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Old Ben Kenobi whipped out an ancient lightsaber. It hummed to life, flashing blue as he slashed off Ponda Baba’s arm, sliced Evazan’s chest. Then he flipped off his lightsaber and cautiously backed away with the young moisture farmer in tow.

Nadon followed Ben Kenobi with his eyes as the music went silent. The bloodshed nauseated Nadon. Old Ben Kenobi took his young friend to the back of the cantina, and together they spoke with the Wookiee smuggler Chewbacca, then retired to a private cubicle with Chewbacca’s partner, Han Solo.

“I think I should be going,” Nadon said to Muftak. “Things are getting hot in here.”

“Please,” Muftak said heavily. “One last drink for old times. I’m buying.”

This was such an unusual offer that Nadon didn’t dare refuse. They ordered another round, and Nadon sat talking for a few more moments with Muftak, said his good-byes. A moment later, Ben and his moisture boy got up from their table at the back of the bar, and a seed of thought sprouted in Nadon’s head. He wondered what business the old mystic from the Jundland Wastes might have in town with smugglers, especially bringing a moisture farmer in tow.

Then he remembered the droids that Ben Kenobi had with him, and Momaw Nadon saw the truth: Ben Kenobi was trying to smuggle the droids off Tatooine.

In that one second, Momaw Nadon’s hearts beat wildly and he saw his salvation. Nadon knew exactly where to look for the droids, and if he told Alima, then the lieutenant would spare his life.

But as old Ben Kenobi passed him, the mystic glanced calmly into Nadon’s eyes, and somehow, Nadon suspected that Kenobi knew what he was thinking. Ben and the moisture boy walked past, yet Ben said nothing to Nadon.

“Did you see the way he looked at you?” Muftak asked. “Like a Tusken Raider staring down a charging bantha. What do you think that was all about?”

“I have no idea,” Nadon said. Yet he looked down at the table, ashamed even to have thought of sacrificing someone else in an effort to escape his own pain.

Nadon fell silent for a moment, glanced around the room. Certainly, if Nadon could figure out what was happening here, others might also. Yet Ben Kenobi was not a regular in town, and few in the cantina would have recognized him. No one followed the old mystic out.

Muftak laid a hairy paw on Nadon’s smooth gray-green arm. “You are afraid, my old friend. Your worries weigh on you. Is there anything that I can do?”

Blaster fire erupted from a cubicle at the back of the cantina, and Han Solo stepped out, holstered his blaster. He puffed out his chest in false bravado, threw a credit chip to Wuher as he left.

Muftak put a hairy paw to his head and scratched.

“I think I had better be leaving, too,” Momaw said. “I don’t want to be here if the Imperials come to investigate.”

Momaw hurried out, looked up at the suns dropping toward the horizon. Time for the torture to begin.

He glanced up in despair, wishing that he were like Han Solo, wishing that he could kill someone who merited death, then walk away calmly. But he couldn’t. Even in his deepest rage, he could not harm another. And so, there was nothing left to do but save what he could.

Momaw Nadon breathed deeply for a moment, then hurried home and began carrying the most valuable of his plant samples and setting them outside the back door in the hope that they would escape the fire.

The streets were nearly deserted, except for a few stormtroopers that watched the house.

When this is done, Nadon promised himself as he worked, I will go home. I will repudiate the elders and their foolish traditions. I will bear the limbs of the burned Bafforr trees in my arms, and I will show the elders my scarred eyes, and then they will see how monstrous the Empire has become, and they will know that we must fight.

Nadon chuckled to himself. Somehow, his spiritual eyes had been sewn open long ago. He’d seen the evil, known he had to fight it. But when Alima came and made the act physical, then Nadon’s scars would bear witness to his