He smoothed his hand across the dashboard and whispered lovingly, “Come on, I just gave you a new turbine engine.”
Jules rode between the rocky pillars surrounded by dark green shrubbery, careful to avoid Kat’s farmland in case Belen spotted him and asked him too many questions later. On the way, there was an outcropping of abandoned homes. Though it had been about twelve years since the fires, traces of bitter smoke from scorched debris clung to the area. He shook off the memories of that day and sped up.
As he approached Black Spire Outpost, Jules’s mood improved. Long gone were his aches and the doubt that crept into his mind at the thought of what might lie ahead. It was a good thing that someone like Dok-Ondar found him dependable. Around the Outpost, Dok’s word was worth its weight in the rare golden lichen that grew on the spires.
He sped through the still-empty roads. The Market was just waking, with vendors setting up stalls and unloading crates. Stragglers, probably from Oga’s Cantina, were stumbling down the alley, singing in a language Jules had tried to learn but could never get his tongue to cooperate with.
When he got to Merchant Row, he parked next to Tap’s speeder bike. Jules unwrapped the scarf around his neck and tasted a faint trace of dust on his tongue from the ride. Dok-Ondar’s Den of Antiquities was still covered in shadow. The strange statues leaning against the side of the building had bothered Jules ever since he was a little kid. He couldn’t quite put a finger on why until Dok let it slip that one was a grave marker, though he wouldn’t say whose. A tarp that had been tied over a stack of crates nearly two meters high had come undone, and it flapped in the morning breeze. As Jules tied it back down, an eerie chill seeped into his bones.
He realized why when the morning patrol of stormtroopers turned a corner, and he quickly let himself into the shop. It was brighter than usual inside, which meant Dok wasn’t around. He’d never understood how Dok could work in the dark, but maybe the Ithorian had excellent vision.
Jules heard a muffled groan as he entered, but when he listened close, he was sure he’d imagined it. Dok’s had a way of playing tricks on your mind. The first time Jules had snuck out of his house and spent the day at the Outpost by himself, he’d gone into Dok’s shop. For a child, it was like a cavern filled with treasure and wondrous things from every reach of the galaxy. Everything from metal reliquaries to the supposed bones of Jedi to crown jewels of destroyed worlds to a dianoga in a tank. But the thing that had sent Jules running was the taxidermic wampa. Back then he’d been positive the beast was alive. Even as an adult setting off into the world, he could have sworn the creature’s eyes followed him as he strode farther into the shop.
Jules found Tap at a corner desk, unloading trinkets from a small box for sorting.
“Where’s the boss?” Jules asked.
Tap shrugged and didn’t look up from his task. He pulled out an old metal tube with the head of a Zillo Beast on either end. “He was here when I went to get you. Must’ve stepped out, but he left you a list of things to do.” Tap lifted his chin to a piece of paper—Dok still used paper, of all things—with a list of errands.
“Me?” Jules asked. He snatched the paper. “Don’t you mean us?”
“The way I see it, Jules, someone has got to stay here and watch the shop until Dok gets back.”
Jules sounded his frustration but wasn’t going to argue with a kid. He leaned against the wall of the raised mezzanine. There was something strange about not seeing the Ithorian behind that railing, long fingers tugging at the long wisps of his white beard. As he scanned the list in Dok’s barely legible scrawl, Jules knew he could get all this done and be free in time for lunch at Ronto Roasters. Clean out storage vault, payment for Hondo, payment from Oga, find a fancy glass container for Bubo’s milk stand display, sort and log new acquisitions. Since Tap had picked the very last, and easiest, thing on the list, and since everyone else seemed to have vanished, Jules thought this favor might get him on the old man’s good side. Dok wasn’t a bad boss, but he wasn’t the kind anyone wanted to cross.
Tap had already prepped the carton of glass and the case of spira for Hondo. Jules was about to haul the goods to his speeder, but he doubled back before reaching the door. “I need something to carry Oga’s payment. Last time I almost got jumped by some Snivvian pirates.”
