A Crash of Fate

by Zoraida Cordova

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “The Force does move us together and apart as it needs to,” Nate said.

  After that day, Jules was certain it was true. When he looked at the sky, he saw a cluster of ships taking off, soaring across the sky to the stratosphere. Among them was a ship he’d not soon forget—a triangular freighter called the Meridian.

  “Yeah,” said Jules, waving good-bye to Nate and turning back to Oga’s. “It sure does.”

  She wasn’t used to dressing up, but after cleaning up vermin innards in the hold, Izal Garsea needed a shower. The only clean clothes she had were a simple black dress and a capelet her mother had once bought on Cloud City.

  She walked through the market. Despite the lateness of the hour, there were still stalls open, and vendors who sold street food had customers gathered around small grills. A contortionist on a colorful rug was doing tricks for a horde of children, bending himself into a position that didn’t look physically possible. He looked the way her mind felt.

  What was she going to say to Jules when she saw him? What if he wasn’t even there? What if he didn’t want to talk to her? Once she’d replayed her mother’s message enough times to memorize it, she could only think of one person she wanted to tell about it.

  When she rounded a corner, she saw the obelisk. After her trip from the Outpost to the ruins and back again, she wondered if what she was about to do made her look like a tourist. She hopped up on the circular stone shelf carved with symbols similar to those she’d seen in Oga’s office. Then she reached out and rubbed the obelisk for good luck. She needed it.

  Izzy didn’t stop again until she stood at the door to Oga’s.

  The bouncer out front, a lizard-faced Trandoshan, took one look at her and opened the door. Entering through the front was a much nicer experience than being escorted through the back. It was dim, but far nicer than any cantina she had ever been to. Yes, there was wear and blaster marks on one wall, but the exposed metal around the bar and the colorful lights around the stage and tables gave it a romantic ambiance. No one noticed her as she walked in, but she didn’t expect them to.

  The droid DJ she’d only heard on the radio earlier stopped the music. “Would the owner of an XP-38 speeder move it from the parking lot? You’re going to be towed in ten seconds.”

  A skinny white creature with a long neck shot up from the gambling table and ran out the door.

  That was when she saw him sitting at the bar.

  Jules Rakab had cleaned up. Even in the dark she could see the bruise on his cheekbone, the cut on his lower lip. He was listening to some of the farmers she’d met earlier. She wondered what Oga had done with Damar and the others. She wondered if Ana Tolla would come seeking revenge—if she wasn’t dead. Perhaps that revenge would hurt Jules all over again.

  That old fear of losing people raked its claws across her back, and she turned around. She couldn’t breathe. The smoke was too much. He would reject her. He would—

  “Would Izal Garsea please come to the bar for a celebratory drink?” DJ R-3X said over the mic. Feedback and distortion made everyone cringe. “That’s it! No more special requests for the night.”

  She could feel all eyes on her even before she turned around.

  When she finally did, she told herself to be brave. She’d raced across Batuu to deliver a package to the Resistance. She’d stopped a chemical attack. She’d kissed a boy under three suns and two moons. She’d heard her mother speak again. She’d lived a thousand lives since her parents died, but she had never chosen to stay instead of run.

  As she walked through the throng of bodies, they parted to make her way a little easier. Every step felt like wading across a wide sea. But she would do it because on the other side waited Julen Rakab.

  They stood facing each other.

  “This would be a lot easier without an audience,” she said.

  “Nothing with you is easy, Garsea,” Jules said, the corner of his lip quirking as the giant, hairy bartender slid two drinks in front of them. They glittered with gold specks.

  He handed her one glass and raised the other. Everyone in the bar was turned toward them.

  “To Izal Garsea,” Jules said. His voice was confident and carried across the entire cantina. “Who saved a lot of lives tonight.”

  There was a round of cheers and people chanted her name.

  No one in the galaxy knows your name.

  Except that had never been true. Jules had always known her name. He’d remembered her before she remembered him. He’d trusted her before she trusted him. Oga Garra, knew her name, too. Now Ana Tolla and her crew would never forget it.

  She took in the congratulations and thank-yous. She did not feel deserving of them—not when the galaxy felt so much greater.

  “I saw your ship fly away,” Jules said. “Not moments ago.”

  She relaxed a bit. Both of them leaned on the bar. “I told Salju she could take it for a spin. She added some new thrusters. Plus, don’t tell Volt, but I had a terrible vermin problem and Lucky ate six of them.”

  Jules nearly spit out his drink. They laughed and reached for each other at the same time.

  “I thought you left again,” he said.

  “I was about to.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “A couple of things.” She held the ring between them. “Starting with this. I told you I was going to give this back to you.”

  That had been the moment when everything went wrong. Part of her was holding her breath in case something else crashed in and interrupted their happiness again. But the music flowed, and the noise of conversations grew louder still.

  He leaned closer to her ear. “I never caught you. I guess you’ll have to keep it a little longer.”

  She restrung the necklace. It felt like it was where it belonged. She was where she belonged as long as Jules was with her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean those things—”

  Jules shook his head. He reached for her hand, and their fingers intertwined. “I told you. I know when you’re lying. But you don’t have to protect me.”

