A Crash of Fate Read online

  Normally, Jules liked gawking—discreetly of course—at the new arrivals in the Outpost. He could usually tell them apart because they craned their necks at the spires and stalls as they walked, their attention bouncing from sound to sight. It filled him with a sense of pride when off-worlders found something about Batuu to love. He hoped Izzy would feel that way.

  She kept an easy pace beside him, though he found himself slowing down to let her eyes roam the eroded sides of buildings laced with green vines, the couples sitting on stone steps sharing mugs of spiced tea.

  He stopped in front of a tall tree. He’d taken a slightly longer route, but the look on her face was worth it.

  “What is this?” Izzy asked, reaching for the closest branch. Around the slender wood were dozens of ribbons and scraps of cloth. They ornamented the tree, tied any place there was available bark. The loose ends moved in the wind like leaves.

  “It’s the wishing tree,” he said. “You take a piece of string or cloth or whatever you want and tie it up here. When it breaks off by itself, your wish has been granted.”

  As soon as he said it, he could imagine what he must sound like—a boy from a small outpost who’d never left home and believed in magic.

  “Has it ever worked?” she asked him.

  He’d come to the wishing tree once and tied a blue strip of Belen’s yarn around a branch. There was no way he could tell if it was still there, because there was yarn tied in every color. Besides, the tree had grown right along with him. But his wish had been simple. He couldn’t even meet her gaze as he said, “Yes, but it took a long time.”

  The look on her face was skeptical, but that didn’t stop her from digging into her pockets for a string. She came up empty. She touched the cord around her neck but seemed to decide against it. There was a string coming loose from the side of his tunic, and he pulled it, snapped it off, and handed it to her.

  She pushed up onto her toes, as high as she could reach, and added her wish to the tree.

  “What did you wish for?” he asked.

  She bit her bottom lip and shrugged. He could already see the lie forming on her lips before she said, “Food.”

  “We’re close to Cookie’s,” Jules said. “He’s new to these parts. Downright mean, always angry. You might understand.”

  “I’m not always angry!” she shouted indignantly.

  But she was. It clung to her in small moments, like stubborn clouds drifting slowly across the suns. Anger was the hardest thing to let go of, other than love. He’d seen his mother go through it. After his father died, she’d succumbed to a deep sorrow. The same woman who’d taught him to dream became someone who cursed the sky. Jules had hoped he and Belen could love their mother enough to make up for the loss they all felt, but it never quite worked. He didn’t want the same for Izzy. She wasn’t his to fix. He didn’t wish that on Izzy. But maybe he could help if she let him.

  He began walking away from the wishing tree and back into the road, giving the right of way to a skittish eopie loaded with luggage, a little girl riding atop while her mother led the creature.

  “I have a deviated septum that says otherwise. But you’re certainly not the same giddy little girl who used to chase me around.”

  “If anyone chased anyone, it was you chasing me,” she corrected him.

  They entered the hangar at docking bay seven, where a ship converted to serve as a traveling restaurant was stationed. Jules waved at those he was acquainted with, like the Xexto mechanic who’d fixed Belen’s cleaner droid and off-duty human bartenders from Oga’s. He made straight for the grill counter. That early, there was no one to help Cookie serve the tables, and in the short time he’d known the Artiodac, Jules had learned that the easier he made Cookie’s life, the better service he’d get.

  “You should have seen how packed this place was when he first arrived,” Jules told Izzy. “I might have snuck off work early just to get an order of fried Endorian tip-yip or seven.”

  “Beats the nutrient packs I’ve been living off.” She took a seat beside him and swiveled until they were face to face. He noticed four black freckles clustered on her cheek.

