Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

“You said that stuff is toxic, right?” Her heart was a fist punching her chest. “She won’t do it if she’s within the explosives area, so the best bet is to box her in. And I’ll—Lucky?”

As she spoke, the loralora bird soared above her. She wasn’t prepared for how relieved she was upon seeing the creature again. Volt glanced up, and she didn’t miss the moment of anger that flashed across his face. She would have to deal with him later.

They kept running. Ahead Izzy could see that Ana Tolla and Oksan were halfway up the water tower, attaching the white bricks as they went.

“Lucky!” Izzy shouted, ready to put their bond to the test. She pointed at Oksan. The loralora let out a brilliant shriek, then swooped down and pecked at him until he let go of the water tower. He fell three meters, but landed on his feet.

“No, you fool!” Ana Tolla shouted. She clung to the metal rungs.

Oksan drew a blaster and shot as he tried to run. Volt pushed Izzy to the ground, and she rolled on her side. Everything was upside down, the sky dark and the moons spinning around her. She could hear the red laser fire Volt and Oksan were trading. The flap of wings. Her blood pumping in her ears. Amid all that, there was a loud grunt, and then a ceasefire.

When she sat up, Volt was back at her side and Oksan was limping to his feet. Ana Tolla flung herself off the lower rungs of the tower. She caught up with the Zygerrian and held up the detonator.

Watching Izzy run into the fields with Volt was almost physically painful. Jules should be the one beside her. He should be the one helping her stop Ana. But she’d made the right call. Volt could disarm the detonator. They all had their roles in saving Kat’s farm.

But Jules had a role in helping destroy it. There were times when he couldn’t understand why people made the choice to hurt others. In the moment when Ana Tolla made Jules choose between the farm and his sister, he hadn’t hesitated. Guilt weighed heavily on him. The only way he could make up for what he’d done was to stop Ana and her crew.

Jules returned to the storage silo, his blaster trained before him. Someone had turned the lights off. He kept his back along the surface of the walls and slunk from crate stack to crate stack. He listened for footsteps, heavy breathing, anything that would give away Safwan and Lita’s location.

He thought of where he’d been the night before, almost to the minute: out in the empty fields using hollow droid heads and helmets for target practice, wishing the answers to his future would unravel. He’d spent years waiting for his life to change, and in the course of a day, it had changed over and over again. Izzy was to thank for that. He should have said something more to her before they split up, reassured her that everything was going to be fine.

He heard it then: wings beating directly above him. He reached up to grab Lita’s tail, but his hand closed around air.

“Now!” the Ketzalian shouted.

Jules turned around in time to see the towering crates falling toward him. He jumped out of the way, but each column slammed into the next. Metal warped and hundreds of thousands of individual grains spilled from the containers. He crawled through the avalanche covering the ground. As he neared the door, he struggled to his feet and ran outside. Safwan and Lita had a head start, but not by much. He could catch up.

Aided by the light of the moons, he ran toward Ana’s ship. He knew something was wrong because his Avent100 was still docked there. What had happened to Tap and Belen? Jules dug deep down and found his strength to run raster. He thought of the people who depended on him. He thought of Izzy. He hadn’t heard anything from the fields. Did that mean they were safe or not?

When he reached the ramp of Ana’s ship, he was thrown back by a sucker punch to the face. He tumbled off the ramp and onto the grass. For the second time that day, his nose was bleeding. He wiped it with the back of his hand.

“Come on!” Lita shouted, her already nervous voice shrill.

Damar whirled around. “Not without Ana!”

“She’d leave you in a heartbeat,” Jules told him.

“No, she wouldn’t.” Damar sounded so earnest, so adamant, that Jules almost felt sorry for him. It wasn’t enough though. Not after everything he’d put Izzy through. Not after their attack on his home.

The sound of blaster fire rang out, followed by screams, then silence.

Jules wanted to turn to the fields, even though it was too dark to see. What if that had been Izzy or Volt? What if something terrible had happened? Damar had the same thoughts. Jules hated to think that he had anything in common with the blue-haired slug, but he recognized the frantic worry that had overtaken Damar as he stared off into the distance. It might be the only distraction Jules was going to get, and he took it.

He fired at Damar, the pulse of the blaster as blue as his hair, and dragged him away from the ships. Jules took back Izzy’s blaster with the intention of returning it to her.

There was a low rumble in the distance as speeders made their way to the farm. Jules threw his head back and laughed.

“No celebrating yet,” came Delta’s voice. She was out of breath, jogging back to him.

“Why are you still here ?”

“Take it up with the others!” Her sweat glistened in the moons’ shine. “Your sister and Tap won’t leave without you.”

“Where are they?”

“Tap said he could turn the lights back on, and Belen is trying to take Gee-One apart.” Delta looked down at Damar, then back at Jules. “Aren’t there two more?”

“In the ship,” Jules said, and handed her the blaster he’d lifted from Safwan. “I’ll go help Izzy.”

“There are bombs everywhere,” Ana warned. “In the fields. On the tower. You’ll never find them all.”

Izzy took aim. “Hand the remote over, Ana, and we’ll let you go.”

“Liar.”

Izzy shrugged. “I had to try.”

“So selfless all of a sudden?” Ana asked. “Don’t forget, Izal. If I hadn’t left you, you would have been following my orders like the rest of them.”

Izzy saw Oksan’s head jerk up. He didn’t seem to like that comment.

“Maybe,” Izzy said. “But you should have honored our agreement.”

She wanted to think that once she’d known about the plans to cause so much destruction, she would have walked away. Izzy remembered standing on the cantina patio on Actlyon. The foul smell in the air. The confusion of the fight. As awful as those moments had been, Izzy knew that it needed to happen that way. She’d been shaken out of a stupor. Knowing she was helping the people she’d met on the farm was a feeling she could get used to.

“And here I didn’t think you were capable of surprising me,” Ana said. Her red braid swung at her back. “Maybe there’s room for you on this crew after all. It’s not too late, Izzy.”

Izzy took a deep breath and looked at Volt. She saw three landspeeders approaching in the distance.

“I work better alone,” Izzy said.

Every light that had previously been off came back on, from the barn to the fields.

“You’re surrounded,” Volt added.

Ana Tolla held out the detonator and grinned at Izzy. Her smile was wide and cruel. “A captain goes down with the ship.”

Izzy’s body went rigid with fear. Beside her, Volt was raising his blaster, but Ana held the control too closely to her body for him to get a clean shot.

“But I don’t,” Oksan said, and in a flash he reached out and grabbed the woman’s wrist so tightly all she could do was scream and let go.

Izzy raced to catch the detonator, but before it fell to the grass, Lucky swooped down and caught it with her prehensile tail. Izzy couldn’t stop her forward momentum and fell to the grass. She groaned as she rose onto her knees and back onto her feet. Lucky flapped to a rest on her shoulder, tail up in the air. Izzy carefully retrieved the detonator and choked a sigh of relief.