Chapter Four The Smuggler
CHAPTER FOUR
The Smuggler
The taxi landed a short walk from the docking bay, and Sian walked me all the way to the entrance.
At first I wondered if it was simply because he was invested in my opinion of the most recent galactic pop star who had found themself in another auto-tune scandal or the artificial weather of Coruscant and why it was always so muggy, but no. Maybe he was just being chivalrous?
I had my suspicions.
I had my suspicions right up until he cursed and ducked behind a large crate waiting to be moved into the docking bay.
He pressed himself flat against it and quickly motioned for me to follow.
I didn’t see what he was so concerned about until two men emerged from the crowd, heading toward the hangar.
Which sent me quickly behind the crate with him.
He thumped his head against the back of it. Noola chirped inside his jacket. “How does word travel so fast?” Then he squeezed his eyes tightly closed and massaged the bridge of his nose. “They’re going to be looking for me in every ship out of here,” he muttered. “This is not my day.”
“Well…” I glanced around the crate at the men again. “It looks like they didn’t see us. They’re leaving.”
Noola chirped again, and he absently scratched her head as he peeked around the crate with me. “Yeah…”
Suddenly, my communicator crackled, making us both jump.
“Hello? Arie? Helloooooo?”
I quickly pulled it out of my leather jacket, about to answer, and then thought better of it and turned it off. I’d see Kotti in a few minutes anyway. “I should get going. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, but I hope everything works out for y—”
“No—wait!” He caught my wrist and then quickly let go of it. A muscle in his jaw throbbed. “Wait,” he repeated, as if the words pained him. “I…have a favor to ask. I’m not going to get off this planet otherwise.”
I pursed my lips, looking down at my wrist, where he’d touched me. “Why is that lightsaber so important?”
“It just is.”
Which still wasn’t an answer.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and tried to leave again, but with his long legs, he managed to get in front of me and block my way around.
“I just need to get off this planet,” he said.
I felt myself tense like a trapped creature. He was tall and broad, a certifiable brick wall I wouldn’t be able to budge, but I could scream, and that was just as potent. Then everyone in the hangar would come running…including the people looking for us both.
Which also wasn’t great.
“Please,” he added, and then seeming to realize he was blocking my way, he agonizingly stepped aside.
I should have fled then. I should have been halfway up the ramp to hangar eighty-nine.
Instead, I gave it a thought. I really shouldn’t have.
But he hadn’t lied to me yet, even if he wouldn’t answer all my questions.
He was on the run, and it did make sense that a tour ship was trickier to track than a passenger one.
It was like running in a zigzag versus a straight line—harder to hit you if you kept them guessing where you’d turn.
And then there was the whole mess with those First Order goons….
I chewed on my bottom lip as I thought it all through. “You get off at the first stop.”
“That’s fine.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Perfect, I hate travel.”
This was a terrible idea. I’d already saved him once, but then again he’d saved me, too. And if anyone could smuggle him out, it would be me. Still…I bit the inside of my cheek. “Okay.”
Relief flooded his face. “Really? You mean it?”
“Yeah. I’ll go tell my dad—”
He gave a start. “No! No—the less people who know about me, the better. I promise you that. You saw how those First Order officers hunted me, and you. I don’t want them after the whole ship.”
The chances of someone on the ship finding him were ridiculously high, and what if he did something while on the ship? Stole something? Vandalized? Ate one of Veebee’s rare century eggs? I outstretched my hand. “We’ll try, but while you’re on my ship, I’m holding on to that thing.”
His eyes widened. “What? No. Out of the question.”
“Then we don’t have a deal.”
Frustrated, he set his jaw. “You’re asking for the moon, Starlight.”
My eyelids fluttered at the nickname. It surprised me. “I’m…just asking for collateral. You’ll get it back when you leave.”
“How can I trust you?”
“And how can I trust you?” I echoed.
He shifted, muttering to the creature on his shoulder, and then extended the saber to me. “Fine. It doesn’t work, anyway. It’s broken.”
“Even better. We don’t usually allow weapons on the Starfarer.
” I put the saber into my leather jacket and then glanced one more time around the crate.
It would be hard to smuggle him onto the Starfarer—and if we got caught I’d have to explain it all to my father, and I doubted he’d take Sian’s dodgy answers in stride like I did.
