A Crash of Fate Page 10

That meant Jules was about to hand hers to someone else.

  “Where’s Jules?” she shouted at the kid.

  “You were just with him.”

  “Please, Tap,” she said, shoving the contents back where they belonged. “I need to find him, or all of us are getting on Dok’s blacklist.”

  “The Doklist?” Tap set his game down long enough to see her panic. “He’d go to Hondo’s and then work his way back to Oga’s.”

  “Where is Hondo’s?”

  With Tap’s quick directions, Izzy took off as fast as she could manage. She wove through the throng of bodies clogging the arteries of the market’s heart. Her rapid feet moved to the pharynx flute music coming from one of the stalls. Why hadn’t she borrowed a speeder from Salju so she’d never need to accept a ride from Jules? Why hadn’t she stayed with him in the first place? She wanted to blame it all on seeing Damar and Ana Tolla, on their presence on Batuu rattling her nerves, but she knew it was more than that. Being around Jules had made her start to feel things she wasn’t used to feeling, and she wanted to put as much distance as she could between herself and that planet. Her own carelessness was why she’d switched their backpacks. She couldn’t let something like that happen again. She stopped in front of the stall with the pharynx flute and realized she’d been going in circles.

  “Stop, think,” she said, but her own panic was getting the best of her. She picked a direction and went with it. She was practically born there for sky’s sake. It shouldn’t feel so strange.

  “Izzy!” A hooded figure a few meters ahead shouted her name. Her first reaction was to turn back around. Only Jules and Ana Tolla’s crew knew her there. But when the figure called her name again and waved, she could see the blue and white of the Togruta’s montrals under the hood of his tunic. It was Neelo and Fawn, and they were in a speeder.

  “Hey!” She caught up to the stalled speeder. She didn’t think she could be so happy to see people she’d only met in passing. Their speeder was weighted down with encased instruments strapped down by ropes.

  “Where are you off to so quickly?” Neelo asked.

  “I need to find Jules. Can you give me a lift to Hondo’s?”

  “We’re on our way to practice over there,” Fawn said, sliding to the middle of the speeder’s seat, next to Neelo.

  “Where do you practice?” Izzy asked, hopping in.

  Fawn, the human boy, ran a hand over the tight curls in the center of his head, the sides buzzed short. Two black earrings had stretched out his earlobes. “Since tourism is down the last few weeks, Oga rents us docking bay four to practice.”

  “Oga hates that, but she’ll take the spira where she can.”

  “Besides, my mom hates it when we play in the house.”

  Izzy white-knuckled the side of the seat, her hair whipping behind her as they flew. The dry air felt good on her sweaty skin, and the faint smell of smoke and exhaust let her know they were near their destination. “I appreciate it.”

  “No doubt,” Neelo said. “Any friend of Jules is a friend of ours.”

  She grinned despite the rest of her body flashing with panic. “Jules has a lot of friends here.”

  Fawn turned to Izzy, a twinkle in his brown eyes. “No girlfriend, though, in case you were wondering.”

  “I was not wondering,” Izzy said, but she had definitely been wondering. “I’m only here for a few more hours.”

  Neelo tapped the dash like it was his drums. She’d known enough musicians to know that they always had a rhythm waiting to be tapped out by their fingers, their toes, and whatever other limbs were free. Even the Rodian musician/spy/whatever he was, Pall, hadn’t been able to stop fiddling with the rim of his glass, trying to coax sound out of it, while they talked.

  “What’s so urgent that you can’t stick around for a little longer? You’re young! Live a little or a lot but you’ve got to live.”

  Musicians, she thought.

  “The last time I checked I had a pulse, so by all definitions I’m living.”

  “You know what I mean!” Neelo said, and Fawn laughed. “What’s the point of racing around the galaxy if you aren’t going to have fun?”

  “I know how to have fun!” she said defensively.

  Was that why Damar had left her? Because she’d stopped being fun? He’d mesmerized her at first with his strange gray eyes and pretty words. They’d taken on jobs, many of which had failed. For a time, it didn’t feel like failure. It felt like adventure. But she’d grown tired of always being responsible for getting them out of trouble with officials. The less work they could find, the angrier she’d become. And yet, she had been afraid to ask him to leave.