“Check behind the sarlacc tank,” Tap said. He was still toying with the metal tube. “Hey, Jules, what do you reckon this is?”
“It’s a fingernail cleaner,” Jules said, trying his best to keep a straight face. He was positive Dok kept that finger trap as a prank for his assistants. Who knew the ancient Ithorian had a sense of humor?
Jules sorted through a bin of standard-issue military uniforms from the Republic days and a pair of macrobinoculars with one lens missing. He wished he understood the way Dok’s mind worked when it came to storing stuff, but Jules didn’t see that happening in his lifetime. At the bottom of the bin was a large leather backpack that looked like it had spent time in a war zone. Jules wouldn’t have been surprised if it had, though he hoped the dark stains were oil and not blood. He packed the spira and slung his arms into the straps.
“Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone,” Jules said as he rushed to the front door.
“I won’t have to try too hard,” Tap said, then gasped when he realized his fingers were stuck in the metal trap. “Hey, Jules! Wait, come back!”
Jules’s mother had always warned that every deed carried out was returned in kind. So he shouldn’t have been surprised when he swung the door open to find a green-eyed girl at the threshold and her fist collided with his face.
Izzy managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before she was jolted awake by restless nerves and dreams in which faces from long before coalesced with the previous night’s music.
She sat up and got the Meridian prepped. As a little girl she’d trailed behind her parents making sure everything was in place and cargo was secure. The ship’s exterior needed light maintenance she’d neglected during their days on Actlyon. During that time, she’d been working on Ana Tolla’s ship instead of the Meridian. The memory made her grimace as she took inventory. She had enough fuel to get to Batuu, nutrient rations, and a bag of chocolate-covered caf beans she’d splurged on for the occasion of her eighteenth birthday. She didn’t have the appetite for them yet.
Izzy fired up the thrusters and took off, sparing a single glance at the empty seat beside her. When she was a little girl, she would strap in behind the copilot seat, where her father had left the imprint of his strong body in the leather. Right before they leapt to hyperspace, her father would pause to look at her mother—every single time. Izzy knew what adoration looked like because she’d seen it often on his face. When she missed her family most, she thought of those moments. Times like this, when she felt like she was starting all over again, Izzy wondered what her mother would say to her. Correct her shooting stance. Admonish the company she kept. Then she realized: Nothing. She’d say nothing.
All she could do now was put everything her parents had ever taught her to good use and keep going.
Izzy soared out of Actlyon’s polluted atmosphere and into the darkness of space. She relished the first seconds of that transition during every flight. She wasn’t sure what about it captured her awe—the endless stars blinking in front of her, the promise of new worlds she’d yet to explore, the solitude of space that could never quite be simulated. Or perhaps it was the ability to look at a world from above and then put it behind her as she moved on to the next place. For a girl without a planet to call home anymore, a ship flying through space was as close as she was going to get. Wasn’t that what she wanted? The freedom of being untethered.
It took her longer than usual to set a course for Batuu, then punch the hyperdrive. Pinpricks of stars gave way to the marbled blue of a hyperspace lane. Fortunately, Actlyon was close enough to Batuu that she didn’t need to take more than one route and she would save herself a refuel.
&n
bsp; Izzy feared being alone with her thoughts. The night before, she’d broadcast a stream of news and music to have something to lull her to sleep. Out there all she could do was wait, clean her blaster, and retrace her entire relationship with Damar. His abandonment bruised her. What could she have done differently? Be a different person? More like Ana Tolla? She didn’t want that. The rational part of her mind told her it was for the best. But the rest of her was indignant. Angry. So much so that if she cleaned her blaster any harder, she’d wear off the grooves on the handle. Izzy knew she deserved better. She had a job and a destination, and that was a start.
