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Too bad Chalmun wasn’t around. His imposing figure usually discouraged these kinds of shenanigans. That Wookiee that had been talking to the old man looked a bit like his employer, only taller and younger. He’d been hanging around before, with that larcenous smuggler Han Solo. The spacer had burbled something yesterday about the Wookiee being his first mate. Dangerous profession, that. Perhaps there were worse things in the universe than being dumped on by Rodians in the Mos Eisley Spaceport Cantina.

Still, it rankled, and Wuher could feel his anger and hatred roiling and coiling like a stepped-on sandsnake.

The next thing he knew, a pair of stormtroopers had come through the doors and immediately stepped to the bar.

“We understand there’s been a ruckus here,” said one in a muffled electronic voice through his white skull-like helmet.

“You bet,” said Wuher. He looked around, saw the backs of the perpetrators at a table at the far end of the establishment. Curiously enough, sitting across from them were none other than Han Solo and his Wookiee first mate. “The old guy and the young guy over there.”

He pointed. The sooner these troopers got out of here, the better. They made him nervous. The place had plenty of trouble enough as it was. Besides, stormtroopers were terrible tippers.

Wuher’s mind dipped back into his musing as he went on automatic pilot, making up barium frizzes and frosty sulphates and even serving the odd shot and a draft. He even poured himself some of his own homebrew ale, to take some of the edge off the mild headache that sulked at the back of his skull. However, during all this he was still haunted by two things that smell that still clung to his nostrils, and that squeaking droid. What was going to happen to it? Why should he care? And what did it say its specialty was?

His musings were suddenly interrupted by a loud blast.

All heads swung toward its origin, the table where Han Solo sat. The jaunty smuggler was rising up and walking toward the bar, sticking his gun back into its holster.

Wuher could not believe what he was leaving behind.

“Sorry about the mess,” Solo said, flipping a two-credit chip toward Wuher. Normally, Wuher would have immediately slapped a palm down onto the coin to prevent its appropriation. However, he was far too stunned by what he saw to think about money.

There, flopped over at the table, was none other than Greedo the Rodian bounty hunter, a shred of smoke rising up from a blasted abdomen.

Greedo, dead as a starship rivet.

A kind of chill satisfaction moved through Wuher, a transection of reality and dream that did not occur often enough. True, creatures got killed in here all the time, and it would have given Wuher far more satisfaction to have actually been behind the trigger of that blaster, seen its power rip through that obnoxious, smelly—

A kind of transcendental realization flashed through the bartender. Thought processes meshed thunderously in his head, and it was as though the heavens had opened and the light of Cosmic Wisdom poured down upon him.

That droid … that odd, frightened droid …

He had to get it out of harm’s way. He had to save it!

“Nackhar!” he called.

The little creature scuttled up. “Did you see that, sir? I say that Chalmun should take all guns at the door. I say—”

“Are you going to be the one to do the body searches, Nackhar?”

The assistant bartender was stunned speechless at the notion.

“Take over for me. There’s an urgent task I must attend to. I shall be back soon. In the meantime, do not allow the body of the Rodian to be moved a centimeter. Don’t let those Jawas trying to bag it take it out of here. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Of course—but if the police—”

“They can examine it all they want to, and there’s no question about who did it. However, claim it in the name of Chalmun. It’s officially our property now.”

“But why can’t you—where are you going?”

“I am embarking on a mission of mercy!”

Thus saying, Wuher left.

The droid was not amongst the refuse cans.

Alarm filled Wuher.