hiding in his propulsion wake-the same two he had faced before.
For whatever reason, perhaps to avenge the death of their wingman,
Sivrak was still at least a worthy target to them.
The Wolfman felt relieved the choice had been taken from him.
There was now no need to plan, no need to decide. There was only
the fight. The balance. The reassuring enormity of now.
Unable to change his fighter's course in space, he threw it
into a spiraling roll, releasing all his decoys and mines in an
expanding cloud of sensor-opaque, carbon-fiber chaff. Then he
locked his rear sights onto the cloud's dark center, daring one or
both of the TIE fighters to survive the cloud's perils. Sivrak
calculated he would have time for at least two shots before the
Imperial pilots could target him. Perhaps those shots would be
enough. Perhaps they wouldn't. Sivrak did not care either way.
He glanced ahead a t the rushing disk of the moon, colors
smearing as he wildly spun. At last, he felt the first tremors of
atmospheric resistance fight his craft's roll. With fierce
satisfaction, he pictured his X-wing tearing itself into pieces,
raining down on the moon like a comet come to die. It was a good
image. A fitting image. A hunter's death.
The tactical display flashed as the mines he had deployed
erupted behind him. At least one of the fighters had vanished. But
then the display glowed as a piercing beam of brilliant energy
shot from the defensive carbon cloud, blinding his rear sensors
with a wash of static-filled white that enveloped Sivrak like a
smothering snowdrift-
-carved by the icy winds of Hoth.
Sivrak dove for the trench before him as an energy bolt from an
Imperial walker obliterated a nearby gun emplacement. Echo
Station-the Rebel base's lone outpost on the north ridge-was a
charnel house. The awkward dead lay all around him as he pushed
himself to his feet and shook the snow and ice from his matted
fur. It was so achingly cold he could not even scent the blood of
the dying. But then he caught the scent of her.
The ground shook with the thunder of approaching walkers and
the constant firing of the ion cannon as desperate Rebels tried to
clear the way for the retreating transports. But Sivrak was aware
of only one sensation-she was close.
He ran to her, dodging the other troops in the slippery, ice-
lined trench, his brilliant orange flight suit startling amongst
their white Hoth camouflage. The main communicator channel
crackled with the call to evacuate all ground crew. The command
center had been hit. All troops in Sector 12 were to report to the
south post to protect the fighters. But Sivrak was beyond the
reach of orders now. He collapsed in the snow at Dice's side.
It was stained with the rich purple of her blood.
Sivrak spoke her name and touched her face, afraid to disturb
the ragged shard of metal that had sliced through her insulated
suit and cut deeply into her upper thorax. Purple drops of frozen
blood shone there, as if, for her, time had stopped.
Her eye sensors trembled and stiffened and she looked up at
him.
"Go," she said.
"How can I?" he answered. "I have sworn allegiance to the
Princess and the return of the Republic."
The lamproid's teeth shifted in amusement, even as her gasp of
pain formed mist in the icy air.
"You never meant to wear the uniform of a Rebel. That day in
the cantina, when we first met, you only accepted my offer to join
the Alliance as a way to wrap yourself in my coils."
She was right, of course. The first time in the cantina -the
real first time-he had made much of his Rebel sympathies, sensing
it might make him a more acceptable companion to her. But in time,
he had come to believe in what the Alliance stood for. He had
become a proud and willing warrior in its cause. But now Dice was
dying and the past no longer mattered.
"What is the past?" Dice asked, reading his mind again.
Sivrak tore the med-kit from his belt, somehow knowing that
another battle was being fought above a world of forests. He
stared blankly at the contents of the kit. Most of its salves and
ointments were for his species. He had no idea how they would
react with Horn biology. But he had to do something.
"You have done something," Dice said soothingly. Her voice was
calm, almost peaceful. She fixed her light sensors on the clear
blue sky.
"We are alike," she continued, "as you have always known. The
hunter and the killer know the sick and diseased must be culled
from the herd-and the Empire is rotten with corruption. That is
why you must leave me, to continue our fight until its end."
The vials and tubes from the med-kit spilled into the snow from
Sivfak's rigid paws. "Dice, no. I can't."
"I know you can't. In time, I know you won't. But for now, my
love, you must. Alliance and Empire. Predator and prey."
Sivrak's communicator sounded the evacuation code sound. A
terse voice announced that Imperial troops had entered the base.
"I.will die with you here," Sivrak said.
He cradled her head close against his warm body.
"What is death compared to love?" Dice asked, her voice fading.
Sivrak could not move. He was losing her.
"What you must do," she whispered, "is believe in the Force."
"If you wish me to," Sivrak said thickly, unwilling to argue
with the old religion if that is what brought her peace at this
time. He felt the mourning cry rise in his chest.