When her dashboard beeped hours later, signaling she’d arrived, Izzy buckled in and braced herself to come out of lightspeed. When the stretch of stars faded out of view and took the shape of a planet, her first thought was that it looked like so many other worlds—an expanse of green cut by patches of brown and some blue, swirling storms gathering at the poles. She was born on the Meridian, while her parents were in the middle of their travels, and Batuu just happened to be the nearest planet. “One rock is as good as the next,” her mom used to say. But as the Meridian broke through the coverage of clouds, Izzy took in the jutting rock spurs of petrified trees and jagged cliffs that made Black Spire Outpost so unique. Home, a part of her thought. Another part contradicted her. Home is where this ship is.
Thirteen years before, her parents had picked up in the middle of the night and left Batuu without so much as a word to their neighbors or coworkers on the vegetable farm where she’d believed both her parents were employed. Soon Izzy discovered her mother had never been a farmer, only her father. Her parents were not the best at explaining things, like why they moved so often or why her mother always needed to scan a room before she entered it, and Izzy had learned quickly not to ask questions her mother would never answer.
She scoured the sprawling land beyond the Outpost and couldn’t even remember where their house had once been. Could it have been in the cluster of settlements to the north? The grasslands? Faced with her return to Batuu, Izzy felt bothered that some of the best memories of her life had grown blurry after so many years. That planet on the edge of Wild Space was where the Garsea family had settled down for the longest uninterrupted stretch of their lives together. Her parents might have found it easy to abandon, but Izzy had left a part of herself on those cliffs on the horizon, and she had the scars to prove it. Her time there belonged to a different girl in a different era.
Izzy made for the Outpost and set the Meridian down at a filling station. Clouds of dust obstructed her view of the landing pad. The ship made a strange sound, like metal warping.
“That can’t be good,” she muttered, and powered down.
As the suns rose, a bronze light illuminated the rock spires surrounding the domed station. She realized she hadn’t been honest with herself moments before. There were some memories from Batuu that were clear. One person. She reached into her blouse and pulled out the smooth black stone ring flecked with bits of gold. It only fit her pinky finger, so she kept it strung on a leather cord. The boy who’d given it to her as a token of friendship had been her only friend on the planet—perhaps her only real friend ever. It was difficult to build lasting relationships when her family wasn’t in any one place for more than a couple of days, and on the off chance that they lived somewhere for as long as six months…Well, Izzy remembered how hard she’d cried when they left Batuu. As the years went by, she figured out that it was easier to leave a place when there was no one there who might miss you.
For a while, she’d had Damar. As she slipped the ring back under her shirt, she wondered if she had put up with him for so long because she truly cared for him or because she had gotten tired of being alone.
Izzy had always been used to noise—her parents laughing; cantinas; markets; her aging, beautiful ship; even Damar running through the list of things that could go wrong with a job, or his constant commentary about the state of the galaxy, which was usually uninformed. Was she really so terrified of silence that she couldn’t be alone for a few hours? She should know better.
“You have to learn to love your own company. That way you’re never alone,” her mother had once told her. Like so much of Ixel Garsea’s advice, it came as part command and part truth, and with zero explanation.
If her mother could see her, Ixel would set those crystalline green eyes on Izzy and drip disappointment with the barest frown.
Izzy shook her head. She needed to focus. The job was easy and paid well. Pall Gopal had been the lucky break she’d been searching for, even if his words had bruised her ego. All she had to do was deliver the mysterious parcel to the legendary Ithorian, Dok-Ondar. She’d caught a glimpse of him once on the rare occasion her father took her to the Outpost. After that she was free to do whatever she pleased. The Meridian needed work and fuel. For the first time in months she wouldn’t have to scrape the credits together. If she remembered correctly, Batuu was known for its copious market stalls, offering all kinds of wonders from around the galaxy. Maybe she’d even shop for her birthday. Her boots were beginning to fray and thin out at the soles. The next day, she’d be somewhere else. It had been a while since she’d been to the other side of the galaxy. Maybe she’d travel to Canto Bight to search for new job prospects or visit one of its spas.
