people from all corners of the Empire. Representatives of peoples
who had each, in their own way, been oppressed by the Empire. We
had all endured it.
But there was another way. I knew there was another way.
There was the Rebellion.
The Empire had driven me into rebellion.
I took another drink and looked around. I didn't know how to
find the Rebellion. I didn't know how to join. But this cantina
would be the place to find out, I thought. If I asked a few
judicious questions, maybe I'd find out. I decided to ask the
Ithorian a few tables down.
I took another drink, for courage, but before I could move,
Owen and Beru's nephew, Luke, walked in with somebody I didn't
know and two droids that got ordered out.
Where were Luke's aunt and uncle? I wondered. And that started
me thinking. Owen and Beru's farm was quite far from mine and
Ariela's. Maybe they could use an extra hand or two till things
settled down and it would be safe for Ariela and me to go back to
our farms.
Then we could start our work for the Rebellion.
Ariela would follow me into the Rebellion. Most of the other
farmers probably would too after what had happened today. The
Jawas would help. In time, maybe even the Sand People might come
to understand what had happened to them - and that restoring the
Republic would stop Imperial atrocities. Farmers like me, in an
odd alliance with Jawas and maybe Sand People, would have to fight
for our right to live in peace on the world we called home.
After I thought this through, something told me I'd find the
Rebellion just fine, out in the mountains and valleys of the water
farms of Tatooine.
Something told me things were going to change on Tatooine, in
ways the Imperials never imagined or wanted.
Something told me that, in the end, someday, somehow, there
would be pe'ace here.
We would draw the maps of peace.
One Last Night In the Mos Eisley Cantina The Tale of the
Wolfman and the Lamproid
by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Instants after the jump from lightspeed, the situation became
as simple as the balance between predator and prey. Despite the
secrets bought with Bothan blood, the half-finished Death Star
above the forest moon of Endor was ready for what was supposed to
have been an unexpected assault. The Rebel fleet was doomed.
Sivrak punched the controls of his X-wing fighter even as
Admiral Ackbar gave the order for evasive maneuvers. But that
would buy only a few moments of life. The Imperial fleet already
advanced from Sector 47- Star Destroyers, Cruisers, waves of TIE
fighters-and Sivrak knew it was a trap. It had always been a trap.
The fur rose on his face and his fangs flashed in the reflexive
grimace of attack. In the common tongue of the Alliance, Sivrak
was a Shistavanen Wolfman, and he faced his death with all the
primal rage that evolution and unknown genetic engineers had
encoded in his cells.
The TIE fighters surged ahead of their fleet, as if the Star
Destroyers were not needed in this final battle. Already space
blossomed with deadly flowers of exploding spacecraft. Sivrak
heard his orders through the static of Imperial interference and
the cries of the dying Protect the fleet no matter what the risk.
Sivrak howled at the challenge. He had nothing more to risk.
All that had given his life meaning was now ash scattered across
the icy wastes of Hoth.
His lips glistened with anticipation of the hunt as he switched
his weapons to manual and wrenched his craft onto a collision
course with a trio of TIE fighters. Over his helmet communicator,
he heard the medical frigate was under attack. But it was too late
to alter his trajectory. His course was as set now as it had been
the day he had first met her.
Endor's moon spiraled before Sivrak. The three TIE fighters
converged as they changed course to meet him. His weapons carved
space like blazing gouts of blood released by the stab of his
fangs. The Imperial ships fired back, closing faster than even a
perfect hunter's eye could track.
But Sivrak throttled forward, faster still, and his fighter's
engines shrieked behind him. His full-throated voice joined theirs
as he shouted out her name as his battle cry. The all-encompassing
roar swept to a thundering crescendo as charged particles from the
Imperial fighters resonated against his own fighter's canopy.
Space distorted, wrapping him in red destruction. He embraced the
end of his existence, the beginning of nothingness. Yet somewhere
inside that senseless maelstrom, Sivrak heard faint strains of mu
sic. Music he had heard before. Long ago. The day he had first-
-walked into the Mos Eisley Cantina, boots heavy with the dust
of Tatooine, burning with the heat of streets scorched by two
blazing suns. He wiped a paw against his mouth, feeling the scrape
of grit and sand against his fangs, letting his eyes adjust to the
dimmer light.
For a moment, he experienced a slight wave of vertigo, as if
his body had not expected to be back in a natural gravity well so
soon after ... after ... he couldn't remember what. He closed his
eyes and a green world spun before him. Something about a de
flector shield. Something about a ... Death Star? He shook his
head to dispel his confusion, then walked down the stairs by the
droid detector, heading for the bar.
