“Ah, that’s a pity,” said the hermit. “Perhaps when I return we can discuss the Force anyway.”
“Yeah, maybe we can.”
Chewbacca growled softly, and BoShek took the hint. “I do know someone with a ship who might be willing to take on passengers, though,” he said, nodding toward the Wookiee.
“I see. Thank you.” The hermit glanced toward Chewbacca, then looked back at BoShek and said, “I’ll leave you with one piece of advice: Beware the dark side. Your role here on the edge of society has put you in a very ambiguous position, one that you must resolve before you can continue in your journey. Only the pure of heart can ever hope to wield the Force’s power with any success.”
“Thanks, I think,” BoShek said.
“You’re welcome.”
It was clearly a dismissal, so BoShek bowed out with a nod to Chewbacca, letting them discuss business while he went around to the other side of the bar to get the bartender’s attention.
He’d finally managed to get a drink and was casting about to see if he could spot Solo when the old man pulled a lightsaber on a walrus-faced Aqualish and an even worse looking human, and BoShek got knocked over in the rush to give them room. The Aqualish lost an arm in the fight, and the old man gained a wide zone of respect, but BoShek didn’t care about either one of them at the moment, being occupied with wiping a pint of bitter off the front of his flight suit.
Bloody brawls were nothing new in the cantina, and aside from the old man’s lightsaber this one was nothing special, but enough of the other bar patrons had spilled their drinks that it took BoShek another ten minutes to get served again. By then he’d spotted Solo, but the Corellian was already deep in conversation with the old man and the boy, so he sat back down at the bar and waited his turn. Maybe he could learn something more from Solo about the old guy after they were done.
While he waited, he tried asking around to find out what all the stormtroopers were doing in town, but nobody would admit to knowing. The Imperial troops had simply swooped down from their Star Destroyers a couple of days ago and set up roadblocks all over town, and in most of the other towns surrounding the Jundland Wastes as well. They were looking for something, but nobody knew what.
A couple of them came into the cantina, shining conspicuously in their white body armor. BoShek looked over to see how the hermit and the kid would react to their presence, but they were already gone. He stood up to go take their place at Solo’s table, but first the stormtroopers, then a long-nosed, green-skinned Rodian, beat him to it. Solo was a popular guy today.
The Rodian held a blaster pointed straight at Solo’s chest. BoShek slipped his own blaster out of its holster, ready to help if it looked as though Solo needed it, but then he saw something that made him reholster his weapon and watch with amusement. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Solo was drawing his own blaster under the table.
Sure enough, when he got it free of its holster, he gave a little shrug as if to say “So long, sucker,” and fired right through the table at the Rodian, who collapsed forward on the smoking remains.
Solo stood up, flipped a couple of credits to the bartender, and stalked out before BoShek could catch his attention. He downed his drink and followed him out, but he had barely made it out the door when he felt someone grab his arm and an authoritative voice said, “All right, hold it right there, spaceman.”
He turned slowly to see a local cop pointing a blaster at him. “What’s the problem?” he asked, keeping his voice as unconfrontational as he could manage.
The cop scowled. “The problem is, a wanted starship ran an Imperial blockade, dusted four interceptors in the process, and landed here in town just a little while ago. Darth Vader’s on one of the battleships and wants somebody’s head for it, and yours looks about the right size to me. You’re still suited up; how ’bout you and me have a little chat down at the station?”
Only his years of practice at talking his way through customs allowed BoShek to keep his expression neutral. Inside, he was close to panic. If they got him under a mind-probe, they’d know for sure he’d done it, and there was a good chance he’d blow the monastery’s cover as well. Either way, he was dead.
Forcing himself to sound calm, he shrugged and said, “You’ve got the wrong pilot, I’m afraid, and there’s a whole bar full of people in there who can prove it. I’ve been here all afternoon.”