Then there was Kotti, who couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, and if anyone else saw him…
My attention returned to the crate itself. perishables, it read, bound for the Starfarer, full of food to restock the galley. “I have an idea.”
He hesitated. “Will I like it?”
“Depends. Do you like pickled fleek eels?”
He paled, which was answer enough.
Everyone in hangar eighty-nine—in the entire spaceport—knew about the Starfarer. If they didn’t, then I was pretty sure those people were living under a rock. There were only two reputable tour companies in the known galaxy, and one of them was owned by Captain Hansifred Quay.
(Obviously more companies existed, but none of them were quite as storied as Hyperlight Tours or—sadly—our dreaded rival: the ultra-exclusive luxury cruise company Chandrila Star Line.
Though rumor had it that they were about to close up shop due to budget cuts—which was nonsense, but rumors were often more catching than the truth.)
Few people knew the galaxy as well as my family and my family’s ancestors.
It came with the territory, really. We were descendants of hyperspace prospectors and cartographers who had charted some of the most notorious hyperspace lanes in history.
It was said even the famed Plyon cartographers came to the Quays when they needed directions.
My great-great-great-grandfather on my mom’s side founded the most legendary hyperspace lane of them all.
And somehow, while we were swirling through hyperspace across the galaxy, something strange had settled into our bones—something that made us special.
We were exquisite navigators.
Magical, almost.
Or at least that was the rumor.
The Quays never denied it. The rumor was good for business, and it wasn’t exactly a lie. The actual truth simply stayed in the family, much like our beloved tour ship, the Starfarer.
In the docking bay sat the ship, an old CR90 Corellian Corvette, refitted with current tech and refurbished with the kind of painstaking detail only Captain Hansifred Quay could muster, down to the is-that-rust-or-is-that-stormtrooper-blood on the bulkheads.
(It wasn’t either one. It was paint. Dad just liked to be dramatic.
“Everything has to tell a story,” he always said, and took it to heart.)
For the nearly three decades since the Galactic Civil War had ended, Dad and his crew had been ferrying daring tourists on journeys to the heart of history itself: to the asteroid field where Alderaan paid the ultimate price in the war, the frigid battlefields of Hoth where the rebels held their ground, Endor’s orbit to lay eyes on the carcass of the Death Star II, and countless other scars in recent history—Yavin 4, Naboo, Corellia, Geonosis, Kashyyyk, Coruscant, Ghorman.
And those were just the ones we could travel to relatively safely.
Sometimes when the stars were quiet, Dad would sneak in a trip to glimpse a dying red giant, or visit a cantina on Batuu, or take a waiver-signed outing to Bakura.
History reached across the galaxy, but most stories and their popularity came in lulls and waves, and Dad rode them like the expert historian he had become.
When he finally retired, I would take over the business. No one ever asked if I wanted to. Of course I did.
There was no one else.
Besides, people booked travel with Hyperlight Tours solely to say they were on a ship captained by a Quay.
So of course no one blinked an eye when I signed off on the crate hiding the stowaway and sent it off to be loaded onto the ship.
This is a terrible idea, I told myself, because it was.
But what else was I supposed to do?
As I went up the gangway of the Starfarer, a Twi’lek stood at the top of it, nose-down in her datapad as she checked off the last bits of her pre-tour checklist. She chewed on her bottom lip worryingly—a habit that was hard to break, even after she made it bleed.
Her skin was the color of fresh moss, accented by the golden bands she wore on her forearms and long twin lekku she usually pulled over her shoulders.
She rocked back and forth on her heels nervously.
That was never a good sign.
Then she looked up and startled, almost tossing her datapad. “Ardent Quay! You’re alive!”
“Somehow, I survived,” I deadpanned.
“I thought you were dead!” she cried, running down the gangway to give me a hug. Her accent was strong, curling at the ends like vines. “I was going to have to tell your dad! Then I would have been dead!”
“No one’s dead,” I squeaked as she hugged tighter. Well, almost no one. “Can’t breathe.”
She let go and held me at arm’s length. She narrowed her eyes. “Seriously, though, where have you been? You were supposed to be back an hour ago!”
I winced. “Did Dad…?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “I’m a professional. He thinks you were still in the shower. Then you went to your room. Girl stuff. You were right, it worked like a charm.”
I groaned. “Great.”
“You know, if you’d come back an hour ago then I wouldn’t have had to lie to my boss.”
Which was true. “I appreciate it.”