Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [156]
Sivrak had heard of such beings before—Florn lamproids—the sole intelligence born on a world of such dangers it meant instant death to any who set foot on it without hyperaccelerated nerve implants.
“Buy you a drink?” the lamproid hissed seductively. Her inflection of the predator’s tongue was intensely personal, as if they had hunted and shared blood a thousand times.
Sivrak felt the temperature of the cantina increase and he shrugged off his jacket and sat down across from her just as he had the first time.
But this was the first time, wasn’t it? How could two beings meet for the first time except for the first time?
“Lak Sivrak,” she breathed, and Sivrak growled to acknowledge that somehow, incredibly, she knew even his litter name.
“Dice Ibegon,” he replied, disturbed that he knew her name in turn, the moment he spoke it aloud, as if he had always known it.
“You are troubled,” Dice said.
“We’ve met before.” Sivrak had said those words in a hundred other cantinas on a dozen other worlds, but this time he meant them. Though how could he, a perfect hunter, forget having met such a perfect killer?
“Are you certain?” the lamproid asked. She trailed the exquisite tip of her lethal tail through the shimmering translucence of a snifter of clarified bantha blood. The reflective surface of the liquid made Sivrak think of force-field emanations. Wasn’t there something else he should be doing? Someplace else he was supposed to be?
“At the bar, I knew a Jawa was going to bump into me,” he said.
“Jawas often do.”
Sivrak concentrated. A new memory came to him. “A golden droid will enter soon.”
Dice brought a single drop of bantha blood to Sivrak’s muzzle. The liquid trembled on the tip of her tail. “Their kind is not served here,” she said. Her voice was inviting, distracting.
Sivrak drew a single, razor-sharp claw against the cool pink flesh of Dice’s tail tip, transfixed by her light sensors and her scarlet mouth and its endless rings of needle teeth. “The farm boy with the droid will talk to it.”
Dice’s voice dropped in tone, sharing secrets. “And the golden droid will leave.”
Sivrak’s rough-rasped tongue flicked out and captured the teardrop of blood from the lamproid’s tail. His claws tightened around the sweet, boneless flesh, feeling the steel cords of her muscles flex in response.
“Tell me what is happening,” Sivrak said.
“Only that which has happened,” the lamproid answered. A single light sensor shifted to the left. Sivrak glanced in that direction and saw a horned Devaronian sitting against the wall, nodding dreamily in time to the music of the cantina’s band as he watched the main entrance.
Sivrak looked over to the entrance to see what the Devaronian saw—an old man in desert robes, a farm boy, an Artoo unit.
And the golden droid.
The old man hurried ahead to the bar. Without knowing how, Sivrak was aware of what lay hidden beneath the old man’s robes—an antique lightsaber. There was an Aqualish pirate at the bar who would soon be short an arm.
Sivrak released the lamproid’s tail and began to rise from his chair. But Dice’s coils snaked out to bind him tight, keeping him in his place across from her.
“Hey! We don’t serve their kind here!” the bartender shouted.
“Tell me,” Sivrak demanded.
“What you already know?” Dice replied.
The farm boy spoke to the golden droid. The golden droid and the Artoo unit left. The farm boy joined the old man by the bar. Sivrak struggled—not against the lamproid, but against hidden knowledge that was somewhere inside him.
There could be only one answer, yet it made no sense.