  Something about being so close to her all of a sudden made him feel like a vise was around his insides. He had to look away, turning to the lively tables in the hangar below them. Two humans and a masked Kel Dor were minutes from a food fight over a game of dice. Beside them a group of purple-skinned aliens with large eyes shoveled food into their wide mouths like it was a last meal. They were probably going to the market soon to open a stall. He tried to see if Volt was in the order queue, his bald head easy to spot. Jules wondered if he’d be too hungover to show up to his shift at the creature stall. Hell, maybe even Dok had snuck away to go to Cookie’s.

  “What’s moof juice?” Izzy asked.

  Jules smiled widely and shrugged. “Sometimes I don’t ask. I just order and hope for the best.”

  “This coming from the boy who could survive on popped grain for days.” Izzy watched him in a way that made him fidget.

  “Well, I’m not afraid of heights anymore, either,” he said. “Especially after our last scramble down that cliff.” He wanted to ask what happened after that night when her family had taken off, but there was something so guarded about her. He didn’t want to scare her away by saying the wrong thing.

  “How’d you end up at Dok’s?” she asked. “Last I was here you were starting at one of the vegetable farms.”

  “For a year. Then there was the fire.”

  “Fire?”

  He picked at the frayed menu and leaned on the countertop. “The year after you left there was a drought. The brush caught fire and spread through the forest and our homes. We got out. Da, being Da, ran back and made sure everyone was safe, but he inhaled too much smoke.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” she said softly.

  “It’s all right, Izzy,” Jules assured her. He felt good remembering them whenever he could. “My parents never talked about where their people came from before settling on Batuu, but one of their rituals was remembering the dead to keep them alive. Ma went two years ago from a virus that swept the Outpost.”

  Izzy listened, once again toying with the pendant she kept under her shirt, like a secret. “Then tell me.”

  “After Da passed, I got a job with Dok. Belen and Ma never liked it. I got beat up a lot. You would have done great here if you’d stayed.”

  She wrapped her hand around his bicep and playfully shoved. “I’m sorry I punched you. Will I ever live it down?”

  That feeling around his insides tightened when she touched him, but he forced himself to focus. “Belen got me a job at Kat Saka’s farm, but I was restless. I almost enlisted in the New Republic Academy when practically all the kids my age left.”

  “What stopped you?”

  Nothing had stopped him. Or perhaps everything had. He’d wanted to leave for so long, but when the opportunity lay in front of him, he simply returned to his routine. Every time. At first it had been his mother getting sick. Then he couldn’t leave Belen. Then Kat Saka had implored him to stay on for another season because business was booming. Then? Haal’s words cycled through his mind once again. There was nothing anchoring him to that world anymore. Was there?

  “It never felt right.” He wanted to impress her. He wanted to let her know that there was possibility in his future. “What about you?”

  “There’s not much to tell.” Izzy busied herself with the single-sided menu frayed at the corners. She tucked her hair behind her ear, exposing a metal cuff.

  “Oh, come on. When we were kids you wanted to be a senator of a planet you called Ata Walpa and give the citizens all-you-can-eat puffed candies and no bedtimes.”

  When Izzy laughed, really laughed, her eyes crinkled at the corners and she clutched her stomach. It was only for a moment, but the pride he felt eliciting that kind of joyful reaction from her—well, it was something he was not supposed to feel so quickly, and he
wanted to do it again all the same.

  As some of the only children running around their community all those years before, they’d been bonded by sheer default. They cared for each other while their families were at work. They made up entire worlds to discover. Part of him missed how easy it was to make plans when there were no ramifications or expectations or possibilities of failure. He wondered if that was why it had been so difficult for him to decide what his life would be after quitting Kat’s farm. Izzy, by the force of her presence, reminded him of the kids they used to be, the kids who used to climb up spires, run across fields, laugh until it hurt.

  “I’m a long way from politics,” she said, worrying at her bottom lip.

  “What trouble are you getting yourself into?”

  “Why do you assume I’m involved in something bad?”

  “I’m born and raised here, remember? I can spot a potentially bad deal from a mile away.”

  “Is that so?” She pursed her mouth into a challenge he would have given anything to meet. “Let’s have a look around, shall we? That group over there. What do you suppose his deal is?”