Without prompting, the bartender served Sivrak his regular
order-a mug of crushed Gilden, organ tendrils still writhing,
attesting to their freshness. Sivrak lapped at it, trying to
remember how this drink could be his regular when he had never
been in this cantina before. He was a rim scout, or had been,
until the Empire had closed off the Outer Rim Territories to new
exploration. Now he was just another displaced being, on the run
from the Empire and all political entanglements. And Mos Eisley
had too many Imperial storm-troopers for his liking. He knew he'd
leave as soon as he had the necessary credits. He . . . moved to
the side an instant before a Jawa scuttled past him, rushing up
the stairs for the door.
Sivrak felt a shock of recognition. He had expected the Jawa to
run past him. He had known what the Jawa would do. Exactly what
the Jawa had done that first time he had stepped in here and met .
. .
Sivrak stared past the bar, into the gloom on the side of the
cantina opposite the band.
And he saw her again. Just as he had seen her that first time.
He stood by her table, savoring the unmistakable pheromones
that identified her as female, admiring the sinuous twists of the
muscular coils she draped over her chair, all the more sensual for
the strength they contained, able to squeeze the skull from a
bantha. She turned to him, her loose-hinged coral jaws revealing
rings of glittering fangs, with the outermost the length of
Sivrak's claws. Her light senso
rs bristled as they shifted toward
him, seeing in wavelengths beyond those even the Wolfman's glowing
eyes could perceive.
Sivrak had heard of such beings before-Florn lamproids-the sole
intelligence born on a world of such dangers it meant instant
death to any who set foot on it without hyperaccelerated nerve
implants.
"Buy you a drink?" the lamproid hissed seductively. Her
inflection of the predator's tongue was intensely personal, as if
they had hunted and shared blood a thousand times.
Sivrak felt the temperature of the cantina increase and he
shrugged off his jacket and sat down across from her just as he
had the first time.
But this was the first time, wasn't it? How could two beings
meet for the first time except for the first time?
"Lak Sivrak," she breathed, and Sivrak growled to acknowledge
that somehow, incredibly, she knew even his litter name.
"Dice Ibegon," he replied, disturbed that he knew her name in
turn, the moment he spoke it aloud, as if he had always known it.
"You are troubled," Dice said.
"We've met before." Sivrak had said those words in a hundred
other cantinas on a dozen other worlds, but this time he meant
them. Though how could he, a perfect hunter, forget having met
such a perfect killer?
"Are you certain?" the lamproid asked. She trailed the
exquisite tip of her lethal tail through the shimmering
translucence of a snifter of clarified bantha blood. The
reflective surface of the liquid made Sivrak think of. force-field
emanations. Wasn't there something else he should be doing?
Someplace else he was supposed to be?
"At the bar, I knew a Jawa was going to bump into me," he said.
"Jawas often do."
Sivrak concentrated. A new memory came to him. "A golden droid
will enter soon."
Dice brought a single drop of bantha blood to Sivrak's muzzle.
The liquid trembled on the tip of her tail. "Their kind is not
served here," she said. Her voice was inviting, distracting.
Sivrak, drew a single, razor-sharp claw against the cool pink
flesh of Dice's tail tip, transfixed by her light sensors and her
scarlet mouth and its endless rings of needle teeth. "The farm boy
with the droid will talk to it."
Dice's voice dropped in tone, sharing secrets. "And the golden
droid will leave."
Sivrak's rough-rasped tongue flicked out and captured the
teardrop of blood from the lamproid's tail. His claws tightened
around the sweet, boneless flesh, feeling the steel cords of her
muscles flex in response.
"Tell me what is happening," Sivrak said.
"Only that which has happened," the lamproid answered. A single
light sensor shifted to the left. Sivrak glanced in that direction
and saw a horned Devaronian sitting against the wall, nodding
dreamily in time to the music of the cantina's band as he watched
the main entrance.
Sivrak looked over to the entrance to see what the Devaronian
saw - an old man in desert robes, a farm boy, an Artoo unit.
And the golden droid.
The old man hurried ahead to the bar. Without knowing how,
Sivrak was aware of what lay hidden beneath the old man's robes -
an antique lightsaber. There was an Aqualish pirate at the bar who
would soon be short an arm.
Sivrak released the lamproid's tail and began to rise from his
chair. But Dice's coils snaked out to bind him tight, keeping him
in his place across from her.
"Hey! We don't serve their kind here!" the bartender shouted.
"Tell me," Sivrak demanded.
"What you already know?" Dice replied.
The farm boy spoke to the golden droid. The golden droid and
the Artoo unit left. The farm boy joined the old man by the bar.
Sivrak struggled-not against the lamproid, but against hidden
knowledge that was somewhere inside him.
