Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

But her attention refocused when she caught sight of Jules. The feeling that slammed into her gut as he stepped off the loading ramp of the hexagonal red-striped freighter was unexpected. He was smiling, his— her —backpack slung by one strap over his shoulder. His hand gestures were animated as he spoke to a middle-aged brown-skinned woman with hair styled in hundreds of individual twists and then piled high in two layers of buns. They disembarked together, shook hands, and she took off, her silver cape billowing as she headed away from the spaceport.

Izzy bit down on the swell of feelings that came with seeing Jules Rakab and fought the urge to shout his name. He looked up then, as if he could sense her walking hurriedly over to him. Jules didn’t move, didn’t do anything but gape at her.

“Izzy—” He appeared both surprised and relieved to see her. “What are you still doing here? I mean, I’m glad you’re still here. You won’t believe what—” His smile faltered when he took in the sight of her. “What’s wrong?”

She shut her eyes, a dull pain building behind her lids. “Please, please tell me you haven’t delivered that parcel.”

“Why?” he asked cautiously.

Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach. Of all the things that could have happened, this was not supposed to be one of them. Her vision blurred and she was quite sure that she needed to throw up. Jules was saying her name, asking her what was wrong. She went over the things she could do to fix this.

No one in the galaxy knows your name. Pall Gopal’s words echoed through her mind. Perhaps that was her one advantage. She could leave Batuu and hide where no one would find her. She could evade the Rodian if she had to, change the ship’s manifest. She should have done that long before, but she couldn’t bear the idea of erasing her parents’ names. How long could anyone go looking for her? If the parcel was life or death, why would he send a girl like her? No one in the galaxy knows your name.

But Jules did. Dok, wherever on the Outpost he was, knew to expect her. Izzy could run. Hide. And what? Blame Jules for the job gone wrong? Plenty of smugglers had shipments that mysteriously failed to show up. That’s why when you hired a smuggler you split the payments to guarantee delivery. She’d accomplished the getting to Batuu part. Why not stop there? Her backpack was stuffed with the credits she’d exchanged. There were ways to make that stretch while she looked for another job on the opposite end of the galaxy.

Izzy was beginning to feel as though no matter which way she turned she hit a wall. She’d learn from her mother’s mistake. All it had taken was one bad job, a small, insignificant one that she hadn’t finished, and she’d ended up dead right along with Izzy’s father. Izzy swore that wouldn’t happen to her or Jules. Whether she’d intended on it or not, they were in this together the minute they swapped parcels.

Izzy Garsea was not going anywhere. Not until she got that parcel back. She rested her hands on Jules’s chest and gripped the edges of his jacket, pulling him close.

“I’ve made a huge mistake,” she said. “You have to help me.”

Jules hadn’t been sure if it was the morning spent with Izzy or the traces of adrenaline from his drive over, but after delivering Dok’s payment for Hondo, he’d made the most impulsive decision of his life. After years of talking about getting off-world, he was actually going to do it. He had Izzy to thank for that. He’d been missing her, wondering if she’d left yet, turning over the events that led to their encounter to see their purpose. That was when he bumped into a spice trader named Trix Sternus. She’d given him a tour of the compact light freighter and listened to him talk about his day with Izzy. The next thing he knew, he was taking her up on an offer. Those were the kinds of singular moments he found at the Outpost, connecting with strangers from worlds away. He’d even found a bag of chocolate-covered caf beans in his pack, which Tap liked to hoard from one of the sweets stalls. He ate half the bag before he felt his heart racing and decided it was time to finish his errands.

He was sure he’d conjured Izzy the moment he stepped off the ramp. He’d heard about mirages from travelers who came from desert planets but had never experienced one himself. Somewhere to the right, Lee Skillen, the Karkarodon who supervised Ohnaka Transport Solutions while Hondo was off-world, was screaming in her terrifying knife-sharp voice.

But Izzy was not a mirage, and she was very much pulling him close, telling him that she’d messed up.

“I’ll fix this,” he said. “Just stay right here.”

The stubborn frown on her forehead was set. “I’m coming with you.”

He lowered his voice and lowered his head to whisper in her ear. “Hondo’s gone legit, but a pirate will always be a pirate. Trust me, when you ask to take back a payment, there will be trouble. Plus, Lee doesn’t know you. She’ll think you’re trying to steal from them. It’ll be best if I go to her and explain. She knows I wouldn’t do anything to upset Hondo’s relationship with Dok.” He considered this. “Any more than it usually is.”

“I don’t like this,” Izzy said, letting go of him. He realized he’d somehow ended up holding her hands. “It’s my parcel.”

“And I’m the nerf herder who handed it away. Please, Izzy. Trust me.”

He could see how difficult it was for her to relinquish that bit of control. Now that he knew what her day before had been like, he wanted to do everything in his power to give her some semblance of order. He wanted to think that he’d earned a bit of grace around the spaceport, especially with how often Hondo’s people were late with Dok’s shipments.

“All right,” she said.

“All right.” He left her where his speeder was parked, then caught up to the Karkarodon. She always smelled like salt water, which was not unpleasant considering the other smells that sometimes wafted through Black Spire Outpost.

“Hey, Lee, wait up!” Jules shouted after the supervisor. Like Hondo, Lee had traveled the galaxy far and wide, but unlike Hondo, she was cracking under the pressure felt across the Outpost as vendors demanded their goods and merchandise so they could make their payments to Oga Garra. If they kept falling behind schedule, then there would be hell to pay.

“Rakab!” Lee said, though she didn’t look up from the datapad she was tapping. Jules craned his neck to see it, because he was sure it was turned off and she just wanted to look busy so people would leave her alone. A green-and-white interpreter droid ambled over and began tapping Lee’s shoulder at the same time as one of the many pilots in the hangar joined Jules. Between the droid’s distressed metallic voice and distress over a ship that had never arrived, Jules wasn’t liking his odds at getting Lee’s attention.

“Hey, Lee, I really need to talk to you,” Jules said.

The human pilot—an old man with frizzy red eyebrows and a scar on his cheek—held a hand up to block Jules. “No way, me first. I’ve been waiting for my chair to be fixed. How am I supposed to fly a ship standing up? And where are you signing up these copilots from? The backward farms on this dump?”

Something hot sparked in Jules’s core. “I’ll have you know these backward farmers are the reason you have any work.”

The redheaded man jabbed a finger into Jules’s chest, but Lee slapped the hand away with her datapad. “Hey, now. If you can’t handle the environment, then get off my launchpad. I’m sure Hondo can find another flyboy who can navigate standing up in a pinch.”

Jules watched the man attempt to stare Lee down. Lee was bluffing, but he enjoyed watching the redheaded moof-brain sweat.