Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina Read online

  MEET SOME OF THE EXOTIC CLIENTELE

  OF THE GALAXY’S HOTTEST SALOON …

  Feltipern Trevagg, a ruthless Gotal who’s on a hunt for a beautiful alien he’d love to bed and a legendary Jedi Knight he’d gladly kill.

  Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes, Jabba’s full-time musicians who’ll dare to break their exclusive contract for one dazzling gig …

  Muftak, a daring spy who plots the biggest heist of his life—the plunder of a hundred worlds—but risks a one-way trip to the Great Pit of Carkoon.

  Wuher the Bartender, a surly human who dreams of pleasing Tatooine’s most evil crime lord by concocting the perfect brew …

  Momaw Nadon, an exiled Ithorian priest who plots to destroy a vicious Imperial lieutenant—even if he must break his most sacred vows to do it.

  Kardue’sai’Malloc, the flesh-shredding Devish who dares to trick none other than Jabba the Hutt … for the sake of a song.

  Davin Felth, a raw recruit in the Emperor’s armed forces who is thrust into a situation never covered in basic training …

  Dannik Jerriko, an assassin who takes pleasure in his job … one victim at a time.

  THEY’RE LOOKING FOR VICE AND SPICE AND

  ENTERTAINMENT …

  THEY’LL BE LUCKY TO GET OUT ALIVE

  Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina

  A Bantam Spectra Book / August 1995

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of

  Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  ®, TM, © 1995 by Lucasfilm Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Used under authorization.

  Cover art by Stephen Youll.

  Cover art copyright © 1995 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  Interior illustrations by Michael Manley, Aaron McClellan, and

  Al Williamson. Courtesy of West End Games. Copyright © 1995

  Lucasfilm Ltd.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from

  the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-79619-6

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1_r2

  TO BILL SMITH

  of West End Games

  who has been a wealth of information and ideas,

  providing the character backgrounds and starting points

  for many of these stories.

  Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.

  —OBI-WAN KENOBI

  I’m ready for anything.

  —LUKE SKYWALKER

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  We Don’t Do Weddings: The Band’s Tale

  Kathy Tyers

  A Hunter’s Fate: Greedo’s Tale

  Tom Veitch and Martha Veitch

  Hammertong: The Tale of the “Tonnika Sisters”

  Timothy Zahn

  Play It Again, Figrin D’an:

  The Tale of Muftak and Kabe

  A. C. Crispin

  The Sand Tender: The Hammerhead’s Tale

  Dave Wolverton

  Be Still My Heart: The Bartender’s Tale

  David Bischoff

  Nightlily: The Lovers’ Tale

  Barbara Hambly

  Empire Blues: The Devaronian’s Tale

  Daniel Keys Moran

  Swap Meet: The Jawa’s Tale

  Kevin J. Anderson

  Trade Wins: The Ranat’s Tale

  Rebecca Moesta

  When the Desert Wind Turns:

  The Stormtrooper’s Tale

  Doug Beason

  Soup’s On: The Pipe Smoker’s Tale

  Jennifer Roberson

  At the Crossroads: The Spacer’s Tale

  Jerry Oltion

  Doctor Death: The Tale of Dr. Evazan

  and Ponda Baba

  Kenneth C. Flint

  Drawing the Maps of Peace:

  The Moisture Farmer’s Tale

  M. Shayne Bell

  One Last Night in the Mos Eisley Cantina:

  The Tale of the Wolfman and the Lamproid

  Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

  Contributor Biographies

  About the Author

  Also by this Author

  Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

  Excerpt from Star Wars: Death Star

  Introduction to the Old Republic Era

  Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

  Introduction to the Rebellion Era

  Introduction to the New Republic Era

  Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

  Introduction to the Legacy Era

  Star Wars Legends Novels Timeline

  We Don’t Do Weddings:

  The Band’s Tale

  by Kathy Tyers

  Jabba the Hutt’s cavernous, smoky Presence Room stank of spilled intoxicants and sweaty body armor. Guards and henchmen, dancers and bounty hunters, humans and Jawas and Weequays and Arcona lay where they’d toppled, crumpled under arches or piled in semiprivate cubicles or sprawled in the open. The inner portcullis yawned open.