  She shook her head. No, that was not the reason he’d left. He had left her because he had chosen someone else, someone who could give him things Izzy couldn’t—a crew, adventure, danger. Izzy did not want to be Ana Tolla, not even remotely. But hadn’t she said she’d prove Pall Gopal and her old crew wrong? If they could see her, hitching a ride with two musicians to chase after a boy she hated saying good-bye to, they’d laugh at her.

  “Remember what I said about living.” Neelo flashed his white teeth. He stopped and powered down the speeder on a busy pad where a shiny hexagonal Avent100-series light freighter was parked.

  She kissed both of her drivers on the cheek. If not for them, she’d still be running over there and most likely turning down another wrong alley. If only cities were as easy for her to maneuver as infinite space. “Thank you, both. Have a good practice!”

  Izzy was overwhelmed by the number of people on the maintenance pad. There were hundreds of crates, packages of all sizes, and barrels and buckets of shipments waiting to be loaded into different ships. The hangars appeared to have been built into a curved wall of connected spires. She searched for Jules on the main level. He was so tall he should have stuck out among everyone else, but she was once again going in circles.

  A Karkarodon was shouting orders. Izzy froze for a moment at the sight of the jagged teeth lining the arch of its mouth. Its long webbed feet slapped the landing pad. Waving pointy webbed fingers, the Karkarodon was a musical conductor, if the symphony was all mismatched instruments playing in different keys. It clutched a datapad against its broad chest, though it did slap the datapad on the rough blue skin of its head twice in so many seconds. Izzy watched as the Karkarodon pressed a button on what looked like a habitat-regulating bodysuit. It released vapor that the sharklike alien inhaled through the slits of its nose. Though Izzy found Batuu humid, she couldn’t imagine what an aquatic being felt like on land. The shark-headed being pulled a silver key card from a hip pocket, and the large metal door slid open.

  But her attention refocused when she caught sight of Jules. The feeling that slammed into her gut as he stepped off the loading ramp of the hexagonal red-striped freighter was unexpected. He was smiling, his—her—backpack slung by one strap over his shoulder. His hand gestures were animated as he spoke to a middle-aged brown-skinned woman with hair styled in hundreds of individual twists and then piled high in two layers of buns. They disembarked together, shook hands, and she took off, her silver cape billowing as she headed away from the spaceport.

  Izzy bit down on the swell of feelings that came with seeing Jules Rakab and fought the urge to shout his name. He looked up then, as if he could sense her walking hurriedly over to him. Jules didn’t move, didn’t do anything but gape at her.

  “Izzy—” He appeared both surprised and relieved to see her. “What are you still doing here? I mean, I’m glad you’re still here. You won’t believe what—” His smile faltered when he took in the sight of her. “What’s wrong?”

  She shut her eyes, a dull pain building behind her lids. “Please, please tell me you haven’t delivered that parcel.”

  “Why?” he asked cautiously.

  Dread pooled in the pit of her stomach. Of all the things that could have happened, this was not supposed to be one of them. Her vision blurred and she was quite sure that she
needed to throw up. Jules was saying her name, asking her what was wrong. She went over the things she could do to fix this.

  No one in the galaxy knows your name. Pall Gopal’s words echoed through her mind. Perhaps that was her one advantage. She could leave Batuu and hide where no one would find her. She could evade the Rodian if she had to, change the ship’s manifest. She should have done that long before, but she couldn’t bear the idea of erasing her parents’ names. How long could anyone go looking for her? If the parcel was life or death, why would he send a girl like her? No one in the galaxy knows your name.

  But Jules did. Dok, wherever on the Outpost he was, knew to expect her. Izzy could run. Hide. And what? Blame Jules for the job gone wrong? Plenty of smugglers had shipments that mysteriously failed to show up. That’s why when you hired a smuggler you split the payments to guarantee delivery. She’d accomplished the getting to Batuu part. Why not stop there? Her backpack was stuffed with the credits she’d exchanged. There were ways to make that stretch while she looked for another job on the opposite end of the galaxy.