  “I want to.” She stared at his face. Had someone broken his nose again? “I even stole a ship for you.”

  He laughed and kissed the inside of her wrist. “That was my ship. Izzy, you stole my ship.”

  She clapped her free hand over her mouth but could not stifle the scream. “No. Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d just bought it when we saw each other again. That’s what I’d been trying to tell you.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  He shrugged. “First I have to wait until it’s fixed. Then, see the galaxy with you if you’ll have me.”

  She ran her fingers through his hair. “Meet me on Eroudac.”

  “Isn’t that where you dropped out of the academy?”

  “It’s also the last place I lived with my parents. It had ancient ruins and a pink moon.”

  “It’s a date,” he said, and drank from his glass.

  “You have a little something on your lips.”

  He touched his chin. “Here?”

  The gold lichen that stained his fingers spread. She chuckled and tapped the corner of her mouth. “You missed it.”

  “Here?” he said, like he enjoyed making a mess of himself. He was covered in gold dust, like a child who’d devoured a bar of melted gold chocolate. “You have to help me, Garsea, because there aren’t any mirrors in this place.”

  She pressed her thumb to the corner of his mouth and then moved in for a kiss. Gold lichen tasted like burnt honey. She leaned into him, the anchor, the tether, the balance she needed. This time it was Jules who broke the kiss. He stared into her eyes, and she had a strange sensation. It was the opposite of vertigo—a steady, unshakable certainty that she couldn’t properly name.

  Another set of drinks slid in front of them. This time they were round fish bowls with a real fish garnish. Volt returned from where
ver he’d been, his cheeks and scalp covered in scratches.

  Neelo and Fawn got onstage and kicked off the lineup of bands with the Frozen Wampas. Jules twirled Izzy in place. She felt limber and free of some of the regret she carried with her. Sometimes heading in the right direction required taking a few steps backward.

  The music played long into the night. Her exhaustion evaporated, replaced by the electric sensation of kissing Jules Rakab until the suns rose again and stalls that had been closed for the night began to reopen. Life in Black Spire Outpost went on as if nothing had changed. It was a place that was rebuilt day in and day out. New strangers, forgotten faces—they all intermingled.

  They said everyone on Batuu was always either looking for a new life or running from one. For that moment, Izal Garsea found a third option. She could come home.

  The girl flew higher and higher out of the spaceport and leveled out over the Surabat River Valley. Swells of green land opened up beneath her ship. For a moment, she took in the rows of jutting spires ahead and the river that cut a path through ancient rock. In the cockpit of the Meridian, she turned to the empty copilot seat. When the boy’s voice crackled over the open comm channel, she flashed a grin he could not see.

  “You’re not stalling again, are you, Izzy?” Jules asked. He flew beside her in his own ship, and she imagined the playful look in his eyes, always daring her.

  She adjusted the comm around her ear and asked, “Why would I be stalling?”

  “Because you don’t want to admit I beat you last time.”

  “Did you ever consider I was being a good teacher?”

  Jules barked a laugh. Sometimes she thought she could listen to him laugh for hours. With the exception of when he won their races. During the weeks it took for his ship to get repaired, Izzy had let him aboard the Meridian and taught him to fly. He’d grown up on simulators and single-pilot vessels, so he needed to get used to piloting a freighter for their pending adventure. The Batuu landscape provided the perfect obstacle course of rock columns and wide plains.

  “On your go, Garsea,” he said. “If you can keep up.”

  She couldn’t keep herself from rising up to meet any dare or challenge he put in her way, even one that kept her in a place she’d never thought she would see again. She hadn’t regretted a moment of it.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m trying to pick out my celebratory drink.”

  They took off in a blur, weaving through the gaps between giant black spires and diving along the jagged rock that flanked the river gorge. Her heart leapt as a hunk of stone cracked off and dinged the left wing of his ship.

  “Blast!” he shouted, sounding hurt.

  “Jules?”

  “I will never not be repairing this ship!”

  “Bad luck, Rakab,” she said, and punched up the speed, imagining the Meridian as one of the needles Belen used so precisely in her sewing. She slid between two narrow columns and held her breath, hoping he’d follow.

  He always did.

  When she reached the end of their course, Izzy let out a whoop. Jules was a breath behind her.

  “We tied,” he said. “That was most definitely a tie!”

  “Tell yourself that. I’ll meet you at Oga’s for my celebratory Bespin Fizz.”

  When they docked in the spaceport, Jules found Izzy waiting in the moving crowd. Families huddled together onto transport vessels. They carried large bundles, and Jules knew that they were leaving Batuu. A feeling he couldn’t place wedged between his ribs and made him wince. He wanted to make things better in the Outpost, but he was only one person and he didn’t know where to start. He promised himself that after he and Izzy went on their journey, he’d come back.

  Izzy tugged on the sleeve of his tunic. “Base to Jules.”

  Looking at her made him feel better somehow. It was one of the many things about being around her that he couldn’t explain—like the way his breath caught when he spotted her in the clusters of people that descended on Cookie’s during lunch, or the way he found any excuse to hold her, or how he could love someone as much as he loved her.