  Just another all-nighter at Jabba’s palace.

  That portcullis bothers me—what if we want to leave in a hurry?—but it keeps out the worst of the riffraff.

  Let me rephrase that. The worst of the riffraff, Jabba himself, paid us well. Crime lord, connoisseur, critic; his hairless, blotchy tail twitched in rhythm when we played. Not our rhythm. His.

  We are Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes, members in good standing of the Intergalactic Federation of Musicians, and we are—or were—Jabba’s full-time resident entertainers. I’ve never spotted his ears, but Jabba appreciates a good swing band. He also likes controlling credit and inflicting pain, and he finds either more therapeutic than our music.

  Huddled on the back of the stage, we put away our horns while Jabba’s guests snored. My Fizzz—you symphonic ridgebrows would call it a Dorenian Beshniquel, but this is jizz—slips into a thin case in less time than it takes to roll an Imperial inspector and check his pockets for credit vouchers.

  We are Bith. Our high hairless craniums manifest a superior evolutionary level, and our mouth folds pucker into a splendid embouchure for wind instruments. We perceive sounds as precisely as other species perceive color.

  Our band leader, Figrin Da’n, was wearily swabbing his Kloo Horn (there’s a joke there, but you’d have to speak Bithian to get it). It’s a longer double-reed than my Fizzz, richer in pastel harmonics but not so sweet. Tedn and Ickabel were arguing over their Fanfar cases. Nalan had started disconnecting the horn bells from his Bandfill, and Tech—we look alike to non-Bith, but you might’ve picked out Tech by the glazed gleam in his eyes—sat slumped over his Ommni Box. Plaster chips from a midnight blaster skirmish littered the Ommni’s reception dish. (The Ommni clips our peaks, attenuates the lows, reverbs and amps the total sound. Playing it takes even a Bith’s full genius. Tech hates Figrin. Figrin won the Ommni last season in a sabacc game.)

  “Hey, Doikk.” Figrin’s head glistened. It was going to be a typical Tatooine scorcher, and Jabba’s temp exchanger needed repair.

  I cinc
hed down my Fizzz. My Fizzz. “What?” I had a shot “lip,” as humans call it. I was in no mood for foolishness.

  “Time for a friendly hand of sabacc?”

  “I don’t gamble, Figrin.”

  Figrin brushed the sheen off his head with one knobby hand. “You’re thermal, Doikk.”

  And you’re compulsive. “All musicians are thermal.”

  “You’re thermal for a musician. Who ever heard of a bander that didn’t gamble?”

  I’m the band’s inside outsider, the straight man. I’ve carried that sweet little Fizzz through six systems. I peg it when it cracks and lube it when the keys click. I carve my own reeds. I wasn’t betting it on any sabacc match. Not even to placate Fiery Figrin Da’n, a bandleader who criticizes every missed note, owns everybody (else)’s instruments, and isn’t shy about giving orders.

  “I don’t gamble, Figrin. You know th—”

  A smoky silhouette rolled in through the main arch. “Figrin,” I mouthed, “turn around. Slowly.”

  The droid’s wasp waist, huge shoulders, and squared-off head had scalded my memory shortly after Jabba gave us our exclusive contract: his vintage E522 Assassin. Eefive-tootoo had saved my neck when one of Jabba’s human sail-barge tenders accused me of munching out of Jabba’s private snack tank of live freckled toads. Luckily for me, Eefive-tootoo gave me an alibi. I’d vowed never again to have more to do with humans than necessary.

  But Jabba’d been hot to feed someone to the rancor. Justice would’ve suggested throwing in my human accuser, but Jabba and Justice are not on speaking terms. They dropped Eefive, liberally smeared with meat juice, through the rancor’s trapdoor in front of Jabba’s throne. By the time Jabba’s huge, slavering mutant spat him out, he was beyond repair.

