Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [155]
Sivrak punched the controls of his X-wing fighter even as Admiral Ackbar gave the order for evasive maneuvers. But that would buy only a few moments of life. The Imperial fleet already advanced from Sector 47—Star Destroyers, Cruisers, waves of TIE fighters—and Sivrak knew it was a trap. It had always been a trap.
The fur rose on his face and his fangs flashed in the reflexive grimace of attack. In the common tongue of the Alliance, Sivrak was a Shistavanen Wolfman, and he faced his death with all the primal rage that evolution and unknown genetic engineers had encoded in his cells.
The TIE fighters surged ahead of their fleet, as if the Star Destroyers were not needed in this final battle. Already space blossomed with deadly flowers of exploding spacecraft. Sivrak heard his orders through the static of Imperial interference and the cries of the dying: Protect the fleet no matter what the risk.
Sivrak howled at the challenge. He had nothing more to risk. All that had given his life meaning was now ash scattered across the icy wastes of Hoth.
His lips glistened with anticipation of the hunt as he switched his weapons to manual and wrenched his craft onto a collision course with a trio of TIE fighters. Over his helmet communicator, he heard the medical frigate was under attack. But it was too late to alter his trajectory. His course was as set now as it had been the day he had first met her.
Endor’s moon spiraled before Sivrak. The three TIE fighters converged as they changed course to meet him. His weapons carved space like blazing gouts of blood released by the stab of his fangs. The Imperial ships fired back, closing faster than even a perfect hunter’s eye could track.
But Sivrak throttled forward, faster still, and his fighter’s engines shrieked behind him. His full-throated voice joined theirs as he shouted out her name as his battle cry. The all-encompassing roar swept to a thundering crescendo as charged particles from the Imperial fighters resonated against his own fighter’s canopy. Space distorted, wrapping him in red destruction. He embraced the end of his existence, the begin-rung of nothingness. Yet somewhere inside that senseless maelstrom, Sivrak heard faint strains of music. Music he had heard before. Long ago. The day he had first—
—walked into the Mos Eisley Cantina, boots heavy with the dust of Tatooine, burning with the heat of streets scorched by two blazing suns. He wiped a paw against his mouth, feeling the scrape of grit and sand against his fangs, letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light.
For a moment, he experienced a slight wave of vertigo, as if his body had not expected to be back in a natural gravity well so soon after … after … he couldn’t remember what. He closed his eyes and a green world spun before him. Something about a deflector shield. Something about a … Death Star? He shook his head to dispel his confusion, then walked down the stairs by the droid detector, heading for the bar.
Without prompting, the bartender served Sivrak his regular order—a mug of crushed Gilden, organ tendrils still writhing, attesting to their freshness. Sivrak lapped at it, trying to remember how this drink could be his regular when he had never been in this cantina before. He was a rim scout, or had been, until the Empire had closed off the Outer Rim Territories to new exploration. Now he was just another displaced being, on the run from the Empire and all political entanglements. And Mos Eisley had too many Imperial stormtroopers for his liking. He knew he’d leave as soon as he had the necessary credits. He … moved to the side an instant before a Jawa scuttled past him, rushing up the stairs for the door.
Sivrak felt a shock of recognition. He had expected the Jawa to run past him. He had known what the Jawa would do. Exactly what the Jawa had done that first time he had stepped in here and met …
Sivrak stared past the bar, into the gloom on the side of the cantina opposite the band.
And he saw her again. Just as he had seen her that first time.
He stood by her table, savoring