Things were looking up for Izal Garsea, and her mood brightened. She made sure her heavy black boots were tightly laced, double knotting them and tucking in the ends. The package the Rodian had given her was safely in the cargo hold. When he’d brought the medium-size briefcase to the Meridian, it had made her nervous enough that she’d hidden it beneath a panel in the floor. She dug her finger under the divot in the floor and lifted the panel. When she was little, the crawl space had served as a hiding spot. It had been days after they’d left Batuu and she had still been angry with her parents. It was hard to imagine that she was ever small enough to tuck herself in the same space that she used for bottles of stolen wine or the purebred cat of a senator’s wife that Izzy had smuggled out of the couple’s home during a divorce settlement.
Izzy grabbed the briefcase by the handle and hoisted it out. The surface was a smooth silver metal with scuffs and scrapes on it. She traced her thumb over the front, where the square keypad was nestled at the center. Her curiosity piqued, she shook the case, but it did not rattle. Perhaps the contents were locked in place. Perhaps Pall Gopal had simply felt sorry for her because he’d witnessed her humiliation, and was sending her on a personal errand as a former friend of her mother. Though she had to admit that would be extremely elaborate, and in Izzy’s experience, no one anywhere did anyone favors out of sheer kindness.
Damar had left her because she wasn’t cut out for their job. The Rodian had chosen her because no one knew her name. She’d been gone from Batuu long enough that it was probably true. But she’d prove them both wrong.
She snatched a large tattered backpack from the closet and stuffed the briefcase inside. There was no way she could walk around a port city with anything that screamed mug me. This way, she was a tourist buying Batuu’s local and imported offerings.
She shoved in the bag of chocolate-covered caf beans, along with part of the payment Pall Gopal had given her and a nutrient packet. It tasted like watery clay, but she had to be prepared.
She dug in the closet for a leather jacket that didn’t smell like Naboo Cooler. Sometimes wearing her mother’s collection of outerwear made Izzy feel like she was playing dress-up, but she had to admit, the forest green with black stripes down the arms looked good on her. Maybe her mom wouldn’t approve of the sentiment, but sometimes Izzy wanted to feel closer to her. Securing her blaster at her hip, she lowered the boarding ramp.
She could taste the dust in the air still settling from her arrival. The morning chill seeped into her bones despite her jacket.
“First customer of the day!” a sweet high-pitched voice greeted her from the shadow of the filling station.
Izzy step
ped on the hard earth and strode to meet the approaching human woman. She appeared to be in her early twenties, with medium brown skin and black hair tied back in a perfunctory way. As Izzy got closer, she could better see the blue markings on the woman’s smiling face. It was too early for anyone to appear so cheerful, but this woman managed it. She wore a deep-blue tunic belted around the waist, loose brown pants, and heavy boots. On her right hand she wore a fingerless glove.
“Do I win something?” Izzy asked.
“You win the pleasure of my company,” the woman said, and extended her arm to the side. She folded herself in a dramatic bow, and even Izzy couldn’t stop her lips from quirking into a grin. “Bright suns…” The girl hung on the last word.
“Izzy.”
“Bright suns, Izzy. I’m Salju, and I run this here operation. What brings you to our corner of the galaxy?”
Izzy had met people who asked that question expecting to get something out of it, whether information on a shipment or on a possible bounty. Most of the worlds she went to avoided asking at all. But there was something genuine about Salju that made Izzy believe the woman truly wanted to know, not out of malice or greed but out of politeness. Friendliness, even.
Damar had liked weaving elaborate fictions, where it felt more like they were playing than doing a job. Before that she’d kept her lies simple, less to remember and even less of a possibility she’d trip herself up. Her mother liked to say that the best lies flew close to the truth. But now that she’d actually set foot on Batuu, part of her didn’t want to be just another stranger. Not in the one place she’d once called home. It was an irrational, sentimental thing that her mother wouldn’t have understood.
“I used to live here as a girl,” Izzy said, shoving her hands in her jacket pockets. “I remember there was plenty of work to go around.”
Salju glanced at the small ship behind Izzy and made a face that was a cross between curiosity and pity. The ship needed work—more work than Izzy could afford or manage herself until that day.
A Crash of Fate Page 4