  Or so I’d thought. Was he back for revenge?

  He wore no restraining bolt. Rolling around a blaster-scarred column, he headed toward us. Frantically I looked around. Nobody showed signs of waking up to rescue us.

  The droid raised his upper limbs. Both ended at elbow joints. Somebody’d disengaged his business parts—but that didn’t leave him helpless. Assassin droids carry backup.

  “Figrin Da’n?” he asked in a brassy green treble.

  “What would you do … if you found him?” Figrin sidled closer to me, trying to sound colorless. I’ve never carried a blaster. I wished I had one then, for all the good it would’ve done.

  “Message delivery,” honked the droid. “Do not fear. My assassination programming has been erased, and as you can see, my weapons are gone. My new employer saved me from deconstruction by using me this way.”

  “He doesn’t remember us,” Figrin whispered in Bithian. “His memory’s been erased, too.”

  As I slowed my breathing, my longstanding attitude about assassin droids resurfaced: Never worry about one you can see. He hadn’t fired before we spotted him, so we were safe. And I’ve always gotten along better with droids than with most sentients. Particularly humans.

  But as for stripping Eefive of his weapons, that would be like … like saving my life by cutting off all my fingers.

  “Who’s your new owner?” I asked.

  The droid hissed, shushing me with white noise.

  I dropped my voice. “Who?” I repeated sotto voce.

  The answer came softly. “Mistress Valarian.”

  Oh, ho. Val to her friends, Jabba’s chief rival in the spaceport town of Mos Eisley, a tusk-mouthed Whiphid recently arrived on Tatooine. Gambling, weapons running, information for sale, the usual … but she’d thrived. No wonder she sent a recycled envoy.

  Now that I’d processed the lack of immediate risk, I leaned back against the stage. “What does she want?”

  “She wishes to hire your services for a wedding, to be held in Mos Eisley at her Lucky Despot Hotel.”

  I’d heard of the Lucky Despot. Figrin puckered his lip folds. “We don’t do weddings,” we answered in unison.

  Please understand. A wedding gig wastes two days (three days, with some species, plus the time it takes to learn new music). You’re treated like a recording, told to repeat impossible phrases and lengthen the usual processional, and ordered to play a final chord as the nerve-wracked principals arrive center stage … if they arrive. Someone always brings a screaming neonate. Then the reception, where they inebriate themselves until no one hears a note. All this for half pay and full satisfaction: You’ve helped perpetuate a species.

  Eefive swiveled his flat head toward Figrin. Obviously his recognition circuits still functioned. “Mistress Valarian procured a mate from her home world,” he declared.

  Good thing I wasn’t drinking. I’d’ve choked. The only thing uglier than a Hutt is a Whiphid. I tried to imagine another gargantuan, rank-furred, yellow-tusked Whiphid arriving on Tatooine. Valarian had probably promised luxury accommodations and good hunting. Wait’ll he saw Mos Eisley.

  The droid continued. “This job is for their reception only. Mistress Valarian offers your band three thousand credits. Transport and lodging provided, and unlimited meals and drinks during your stay. Also five breaks during the reception.”

  Three thousand credits? With my share, I could start my own band—live in the finest habitats—

  Figrin hunched forward. “Sabacc tables?” he asked.

  Too late, I recovered from my greed attack. Jabba had given us an exclusive contract. He wouldn’t like our performing for Valarian, and when Jabba frowns, somebody dies. No, Figrin! I thought.

  “Except while performing, certainly,” the droid answered.

  I buzzed my mouth folds for Figrin’s attention, but his sublime vision didn’t deal me in. Figrin set down his deck and commenced negotiating.

  We flew into Mos Eisley during first twilight, with one of the suns dipping behind a dull, murky horizon. Our cramped little transport skimmed through the decaying southern sector, chauffeured by an orange service droid. He, like the former assassin, wore no restraining bolt, which predisposed me to like their owner. Sentient shadows slipped into darkening corners as we drove past. The byword in Mos Eisley, which looks like a cluster of populated sand dunes, is camouflage. If nobody sees you, nobody shoots you. Or testifies against you in what passes for local courts.

