Chapter Three The Unfamiliar #2
Sian perked up. “Ah’chu apenkee!” he said with a wave of his hand. Huttese. So he was from Wild Space—or at least the Outer Rim. He said something else fast and thick in the language and motioned behind them.
The Houk bouncer narrowed his eyes. Then he said in Basic, “Catch an air taxi at the end of the street.”
“Jupa uba. Thank you,” Sian replied, and tilted his head down the way.
As we followed the bouncer’s directions, he touched his cheek, wincing with a hiss. It was still red, and slightly swollen.
“You have a mean slap, you know,” he said. Noola purred again, and he wagged his finger at her. “That’s not nice. And you’re being dramatic.”
Such an odd pair they were.
Luckily, the bouncer had steered us right. There was a taxi call box at the end of the street. Sian dug into his pockets—he had a lot more of them than I would have thought—but when he came up empty, he took a pocketknife from his boot and crouched down to pop open the money collection bin.
“What are you doing?” I asked in alarm. “You can’t just steal that!”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t think too hard. I’m just recycling.” He pried the door open and took out more than the fare amount, then closed it back up. “How much do you need? Where are you going?”
“A hangar on level five-one-two-seven.”
He whistled. “Guess you’re a spacer then?”
“My family runs a tour company,” I replied. “We embark from there later today—oh, stars,” I gasped, realizing, and checked the time on my wrist chrono. “I was supposed to be back almost an hour ago. Dad’s going to kill me.”
Something over my shoulder caught his eye, but he tried to ignore it. “A tour company—like the Chandrila Star Line or whatever? The really fancy ships?”
I wrinkled my nose. I wished we had that kind of money. “We’re not so fancy.”
His attention flicked again to whatever was behind me. “Ah.”
“We’re affordable, actually. And we orchestrate visits to historical locations, like battlefields, ancient ruins, and disasters.”
“So dark tourism then.”
“Just historically significant—what are you looking at?” I added, turning to glance over my shoulder, but he caught my chin to keep me from looking and rubbed a smear of grime off my cheek.
“Keep your eyes on me,” he said softly, his voice barely more than a rumble, “and stay calm. There are four people coming toward us with blasters.”
My entire body stilled and went cold. “First Order?”
“I don’t know. They don’t look it. We could have a bounty on us.”
Noola chirped to tell us that a taxi hovered over the landing pad, lowering toward us.
Sian said, “We’re just going to get in, quickly, and hopefully they won’t make a fuss.”
“And if they do?”
“You’ll be fine. Just do as I say, okay?”
I thought I could hear their footsteps—heavy and urgent—against the movement of the crowd, or that might have just been my imagination.
Either way, it brought the taste of tin to my mouth. “I don’t want to die.”
He gave me a reassuring smile. “Give me a little more credit, yeah? You’re not going to die.”
The taxi settled on the platform. It was rusted yellow and long, with a closed cab and tinted windows, looking more like a racing pod than a taxi. I was used to seeing the open-air ones from the higher levels.
He instructed, “Go—now.”
I did, diving for the door to the air taxi as it arrived. The droid navigating asked, “Where to?”
“Hangar eighty-nine. Eastern spaceport. Topside!”
A blaster bolt pinged off the taxi call box. Sian pulled out his pistol again and fired twice before climbing in beside me. Noola was tucked into his jacket. He slammed the door closed.
“Go!” I cried.
The droid went nowhere. “Fare first.”
Sian rolled his eyes. “We’ll pay in the air!”
“Request denied,” the droid replied.
One of the people after us slammed their fists against the air taxi window, shouting at us to get out. Two others came around the other side. They weren’t dressed like the men pursuing us before. They looked a whole lot rougher.
Sian fumbled with the creds he’d stolen from the taxi box and dumped them all into the front. “There! Is that enough?”
“Denied. Too much.”
“Keep the change, you hunk of junk!”
The droid debated a moment, earning another dent in its speeder. Then its eyes blinked blue. “Accepted. Taxi en route,” it relayed, just as one of our pursuers pressed a blaster to the windshield.
We were absolutely going to die.
The air taxi shot into the air, tossing off two of the people, and quickly rose into one of the skylanes.
I bent over, putting my head between my legs. I was going to be sick. “I’m never leaving my ship again,” I promised myself.
But I didn’t get sick.
“Aw, this was nothing. Just a normal day on Coruscant,” Sian said lightly.
I don’t know what came over me—I just…
I started to laugh. I threw my head back, holding my aching sides.
The last hour had been so ridiculous, so impossible, it was really the only thing my body could do that wasn’t crying, and I was terrible at crying, anyway.
I knew he was staring—I could feel it—but I didn’t care.
The laughter shook all the fear out of me, settled it back in the bottom of my soul like silt in an ocean.
“Oh, yes, that was just a pleasant walk,” I gasped between howls of laughter. “A little jaunt around the city, running for our lives!”
He chuckled, unable to hide the smile eating at the corners of his mouth. “We all need a little fresh air and impending doom.”
I laughed so hard, it brought tears to my eyes. “I can’t believe we survived getting shot at! Three times!”
“We’re either incredibly lucky,” he said, “or incredibly unlucky.”
“I almost hate to find out which of us is the unlucky one once we go our separate ways,” I replied.
His laughter stopped short. “Ahem. Yeah…about that.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “If those were people looking to collect a bounty…then they know you’re with me now.”
My own laughter caught in my throat. “I am not with you.”
He leveled a look at me. “You know what I mean.”
Wordlessly, I looked between him and his creature, and then at him again. “They think I’m helping you?”
“Well, you kind of did.”
“I did,” I realized. My thoughts fell on the lightsaber tucked into his jacket. I remembered what the leader had told him in the shop. “Why’s that saber so important?”
“It’s not,” he replied quickly, looking out the window at the passing speeders.
“Is it yours?”
“No.”
“Then whose is it?”
“No one’s,” he replied, flicking his gaze to me.
A whole lot of helpful answers there.
I studied his easy demeanor. There it was—that strange pulse again in his eyes, white pinpricks widening before retracting again. I made him nervous, or did my questions? “Do you normally lie to people you just met?”
Knowing he was caught, he smoothed an easy smile over his lips. It almost made the lie easier to swallow. “I’m usually better at it,” he said decisively, “but my charm doesn’t seem to work on you.”
“And what charm is that?”
His smile widened, and it reached his glittery eyes. “You’re fun, Ardent.”
“Well, you’re infuriating.”
“I aspire to nothing more.”
He laughed again, disarming the tension that had built in the taxi, and we made small talk for the rest of the ride to hangar eighty-nine.