Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

Izzy stopped to breathe. She was leaning so close to Delta that she shoved Izzy back to her side of the cockpit. “The only way we live is if we get help, right now.”

“You know what? Fine. I’d rather Ana kill us, because if she doesn’t Oga Garra will,” Delta said. “Who’s going to help us?”

“Oga,” Izzy said.

Delta shook her head. “We wouldn’t get past her guards.”

Izzy thought that perhaps she might. But it didn’t matter; she needed someone who would prioritize saving Jules first.

Izzy got an idea. “Where would Volt be this time of night?”

“Hold on tight,” Delta said, and Izzy’s entire body slammed against the seat as they zoomed toward Black Spire Outpost.

All Jules’s humor vanished when the speeder powered up again. He was really going to have to rip it apart to figure out what was wrong. But first he had to get through the next few hours alive.

They drove with the live broadcast from Oga’s Cantina blasting from the speakers. Jules’s gut turned with every swerve.

“Where did you learn to drive?” Jules asked.

Damar made a face. “My chauffeur taught me.”

“Great,” he muttered.

“Why do I get under your skin, farm boy?” Damar asked. A punchable grin split his angular face. “Is it because Izzy was with me for awhile?”

What had his father said? The overconfident farmer doesn’t yield enough harvest for a drought? He couldn’t remember the exact words, and Damar was not a farmer, by the look of his delicate hands, but he was overconfident. Jules was bigger and stronger, and he could get the jump on him. He could save Izzy and set things right.

Jules raised his elbow and slammed it into Damar’s eye. He grabbed Izzy’s blaster from Damar’s lap, leaning into the swerve of the speeder. Damar winced and cried out, but kept one hand on the wheel.

“Get out of my ride,” Jules said.

Damar had the nerve to laugh. “You didn’t think we’d do this without extra insurance, did you?”

Jules’s body flashed hot. He tentatively lowered the blaster.

Damar retrieved the holodisk again and pressed a button. Jules recognized the unconscious farmer immediately. Belen. He’d never seen his sister slumped like that before. Her wrists and ankles were bound. What would she do when she woke? She would fight and get herself hurt. He couldn’t allow that.

“Now,” Damar said, “I’ll take the blaster. Sit.”

Jules clenched his fists all the way to Kat Saka’s farm.

“You don’t happen to have my clothes, do you?” Izzy asked. “Not to mention the key to these?”

“You’re already asking for too many things when you should be happy I spared your life.” Reluctantly, Delta removed a cube and pressed it to the top of the magnetic cuffs. They fell to Izzy’s lap, and she swept them aside. Her clothes had been shoved into the foot of the cockpit. They were damp and smelled of hangar grease, but at least she wasn’t half naked anymore.

She closed her eyes against the wind and thought of those perfect moments kissing Jules in the cenote. There were times when she was on a job and the only things guiding her were food and fuel. She was aimless in a galaxy she’d never live enough years to explore, but that was not going to stop her from trying to find her way. Now she had something guiding her. Whether he forgave her or not, she had to save Jules. If nothing else went her way, she would hold on to those moments with him.

The headlights illuminated the path she and Jules had traveled—their cliff and the farm. The entire planet was peppered with her history.

Go home, Izzy.

That hurt even worse coming from him because he knew she didn’t have one. He wasn’t wrong to be angry with her. But all she had was a pilot who wanted to kill her and a creatures vendor who probably also wanted to kill her. At least she wasn’t alone?

She concentrated on the patch of light where Black Spire Outpost was nestled in dark lands. Her mind cycled back and forth from the elation of kissing Jules to the moment Damar had held her up with her own blaster.

Things would have been different if she had listened to Belen—Belen, who didn’t like her and believed she would only bring Jules trouble. Belen’s maternal intuition had been right, hadn’t it?

No, she couldn’t think that way. If she’d left, Ana Tolla might have taken Jules regardless, and then where would he be? Dead.

“That was cold before,” Delta said after a stretch of uncomfortable silence. “With your boyfriend.”

“I know.” Izzy glanced at her. They both simmered with impotent rage. “I thought I was helping him. The worst part is not knowing if he bought it or not.”

Delta made a choking sound. Was that a laugh? “I’d say getting kidnapped is worse than your feelings. ”

She was right. She had to remain focused.

“That’s why I took the deal,” Delta said, shouting over the wind and the hum of the speeder. “To help my family. I should have known it was too good to be true. But I only came to Batuu a month ago.”

“Where were you before?”

“Chibbier. A forest planet. Everyone was laid off two months ago.”

“Why?”

“No trees left means nothing to cut down. I was lucky to get out. My cousins wanted to get work in the Core, but I’d heard of Hondo needing pilots and I thought, I can fly well enough.”

Izzy thought of the two seeming Resistance fighters she’d met before they were captured. What had the woman said? Everyone on Batuu is always either looking for a new life or running from one. She’d had no idea that Delta was both, too.

“I really am sorry about what happened,” she said.

“You mean stunning me and leaving me on the floor in an office?” Delta said dryly.

Izzy repeated her apology and made sure it sounded real, because she meant it.

“I’ll be fine,” Delta said. “Since I can’t kill you, I would like something to hit.”

Izzy stared ahead and nodded slowly. Black Spire was not like the glittering cities she’d been in, but there was something about seeing it at night that stole her wonder. Lights in homes blinked on, and the market remained open for the after-hours crowd. Shuttles carried people from either end of the Outpost, and ships were still landing, bringing mysterious cargo from every corner of the galaxy.

Izzy had never had many friends. She’d never stayed anywhere long enough. She was too quiet. Too strange. Too angry. Too scared. Too much . There were dozens of excuses she could have used. But that night she didn’t try to think of any. Delta was as close to a friend as she was going to get, and Izzy was going to need her to get Jules back.

They came to a halt in the spaceport and hopped out. There was one person directing traffic for Ohnaka Transport Solutions. G1-MD wandered around barking orders. Izzy didn’t see the Karkarodon, which was a relief. The Avent100 light freighter was still docked.

“I don’t see him,” Izzy said.

“He’ll be at the game,” Delta replied.

Izzy ran behind Delta, their heavy boots beating a rhythm on the launchpad. Delta punched a code into an office door and it hissed open. She heard Volt’s voice before she saw him.

In the smoky room, there was a game of sabacc going, but unlike the card game she’d seen on the farm earlier, this one used credits of all shapes and sizes. She even spotted a turquoise ring in the pile.

“Delta! We thought you weren’t coming. How goes—” Volt’s eyes widened, and the veins in his neck bulged, resembling nightsnakes moving across the ground. He jumped up from the table as he said, “You!”

He recognized Ana Tolla from the holovid recording they’d played for him. Even though he was nearly certain Izzy had said what she had for his benefit, it still burned. He’d been so beaten up that day that he felt like the loser droid in the death matches run in the Galma vicinity. If Izzy had waltzed into the storage barn at that moment to say she’d been playing him the whole time, he might have believed her in his current condition.