Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [58]
Nadon replayed his first memories of Alima, captain of the Imperial Star Destroyer Conquest. Alima had been a young man with dark hair, a craggy face, and fierce eyes. Nadon had been newly married, High Priest of the Tafanda Bay.
On his native Ithor, Nadon’s people lived in immense floating cities called herdships, which used repulsorlift engines to constantly sweep over the forests and plains, and the Tafanda Bay was the largest and finest of Ithor’s planetary herdships. Inside each herdship, hundreds of biospheres were painstakingly reproduced down to the microscopic flora and fauna of the topsoils. The Ithorians harvested plants from the biospheres of the ships, but particularly on their huge groundships, they also harvested from the abundant forests of Ithor—taking nourishment from fruits and grains, creating medicines from saps and pollens, using plant fibers to create fabrics and ultrastrong porcelains, harvesting minerals and energy from otherwise unusable roots and stems.
The study of plants and their uses was the lifework of most Ithorians, and the greatest of the students became priests who guided others, prohibiting the people from harvesting plants that could think or feel. Only those plants that slept, those that were not self-aware, could be harvested, and then only under a rigid law: For every plant that was destroved in the harvest, two must be planted to replace it. This was the Ithorian Law of Life.
As a High Priest, Nadon had spent decades in the service of life, until Captain Alima came seeking excuses to board the Tafanda Bay, then demanded to know the secrets of Ithorian technology. At first Nadon had refused to reveal his secrets, until Captain Alima trained his Star Destroyer’s blasters on the sentient forests of Cathor Hills. Thousands of the Bafforr died, trees that had been Nadon’s teachers and friends in his youth. Neither the trees nor the Ithorians had the weapons to fight the Empire.
When the forest was destroyed, Captain Alima had turned his weapons on the Tafanda Bay and ordered Nadon to surrender. In a last-ditch effort to save his own people, Nadon had no choice but to relinquish the secrets of Ithorian technology to Alima.
As punishment for revealing the Ithorian agricultural ceremonies, Nadon could still hear the elders’ judgment ringing in his ears, “We banish you from Ithor and from our mother jungles. Go and consider your evil actions in solitude.”
Home. Nadon found himself both envying Muftak and feeling gratitude that perhaps the hairy creature would find joy.
Nadon was interrupted from his reveries by a comlink call on his personal channel.
“Nadon,” Muftak said over audio, “I just sold your name to this Lieutenant Alima. You had better get home to meet him. Be careful, my old friend.”
“Thank you,” Nadon said.
When Momaw Nadon reached Mos Eisley, his house was quiet. With the suns down, many of the townspeople were on the streets, enjoying the cool evening. Out across the Dune Sea, winds raced over the sand, raising clouds of dust. Static discharges in the dust clouds made the night growl with the sound of distant dry thunder.
Nadon unlocked his door, checking the doorjamb for any sign that someone might have forced their way in before him. The air in his house was rich with the smell of water, and dreeka fish chirped among the reeds of the pond in his living room. Everywhere in the dome, creepers climbed the pourstone walls toward the skylights. Small trees shivered under the weight of a breeze produced by fans.
Nadon made his way over a paved trail into one of his many side domes, to a small grove of Bafforr trees that glowed pale blue in the starlight under black leaves. Nadon knelt before them and wrapped his long leathery gray fingers