"Not because I wish you to, but because there is no other
choice you can make."
Before Sivrak could answer, the lamproid's body shivered, then
quietened. He stared down at Dice as one by one her light sensors
drooped, losing focus, losing contact. And then, amid the sounds
of battle light-years removed from the moment that they shared,
Dice blessed him with the Force, willing it to remain with him,
forever.
Sivrak held her body until a walker destroyed the main
generator and the fall-back lines finally fell. Energy beams cut
through the air like falling stars. Sivrak's communicator relayed
a final evacuation alert. The roar of departing transports, now
launching two at a time, was continuous.
But as if he were on a different world, one that knew no war or
conflict, Sivrak arose and moved with a slowness and surety that
set him apart from the chaos around him.
He heard no explosions as he laid Dice upon the snow,
sheltering her in an alcove of the trench. He felt no walker's
footfall as he arranged her fur-trimmed hood around her serene,
unmoving face, and caressed her ringed teeth that were never again
to know the bliss of shredded flesh.
A human Rebel slipped to a near halt in the trench and pulled
on Sivrak's arm to urge him to the evacuation point. But Sivrak's
snarl sent the human on alone.
Then Sivrak stood over his beloved and took his blaster from
his holster. He had he
ard the stories of what the Imperial
biogeneticists did with the bodies of the Rebel dead. How parts
could be cloned and kept alive for unspeakable research, or
Imperial sport. He set the blaster for full immolation.
"May your Force be with you," he said in the most intimate
inflection of the predator's tongue, and his breath swirled into
the frozen air to join with hers.
He would make it to the evacuation point or he would not. There
was no reason to hurry.
Sivrak activated the blaster.
Dice's body shimmered with the disassociative energy of the
beam. She became fiery, incandescent, and somehow, Sivrak thought,
she might have appreciated diat transformation. And then the fire
that consumed her reached out for Sivrak, engulfing him too as-
-a single TIE fighter emerged from the carbon cloud with all
weapons firing blindly. Blinking with surprise, Sivrak felt the
chill of Hoth still pulsing through him as he instinctively
switched from his etheric rudder to full atmospheric controls, and
dodged the killing strands of the TIE fighter's beams until his
rear sights locked and he fired.
The TIE fighter flew apart as Sivrak's beam tore open its skin
and the moon of Endor's atmosphere instantly ripped the Imperial
craft to dust-sized fragments. The hunt was over.
But now the Endor moon filled his canopy. Sivrak, slammed at
the atmospheric controls, fighting to reduce the X-wing's roll.
The navigation display showed his two possible courses. One to
safety. One to the gen-; erator. The rear display showed the Death
Star firing at i will. The X-wing shook as it tore through the
thickening atmosphere. Sivrak's claws dug into the yoke. He was
less than thirty heartbeats from the point of no return. Again, he
had to decide. He couldn't decide. The atmosphere sang to him.
Like music. Like music from-
-the cantina. Sivrak leaned against the wall inside the
doorway, trying to understand what he heard outside on the streets
of Mos Eisley. Fighting. Rioting. Speeders rushing. Detonations
from the direction of the spaceport.
He stumbled down the stairs to the bar, breathless, feeling the
panic of time running out.
It was night. The cantina was deserted. The music was recorded.
Something was wrong.
Sivrak slumped against the bar, feeling it shudder as if it
coursed through atmosphere.
"Jabba is dead," Dice said.
Sivrak looked up from the bar to find the lamproid close beside
him, studying the reflections in her snifter of clarified blood.
"How...?" Sivrak rasped. His question took in everything that
had happened but Dice heard it in only one way.
"Strangled on his sand ship," Dice said. "A human slave girl,
of all things. Used her own chains."
From somewhere outside, there was an explosion, much closer
than the spaceport. The bottles and glasses stacked up behind the
bar rattled.
Dice picked up her snifter. "Mos Eisley is in flames. No one
knows who is in control." She unrolled her drinking tongue into
the blood and ingested.
Sivrak smoothed the fur around his muzzle in agitation. He knew
there was something he had to do, but he couldn't work it out. He
had to discover what was out of place here.
"If Jabba is dead," he began uncertainly, "then Hoth . . . Hoth
has already been evacuated."
Dice put the snifter back on the bar top. "That's right," she
said.
Sivrak felt the fur lift along his spine. "But then," he said,
"you're dead."
Dice slid the tip of her tail across Sivrak's forearm. "Do I
feel dead?" she asked.
The Wolfman closed his claws o ver the tail tip, focusing only
on the magic of her improbable presence. He heard other sounds
now. Shuffling. Voices. Boots grinding sand into the floor. He
looked up at Dice. They were sitting at the table in the corner,
the horned Devaronian nodding to the music behind them. Now the
cantina was full, bustling. As it had been, long ago.