  Three stories above one of Mos Eisley’s nameless streets, twin beacons blinked like ship lamps, and brilliant yellow beams glowed out of a wide-open entry hatch. The droid maneuvered us closer. A long curving ramp and straight stairs swooped up from street level to the elevated main entry. Beneath the stairway, I spotted the hotel’s most notable feature: three large portholes.

  A group of investors crazy enough to sink their credits on Tatooine had towed a beat-up cargo hauler here and sunk a quarter of it under the sand. Debris blown in by a recent dust storm lay clumped along its near side, which had been starboard. Antenna-cluster wreckage drooped over what must’ve been the cockpit. I mentally saluted the Lucky Despot with the spacer’s traditional appraisal of somebody else’s ship: What a piece of junk.

  Our speeder settled at the foot of the long ramp. “Disembark here, gentles,” droned the droid.

  We unloaded our gear from the airbus’s cargo compartment onto a repulsor cart. We’d only brought one change of clothes and our performing outfits, and left the rest of our belongings at Jabba’s palace. Mos Eisley’s odors—ship fuels, rancid food, low-tech industrial haze, and the sheer desensitizing smell of hot sand—hung in sullen air.

  Once inside the lobby, we blinked while our eyes adjusted. An orange-suited human security guard slouched at one corner. No sign of Lady Val. Mentally I recategorized her. She might trust droids, but she equated musicians with kitchen help.

  “This way.” Our droid led us past an extremely attractive front-desk person, species unknown to me, whose multifaceted eyes glistened prettily. A long, vast room filled a third of the ex-ship’s top deck. Reflective black bulkheads and a shiny black floor enveloped several dozen sparsely populated tables, but more than one table tottered over damaged legs,
and here and there white strips showed through the peeling black bulkhead. In here—the famous Star Chamber Cafe—we set up and started a number to get the room’s acoustics. Early diners clapped, clicked their claws, or snapped their mandibles. Satisfied, we repacked our gear and grabbed an empty dinner table. Within minutes, the show began. A comet whizzed past Figrin’s head. Constellations appeared beneath the ceiling and reflected in my soup.

  Holographic sabacc spreads flickered into existence over several tables. Now I remembered the rest of what I’d heard: Jabba had made sure the Despot never got her gambling license from local Imperial bribemeisters, so Valarian had to hide her gaming equipment until dark. Reportedly Jabba warned Lady Val of planned police raids … for a price.

  Figrin ate rapidly, pulled out his deck, and wandered away. Tonight he would lose. On purpose. My other comrades joined a low-stakes Schickele match.

  I found a bored-looking Kubaz security guard and struck up a conversation. Kubaz make excellent security staff. Their long prehensile noses discern scents the way Bith distinguish pitch and timbre, and a Kubaz’s greenish-black skin blends into every shadow. In exchange for my personal stats, which he probably knew anyway, and a mug of mildly intoxicating lum, I found out that the green-caped Kubaz’s name was Thwim, that he was born on Kubindi, and that Mistress Valarian’s prospective bridegroom, D’Wopp, was an expert hunter—common enough profession on their homeworld.

  I also spotted a familiar triangular face. Not friendly, but familiar. Kodu Terrafin pilots Jabba’s courier run between palace and town house. He’s Arcona: Dressed in a spacer’s coverall, he looks like a dirt-brown snake with clawed legs and arms and a large, anvil-shaped head.

  I kept up my conversation with Thwim as Kodu minced from table to table, swiveling the anvil head. I watched sidelong. Abruptly I spotted the yellow-green glitter of his eyes.

  Immediately he slithered in my direction. He’s got me mixed up with another Bith, I thought wearily. Thwim pushed back, lifting one edge of his cape, and made room for Kodu.

  “Figrin, ihss it?” The bulbous scent organ between Kodu’s faceted eyes twitched.