Chapter Three The Unfamiliar
CHAPTER THREE
The Unfamiliar
My mother used to sit me on her lap in the quiet hours all to ourselves on the flight deck, the buttons and knobs on the console blinking and beeping in symphony as she told me, “You can go wherever you want, my heart. The sky is wide.”
And I used to believe her. She always looked most at home in the pilot’s seat, humming to herself as she flew.
Most of the time the Starfarer coasted on autopilot—droids and navigational systems were more than enough to accurately take a ship to its destination—but Mom always rechecked the coordinates anyway, and she charted courses, and she dreamed.
My mom dreamed a lot.
She came from a long line of hyperspace prospectors—explorers charting unknown regions of our galaxy and finding safe routes home.
That was her magic, I used to think—that wherever she was in the galaxy, she could always find her way home.
So whenever she went out on excursions, I never worried.
Sometimes she’d be gone for a day or two, sometimes for an entire tour itinerary, but she always came back.
Until she didn’t.
I remembered that I had begged her not to go. It was almost my eighth birthday, and she had promised to take me to my favorite restaurant on Naboo. But she went anyway. She took the lander and left on an errand.
On the day she was supposed to come home—my birthday—I stood outside of the cockpit as my father talked with her over the communicator. He sounded worried—no, that wasn’t right. He sounded frightened.
“Audra, don’t. It’s too dangerous,” my father warned. “Just hide the lander somewhere. Repair the droid. Then come home.”
“I can’t, Fred,” she replied. Her voice was filled with static. She must have been a long way away. “I promised Arie. I’ll be fine. You worry too much.”
“I worry just enough.”
She laughed. “I’ll see you soon, and Arie will love her present. I’ll be fine,” she added, softer. “I’ve jumped this a thousand times before.”
Dad sounded unsure. “But I was with you.”
Mom laughed through the communicator. “You’re with me now, silly. Love you wide.”
“Audra, love, don’t—Audra!” Dad’s voice broke. He shouted for our ship’s droid, N2-0, to help him get a lock on the shuttle, and for a moment in my memory, he did. Though, that might have just been a haze of my imagination filling in the blurry bits.
She never came home.
I couldn’t disappear like Mom. I couldn’t do that to Dad. I had to make it out of this alive—no matter what.
I curled my hands tight around the saber hilt, pressing it against my chest. My knuckles were white from gripping it so hard.
My heart beat so loud, it thundered in my ears, and I was terrifyingly aware just how screwed we were if they found us—and how much of my body was wedged against this stranger.
When he breathed, I breathed.
In. And out.
In. And. Out.
He was so warm and solid, grounding me in a way that pinned my panic so it couldn’t rise any higher.
He smelled like the strangest thing—dust. Like something older than ships and stars.
It made my chest ache in a way I couldn’t name—like bittersweet nostalgia, the scent of something I’d never known I lost.
The Wild Spacer’s arms wrapped around me tightly. The side of my face pressed against his chest, and his heart was hammering, and hammering, and hammering.
For all the cool smooth-talking, he was just as scared as I was.
“Do you think they went down that other alley back there?” one of the men asked.
“I think they’re still here,” said their leader.
Strange—weren’t there three of them left? Where had the other one gone?
I heard the Wild Spacer curse under his breath. The next moment happened so quickly. He reached for something on his hip. The men pushed back the scrap of metal blocking the crevice—
The Wild Spacer drew a pistol and fired off two shots. One of the men fired back before both of our hunters went down for the count. White-hot static buzzed over them. Their bodies jerked, eyes rolling into the backs of their heads.
He pried himself out of the crevice first, and numbly I followed suit.
“Did you…” My voice wobbled.
“They’re only stunned.” He glared down at the men in disdain. “But that was probably a mistake.”
“Why—” I sucked in a breath as I noticed a blaster hole on the right side of his cloak. “You’re hurt!”
Startled, he glanced down and noticed the burn hole, too. He frantically parted his cloak and melted with relief. The shot had missed him at least, though it also burned the shoulder of his jacket.
“That could have been worse,” he said, more to himself than to me as he took off his cloak.
He kicked one of the unconscious men over, turning him on his back, and began patting him down.
He found what he was looking for in the man’s pockets—a communicator and a small metal cylinder.
