle limping along again over the rocky ground.
Inside his cloak the DL-44 blaster felt incredibly heavy, cold and hot at the same time. The weight inside his chest seemed even heavier, but burning anger drove him on.
On the dust-whipped streets of Mos Eisley, Het Nkik kept the sand vehicle functioning until he spotted another Jawa—a member of a distant clan who had been in town for some time—and offered the used-up vehicle for sale. Though he drove a poor bargain, Het Nkik did not expect to live long enough to spend the credits; but his nature forbade him giving anything away.
On foot, Het Nkik trudged through the rippling midday heat, clutching the blaster close to his chest, looking at languid creatures dozing in adobe doorways waiting for the day to cool. The streets were nearly deserted. He walked and walked, feeling his feet burn; the pale dust caked his garment.
He knew what he intended to do, but he didn’t quite know how to go about it. He had a blaster. He had an obsession. But he had yet to find a target—the right target.
He noted an increased Imperial presence in the city, guards stationed by docking bays and the customs center; but no more than two at a time. Het Nkik knew that life was cheap in Mos Eisley, and killing a single Imperial trooper would not cause enough uproar. He had to go out in such a blaze of glory and heroism that the Jawas would sing of him for years to come.
In the town center he found the large wreck of the Dowager Queen spacecraft, a mess of tangled girders, falling-apart hull plates, and all manner of strange creatures, vagrants, and scavengers lurking inside the hull.
To Het Nkik it looked like the perfect place for an ambush.
His instincts told him to feel helpless, but he firmly squashed those thoughts. He had the strength, if only he could find the will to make an example of himself. It could change the lives of Jawas forever … or he could just get himself foolishly killed.
Panic welled up within him as he considered the folly of an insignificant Jawa planning something so preposterous. He wanted to hide in a shadowy alley. He could wait for darkness, scurry out of the city and find someplace where he could be safe and cower with the other Jawas, afraid of every threatening noise. Afraid to fight …
Bracing himself, Het Nkik slipped inside the bustling cantina right across the dirt thoroughfare from the wreck of the Dowager Queen. Conflicting scents overwhelmed him: strange smells of a thousand different patron species, chemicals that served as stimulants for an untold number of biochemistries, the smell of amorous intentions, of restrained violence, of anger and laughter, food and sweat. Strains of music drifted out, a mixture of noises chained to a melody.
He had credit chips. He could get a stimulant, something to help him focus his thoughts, brace up his courage.
Het Nkik moved with quick steps down the stairs, hugging the shadows, trying not to be noticed. Deep inside the folds of his garment he gripped the precious blaster. He placed a credit chit on the bar counter, straining to reach the high surface. He had to repeat his order three times before the harried human bartender understood what he wanted. Nursing his drink, Het Nkik hunched over a tiny private table, smelling rich volatile chemicals wafting from the surface of the liquid. The scent was just as intoxicating as the drink itself.
He tried to plan, but no thoughts came to him. Should he resort to a spontaneous action, an angry gesture, rather than a methodically orchestrated seenario? His plan required no finesse, merely a large number of targets and the element of surprise. He thought of the burning Jawa corpses at the wrecked sandcrawler and the old human hermit who had given him the courage.
He felt a warm rush of surprise as the old hermit entered the cantina with a young moisture farmer. The bartender made them leave their droids outside; at another time Het Nkik might have plotted a raid to steal the two unguarded droids, but not now. He had more important things on his mind.
The old hermit didn’t notice him, but Het Nkik took his appearance as a sign, an omen of strength. He gulped his drink and sat up watching the old man talk to a spacer at the bar then to a Wookiee, and when the moisture-farmer boy got into trouble with one of the other patrons, the old man came to the rescue with the most spectacular weapon Het Nkik had ever seen, a glowing shaft of light that cut through flesh as if it were smoke.
Seeing the lightsaber made him suddenly doubt his mere blaster. He pulled out the weapon and held it on his lap under the table, touching the smooth metal curves, the deadly buttons, the power pack snapped into the end. He was startled by another creature joining him at his table: a furry, long-snouted Ranat who smelled of dust and eagerness to make a trade.
Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina Page 23