The cop hesitated, looking into the dark doorway, and when he squinted to see inside, BoShek lashed out with a foot and kicked the blaster out of his hands. He followed with a punch to the side of the head, putting all his weight behind it, and the cop collapsed like a shorted droid.
The blaster clattered to the ground a few steps away. BoShek lunged for it but lost the race to a pair of Jawas, who scurried away with their prize and quickly disappeared among the dozens of taller aliens on the street. BoShek didn’t particularly care; he had his own blaster if it came to that, and as long as the cop didn’t, he was happy. He turned and walked nonchalantly—but quickly—away from the cantina toward the city’s central plaza and the thickest crowds.
He had only made it across the street and down half a block to the wrecked Dowager Queen when he heard a shout behind him. Few of the street’s inhabitants even looked up, since shouts from the cantina were a regular thing, but BoShek quickened his stride toward the old colony ship’s rusted hulk.
Twisted girders arched out over the packed dirt, awnings tied between some of them providing shade for the crowds gathered to listen to the street preachers pontificating from the upper levels. Ruptures in the hull and busted portholes provided glimpses into the ship’s dark interior, from which the red glow of Jawa eyes peered outward.
BoShek ducked inside the sagging cargo lock. The hold smelled strongly of Jawas, but he didn’t care. The more the merrier, in fact. He stepped over vagrants and preachers resting in the shade, pushing past them until he was well hidden from the street. In the dim light filtering in through holes in the hull, he stripped off his flight suit and flung it farther into the darkness, keeping only the tool belt with all his personal belongings. A chorus of growls and high-pitched chattering erupted as the wreck’s inhabitants quarreled over their new prize.
His gray suit liner was a little less of a beacon for the police, but it still wasn’t very good camouflage. BoShek knelt down beside one of the vagrants and said, “Ten credits for your cloak.” That was far more than it was worth, and they both knew it. Without a word the vagrant tugged off his rough brown robe and handed it over. BoShek paid him and wrapped himself up in the noxious-smelling garment, then pushed back toward the door.
He had underestimated the cop’s tenacity. He had evidently seen BoShek slip into the wreckage, and was now standing at the edge of the crowd with a small boot-top blaster in his hand. The crowd had thinned considerably under the policeman’s glare; BoShek didn’t think he’d be able to hide among the few people left.
He turned and reentered the ship. There had to be another way out of it. He stumbled over more bodies, circumnavigating the cargo hold, but all he found was a ramp leading up a level. Thinking maybe there would be a stairway back down over the outer hull, he climbed the ramp, but it only led to the observation deck from which half a dozen preachers harangued the crowd below.
From his new vantage, BoShek saw reinforcements coming to the first cop’s aid. He was trapped. They obviously weren’t going to drop it, not with the Empire breathing down their necks. They needed a sacrificial suspect to deliver to the stormtroopers, and they weren’t about to let him get away now. Which meant they wouldn’t rest until they’d swept through the entire ship. BoShek looked around frantically, but there was no place to hide. The observation deck was even more open than the cargo hold. It had been gutted of everything that could be unbolted or torn loose, leaving just an empty floor with blasted-out windows spaced evenly around it. All but one of the window frames had a preacher standing before it, facing outward toward the people on the street below. Non
e of the preachers were from the monastery; BoShek wondered why until he remembered the note he’d dropped off here on his way to the cantina. The abbot must have called them in for some kind of conference.
With no place to hide and no friends to help him, he could see only one possibility. He bent down and smeared his hands along the floor near the wall, then wiped the grimy black goo he gathered there on his cheeks and forehead, darkening his complexion and making his face fit his clothing. Then he stepped to the window and said in a quavering voice he hoped sounded old and wizened, “Brothers, sisters, friends, and aliens; beware the dark side of the Force!”
A few of the people below him looked up, squinting into the sun, and BoShek realized why this particular window was empty. Tatooine’s twin suns were directly behind him from the vantage of anyone below; not a good location for a preacher interested in gathering a following. It was perfect for BoShek, though. He pulled his hood over his head so nobody could get a good look at him from the side, then he cleared his throat and began his sermon.