  Izzy was beginning to feel as though no matter which way she turned she hit a wall. She’d learn from her mother’s mistake. All it had taken was one bad job, a small, insignificant one that she hadn’t finished, and she’d ended up dead right along with Izzy’s father. Izzy swore that wouldn’t happen to her or Jules. Whether she’d intended on it or not, they were in this together the minute they swapped parcels.

  Izzy Garsea was not going anywhere. Not until she got that parcel back. She rested her hands on Jules’s chest and gripped the edges of his jacket, pulling him close.

  “I’ve made a huge mistake,” she said. “You have to help me.”

  Jules hadn’t been sure if it was the morning spent with Izzy or the traces of adrenaline from his drive over, but after delivering Dok’s payment for Hondo, he’d made the most impulsive decision of his life. After years of talking about getting off-world, he was actually going to do it. He had Izzy to thank for that. He’d been missing her, wondering if she’d left yet, turning over the events that led to their encounter to see their purpose. That was when he bumped into a spice trader named Trix Sternus. She’d given him a tour of the compact light freighter and listened to him talk about his day with Izzy. The next thing he knew, he was taking her up on an offer. Those were the kinds of singular moments he found at the Outpost, connecting with strangers from worlds away. He’d even found a bag of chocolate-covered caf beans in his pack, which Tap liked to hoard from one of the sweets stalls. He ate half the bag before he felt his heart racing and decided it was time to finish his errands.

  He was sure he’d conjured Izzy the moment he stepped off the ramp. He’d heard about mirages from travelers who came from desert planets but had never experienced one himself. Somewhere to the right, Lee Skillen, the Karkarodon who supervised Ohnaka Transport Solutions while Hondo was off-world, was screaming in her terrifying knife-sharp voice.

  But Izzy was not a mirage, and she was very much pulling him close, telling him that she’d messed up.

  “I’ll fix this,” he said. “Just stay right here.”

  The stubborn frown on her forehead was set. “I’m coming with you.”

  He lowered his voice and lowered his head to whisper in her ear. “Hondo’s gone legit, but a pirate will always be a pirate. Trust me, when you ask to take back a payment, there will be trouble. Plus, Lee doesn’t know you. She’ll think you’re trying to steal from them. It’ll be best if I go to her and explain. She knows I wouldn’t do anything to upset Hondo’s relationship with Dok.” He considered this. “Any more than it usually is.”

  “I don’t like this,” Izzy said, letting go of him. He realized he’d somehow ended up holding her hands. “It’s my parcel.”

  “And I’m the nerf herder who handed it away. Please, Izzy. Trust me.”

  He could see how difficult it was for her to relinquish that bit of control. Now that he knew what her day before had been like, he wanted to do everything in his power to give her some semblance of order. He wanted to think that he’d earned a bit of grace around the spaceport, especially with how often Hondo’s people were late with Dok’s shipments.

  “All right,” she said.

  “All right.” He left her where his speeder was parked, then caught up to the Karkarodon. She always smelled like salt water, which was not unpleasant considering the other smells that sometimes wafted through Black Spire Outpost.

  “Hey, Lee, wait up!” Jules shouted after the supervisor. Like Hondo, Lee had traveled the galaxy far and wide, but unlike Hondo, she was cracking under the pressure felt across the Outpost as vendors demanded their goods and merchandise so they could make their payments to Oga Garra. If they kept falling behind schedule, then there would be hell to pay.

  “Rakab!” Lee said, though she didn’t look up from the datapad she was tapping. Jules craned his neck to see it, because he was sure it was turned off and she just wanted to look busy so people would leave her alone. A green-and-white interpreter droid ambled over and began tapping Lee’s shoulder at the same time as one of the many pilots in the hangar joined Jules. Between the droid’s distressed metallic voice and distress over a ship that had never arrived, Jules wasn’t liking his odds at getting Lee’s attention.

  “Hey, Lee, I really need to talk to you,” Jules said.

  The human pilot—an old man with frizzy red eyebrows and a scar on his cheek—held a hand up to block Jules. “No way, me first. I’ve been waiting for my chair to be fixed. How am I supposed to fly a ship standing up? And where are you signing up these copilots from? The backward farms on this dump?”

