• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“But here and now, in this cantina”—Sivrak’s voice rose as all that had happened, all that would happen, all that might happen, converged on him at once—“in the trenches of Hoth, or falling toward some nameless moon of Endor—the Force binds it all.”

His pulse hammered, his lungs strained for air. A flicker of light by the entrance showed that someone had entered the cantina. The Devaronian glanced over to see who it was.

“Of course,” Dice said, as if she had heard every word he had spoken uncounted lifetimes ago.

The farm boy appeared on the stairs as the old man hurried ahead. The Artoo unit and the golden droid followed behind.

“This time, when the golden droid leaves, I can leave too, can’t I?” Sivrak asked.

“That choice was yours when we first met,” Dice said. “Nothing has changed.”

Sivrak felt the worldlines converge, then pull apart, not on this one place and time, but on this one feeling, this one experience that transcended all else.

He now knew that through some trick of the Force, he could follow the golden droid back onto the streets of Mos Eisley, and all would be as it had been before he had met Dice Ibegon.

The same choice but a second chance.

In love, Dice had given him this way out.

“Hey,” the bartender growled from behind the bar. “We don’t serve their kind here.”

Sivrak watched intently. The farm boy talked with his droids. Only heartbeats remained. The time between one decision and another. One direction or the other.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Sivrak said to Dice.

“Knowing all that you know?” she asked. “Knowing with certainty what lies ahead?”

Sivrak didn’t answer. He simply reached out to her, to gather her coils close around him for one timeless moment that would last, had lasted, forever.

The golden droid left the cantina. The music played. Sivrak waited for the hum of the old man’s lightsaber to drown out all other noise.

“Sometimes choice is an illusion,” Sivrak said, at last knowing that all choices were the same choice, and had been from the instant he had set foot into this cantina and seen Dice Ibegon, waiting as she had always waited to join him.

He forced his eyes shut, knowing all that would happen. The old man reached into his cloak and pulled out his antique lightsaber. The glow of its beam sparkled from the glasses on the bar. The Aqualish pirate screamed. The cantina shuddered—

—under the withering assault of the Endor moon’s atmosphere.

Sivrak bayed at that moon as he lifted the nose of the X-wing to make it skip through the turbulence, riding his own sonic compression wave, shedding just enough speed to bring his velocity below the X-wing’s critical stress load. This time he reached the point of no return and knew at once he had always lived his life precisely at this moment. The enormity of now. His movements were instinctual, no thought required, no decision possible. He pulled on the control yoke to bring his course around to intersect with the ground generator’s coordinates.

His X-wing screamed through the atmosphere, the forward deflector shields blazing red like a dying star. His tactical display remained silent—no Imperial ground defenses tracked him. Standard defenses were unbreachable, but perhaps, with the space battle in progress above, these weren’t standard times.

The navigation display confirmed his trajectory. Over-the-horizon scanners locked him onto the generator’s transmission antenna. The X-wing bucked like a crazed tauntaun. Everything Sivrak saw blurred before him, blending in with the cacophony of his communicator: a burst of static, then Ackbar’s exultant voice—“The shield is down! Commence attack on the Death Star’s main reactor!”

The moon’s forest streaked below Sivrak’s X-wing as he saw a plume of smoke and fire rush for him, the remains of the transmission antenna already destroyed. Solo’s strike team had succeeded after all.

General Calrissian’s voice broke up with static. “We’re on our way!” Raw cheering voices. Human and Bothan. Mon Calamari and Bith. Even a droid