Despite living at a monastery, he knew almost nothing about the religion they preached. He spent his time in the underground ship-alteration complex, not in the cathedral the monks had set up to establish their cover. He knew their doctrine was all based on the divinity of banthas or some such crock, and had been borrowed from a group of true believers who lived out in the wilderness, but he had no idea how it all tied together. Far better, he thought, to preach something he at least knew a little about, though he didn’t suppose it really mattered. Who listened to street preachers, anyway?
Remembering what the old man in the cantina had told him, he said, “Only the pure of heart can ever hope to achieve true mastery of the Force.” A few more faces looked up, then away. BoShek spread his arms wide. “You must open yourselves up to salvation. You must cleanse yourselves, make peace with your inner natures, and accept the Force as your guiding principle.”
The preacher to his right had stopped his own sermon to listen. BoShek smiled nervously at him, then went on. “When you surrender yourselves to the Force, you deliver your lives unto the greatest power in the universe. With it you can move mountains, see the future, and find eternal life.” Hah, he thought, this preaching stuff wasn’t that hard. Just string all the buzzwords together, and you had it.
Another of the preachers fell silent. BoShek wasn’t sure he liked their attention, but the cops had moved to surround the ship, and he could hear the commotion in the cargo hold as they began their search. And now, attracted to a scene of trouble like flying insects to light, a stormtrooper patrol was also heading toward the ship.
BoShek pulled his robe closer about him and leaned farther out the window, saying, “Repent! Dig deep into your hearts, and the truth shall set you free!”
“Be silent,” the priest on his right hissed. BoShek noted that he wore a robe considerably cleaner than his own, and his fingers and wrists were spangled with gold rings and bracelets. Preaching was evidently good business.
“Be silent yourself,” BoShek told him. He could hear the cops ascending the ramp now. “On second thought, don’t be. Preach, or we’re both going to be saying our prayers in jail.” He turned back to the window and said to the crowd below, “There are disbelievers among you, people who deny the existence of the Force, or say that it’s weakened with time and no longer useful in these modern days, but I say to you, every living creature that is born increases the power of the Force.”
The preacher who had shushed him glanced warily down the ramp, then turned back to his window and picked up where he’d left off, saying in a voice loud enough to drown out BoShek completely, “Consider the banthas of the dunefields. They quail not; neither do they sting. They are the holiest of beasts …”
Oh, boy. This guy was the real item. BoShek was glad he hadn’t tried to fake the monastery religion, although the preacher didn’t seem too thrilled to be hearing a competing doctrine, either. Well, it couldn’t be helped; BoShek was committed now.
The other preacher resumed his spiel too, offering to heal anyone who tossed him money.
BoShek gladly let them drown him out, babbling on about the Force merely to keep up his cover. He could sense the cops behind him, three of them sweeping blast rifles around the observation deck. He closed his eyes and wished for a miracle, wished that they would just turn around and march back down the ramp and go away.
A high-pitched Jawa voice chittered angrily from below. The unmistakable crack of blaster fire made BoShek nearly leap out the window, but he realized just in time that the shooting had come from outside, too. He leaned out and peered around the curve of the hull, and could just see the Jawa lying in a smoking heap on the ground. The patrol squad of white-armored stormtroopers stood in the middle of the square, waving their blast rifles around menacingly, but no one else fired.
The cops behind BoShek rushed back down the ramp to investigate. BoShek leaned against the window frame for support, his legs suddenly weak. Whatever the Jawa had done, its noisy death had distracted the cops long enough for him to escape.
He turned to go, only to meet a gold-ringed fist with his face. He staggered back and landed hard on the floor. “Mock us, will you?” the preacher snarled at him, aiming a kick at his ribs that BoShek barely dodged.