  Something hot sparked in Jules’s core. “I’ll have you know these backward farmers are the reason you have any work.”

  The redheaded man jabbed a finger into Jules’s chest, but Lee slapped the hand away with her datapad. “Hey, now. If you can’t handle the environment, then get off my launchpad. I’m sure Hondo can find another flyboy who can navigate standing up in a pinch.”

  Jules watched the man attempt to stare Lee down. Lee was bluffing, but he enjoyed watching the redheaded moof-brain sweat.

  Lee grinned, the sight of her jagged sharp teeth even made Jules and the protocol droid step back. “Glad we could settle that. Follow Gee-One-Emdee. She’ll find you an astromech.”

  “But, madam,” the droid began to say.

  “Come back to me later,” Lee told G1-MD in a voice that could almost be mistaken for patient—as patient as Lee got.

  “Rough day?” Jules asked, reminding Lee that he was still there.

  Lee ran a webbed hand down her face. Her eye slips blinked rapidly as she released more vapor to wet them. “Rakab! What are you still doing here? Don’t tell me your deal’s gone wrong, because we have nothing to do with third-party transactions.”

  Jules glanced over his shoulder. Izzy was pacing, biting her thumb.

  “That’s not it. I’ve got another problem.”

  Lee threw her hands in the air. “Everyone’s got a problem! My girlfriend’s got a problem with the hours I’m putting in! My mother’s got a problem with me dating a Twi’lek! But I love her, you know? The droids have a problem! Kat Saka’s got a problem with Hondo importing grain for her competition! Don’t get me started on Hondo. He never learned how to read a flight chart and just throws deliveries on my tablet and expects me to make sense of it! So tell me, Rakab, what is your problem?”

  “Wow, okay, that was a lot,” Jules said.

  Lee shook her head. “I apologize, my friend. You’re a good kid. I’ve never had a problem with you before. In fact, if you ever want to make some real money and a change of scenery, say the word. I tell you, I could use a hand here. Especially now that you can—”

  “Thank you, Lee,” Jules cut her off. The only downside to having Lee’s attention was that she unloaded. On any other day, he might have listened. But Izzy was waiting for him, and he did not want to explain the mix-up to Dok. “I know
you’ve had a long day.”

  The Karkarodon sighed, the shape of her jaw giving her a permanent frown. “I have.”

  “You understand what it’s like. Everyone needs something from you, and sometimes you slip up.”

  Lee arched her brow. “Slip up how?”

  “The parcel I gave you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “That was never meant to go to you. It was meant to go to Dok. And don’t ask me what’s in it because I have no idea, and I really need to get it back or—”

  Lee clapped her palm on Jules’s back. It would have been a great thing had Jules been choking, but it was startling. When she laughed he could see the inside rows of her teeth. Jules couldn’t figure out what part of what he’d said was funny. But he laughed along with her.

  “Look here, Rakab, my first week on the job I sent a crate of worms to the wrong planet and I couldn’t get them back. Not like a little box. I mean a crate. Now the jungles of Urajab have been reduced to weeds because of an invasive species.”

  Jules was stunned by Lee’s understanding. He’d had other plans. Though he wasn’t as good as other kids he’d come up with in the Outpost, his sleight of hand was decent. Just when he thought she might let him into the office and he’d be able to avoid stealing from her, she slung her arm around him, and that much closer she didn’t smell pleasantly of salt water. She smelled like the daily catch at the fish stalls. She was walking him away from the center of the landing pad and toward the shut door where he knew the main office was.

  “Do you see that door, Rakab?” she asked, her voice low in his ear. She was two meters tall and had to lower her head to level her black-stone eyes with his.

  “I do,” he said, surprised at how even his voice sounded.

  “Nothing leaves that office once it’s in there unless Hondo’s counting his credits or a delivery is being made.” She squeezed her muscular arm tighter around his neck.

  “But I have the payment right here,” he tried to explain.

  “I like you, Rakab,” she told him. “Which is why I’m only going to tell you one more time. That, and human blood gets everywhere. Fragile things you are. Nothing leaves that office once it’s in there. But I can take the other parcel off your hands if you like. Understood?”