Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina

by Kevin J. Anderson

  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,