"The golden droid will come in soon," Sivrak said. He wasn't
sure how, but he was beginning to understand what was happening,
the choice he must make. "And then the golden droid will leave
again."
Dice's light sensors Were unfathomable, as deep as a gravity
well. "And what of you, this time?" she asked, as if she had read
his mind. "Will you choose to leave as well?"
"The Force," Sivrak said with wonder as understanding finally
welled within him. "The Force is with me, isn't it?"
Dice smiled, an irksome habit in those who knew the Force so
well. "The Force is within everything," she said.
"But here and now, in this cantina" - Sivrak's voice rose as
all that had happened, all that would happen, all that might
happen, converged on him at once - "in the trenches of Hoth, or
falling toward some nameless moon of Endor - the Force binds it
all."
His pulse hammered, his lungs strained for air. A flicker of
light by the entrance showed that someone had entered the cantina.
The Devaronian glanced over to see who it was.
"Of course," Dice said, as if she had heard every word he had
spoken uncounted lifetimes ago.
The farm boy appeared on the stairs as the old man hurried
ahead. The Artoo unit and the golden droid followed behind.
"This time, when the golden droid leaves, I can leave too,
can't I?" Sivrak asked.
"That choice was yours when we first met," Dice said. "Nothing
has changed."
Sivrak felt the worldlines converge, then pull apart, not on
this one place and time, but on this one feeling, this one
experience that transcended all else.
He now knew that through some trick of the Force, he could
follow the golden droid back onto the streets of Mos Eisley, and
all would be as it had been before he had met Dice Ibegon.
The same choice but a second chance.
In love, Dice had given him this way out.
"Hey," the bartender growled from behind the bar. "We don't
serve their kind here."
Sivrak watched intently. The farm boy talked with his droids.
Only heartbeats remained. The time between one decision and
another. One direction or the other.
"I don't want to leave you," Sivrak said to Dice.
"Knowing all that you know?" she asked. "Knowing with certainty
what lies ahead?"
Sivrak didn't answer. He simply reached out to her, to gather
her coils close around him for one timeless moment that would
last, had lasted, forever.
The golden droid left the cantina. The music played. Sivrak
waited for the hum of the old man's lightsaber to drown out all
other noise.
"Sometimes choice is an illusion," Sivrak said, at last knowing
that all choices were the same choice, and had been from the
instant he had set foot into this cantina and seen Dice Ibegon,
waiting as she had always waited to join him.
He forced his eyes shut, knowing all that would happen. The old
&n
bsp; man reached into his cloak and pulled out his antique lightsaber.
The glow of its beam sparkled from the glasses on the bar. The
Aqualish pirate screamed. The cantina shuddered-
-under the withering assault of the Endor moon's atmosphere.
Sivrak bayed at that moon as he lifted the nose of the X-wing
to make it skip through the turbulence, riding his own sonic
compression wave, shedding just enough speed to bring his velocity
below the X-wing's critical stress load. This time he reached the
point of no return and knew at once he had always lived his life
precisely at this moment. The enormity of now. His movements were
instinctual, no thought required, no decision possible. He pulled
on the control yoke to bring his course around to intersect with
the ground generator's coordinates.
His X-wing screamed through the atmosphere, the forward
deflector shields blazing red like a dying star. His tactical
display remained silent - no Imperial ground defenses tracked him.
Standard defenses were unbreachable, but perhaps, with the space
battle in progress above, these weren't standard times.
The navigation display confirmed his trajectory. Over-the-
horizon scanners locked him onto the generator's transmission
antenna. The X-wing bucked like a crazed tauntaun. Everything
Sivrak saw blurred before him, blending in with the cacophony of
his communicator a burst of static, then Ackbar's exultant voice
- "The shield is down! Commence attack on the Death Star's main
reactor!"
The moon's forest streaked below Sivrak's X-wing as he saw a
plume of smoke and fire rush for him, the remains of the
transmission antenna already destroyed. Solo's strike team had
succeeded after all.
General Calrissian's voice broke up with static. "We're on our
way!" Raw cheering voices. Human and Bothan. Mon Calamari and
Bith. Even a droid who announced it had always wanted to do this.
It was the frenzy of a successful hunt, Sivrak knew, even as he
understood that no power in the universe could stay the streaking
course of his fighter, because it had already been set by the
strongest power.
The flaming ruins of the Imperial base came at him with the
speed of destiny. Calmly, Sivrak took his claws from the controls
-
-and walked the forest of Endor's moon.
It was night. The breeze was cool. His nostrils were aflame
Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina Page 42