There could be only one answer, yet it made no sense.
"Is it the Force that binds us to this place?"
"The Force binds all, if you would believe in it."
"I believe only in the hunt."
The lamproid's teeth shifted in amusement-the Florn equivalent
of a smile. "That's not what you said when we first met here. You
were most eloquent then, my romantic Wolfman."
Sivrak's eyes narrowed. Was she teasing him? "Is there a price
to be paid?" he asked stiffly. An altercation began at the bar.
"To understand why everything is familiar yet new at the same
time?"
"Poor Wolfman," Dice said. "You still don't understand the
promise I made you. So for now the price of your understanding is
the same price it was the first time we met here."
Sivrak searched his memory for events yet to happen. He cast
back to predict what he had already seen. On the other side of the
bar the farm boy was thrown into a table. Despite Dice's hold on
him, Sivrak leaned forward threateningly. "You're a member of the
Alliance, aren't you?"
A lightsaber thrummed into life. The Aqualish pirate screamed.
Sivrak's nostrils flared at the scent of fresh blood exploding
through the smoke-filled air. The lamproid's tail tip fluttered as
she scented it, too. A severed arm fell to the floor of the
cantina.
"I am a member of the Alliance," she said. "Just as you chose
to be, that first time."
But the heady wash of the blood scent pushed Sivrak beyond
understanding, and Dice swiftly released the pheromones that would
guide the Wolfman to the one state he could achieve without
endangering bystanders.
Sivrak arched in her deadly grip, and with a powerful
undulation, Dice uncoiled the rest of her body and slithered
across the table toward him. Then perfect killer met perfect
hunter as their fangs clashed, then locked in the lethal kiss of
predators. Sivrak's senses were overwhelmed. He felt the floor of
the cantina shift beneath him, gaining momentum as it spun faster
and fester, just as if he rode an-
-X-wing fighter spinning through space. A storm of debris
rattled against his fighter's skin as Sivrak fought to stabilize
the craft. His tactical display showed that two of the TIE
fighters had survived his headlong strike. The third was a vapor
of incandescent particles dispersing in vacuum. He turned to Dice
to make certain she was safe and growled when he saw only the
reflection of his own glowing eyes in the canopy. The cantina had
been a hallucination, a dream of what had been... what might have
been ... he couldn't be sure.
A second sun flared over Endor's moon and Sivrak was torn from
his memories by a lance of unthinkable energy that burst from the
Death Star to claim a Rebel frigate. The communicator channels
were flooded with transmissions of shock and confusion. The Death
Star was operational.
Admiral Ackbar ordered a retreat-all fighters were to return to
base. General Calrissian countermanded the retreat-all fighters
were to engage the Star Destroyers at point-blank range. And every
other R
ebel voice asked about General Solo's strike team on the
moon's surface. Would they destroy the force-field generator? Had
they already tried and failed?
Sivrak pulled back on the controls to bring his X-wing on
course to the nearest Star Destroyer. There were many ways to die
in space. He would find one soon enough, he knew.
The X-wing did not respond.
Sivrak activated the diagnostics, rechanneled auxiliary power,
and closed his wings for increased etheric stability.
But the X-wing continued its fall toward the forest moon, and
nothing he could do would change its course.
One thought and one thought alone flooded through him He was
going to live.
Once in the moon's atmosphere, Sivrak knew he could use the
fighter's control surfaces-useless in vacuum-to bring his craft to
a soft landing. A whole forest world waited for him. The Alliance
and the Empire would fall from his consciousness as he stalked its
prey and returned to what he knew and understood-the hunt.
Perhaps, in time, he might even forget Dice Ibegon, and things
would be as they had always been. Simple. Balanced. The pure
equation of life and death, free of the pain of love and duty.
The raging space battle receded behind him. He watched it
diminish in a cockpit display. It appeared his damaged X-wing was
no longer a target worthy of the Empire.
He focused on the forest moon, closing fast, bringing him a new
life. Another life.
As if any life could have meaning without her.
Rebel craft exploded on the battle display. Sivrak knew that
meant the force-field generator on the moon's surface still
protected the Death Star. Perhaps his battle wasn't over yet.
He touched the atmospheric controls of his fighter, searching
for the first sign of resistance from the wispy upper reaches of
the atmosphere he plunged into. To change course one way was to
land in safety. The other way, Rebel tacticians had set the odds
of a successful atmospheric attack on the generator at a million
to one. Standard Imperial ground defenses were too strong.
Sivrak's claws tapped the control yoke as he considered his
choice. One way or another. And then his fighter yawed violently
as an Imperial particle beam sliced through a rear stabilizer. His
tactical display showed two TIE fighters closing behind him,
Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina Page 41