Zoraida Cordova - A Crash of Fate

“Bright suns, Mother Katlock,” Jules said without his usual warmth.

“Don’t bright suns me,” she said. “Waking a body up at all hours of the night with your caterwauling. Who do you think you are, Gaya herself?”

“Who’s Gaya?” Jules and Ksana asked at the same time.

“One of the biggest stars in the galaxy!” The matriarch grumbled on about how “this generation” wouldn’t know music if it docked in their ear canals. Jules watched them leave, Ksana chirping her final thanks.

It was already a longer morning than he’d ever had. After a hot shower, Jules felt alive again. On the small kitchen table was a bowl of fruit Belen had left for him as she’d always done after their parents had passed. As he ate, replacing his milk with water, Jules considered that things had never been easy or simple in their lives. Their father always said an easy life was earned by those with the will to make something out of nothing. Jules often wondered if he’d ever measure up to his da’s philosophy. He loved his home planet, mostly because he’d never been anywhere else. But there were days when he was so restless and full of want for the unknown that he scared himself. When Jules had first spoken of quitting, hadn’t Haal, his brother-in-law, laughed and reminded Jules that he wasn’t going anywhere?

Maybe Jules didn’t know what he actually wanted, but he knew what he needed. And that was not to spend the day cooped up in the house. He had the sudden craving for some fried tip-yip from Cookie’s. How was he supposed to think on an empty stomach?

He tugged on his boots and tucked his arms into the deep red coat Belen had sewn for him the previous season as a gift for a good harvest. He was about to step outside when he noticed a small human boy waiting for him in the courtyard. The boy had dark brown skin and was about ten, with a shrewd stare and a floppy hat that always covered his buzzed head. Tap was one of Dok-Ondar’s many runners in town. Jules knew his first day of freedom was over before it started.

“Bright suns, Tap!” Jules said, locking the door behind him. “I was just on my way to—”

Tap cut him off. “Boss has a job for you.”

“How could Dok have a job for me? The suns aren’t even up! Did he forget I don’t work for him anymore?”

“He asked for you specifically. Can’t see why.” Tap lifted his shoulder and dropped it dramatically. “Only ones sleeping in today are you and the puffer pigs.”

“Watch your mouth, kid.”

Tap barked a laugh, but didn’t appear sorry for the insult. “It’s impossible to watch my own mouth when I don’t have a mirror, Jules.”

“Very funny. What’s Dok want?”

“A couple of the runners didn’t show up this morning, and he lost another apprentice to the white masks.”

Jules didn’t think anything of it, as Dok’s runners came and went, sometimes leaving Batuu in the middle of the night without a word. He was used to familiar faces disappearing. A few years back, when jobs were scarce, Jules had started delivering packages for the old Ithorian. That’s how he’d bought his first swoop bike when he was just a little older than Tap. Hearing about the apprentices was troubling, however. They stuck around longer than most, practically worshiping the treasures in Dok’s shop.

Jules’s lingering headache protested. If someone didn’t want to show up to work, why was it his problem? He knew the answer almost as soon as he conjured the question.

He was good, dependable Jules Rakab.

Jules swore under his breath when he remembered he’d left his speeder in the middle of the clearing the night before. That was the last time he was humoring Volt’s Gut Rot. Jules shuddered, then felt a sense of shame as he asked the ten-year-old for a lift.

Jules got on the back of Tap’s beat-up 74-Z speeder bike, barely holding on to the back, which was better fashioned to carry small crates than another person. The fresh dawn breeze beat against his cheeks, and for a few moments, all he could do was watch the rocky terrain dotted with green alight as the suns rose. When he was a little boy, his father would sit and drink hot black tea with his mother on mornings like this. It was an insignificant ritual, but they never seemed to skip it. Sometimes he’d listen to the murmur of their voices before he fell back to sleep.

Tap came to a hard halt, and Jules hopped off the speeder bike in an ungraceful dive. The clearing was a popular place for bonfires and celebrations when the cantina was overflowing with travelers or when Oga raised the drink prices if she knew wealthy convoys had just made port.

“What happened here?” Tap asked, half amazed and wholly terrified.

The memory of the rest of the night was a barrage on Jules’s senses.

He’d drunk his farewell drinks and practiced his aim on the targets they’d lined up. The rows consisted of old Imperial helmets, bottles, and droid heads that must have been in the salvage yard for more years than Jules had been alive. He hated blasters, but after drinking Volt’s Gut Rot, he cleared the targets, then hitched a ride home on the back of a landspeeder.

He didn’t actually remember getting home, but a flash of his sister’s angry face was imprinted in his mind’s eye. Belen wasn’t always so cranky, and she didn’t much care what Jules did with his time as long as he didn’t bring any trouble inside their new apartment. Something had been upsetting her all week, but he didn’t want to pry, especially if it had to do with her marriage.

More than ever, Jules was convinced it was time he set off on his own. He had the spira saved up, but there was something keeping him in the same rut. Most Batuuans his age—those who hadn’t taken off years before and those who hadn’t enlisted in the New Republic Defense Fleet or followed whispers of a new Resistance—were already set in the work they’d be doing for the rest of their lives. They were pairing up and getting married and talking about having kids. He couldn’t imagine doing all that before he’d had a chance to see the galaxy.

Belen’s voice rang in his memory: “Don’t throw a good thing away, Jules!”

She was so worried about her little brother falling in with the wrong crowd or taking off with a bunch of pirates. Sometimes he wondered if the quarters of a smuggler’s ship would be roomier than the cot in his sister’s living room.

Granted, it was a very nice living room with rugs and the knitted throw blankets Belen had been making and selling on the side for years.

“Adult things, Tap,” Jules finally answered, coming back to the present.

“So why were you invited?” Tap countered.

On another morning, Jules would have flicked the kid’s ears, but he let it go. Though the scorched remnants of blasted metal had been cleared out, probably by Volt himself, the smell of wet earth and stale whiskey made Jules’s stomach turn. Blaster bolts left bald patches in the ground and burn marks on boulders. Jules’s speeder, along with two others, was haphazardly leaning on a slab of rock surrounded by wild grass.

Tap waved his hand over his delicate nose. “You couldn’t wait till I was gone to cut one, Jules?”

Jules grumbled but didn’t want to further explain the night’s debauchery. Tap was a good kid, and Jules hoped he’d stay that way.

“Tell Dok I’m on my way, all right?”

Tap gave him a tiny salute, then sped off. Somehow, the kid’s hat always stayed in place.

Jules powered up the speeder. The sooner he was done with Dok’s business, the sooner he could get back to contemplating his daunting, amorphous future.

It seems simple enough , she told herself as she tossed and turned on the bed of her ship. To think she’d nearly let Damar Olin convince her to sell the Meridian . To think she’d let him kiss her and whisper promises about a future that was now erased. She wished she could scrub the thoughts the way she could wipe a droid’s memory systems.