Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

They positioned themselves at a sticky table, and because there weren’t enough chairs to go around, Izzy stood. Lita didn’t sit, either, though as a small reptilian-faced Ketzalian, she could hover beside Izzy on filmy purple wings.

A live band, Sentient 7 and the Clankers, tinkered away on what passed for a stage. Izzy drummed her fingers on the table as they waited for a server but regretted it when her fingers came away sticky. She paused for a moment as the Rodian keyboard player winked a star-speckled eye in her direction. There were dozens of people crammed onto the patio, shimmying to the electric song, but Izzy was positive the musician was looking at her.

At least someone is, she thought.

Izzy tugged on Damar’s jacket, the deep-blue leather one she’d given him because it was an exact match to his dyed hair. His gray eyes were shadowed in the dimness of the patio, and Izzy didn’t miss the lightning strike of irritation that wrinkled his brow.

“Iz,” he said, batting lazy eyes at her. He only called her that when he was trying to correct her without picking a fight. Lately, with Ana Tolla’s crew around, he only seemed to call her Iz.

“Should we, you know, be going over tomorrow’s job?” Izzy asked him.

“We will,” Damar said, tucking her hair behind her ear. He looked to the others, flashing a too-bright smile. There had been a time when Izzy would have done anything to see that smile. That night was not one of those times. He flagged a waitress. “Definitely. Let’s get some food first. I’m half-starved.”

Lita shot him a dark look. “It’s a good thing you ate my last java cake or you’d be fully starved.”

They placed an order for food and drinks with a particularly frazzled Trandoshan waitress, who grunted as she scribbled on her datapad. Izzy was positive the waitress was drawing stick figures, and wouldn’t hold her breath that their order would be correct.

Ana Tolla flipped her fire-red braid over her shoulder and surveyed the crowd. Her pale blue eyes had always unnerved Izzy because they looked colder than the top layer of Orto Plutonia. She looked like she didn’t hear Izzy or didn’t care. Her crew surrounded her, a queen holding court. There was Safwan, a young human-Twi’lek male with light peach skin that phased into multicolored lekku and tattoos modifying his muscular arms. Then, of course, there was Lita, who didn’t mind sharing cakes with Izzy after the previous expedition. Last was the beefy, fuzzy-faced Zygerrian, whose name always escaped Izzy because he was surly and quiet in a way only people who’d spent a lifetime hiding tended to be. Izzy couldn’t help thinking that her mother had been a similar kind of quiet.

When their order arrived—definitely wrong, but no one was going to complain—the crew drank and ate their fill of the local fried meat doused in fiery brown syrup. Izzy felt more like an uninvited guest than an intricate part of a well-oiled crew. Even Damar chimed in on the reminiscing of missions he wasn’t even present at. How about the time Ana Tolla kidnapped a low-ranking senator who owed some Hutts a small moon’s worth of gambling debts? The senator was never seen again. How about the time Ana Tolla was hired to eliminate an oil baron’s prime competition and accidentally set a city ablaze, and the competition along with it?

Izzy couldn’t bring herself to laugh along but managed a pained grin. Wasn’t this what she wanted? A crew. Something to be a part of. When Ana Tolla was hired for a job, she got it done. There was an expectation that went with her name. If Izzy was going to get rich and survive, she needed to be with someone like Ana. That was what Damar had convinced her was best.

Damar had been the one to find Ana and her crew in a dusty port in Abelor when he and Izzy were out of fuel, food, and contacts. Izzy had grown up believing that the one industry in the galaxy that would never run dry was smuggling. But it proved difficult getting potential customers to trust her and her ship when every corner of the galaxy felt the ripples of the current chaos. Though it’d been months since the destruction of the Hosnian system and the government of the New Republic, the upheaval that followed had no end in sight. Most of her only contacts were either dead or in hiding. Ana Tolla had lost half her crew, and joining forces with her seemed almost fated. Ana was especially pleased that Izzy and Damar came with their own vessel. Izzy hoped that the next mission would be the one that solidified them as a unit.

But as Izzy drained the dregs of her Naboo Cooler, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time.

The music played on, the crowd grew louder, and their waitress was nowhere in sight. The collision of nerves and anticipation left Izzy’s mouth dry.

“I’m going to get another drink,” she said offhandedly.

“Could you get me a refill?” Damar asked.

Ana Tolla shook her empty glass between long, calloused fingers. Her finely drawn eyebrow arched up. In her deep, smoky voice, she asked, “Would you be a dear?”

Then the rest of them piled on.

Izzy’s eye twitched, but she told herself this was a way to show she was a team player. She wanted to be more than “Hey, Damar’s girlfriend, fetch me the hydrospanners.” Oddly enough, Damar never had to prove himself. He was simply there, with his beautiful cheekbones and easy manner. He had a talent for making himself belong anywhere, or at least convincing people of it. He’d talked the two of them out of enough situations. Though, if Izzy was honest with herself, he was just as good, if not better, at getting them into situations.

She cut through the crowd, ordered, and lingered at the bar, fidgeting with the brass zipper of her night-black leather jacket. Her drink practically materialized in front of her. She sipped the melon liquid and found that it smelled sweeter than it tasted, but it cost fifteen credits and she was going to drink it. Izzy glanced up at the dark, starry sky. With each jovial note struck by the band, her mood soured.

Maybe that was all part of Damar’s plan—to truly convince her that he’d forgotten. After all, a month earlier, when they’d fought and she’d threatened to leave, he promised that he had something big planned for her. Huge. Fireworks. Explosions! “Unforgettable” wasn’t quite the word he’d used, but then again, when he held her hands and looked at her in that way of his, like she was the only person in the galaxy, she could fill in the blanks of the things he wanted to say. Damar had a way of making her feel special, like the only girl in a single star system. Sometimes she wondered if he was charming her the way he did others. Sometimes she convinced herself that she was too clever to be fooled. It was easy to trust Damar when he uttered the right words. Izzy fought her own instinct that something was wrong because, deep down, she knew that having Damar was better than being alone.

But shouldn’t he be more than that?

Then again, Damar had been the one to pull her from the petty errand jobs she’d been reduced to just to keep her ship in working order. Damar was the one who understood her better than anyone else. Damar never did anything without a little flair and a perfect smile that could crack a moon in two.

On the cantina patio, he was hunched over a table of half-empty drinks with Ana Tolla and the others, speaking more animatedly than he had all night. Ana rubbed her bare arms against the chill of the night, and Damar handed her his jacket. Izzy grimaced but was surprised that it wasn’t jealousy that needled her; it was disgust. Neither Safwan nor the Zygerrian had rushed to hand over their outerwear to their captain, but Damar had. He was so eager, so needy for Ana’s attention. Anxiety twisted in Izzy’s gut. When she glanced at the band, the Rodian keyboard player winked at her again. Maybe a bug flew into his eye. Maybe he was actually looking at the pretty human girl dancing behind her. Izzy decided to ignore it. A group of women were talking to Izzy’s right, and something caught her ear.