Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [130]
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. None 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