  Jules leaned in closer to her, and a stray lock of her hair tickled his cheek. “See, I have an unfair advantage here because I happen to know Schelhorn’s crew. They carry wood shipments for the Wooden Wookiee.”

  “Fine, who don’t you know then, if you’re so good at reading people?”

  Jules spun in his seat and surveyed the tables dotting the hangar like a mess hall. A severe-looking group clad in black lingered at the hangar entrance. Izzy seemed to notice them just when Jules did.

  “They’re here to recruit,” Jules said, careful not to point at them. “But anyone could tell that.”

  “That explains it,” Izzy murmured.

  “Explains what?”

  “I got lost and ran into a stormtrooper earlier.”

  Jules’s eyes widened, and it dawned on him that was why she was nearly beating down Dok’s door.

  “I’ve got nothing to hide,” she said quickly, almost too defensively. “I’ve never seen one in person before. Do they have to look so—”

  “Creepy?” they said together.

  They were drawing closer, as if their whispers could only carry as far as the bubble around them.

  “When they first arrived they stayed put, but they’ve taken—liberties—with their presence.”

  “Can they do that?” Izzy asked.

  “Doesn’t matter if they can, they still do,” Jules said. “My sister’s been pulling extra hours on Kat’s farm because half her crew picked up and enlisted. I’m surprised any of the First Order would even want to eat here out of fear of being poisoned.”

  When Izzy frowned, that tiny worry mark between her brows was accentuated. “Why’s that?”

  Cookie still had his back turned to them, smooshing some kind of meat patties with a large spatula. Juices sizzled on the hot grill, and voices rose around them with lively conversations about fuel prices and the chaos on Toledian after a mining accident destroyed its main city. Normally, Jules would have eavesdropped on every bit of information he could about the galaxy, but for the moment Izal Garsea was a thousand worlds in a single person.

  Jules cleared his throat. “Cookie doesn’t like to talk about them.”

  Hearing his name, the great Artiodac chef stomped around to face them. Cookie’s arms were two sizes—one meaty and long, the other thinner and shorter. How he fit behind that grill comfortably was a mystery to all, but it was where he looked the calmest. He wielded his spatula on his shorter side.

  “Cookie doesn’t like to talk about who?” he asked in heavily accented Basic.

  “Cook!” Jules said, not allowing room for explanation. “I brought you a new customer. This is Izzy Garsea—an old friend.”

  Cookie peered at the girl, who stuck out her hand. Jules was half certain Cookie was going to slap it away with his spatula, so he was as surprised as anyone around them when the large, gray-skinned hand closed around hers. He muttered a greeting.

  “Old friend, huh?” he said. Then his bulbous eyes went to the black-clad group at the door. The officers seemed to stand straighter out of sheer discomfort, their noses tilted to the sky as if trying to get as far from the ground as possible. They did not enter the hangar. “First Order scum. The nerve to show up here. How far in the galaxy do I have to go to get away from them?”

  Izzy leaned forward with deceptively doe-like eyes. Jules had seen her use that look when she wanted something from her father. “I might regret asking this, Cookie, but what did they do to you?”

  Cookie turned, stomping heavy feet as if he was locked in a box. Jules was briefly worried the chef would destroy his own grill counter in a fit and then fry up steaks on the embers that remained.

  “They blew up the last place I worked. Maz Kanata’s castle.” He growled in the back of his throat, a forlorn look in his eyes. “Shame. Such a shame. That’s why I took my show on the road. Lucky for you lot.”

  Jules had heard the story so many times from Cookie, he could nearly recite it. The First Order had come to his world, chasing the Resistance that people whispered more and more about these days. Instead of listening to Cookie, Jules watched Izzy’s facial expressions. Her eyes widened and she gasped at the right moments.

  “That’s awful,” she told him.

  “I make do,” Cookie said, his voice dialing back to conversational. “Business is good. What’ll you be having?”

