safe for a moment, and Trevagg turned back to Nightlily, grasping
the smooth dark ivory of her hands. "Nightlily, you mean . . .
Everything. Everything to me."
She said "Oh ..." while staring up into his eyes. "Oh . . . Oh,
Trevagg. That we should have met like this-that you should have
come into my life like this ..."
He wondered if he could slip away for a moment, summon the city
police . . . But he needed a go-between if he were to get the
money. Slip away and contact Jub Vegnu-first speak to one of the
assassins, in case Balu had tracked the old man here himself.
He felt the flare of emotions, of irrational rage and drunken
aggression, before the yelling started. Swinging around in his
chair, Trevagg saw, to his horror, that the sinister Dr. Evazan
had decided to pick a fight with the farm boy, throwing him
sprawling into a table while Wuher ducked under the bar yelling
desperately "No blasters! No blasters!" and someone else grabbed
for a sidearm . . .
The roar of the Force in Trevagg's cones peaked like the
drumming of a high-desert gravel storm. The old man, in what
seemed like a single smooth gesture, somehow had a glowing stalk
of light in his hand. A lethal slash, a severed limb leaking blood
on the floor, Nightlily's terrified hoot, and silence-a silence
less shocked than cautious as everyone reevaluated the situation.
Then the band started up again. So did the conversations. The
wounded would-be combatant was taken away. So was the arm, by
Wuher's small helper Nackhan recognized as operating a fast-food
stand in the marketplace. The old Jedi picked up his young
companion, moved off with the Wookiee to the booth where the brown-
haired smuggler with the scar on his chin waited. Trevagg became
aware that Nightlily was clinging to his arm, and his every
instinct told him now was the time to move in on her.
Unfortunately, now was also the time to listen, to stretch out
his hearing, to key and sharpen his hunter's awareness of every
word they said. Trevagg disengaged his arm from the trembling
girl, stated "You need something to calm you down, my blossom,"
and moved over to the bar, listening over the jumble of the music,
the murmur of the crowd. Lingering by the bar, he heard the words
"to the Alderaan system," and felt the swift rush of hunter's
adrenaline in his veins. It was, indeed, now or never.
Then, a moment later, he heard the old man say, "Two thousand
now, plus fifteen when we reach Alder-aan . . ."
Trevagg breathed a sigh of relief. That meant a delay here,
while they raised the cash. Probably they'd sell the speeder the
boy had mentioned, or the droids, or all three. That only left the
question of Balu.
The brown-haired human and the Wookiee were obviously not for
hire as assassins. Judging by such of the conversation as he could
hear, Trevagg guessed they were only smugglers anyway. The Wolfman
was engaged in a sharp altercation with a lampreylike thing beside
him, whose vibrations caused Trevagg to back quickly away, and,
nearby, the hookah smoker felt too eerily dangerous, too deadly.
That left the Rodian . . .
"Docking Bay Ninety-four," he heard the smuggler say, and the
old man repeated it, "Ninety-four," as Trevagg returned to his
booth with his own drink and Nightlily's, double-strength and
dosed with a Love-Wallop pill Trevagg had had the foresight to
slip into his pocket before leaving the office. He knew how much
Wuher charged for them. There would now, he knew, be plenty of
time.
Riches, he thought, and the beautiful creature leaning on his
arm, crooning softly, "Oh, my love, my love." Maybe he'd even
spring for a first-class ticket for her. It was, after all, the
least he could do.
He wasn't surprised, or particularly upset, when the
stormtroopers snowed up. He even felt a kind of scorn for them as
they looked around, for of course the old man and the boy had
vanished. So, incidentally, did several other patrons, including
the hookah smoker. The Rodian didn't, Trevagg observed, and
slipped one hand from Nightlily's soft waist to feel in his belt
pouch for the money he'd brought. A hundred credits, he had been
told, was the current going rate for the down payment on a man's
life.
He would be glad, he thought, to get this annoyance out of the
way. To make sure Balu was not going to cheat him out of the
reward that was rightfully his.
Unfortunately, just as Trevagg was rising to go to the Rodian's
table, the Rodian himself got up, with a shift in aura that told
Trevagg that this was indeed a hunter, closing in on his own prey.
That prey, it turned out, was the brown-haired smuggler, who after
a prolonged altercation shot the Rodian neatly with a blaster
drawn under the table.
Nightlily shrieked again and clung to Trevagg's arm; Wuher's
helper ran to guard the remains even as the smuggler and his
Wookiee companion tossed the barkeep a couple of credits and took
their leave "Sorry about the mess." After a momentary pause, the
band took up its tune without missing a bar.
Disgusted and annoyed-because the Wolfman had also left by this
time-Trevagg gathered the flustered and languishing Nightlily on
his arm. So much, he thought, for trying to shortcut middlemen.