The other preachers quickly joined the first in kicking and hitting him. “Here’s for trying to make people laugh at us!” one of them said as he nearly wrenched BoShek’s arm from its socket. “And here’s for leading the militia up here,” another said.
BoShek scrambled to his feet, trying to explain. “No, wait, I didn’t mean to—” But they weren’t interested in excuses. Under continual pummeling, he covered his head and dived for the ramp, rolled halfway down it, and came up running. He thought the preachers would leave it at that, but two of them chased him right out of the wreck and out into the plaza, where the police, gathered around the Jawa’s corpse, turned to see what this new commotion was.
“That’s him!” the cop he’d knocked down shouted, and he snapped off a blaster shot that just missed BoShek’s head, blowing a rusty attitude jet off the side of the wreck ’instead. BoShek leaped over the jet and dashed around the curve of the hull; then when he had its bulk between him and his pursuers, he sprinted straight down the street toward the thickest crowd he could see: the buyers and sellers in front of the Jawa trading center.
The preachers were still hot on his tail, which was the only thing that kept him from getting a blaster bolt in the back. The police were evidently reluctant to shoot a bona fide religious leader, even by accident, probably fearing the trouble their followers would cause in retribution.
Taking advantage of their hesitation, BoShek ran past the traders and on down the street toward the used-landspeeder lot. He thought briefly of dodging through the speeders and trying to lose his pursuers that way, but as he drew closer he saw the triangular-headed Arconan dealer gloating over a deal he had just made, and he realized his salvation was at hand.
Running up to the speeder the Arconan had bought—a battered XP-38A with two engines on the side and a third up on a fin in back—he tossed a fistful of credits at the surprised alien, then leaped into the driver’s seat and shouted over his shoulder, “I’m taking it for a test drive!”
“No, wait! What do you think you’re—” the Arconan wailed, but BoShek didn’t stick around to argue. The engines were still running; he jammed the accelerator on full and zoomed away, nearly running over a cylindrical droid before he swerved the speeder farther out into the street.
The cops took a couple of wild shots at him, but the energy bolts only succeeded in making the people in the street dive for cover. BoShek zoomed down the clear avenue, took the corner at the end of the block at full speed, and continued on.
Two blocks farther, he slowed for another corner, then proceeded at a more normal speed to the next corner, where he turned again and tried to blend into what little vehicle traffic there was. His zigzag course was
leading him in a loop around Docking Bay 94. Good. The jumbled streets dead-ending at the bay would keep the police busy for a long time, if they even bothered to look for him anymore.
He was thinking about ditching the speeder and heading back to the monastery when he turned another corner and found himself gliding toward a patrol of four stormtroopers who stood blocking the street. One of the troopers raised a hand with his palm out, indicating that BoShek should stop.
They didn’t have their rifles drawn, which meant they were probably just stopping everyone on the street for questioning. Even so, there was no way BoShek could get past them or turn around and flee before they could unsling their blasters and take him out. He forced himself to let up on the accelerator and drift to a stop before the troopers, all the while frantically trying to think of a way out of this latest predicament.
“What’s your business here?” the patrol leader asked him. His voice was distorted by the full battle helmet he wore, and the bubble lenses of his visor kept BoShek from seeing where he was looking.
“I’m, uh, just headed down to the cantina,” BoShek told him.
“I see. Is this your landspeeder?”
“I’m test-driving it,” BoShek said.
“A likely story. Let’s see your—” The stormtrooper’s words were drowned out by the roar of a ship taking off under full thrust. BoShek winced at the blast as the ship cleared the rooftops, then did a double take when he recognized its outline. It was the Millennium Falcon.
Looks like the old man must have made it, he thought. Too bad, in a way; he could have used a little bit of his luck right now.
But it wasn’t luck, was it? The guy knew about the Force, and by the way he talked and the way he handled a lightsaber, he was a master at it. He’d probably used its power to manipulate his way past all the obstacles. A little roadblock like this would hardly make him sweat.
Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina Page 30
