Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [83]
“Tell him what?” Balu looked up from jotting on his logpad. He’d never much liked the Gotal, but that kind of death—evisceration with what looked to have been a long, thin knife, skillfully wielded—was something he wouldn’t have wished on anyone.
“About H’nemthe.” When Balu continued to look blank, the bartender added, “The girl he was with. The H’nemthe female.”
“Nightlily?” Balu was startled. The girl had looked too frightened by her surroundings—and too dazzled by Trevagg’s charms—to have harmed a hair of the Gotal’s head.
“Was that her name?” Wuher rolled his eyes. “It figures.”
A small crowd had gathered. Of course, none of the Imperial stormtroopers and none of the Prefect’s guard, either. A murder this small wasn’t worth their time. Balu couldn’t help observing Nackhar in the background slipping the coroner’s deputy a few credits. For what, he decided not to ask.
“The m’iiyoom—the nightlily—is a carnivorous flower that feeds on small rodents and insects that try to drink its nectar,” said the barkeep, hands on hips and looking down at the dark-stained sheet the coroner had laid over what was left of Trevagg. “After mating, H’nemthe females gut the males with those tongues of theirs—they’re as sharp as sword blades, and a lot stronger than they look. Some kind of biological reaction to there being twenty H’nemthe males for every female. The males seem to think it’s worth it, to achieve the act of love. I saw them together in the cantina, but I didn’t think Trevagg was crazy enough to try to bed the girl.”
“He was always bragging about being such a great hunter,” said Balu wonderingly, stepping aside for the coroner’s deputies to carry the body out of the dingy and bloodstained room. “You’d have thought he’d sense it coming.”
“How could he?” The barkeep tucked big hands into his belt, followed the officer back out to the street. “For her it was the act of love, too.”
He shrugged, and quoted an old Ithorian proverb current in some sections of the spaceways: “N’ygyng mth’une vned ‘isobec’ k’chuv ‘ysobek.’ ”
Which, loosely translated, means: “The word for ‘love’ in one language is the word for ‘dinner’ in others.”
Empire Blues:
The Devaronian’s Tale
by Daniel Keys Moran
I don’t suppose it took us five minutes that afternoon to execute the Rebels, start to finish.
The Rebellion on Devaron stood no chance. My home world is sparsely settled even by Devaronians, and is politically unimportant; but it is near the Core. Near the Emperor, may he freeze.
I was Kardue’sai’Malloc, third of the Kardue line to bear that name; a Devish and a captain in the Devaronian Army.
Kardue had served in the Devaronian Army for sixteen generations: through the Clone Wars, back into the days when no one dreamed the old Republic would ever fall. The army lifestyle suited me, and I the army; aside from the stress of dealing with the Imperium, and the detested necessity of placing Devaronian troops under Imperial command during the Rebellion, it was a tolerable life.
Sixteen generations of military service ended the afternoon after we overran the Rebel positions in Montellian Serat. It took me half a year to hang up the armor; but that was the moment.
Montellian Serat is an old city. Well, was; it dated back to the days before my people had star travel. That the Rebels chose to make a stand there was tactically foolish, but not surprising. I spent the night overseeing the shelling of the ancient city walls, and in the first light of morning stopped shelling long enough to offer the Rebels a chance to surrender. They accepted the offer, laid down their arms by the shattered walls at the city’s edge, and came out in single file: man and woman they were seven hundred strong.
I herded them into a hastily constructed holding pen, and mounted guards. I had concern for a rescue attempt; half a day’s march south, another group of Rebels were still fighting.
After they surrendered,