Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [12]
For the adult Rodians it was not a happy time—they deeply missed the lush green world they had left behind. But for Greedo and Pqweeduk, a whole universe of excitement began to reveal itself.
Four years later Greedo’s people were still on Nar Shaddaa, working and surviving. Greedo was nineteen, his brother was sixteen. The green youths had merged with the boundless spectacle of the Galaxy.
4. Bounty Hunters
“Jacta nin chee yja, Greedo!”
Greedo leaped back as three repulsor bikes whipped past, jumped a broken retaining wall, and disappeared into one of the crowded concourses that had been declared off-limits by Uncle Nok.
He watched his brother and friends swerve their bikes among the landspeeders, antique wheeled cabs, Hutt floaters, skillfully dodging the strolling gamblers, alien pirates, spice traders, street hawkers, ragtag homeless … and bounty hunters.
“Grow up, Pqweeduk!” Greedo slouched against a wall, waiting for his friend Anky Fremp, a Siona Skup biomorph who had taught him the secrets of the street.
Greedo, on the edge of adulthood, had left the games of childhood behind. He’d traded his repulsor bike for a fine pair of boots. He had stolen a precious rancor-skin jacket. He had learned how to strip therm pumps and shield regulators off Hutt floaters while the local crimelords were lounging in the Corellian bathhouses, making deals with their interstellar counterparts.
Anky Fremp had shown Greedo the ins and outs of the black market—who paid the most for stolen hardware … and who had the best price on glitterstim, skin jackets, and Yerk music cubes.
Fremp and Greedo were a team, and had been a team for two years. Pqweeduk was still a dumb kid, playing mindless street games with his pals.
“Ska chusko, Pqweeduk!” Grow up, Pqweeduk!
While he waited for Fremp, Greedo watched the street. Every kind of life, human and alien, passed through Nar Shaddaa. Maybe half were legitimate traders and freight haulers, working for one or another of the great transgalactic corporations. The rest were operating somewhere beyond the outer edges of the law.
One group that fascinated Greedo didn’t seem to be chasing gold and excitement, and you almost never saw them on the street. They were the so-called Rebels—political outsiders who had taken a stand against the despotic rule of Emperor Palpatine and his cruel military dictator, Darth Vader.
There were Rebels on this spaceport moon—Greedo knew. They hid out in an old warehouse on Level 88, the same level where the Rodian refugees lived. The Rebels were stashing all kinds of weapons there—weapons that arrived hidden in exotic cargos of precious metals and spice … and left in the darkest hours of the night, on blockade runner ships destined for far-flung outposts among the stars.
I’ll bet the Empire would pay a lot to know what the Rebels are doing on Nar Shaddaa. But how would I give the Imps that information? I don’t know anybody who works for the Empire.
Just then Greedo heard the shrill sting of laser shots and he instinctively ducked, crouching down behind the crumbling retaining wall his brother had repulsorjumped a few minutes before.
Peering carefully over the top of the wall, he saw a man in the distinctive green uniform of an Imperial spice inspector emerge from the shadows and run through the crowded thoroughfare. More laser shots echoed, and the crowd began to rapidly disperse into the surrounding alleys and gambling saloons.
Greedo saw bright bolts of energy smashing off buildings and vehicles. The running man was hit and went down, not three meters from Greedo’s hiding place.
Two imposing figures stepped out of the shadows onto the brightly lit concourse. With deliberate steps they approached the fallen man.
The larger of the two figures, who was dressed in a rusted skull-shaped helmet