Chapter Twenty-One The Jawas
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Jawas
Even as I returned to the ship, I could still feel where his thumb had brushed my cheek.
Telly and Maeve were in the mess hall with a few guests, listening intently to a radio station relaying the fathier races. They cheered at the announcers as I passed the open door and made my way toward the main chamber. There, tables had been rolled out and different board games set up.
In the corner of the room, Maz hummed as she played holochess with herself, first moving one side of the board and then spinning it around to move the other. She saw me in the doorway before I could duck away and motioned with her hand for me to come over. I did, pulling up a chair across from her.
“Sit, sit!” she welcomed. “It’s more fun playing this game with a friend.”
“I’m terrible at it,” I warned as she reset the board. I made the first move. “Entoo always wipes the floor with me.”
She hummed, studying my play. “That little droid just knows all the good moves.” She pushed one of her pieces, and then I pushed another, and she immediately took it. “It’s easy to win a game when you know all the good moves.”
“I guess you’re right,” I admitted. “Dad says my mom was also really good at holochess. I can’t say, though. I don’t remember much about her. But Dad says I look just like her, so when you said I looked like Dad, I was surprised.”
“You are the best parts of both of them,” Maz said. “You’re stalwart and stubborn, like your father, but there’s a curiosity in your eyes, too, like there was in hers. While most people looked away, she’d stare directly into the night. She challenged it.”
The game was immediately forgotten. “My mom? You knew my mom?”
“She was brilliant in the way only the best of us can be.”
Brilliant. Like stars were brilliant. Like glowing homeworlds in the night sky that I kept chasing after, constantly comforted by their light.
I blinked back the terrible burn of tears.
“I wish I got to know her better,” I said, and made my next move to distract myself so I wouldn’t cry.
It was sloppy, so she took that piece, too, and then clicked her tongue in disappointment.
The move put her k’lor’slug in line with my Mantellian Savrip, which could take it.
I didn’t, though, and moved to claim a different piece instead.
She hummed again. “You are so very like her.”
“I just know that trap,” I said with a grin. “Entoo loves that one—”
There was a beep from my communicator.
“Oh! Speaking of which…” I dug into my pocket for it. It couldn’t be Kotti or Daaric; they’d call Telly directly if anything was wrong, so it had to be one of the droids. “Veebee? Is everything—”
“Not all right,” the tinny voice of VB-35 replied.
A cold sweat chilled my spine. “What do you mean?”
“I have gotten into a bit of a—” The staticky voices of other people interrupted her. I froze. It was the unmistakable chatter of Jawa Trade Talk.
I quickly asked, “Veebee, where are you?”
Above the din in the background, N2-0 gave a pitiful bloop.
“I tried offering them credits, Entoo,” Veebee stated, “but the only currency they want is my body. My gloriously rare—wait, unhand me! Get your hands off! Entoo! Resist!”
N2-0 shrieked a war cry.
Uh-oh.
“Where are you?” I insisted. “What’s happening? How did—”
The communicator went dead. I tried to reach them again, but the call went unanswered. Oh, no. Oh, no. I had sent them on a recon mission, and they had somehow ended up being kidnapped by Jawas. I just got rid of trouble. I didn’t need more. With a groan, I scrubbed my face with my free hand.
Think.
How the heck had Veebee crossed Jawa traders? Everyone knew they operated on Tatooine, so Dad had always been insistent that neither of the droids leave the ship. But I’d asked them to follow Val, and now—
Val.
This was my fault.
Maz tapped her finger to her chin thoughtfully. “Trouble afoot?”
“I’ll be back. I’m so sorry to cut this short!
” I popped to my feet, careful not to jostle the holochess table.
My head was scrambled. I didn’t know what to do, where to go—wait.
I did. Maz wordlessly held up my satchel, and I took it, digging out my datapad.
We’d put a tracker in Entoo a few years ago when their directional programming got damaged and they’d been losing themself in weird places on the ship.
We’d fixed them, but I’d never taken out the tracker just in case.
I still had their location code, so I found it and memorized the readings.
Though once I had, I realized I didn’t know what to do with them.
It wasn’t like I carried a compass with me.
Maz hummed to herself as she dug into her vest pockets and pulled out a small square. “Here. Catch!” She tossed it to me.
I fumbled to catch it. The square was about the size of my palm. It was a compass. The arrow on the dial spun and settled due north.
“It won’t point you to the coordinates, but it should help.”
“Thank you,” I said earnestly, slinging my satchel over my shoulder. “If my dad comes asking where I am, tell him I’ll be back soon?”
Maz made a gentle shooing motion. “You should get going. And, Ardent?”
I was already halfway out of the mess hall, but I spun back to her frantically. “Yeah?”
“Your mother always trusted herself,” she said softly, slowly blinking her eyes behind her goggles. “She’d tell you to do the same.”
“Right,” I whispered, then turned and ran out of the mess hall. My droids were in trouble, and it was my fault.
I was sure my mother would’ve never done something so careless.
I hurried down the ramp of the Starfarer and out into the market, using the compass to guide me. I cut down streets and squeezed past stalls and shoved through groups of people, all the while trying not to get trampled or hit by speeders.
By the time I hit the edge of town, gasping for breath, I realized they were long gone.
I put my hands on my knees. I had thought at least I would see the Jawa caravan leaving, but there was nothing but dusty roads and traffic cresting the hill in the distance.
This was the only main road into the town from this direction—or at least that was what my map said.
And there was no sign of them anywhere.
“Crap,” I murmured, trying to catch my breath. “If I were Jawas, where would I go?”
“That way.”
Startled, I looked toward the voice.
Lanky build, threadbare gray jacket, dust-covered dark trousers, scuffed boots, a shock of silver-white hair. Sian. Pointing with a half-eaten meat skewer into the desert, following the main road.
I righted myself, not quite trusting my eyes.
“At least, that’s the direction their caravan went,” he added, and pulled another piece of meat off the skewer. Noola, on his shoulder, purred. “That the direction you’re going?”
I looked at the compass again. “Yes. I think.”
He finished the skewer. “Perfect,” he said with a mouth full of food. “Let’s go.”
“But…”
“I know.” He sighed dramatically. “I have great timing.”
“And you’re very modest about it,” I said.
He smiled and dug into his jacket, pulling out a ticket-chip. “Jee riqsi. I know. You think I can convince the Advozse over there to exchange this ticket for his speeder?”
A ticket off-world? I had begun to tell him that I could do it myself, that he didn’t need to change his plans for me, when he gave me a knowing look. So I settled for, “You don’t have to.”
“You helped me on Coruscant,” he replied, pulling a small satchel with food and supplies over his head. A present from Veebee, no doubt. He must’ve grown on her like a wart. “Let me repay the favor.”
I just hoped he wouldn’t end up regretting it.