Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

She wasn’t new to death and violence, but as she sat on the patio inhaling the stench of smoke and acrid flesh, she considered that she was new to heartbreak.

“Hey,” said someone in a soft voice.

“Go away,” Izzy said, and set her blaster on the table and finished the rest of her drink. As fate would have it, Ana Tolla’s table was one of the few left unturned. The sweetness of the drink soon turned bitter. Don’t hate me, please .

A green hand set a fresh drink in front of her. The liquid was pale green, like the Rodian’s skin.

Her brows knit together. “What?”

“Izal Garsea?”

“That’s a pretty great name.”

The Rodian chuckled, and it had a strange resemblance to bubbles. “I know. You were named for your grandparents.”

Izzy stilled but kept sipping, kept pretending that her world hadn’t been rattled moments before.

“Says who?” she asked.

“Says someone who has a job for you, if you care to listen.”

She didn’t want to listen. She wanted to take the drink and go. But where? Her supposed crew had just abandoned her. The boy she’d traveled with for ten months had broken up with her and given her gift to someone else. Izzy found it disconcerting that she cared an equal amount for Damar and the leather jacket. But before she could dive into a hate spiral, Izzy took the drink and brought it to her lips. It was fizzy and fragrant and didn’t make her want to retch, so she decided she’d stay. “I’m listening. How do you know my name?”

“I make it my business to know many things,” he said. Glass crunched beneath his boot as he took a seat. The music picked up again, and the dance floor was repopulated. “Oh, and by the way, happy birthday.”

The day after Julen Rakab quit his job as a grain farmer, his body betrayed him and still woke him moments before suns-rise. He could sense that his sister and brother-in-law had left recently, because their small apartment carried an early morning draft. He rolled to his back on the cot, tucked away in his makeshift bedroom behind a cloth divider and the back of the couch.

Normally, he’d get up and make a pot of caf and get ready for the day, but that morning of all mornings, Jules kept staring at the ceiling, willing himself to sleep just a little bit longer. For thirteen years his body had been trained to be up at first light. He’d done everything he set out to do. He’d kept his word to his parents to stay close to family. He’d saved every credit he could spare, even if it meant taking side jobs on his days off.

All of it was put toward the grand, epic future he’d been planning since he was a boy. There were times when that future was clear—buy a ship and see the galaxy like the travelers he’d spent his whole life admiring. He could invest in a business. He was sure Dok-Ondar or even Oga would point him in the right direction.

In the moments that future dimmed, Jules was bombarded with more practical questions. Sure, he could buy a ship and fly it. But where was he going to go? What would he do once he got there? If he invested in one of the wild ventures one of his friends always seemed to be cooking up, what would he do if he lost everything? The passersby and strangers that walked the Outpost for a day or a year made it look so easy. Jules didn’t look for easy . He’d never been afraid of hard work. But he needed a direction. How could he find adventure if he didn’t know where to start?

And yet, despite vacillating between fear and certainty, he’d gone through with quitting his reliable job at Kat Saka’s farm. It was the right thing to do. He was sure of it. He was mostly sure of it. By the time he heard his neighbors calling out greetings from the halls, he was 50 percent sure of his decision.

“Too late now,” Jules muttered to himself. Kat had only grown in business and hired a bunch of new hands for the harvest yield. Depending on whom you talked to, the Outpost either had jobs to spare or none at all.

Jules’s big feet dangled off the end of the cot. Even though he was nineteen and was pretty sure he’d stopped growing the previous year, he thought he had another couple of centimeters on himself that morning. Either that or the bed was somehow getting smaller.

Jules threw off the soft wool blanket and gave himself a sniff, the previous night’s revelry coming to him in flashes. After spending his last day harvesting Surabat grain on Kat’s farm, a couple of the older guys had convinced Jules to celebrate the end of an era. His friend Volt was convinced that thirteen years didn’t constitute an era, but Jules hadn’t lived as many lives as Volt claimed himself.

Jules couldn’t say no to his friends, though friends was a loose term after the pounding headache he’d been left with. He poured himself some water and tried to piece together the events after he got off his shift. He’d driven his speeder to a popular clearing in the grasslands. Volt was there with the whiskey he’d started brewing in the hollowed-out remnants of an astromech droid salvaged from Savi’s junkyard a few months back. Volt—a tall, bald human with an unnatural rage toward droids—used his downtime trying to innovate different spirits he could sell to Oga Garra. Jules didn’t have a palate for the stuff, but he liked to support local industry.

Jules had even helped Volt get started, making sure every part of the droid was sealed and the thing could resist the heat. Jules knew that nothing was ever too broken to fix or too old to be repurposed. Like many things, and even people, on Batuu, there was always another life to live. The drink, however—which Volt was advised not to call Volt’s Special Juice—didn’t deserve a second life. Not only did it taste like gargling with rusted screws, it burned something awful going down. The night before, Jules had considered it a good investment, but his stomach said otherwise that morning.

A knock on the door made him wince. Jules shuffled over, combing his calloused fingers through tangles of dark brown hair. Whoever was on the other side of that door at that hour would have to put up with his appearance.

His four-year-old Nautolan neighbor was at the door. Her pond-green skin was smeared with what smelled like baby food. At least he hoped it was baby food. She gaped at him with beetle-black eyes and waved her hand in front of her pert little nose.

“Peee- yew , Jules,” she said in her bright voice. “You smell like Volt.”

Jules shut his eyes and gave a tired sigh, but he couldn’t help laughing at the small girl. “Do you want me to tell your mom about the secret stash of candy under your bed, Ksana?”

She sucked in a breath and righted herself. “You wouldn’t.”

“I could.”

“Don’t be mean, Jules!”

He crouched down to her eye level, suddenly worried that he’d make a child cry before breakfast. “I’m not a rat, Kay. Do you need something? Where’s your gran?”

“Sleeping. We’re out of milk. Do you have some?”

He left the door open to clear out his smell and let her in. They strolled lazily to the kitchen. There was exactly enough green milk left for his breakfast, but he handed the glass bottle over to Ksana’s eager little hands.

Finally, he had purpose for the day. He’d resupply milk! The thought was as disheartening as it was a thought . Maybe he could invest in Bubo Wamba’s milk stand. Though he quickly talked himself out of it as he thought of the way banthas smelled. Surely no better than he did at the moment.

“Remind me why your gran can’t get you milk, Kay?” he asked her.

“She’s sleeping and won’t get up.”

“Maybe I should check and see if she’s alive,” Jules mused.

“She is very much alive,” came a shrill voice from the open door. The elder Nautolan waltzed in, her long purple tentacles speckled with sun spots from a lifetime on Batuu. Jules was certain she’d bash him with her cane the way she had all the neighboring kids when they were younger. He rubbed the ghost of a bruise on his shoulder from a time he’d kicked a ball through her window.