When he contacted Jub Vegnu to arrange information to the City
Prefect about intercepting the old man and the boy at Spaceport
Speeders, he'd mention the need to dispose of Balu for an extra
hundred creds. That should take care of any competition for the
reward for the old man's hide.
And in the meantime, thought Trevagg, slipping his arm around
the trembling bundle of aromatic sensuality that fate had dropped
into his lap, there was the matter of this girl, and getting a
room at the Mos Eisley Inn, to consummate what she thought would
be the start of a wonderful marriage-the more fool she!- and what
was, in actuality, merely the more delectable of the two hunts
upon which he had engaged today.
Really, Trevagg thought, as he guided Nightlily's tipsy steps
along the gold and shadow of the street outside, he might have
retired from the trade, but he was still quite a passable hunter
after all.
What with the commotion of Imperial troops coming into Mos
Eisley to search for a pair of droids, the sudden rumors of a Sand
People massacre on an outlying farm, and the firefight at Docking
Bay 94 ending with a smuggling craft's illegal liftoff, nobody
found Feltipern Trevagg's body until the following afternoon.
"Didn't anybody tell him?" demanded Wuher the bartender,
brought over to the Mos Eisley Inn by Balu's deputy to view the
body and give the security officer his deposition.
"Tell him what?" Balu looked up from jotting on his logpad.
He'd never much liked the Gotal, but that kind of
death-evisceration with what looked to have been a long, thin
knife, skillfully wielded-w
as something he wouldn't have wished on
anyone.
"About H'nemthe." When Balu continued to look blank, the
bartender added, "The girl he was with. The H'nemthe female."
"Nightlily?" Balu was starded. The girl had looked too
frightened by her surroundings-and too dazzled by Trevagg's
charms-to have harmed a hair of the Gotal's head.
"Was that her name?" Wuher rolled his eyes. "It figures."
A small crowd had gathered. Of course, none of the Imperial
stormtroopers and none of the Prefect's guard, either. A murder
this small wasn't worth their time. Balu couldn't help observing
Nackhar in the background slipping the coroner's deputy a few cred
its. For what, he decided not to ask.
"The m'iiyoom-the nightlily-is a carnivorous flower that feeds
on small rodents and insects that try to drink its nectar," said
the barkeep, hands on hips and looking down at the dark-stained
sheet the coroner had laid over what was left of Trevagg. "After
mating, H'nemthe females gut the males with those tongues of
theirs-they're as sharp as sword blades, and a lot stronger than
they look. Some kind of biological reaction to there being twenty
H'nemthe males for every female. The males seem to think it's
wortih it, to achieve the act of love. I saw them together in the
can-Una, but I didn't think Trevagg was crazy enough to try to bed
the girl."
"He was always bragging about being such a great hunter," said
Balu wonderingly, stepping aside for the coroner's deputies to
carry die body out of the dingy and bloodstained room. "You'd have
thought he'd sense it coming."
"How could he?" The barkeep tucked big hands into his belt,
followed the officer back out to the street. "For her it was the
act of love, too."
He shrugged, and quoted an old Ithorian proverb current in some
sections of the spaceways "N'ygyng mth'une vned 'isobec' k'chuv
'ysobek.' "
Which, loosely translated, means "The word for 'love' in one
language is the word for 'dinner' in others."
Empire Blues The Devaronian's Tale
by Daniel Keys Moran
I don't suppose it took us five minutes that afternoon to
execute the Rebels, start to finish.
The Rebellion on Devaron stood no chance. My home world is
sparsely settled even by Devaronians, and is politically
unimportant; but it is near the Core. Near the Emperor, may he
freeze. I was Kardue'sai'Malloc, third of the Kardue line to bear
that name; a Devish and a captain in the Devaronian Army.
Kardue had served in the Devaronian Army for sixteen
generations through the Clone Wars, back into the days when no
one dreamed the old Republic would ever fall. The army lifestyle
suited me, and I the army; aside from the stress of dealing with
the Imperium, and the detested necessity of placing Devaronian
troops under Imperial command during the Rebellion, it was a
tolerable life.
Sixteen generations of military service ended the afternoon
after we overran the Rebel positions in Montellian Serat. It took
me half a year to hang up the armor; but that was the moment.
Montellian Serat is an old city. Well, was; it dated back to
the days before my people had star travel. That the Rebels chose
to make a stand there was tactically foolish, but not surprising.
I spent the night overseeing the shelling of the ancient city
walls, and in the first light of morning stopped shelling long
enough to offer the Rebels a chance to surrender. They accepted
the offer, laid down their arms by the shattered walls at the
city's edge, and came out in single file man and woman they were
seven hundred strong.
