Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

“I should have stayed with them,” he said, leaning back in his seat.

“Has this happened before?”

He shook his head. “Things have been strange all around. Not just people taking off but something else. I don’t even think Oga knows why the First Order is here. Because if she did, she would have handed over whatever it was they wanted and sent them packing.”

Izzy scoffed. “One time my mother said that revolution and war was good for business.”

She hated that she’d said it, but Jules didn’t let go of her hand.

“Do you know what the worst part is?” he asked.

She could guess. She felt his tension beside her. The night before, when she’d been at that cantina in Actlyon, hadn’t she wanted to stay and help but forced herself to go? She’d seen the same look in Jules’s eyes moments before. Only he was already so much braver than she was because he always wanted to do good, not just when things got violent.

“The helplessness?” she offered.

“He wasn’t even wrong,” Jules said. “Batuu is run by criminals. Everything I’ve ever done is touched by that. Everyone on this planet.”

“You’re a farmer, Jules.” She squeezed his hand in both of hers. “You’re a friend, a brother. No matter where you go in the galaxy there’s always good and bad. There are imbalances of power. Batuu is no better or worse. They destroyed an entire system. Nothing can make that right.”

He kissed the knuckles of her hand, like it was something he had done before that moment. Natural, sweet. She wanted to blame the kiss on the events of the day again. Being with Jules felt like jumping to lightspeed without having charted a course. She wasn’t sure if she’d come out of it close to a planet or collide headfirst with an asteroid. But she wanted to see what would happen.

“When I was a boy,” Jules said, “my father said that Batuu was once full of those running from evil as much as it was full of those running because they’d done evil.”

“What about the people caught in between?”

He chuckled then. “Oh, they’re here, too. I think it burned me up when he called Batuu a wasteland because it isn’t. For those who choose to stay, it’s a second chance.”

In all the time she’d spent trying to reinvent herself, to find where exactly she belonged, why hadn’t she considered that she could get a second chance, too? What would that look like? Staying on Batuu?

The words never made it to her lips, because she saw someone familiar. It was Ana Tolla. Her head was covered by a scarf, and she’d tucked her recognizable red hair away. But she wore the blue jacket Izzy had given to Damar. She considered that perhaps the crew leader had sold it for fuel, but when the woman raised her hand to knock on a door, Izzy caught a glimpse of her face. It was definitely her.

Jules squeezed Izzy’s hand hard enough to jolt her. He whispered, “Don’t move. Let me talk.”

Izzy was confused. Jules hadn’t seen Ana Tolla. When she looked around, she saw that it wasn’t her old crew leader he’d been referring to. They were surrounded by scruffy-looking pirates.

A human male in his mid-twenties with a twisted brown beard and greasy hair stepped forward. “Oga Garra wants to see you.”

Jules hesitated for the briefest moment before he turned on the engines. He grabbed the wheel with one hand but didn’t let go of hers as he said, “Tell her we’re coming.”

Jules could count with two fingers the number of times he’d seen Oga Garra.

The first was by sheer accident. He’d had no idea what she looked like, only heard what the farmers, some who rarely even ventured to the Outpost, whispered on their breaks. Then one day he’d been at the spaceport watching off-worlders file out of emissary vessels in glittering robes, accompanied by dozens of handmaidens. He’d followed them right to the cantina to get a better look. At first, he hadn’t known what he was looking at. He saw a gathering of pink tentacles sticking out of the hood of a cloak. She blended so well into the shadows that if there hadn’t been light from the moons, he wouldn’t have noticed her. There were two drunk farmers near her, rowdy and shouting. They made gestures with their hands that Jules didn’t understand at first, pressing their fingers together in a point and speaking in Huttese. The next day those farmers didn’t show up for work. Jules never saw them again.

The second time had been when he walked into Dok’s den and Dok and Oga were in the back room arguing. Dok had shut the doors in his face and he’d had to return to work later.

He told Izzy as much. He powered down the engines and threw a tarp over the speeder. Their escorts waited at the back door. Jules ran through the number of things that could have made Oga summon them.

“Do you think she knows about Delta?” Izzy asked.

“She has a way of knowing everything. But we’re about to find out,” he said, keeping his arms firm at his sides. “I should mention right now that Blutopians don’t like to be stared at.”

“No one likes to be stared at,” Izzy countered.

“You haven’t met my friend Volt.” He managed to wink at her. Who was he, winking and driving a getaway speeder? He’d spent so much of his life trying to stay just adjacent to trouble so it didn’t touch him. He hadn’t always been successful. But he was alive. Though the day wasn’t over. Neelo and Fawn’s lazy, knowing grins flickered in his mind as he and Izzy were escorted down a narrow hall. Trouble, they’d said. Trouble had indeed come in the form of Izal Garsea, and as they stepped into the cool dark of Oga’s office, he knew he’d choose her again and again. After all, that had been his wish so many years before, as a little boy asking the wishing tree to bring his best friend back.

He tried to give her a reassuring look, but her attention had been drawn elsewhere. Though she kept her features steady, he could feel her unease.

Jules marveled at the wall hangings, square pieces of sandstone with carved designs eroded by time. They looked like they were cut from the ruins themselves. He remembered the legends his father had told him, about a queen who built that city from stone before it fell to invaders. Jules wondered if that was why Oga kept those pieces, as if she were the queen of the Outpost, like the nameless ancients from legend.

Oga Garra sat on an elaborate high-backed chair carved from Batuuan spires. Silk pillows cushioned her back, and a small stand beside her held a bowl of three-headed larvae and a glowing hookah that perfumed the air with the scent of river valley blossoms. Orbs of light hovered above her, giving her thick brown epidermis and pink face tentacles a slick sheen.

There was a carved desk in the corner, but unlike Dok’s it held parcels and datapads instead of paper. Jules couldn’t imagine Oga taking her own orders and filling out shipment requests, because she didn’t have to request anything.

The doors slid closed, but R-3X’s music session was streaming from a comm Jules couldn’t see. Oga pressed a button and the sound cut out. The stiff tentacles of her mouth moved, and she spoke Huttese in a screeching voice.

Jules folded himself into a bow, and Izzy followed suit. He had no clue if people bowed to Oga, but he wanted to cover his bases and he thought it was best to let her speak first.

“Sit,” Jules translated for Izzy.

They did as they were told. The stone benches seemed like they were designed to make the person opposite Oga uncomfortable. But when Jules turned to see how Izzy was doing, she looked mesmerized. Her eyes were wide, and a smile played on her lips. Jules realized that she was more used to meeting with beings like Oga than he was. He wondered—could Izzy be in love with Oga’s power? Was that what she wanted? Where would that leave him? Not that it mattered at the moment. First he needed to get through the meeting without incurring Oga’s wrath.