“Damn. First Order.” He scrubbed the top of his head in aggravation and stood. “I was kinda hoping they weren’t.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard him properly. “I’m sorry—did you just say First Order? Like the First Order? Like the zealots in the Unknown Regions who want to bring back the Empire First Order?”
He stood, tossing his cloak over the men. “Unless there’s another one you know of…”
“You must be mistaken,” I said, shaking my head. “They can’t be here—how do you know from that—that thing?” I motioned to the metal tube in his hand.
“This,” he said patiently, holding up the metal cylinder, “is a code cylinder. They contain coded information about whoever uses them and grant them some sort of security clearance. First Order officers usually carry them.”
“How do you know?”
He gave me an unreadable look, and his mouth did that peculiar twist again—tucking in at the corner. “This isn’t my first time.”
If I hadn’t been panicking before, I certainly was now.
“Oh, stars. Oh, stars,” I repeated, pulling my hands through my hair.
I stepped back. There were two unconscious—perhaps dead—fascists on the ground, and despite wanting to kick them again for, you know, who they were, the gravity of it all was overwhelming.
“This is bad. This is so bad. I—I have nothing to do with any of this.” I began to tremble.
I had done a good thing and helped somebody out, and now I was complicit in a crime.
“I just wanted to complete my mom’s serial collection. ”
My voice sounded far away. I sank into a crouch.
“Hey,” he said, squatting down beside me. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Breathe, yeah?”
“I’m trying,” I replied, realizing that I was still clutching the lightsaber to my chest. I needed to let go of it, but my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. They were stuck. The reality of the past ten minutes—the death of the Rodian, the escape, the firefight—came crashing down on me.
I could have died.
With a sigh, he sat down beside me. “We can’t stay here long. They’re gonna wake up soon.”
I felt like I was going to vomit. “How are you so calm?”
“Practice,” he replied. Then he offered his hand to me. “Sian, by the way.”
I looked down at his outstretched hand, then at his face. His strange eyes studied me, dozens of pinholes of white, widening just slightly as he drank me in. “Ardent,” I replied, and pried one hand off the saber to shake his hand.
He grinned. “Thanks for helping me back there.”
“Yeah…” I looked down at the saber.
“I didn’t kill anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he added. I had been worried about that.
Suddenly, an air vent grate behind us fell with a loud thump, and a creature scuttled out of it. I startled with a yelp as the creature scrambled across the alley and up Sian’s body to his shoulder. It nudged its head against his with a purr.
He scrubbed the creature under the chin. “Quick thinking back in the shop, Noola. Were you the one who took care of that last guy?”
The creature chirped in reply. It had three short legs on either side of a long, narrow body, each leg bound with a glossy sort of webbing.
Its face was diamond-shaped, with wide gold eyes with a vertical pupil, a forked tongue, and a frame of horns the same deep indigo as the scales on its body.
Though the longer I looked, I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or if the scales changed colors from purple to green to blue.
The only parts of it that didn’t shift colors were the tufts of fur on its paws and the tip of its tail.
I recognized the creature from the shop earlier. “That’s your pet?”
“She’s more like a babysitter,” he clarified. “Now. Let’s find our way out of here, shall we? But first, can I have that saber back?”
Mortified, I shoved it into his chest. “Yes! Absolutely. It’s yours.” I looked away, a flush crawling across my cheeks.
He bit back a grin as he returned it to his gray jacket.
Regrettably, when we found our bearings, we were in a much seedier area of Coruscant.
Dad had warned me to stick to the main streets of Spindlehub Square, because the crime syndicates weren’t quite as prevalent there, but here that was quite obviously not the case.
Blaster holes marred the buildings, and sparks screeched out of broken tech above.
The streets were damp, and the neon lights fizzled.
As we made our way toward what looked like the main street, the people mingling there were of a much different crowd, too, and the light that filtered in from above was so removed, it was barely a pale mirror of itself.
We were still in Spindlehub Square, I was sure, but where…I had no idea.
Neither, it seemed, did my companion.
“We can ask that person where we are,” he said, motioning toward what looked like a bar and the bouncer guarding the door.
I hesitated. “Is it safe?”
“I dunno. They look nice though,” he added, and waved to the bouncer. I shadowed him, tugging anxiously on my braid.
The bouncer, an incredibly big Houk, eyed Sian. He crossed his massive arms across his barrel-like chest, surveying us with beady eyes set deep in a thick skull decorated with bone ridges. “Man-tah. Speak.”