  He lowered himself to steal a kiss. She threaded her fingers through his and they went off to continue what they’d been doing for weeks—making plans. Sitting at the counter at Oga’s, they mapped their route and the myriad possibilities. They listed planets Izzy had loved and others they had only heard of in stories, like Endor and Mandalore.

  “We’ve gone over this,” Jules said, drinking his Carbon Freeze. Smoke billowed from the glass. “I’m ready, Izzy. You’re hesitating. What’s stopping you?”

  “Credits?” she offered. When she’d decided to stay, Jules had forced her to take her share for the delivery. She’d made it stretch, but it was time to start moving again. When he took her hand in his, she couldn’t avoid the thoughts that kept her up at night. “I’m afraid.”

  He rested his hands on her knees. “You are afraid? Of what?”

  She gave him a gentle shove. “Where do I even start? What if we end up dead in space? What if we get halfway across the galaxy and we want to kill each other?”

  “But think of all the fun we’ll have making up after.” He gave her a look that made her blush.

  “I’m serious.”

  Jules set down his drink and cupped her face. “You’re the only thing I’m sure of in this galaxy, Izzy. The rest, we can figure out.”

  They paid their tab and left the cantina, then headed toward Ohnaka Transport Solutions. Along the way, Izzy and Jules took in the vendors waving customers to step forward, the kids chasing one another through the market streets. The air was thick with humidity, and as billowing clouds drifted low, Jules kept his eyes on the sky. He saw flashes of ships coming into orbit.

  “Have you ever met this Hondo Ohnaka?” Izzy asked as they joined the queue. At the very end of it was Delta, clutching a datapad.

  “I haven’t,” Jules said. “He comes in and out of the Outpost, mostly to pay his debt to Oga. But lucky for us, he’s always looking for flight crews.”

  They were certain that working for Hondo would help them travel the galaxy together while getting steady work. Jules wasn’t in a rush. The first time they’d left the Outpost it was to go to the other side of the planet. The land there was rugged, wild in a way he’d never seen before. Then they’d traveled to a nearby small ice moon called Ielo. It had been his first time seeing snow. It fell in fat, soft drifts. He jumped in it. He ate it. He did that for nearly an hour before he was done with snow forever. After that they’d never made it to Eroudac, but they would one day.

  It was then that everyone around them turned to the sky. Pinpricks of fire blasts illuminated the clouds. Ships swarmed from the direction of docking bay nine and into space. The traffic tower blared an alarm, and chaos descended on them as everyone ran, picking up what they could. There was screaming, fears of the cyclical tragedies of war. But Jules and Izzy remained on the landing pad, suspended at the center of a storm.

  “Looks like the Resistance is coming out of hiding,” Jules said.

  Izzy watched him while he watched the fight happening thousands of meters above them—too far and too close. He often felt the helplessness he had that day in the market when the crowds had been ready to descend into riots. When black and red and white flags had begun to unfurl across the Outpost and hadn’t stopped. Dreaming about his future and the girl he loved pushed away that encroaching dark. But how long could he keep dreaming? What could he do? He was only one person. And that would have to be enough.

  Was that what each and every one of those fighter pilots thought before they flew? I’m only one person, but together we are more.

  Izzy and Jules were not the only ones who watched laser fire punch a hole in the sky. Delta didn’t leave their side, and Volt, who had seen such things before, forced himself not to look away.

  People shoved across the landing pad to get indoors and away from the landing platforms. Screams melted into the wail of sirens the way the
buildings blended into the spires. A part of Izzy still wanted to take off. It was safer to leave. It was harder to stay. She thought of her mother’s holomessage. She’d watched it again and again. At first on her own, then later with Jules. Ixel Garsea had wanted her daughter to live without regret and a stronger heart. Those things weren’t earned so easily.

  Izzy realized it did not matter where she’d been in the past. She was rooted, not to a place but to everything. She was born on a ship flying through space. She’d left pieces of herself scattered across the galaxy like stars. The world out there was Izal Garsea’s home as much as Batuu, as much as Jules, and she would do anything to protect it.

  “I have to do something,” Jules said.

  “We will.” She took his hand, ready to rise up for the battle that was coming.

  My first real memories of Star Wars are the days spent with my brother Danny in our old Queens apartment reenacting fight scenes from Return of the Jedi. Now we are adults, or adult-ish, binge-watching the next generation of heroes in our favorite galaxy. Star Wars and family are so intertwined in my life, which is why I am always grateful to my Ecuadorian tribe for their constant support and for letting me work in a corner during every party and holiday celebration. Finally, you can point to the finished product.

  Huge thanks to my agent, Victoria Marini. This book would not be possible without the phenomenal team at Disney Lucasfilm Press, especially my editor, Jennifer Heddle, and Michael Siglain. Thank you to the ultimate keepers of Star Wars knowledge, Story Group executives Matt Martin and Pablo Hidalgo, and copyeditor Megan Granger. Leigh Zieske for designing such a beautiful book, and Matt Griffin for the incredible jacket cover art. Margaret Kerrison for guiding me through the landscape and characters of Batuu; you’ve helped build something incredible and I can’t wait for everyone to explore this planet.