Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [97]
“Het Nkik!” the Kkak clan member said, clicking the hard consonants and sharpening his name.
He turned and saw the other Jawa reach beneath his table to a private stash of wares. “Are you Het Nkik?” he repeated. “Of Wimateeka’s clan, the one who is always talking about empowering the Jawas, about making us fight? Hrar Kkak salutes you and offers an exchange of wares.”
Het Nkik felt a ribbon of cold inside him like a long drink of rare water. “I am Het Nkik,” he said, letting suspicion curl through his body odor. It was good to let a salesman see healthy skepticism. “The opportunity for exchange is always welcome, and the time for opportunity is always now.”
“I have something for you,” the tradesman said. “Come closer.”
Het Nkik took a step to the table, and now he was honor bound to listen to the sales pitch. The Kkak clansman looked around furtively and then hauled out a blaster rifle, scarred but magnificent. A Blastech DL-44 model, more power than Het Nkik had ever held in his own hands.
He took a step backward in alarm and then forward in fascination. “Jawas are forbidden such weapons,” he said.
“I have heard rumors of such an Imperial decree from Mos Eisley, but I have received no confirmation of it,” the salesman said. “We of the Kkak clan have been wandering the far fringes of the Dune Sea, and sometimes communication of such things takes a long time.”
Het Nkik nodded in admiration of the smooth excuse. “Does it function? Where did you get it?”
“Never mind where I got it.”
Het Nkik felt ashamed for his breach of Jawa protocol. “If I’m going to purchase this …” He removed his pouch of barter credits, knowing instinctively that he had to have the weapon. He wanted it no matter what the consequences—and the salesman knew it, too. “I need to know if it works.”
“Of course it functions.” The salesman popped out the power pack. “You’ll see that the charge is on three-quarters.”
Het Nkik saw that it was a standard power pack of the type that could be used in many sorts of equipment. “Let me try it in that portable illuminator,” he said, “just to make sure.”
Both of them knew Het Nkik could not fire the blaster with all the other Jawas present. The Kkak salesman slipped the power pack into the portable illuminator and switched it on. A bright beam stabbed skyward toward the two suns. “Satisfied?”
Het Nkik nodded. “My resources are meager, though my admiration of your wares is great.”
The two haggled over price for an acceptable amount of time, though the price didn’t change much. Het Nkik hurried away with only a few barter credits left to his name—but the proud owner of a highly illegal blaster hidden under his brown robes. For the first time in his life, he felt tall. Very tall.
He spent the rest of the swap meet looking for his comrade Jek Nkik, but the last sandcrawler never arrived.
After the swap meet disbanded, the sandcrawlers toiled across the Dune Sea in different directions, laden with new treasures each clan had obtained through hard bargaining.
After an hour of relentless jabbering, Het Nkik convinced the pilot to detour along the path Jek Nkik’s vehicle might have taken, to see if they could discover what had befallen the missing Jawas. They headed toward the outlying moisture farms among which his clan mate’s group often traded.
Het Nkik worked in the engine room, coaxing the faltering reactors to function for just a few more months until the storm season when the sandcrawlers would be parked next to Jawa fortresses in the badlands. Wimateeka’s old mechanics would have to give the ion pumps and the reactors a full overhaul. Het Nkik’s companions were much more focused on their tasks now that the swap meet was over.
At about midday, the lookout sounded an alarm. He had seen smoke. Normally the sight of burning wreckage made Jawas ecstatic at the possibility