  Izzy didn’t even glance down at the menu again. “Surprise me. I’m sure it’ll be great.”

  Cookie seemed to like that. His wide mouth made a strange movement. Jules thought Cookie looked as though he was in pain, but then he realized that was what must pass for a smile.

  As their chef milled back to his grill, Jules couldn’t help staring at Izzy.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m just imagining you charming your way around the galaxy.” He’d meant it to be a compliment, and yet there was a flash of sadness on her face. He wanted to take it back. It had only been a matter of time before he said something wrong. But a moment later she shook it off, then turned back to the hangar and pointed at a young Togruta and a human boy with brown skin and hair buzzed close to the scalp.

  “What about them?” she said, resuming their game. “Do you know their story?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “Those two are a very dangerous sort.”

  Izzy tilted her head to the side and made an incredulous face. “Really?”

  Jules could hardly keep his laughter back as he said, “Pirates. Will rob old women of their spectacles if they can. I’d wager they’re on the Doklist and everything.”

  As if sensing he was being stared at, the Togruta lifted his head and his face broke into a lazy smile that was anything but dangerous. The pair shouted his name.

  “You’re trying to trick me, Julen Rakab.”

  He grinned. “Is it working?”

  “Not one bit.”

  “Jules!” The Togruta ran over to him. “Good to see you, mate.”

  “Izzy, this is Neelo and Fawn. They’re playing at Oga’s tonight.”

  The Togruta, Neelo, wore a black tunic and had modified markings on his arms. He grabbed Jules by his shoulders and squeezed. “You’re coming, right? We need you to be there and bring people. Have to show Oga we’ve got the goods.”

  “We go on after Rex,” the human boy named Fawn said, his voice deep and naturally monotone. “Bring your friend.”

  “Me?” Izzy said, pointing at herself. “I can’t.”

  Jules felt a hard pang of disappointment. Of course, he knew she wasn’t going to be there for long. She was going to deliver whatever Dok had ordered, and then she’d be gone. He wondered if he’d miss her more or less the second time around.

  “Bummer,” Neelo said, but held out his fist to Jules.

  Voices soared like a gathering of bees moving through the crowd as a new crowd entered
the hangar from the courtyard. Dishes were doled out faster and faster, and Cookie slid two glasses of cold moof juice in front of them on the house on top of their order. Jules never got free things.

  “I’ll be right back,” Izzy said, standing so abruptly she almost tripped. He caught her by the arm, and she turned around.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, her voice climbing in pitch. He detected the lie, but who was he to press? An old friend? She didn’t owe him anything, not even an explanation. Still, he worried. “I have to call my boss. I should have done it before but—I’ll be right back.”

  She gave him a strained smile, and Neelo and Fawn stepped aside to let her pass. Keeping her head down, she folded into the crowd. Could she be on the run from someone? There were no stormtroopers, and she hadn’t reacted that way to seeing the First Order officers at the door. The dice players were gone, but there were new arrivals—a crew Jules had never seen before. One was a tall human boy with blue hair combed back with glossy product. He whispered something to his companion, a young woman around the same age as Jules, perhaps older, with a bright red braid that hung over her shoulder like rope.

  “I smell trouble,” Neelo said, taking Izzy’s empty seat. He snatched Jules’s moof juice and drank.

  “Trouble can be fun,” Fawn said, shrugging in that easy way of his.

  Jules realized his friends were talking about him. And Izzy. “It’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t think you know what we think,” Neelo said, wiping his lips with the back of his sleeve. “Are you going to eat these?”

  “Yes,” Jules said, but knew Neelo was going to help himself to his friend’s tip-yip anyway. The only reason he didn’t complain was because he knew they’d had a hard time booking gigs after the Outpost crowds had dwindled. And because he was, in part, watching and waiting for Izzy to return.

  “Spit it out,” Jules said. Before Neelo took him literally, he explained, “Say what you’re thinking.”