I herded them into a hastily constructed holding pen, and
mounted guards. I had concern for a rescue attempt; half a day's
march south, another group of Rebels were still fighting.
After they surrendered, we shelled the city into rubble. The
Empire wanted to make sure no one made the mistake of sheltering
Rebels again.
Our orders came just after noon. The Rebels were believed to be
moving north; I was to take my forces and intercept them. I was
not to leave any of my forces behind as guards for the captured
Rebels.
The orders were no more specific than that . . . but they could
not be misunderstood.
I had them executed in mid-afternoon. I pulled the guards back
into a half circle, and had them open fire on the Rebels inside
the holding pen. It took most of five minutes before the screaming
stopped and I could be certain all seven hundred were dead.
There was no time to bury them.
We marched south to the next battle.
With one thing and another it took almost half a year for the
Rebellion on Devaron to be put down. Rebellions are drawn-out
affairs, even the failures. When it was over, I submitted my
resignation. At first my superiors, humans all, could not decide
whether to accept it and let my fellow "natives" kill me once I no
longer had the protection of the Imperial Army, or to refuse it
and execute me for treason for having made the request in the
first place.
I recall I did not much care.
They let me go.
I vanished. Neither my Imperial superiors, nor the family or
friends left behind, who lusted for my horns, ever saw me, or my
music collection, again.
Time passed.
Halfway across the galaxy from Devaron, on the small desert
planet of Tatooine, in the port city of Mos Eisley, in a cantina
tucked away near the center of the hot, dusty city, I looked up
from my empty drink and smiled at my old friend Wuher.
I gave him the polite one. Devish are more sharply
differentiated by sex than most species. Men have sharper teeth
than women, designed for hunting; Devish evolved from pack
hunters. Women have canines as well, but also have molars and can
survive on food that men would starve on. In rare cases, though,
about one birth in fifty, a Devish man will be born with both sets
of teeth. I'm one of them. In the old days it was a survival
trait; Devish men with both sets of teeth were used as solitary
scouts by the pack. They could range farther and survive in
terrain where most males would starve. It may be cultural and it
may be genetic, but there is no question that Devish with doubled
teeth are less creatures of the pack than most Devish men.
I doubt most Devish could do what I've done, at that.
My outer row of teeth are female, flat and not at all
threatening. The inner row, composed of sharp, needle-pointed
teeth, is for shredding flesh. When I feel threatened or angry,
the outer row of teeth retract. In those circumstances it's a
reflex; but I can do it on purpose.
Sometimes I do it on purpose. It startles humans . . . well, it
startles most noncarnivores, but humans are a special case, a
whole species of omnivores. There are not many intelligent
omnivorous species out there. I have a theory about them They're
f
ood that decided to fight back. In the case of humans, tree
munchies. They never quite get over their own audacity, I suspect,
and they're a nervous lot because of it.
(A human once tried to tell me that humans were carnivores. I
did not laugh at him, despite his molars and his pitiful two pair
of blunted incisors, and a digestive tract so long that the flesh
he ate rotted before it came out the other end. With a body
designed like that, I'd take up leaf eating.)
Wuher gave me the usual scowl in response to my polite, flat-
toothed smile. "Let me guess, Labria. The glass is defective."
Wuher is my best friend on Tatooine. He's a squat, ugly human
with a bad attitude and none of the human virtues. He hates droids
and doesn't care much for anything else. I like him a great deal.
There is a purity to his loathing for the universe that is quite
spiritually advanced. If I could free him from his love of money,
he might well attain Grace. "Yes, my friend. It has ceased
functioning. If you would fix it . . ."
"With?"
"Oh, the amber liquid, I suppose."
"The Merenzane Gold?"
"The bottle bears that label," I conceded.
"One Merenzane Gold, point five credits."
I dropped the half-credit coin on the bartop, and waited while
he refilled my drink, Merenzane Gold is a sweet, subtle
concoction, with many thousands of years of brewing tradition
behind it. A single bottle goes for well upward of a hundred
credits, depending on vintage.
I took a sip of my drink and smiled again. Proper. You could
use it to clean thruster tubes, except it might melt the
shielding. I wandered over to my favorite booth, as far away from
the bandstand as I could get, and settled in with my ear plugs for
the day.
I was the first customer in the door that morning. I could
barely remember a time when I had not been.
Tatooine is a nasty, useless little planet. The only noteworthy
things about it are Jabba, and the pilots it produces year after
year. I don't have any idea why Jabba picked Tatooine as a base;
maybe because it's so far from the Core that the Empire is less
likely to bother him here. Doesn't matter, really.
As for the pilots, well, Tatooine's a desert, filled with
moisture farmers north to south. A single farm takes up so much
Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina Page 22