Chapter 4: The Captain's Wager
The alley was no longer a refuge; it was a staging ground. Jax poured a precious stream of water from his canteen onto a strip of cloth torn from his old undershirt. He scrubbed at his face, trying to erase the grime of the hangar that felt embedded in his very pores. He slicked back his hair with wet fingers and beat his worn tunic against a container, sending up a cloud of rust-colored dust.
'You get one shot at a first impression,' he thought, the voice of a long-dead flight instructor echoing in his memory. 'Can't look like I just crawled out of the gutter, even if I literally just did.'
He took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and walked out of the shadows. His destination was the Dust Devil Flophouse, but he wasn't looking for a bunk. Pim had said it was where the workers went, and Jax was betting that included the broke, desperate freighter captains, too. He moved with a purpose he hadn't felt since he'd worn a flight suit, his long strides eating up the distance.
The entrance to the cantina was a dark, intimidating archway. He pushed through the energy curtain that kept the heat and dust at bay and was hit by a wall of sound and smell. The air was thick with smoke, cheap liquor, and the greasy scent of unidentifiable fried meats. The low-ceilinged room was a den of casual despair and cheap thrills, packed with beings of a dozen different species. A hulking, furred creature laughed, revealing rows of needle-like teeth, while across the room, a cloaked Twi'lek argued with a droid over a game of chance.
For a moment, the old anxiety threatened to surface. He was an outsider, a complete unknown. But he pushed it down. 'Eyes forward, Ryker,' he told himself. 'You're not here to make friends. Find your target. Execute the mission.'
His gaze swept the room, past the gamblers and the bounty hunters oiling their blasters, to the secluded booths in the back. And there he was. Captain Valerius. He looked even more miserable up close. A human, probably in his late fifties, with a face like a cracked desert landscape and a cybernetic hand that was currently wrapped around a half-empty glass. His full attention was on a datapad, his brow furrowed in a deep, troubled frown. Jax could see the screen from across the room; it was filled with columns of red, negative numbers. Repair estimates.
Perfect.
Jax navigated the crowded floor, squeezing past a table of boisterous miners and ignoring the challenging glare from a reptilian being with cold, unblinking eyes. He was a man on a mission, and the noise of the cantina faded into a dull roar. He reached the booth and stopped, his body casting a shadow over the glowing datapad. Valerius, annoyed at the interruption of his misery, looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, his voice a gravelly sigh.
"Who's asking?"
Jax met his gaze, his own voice calm and level, cutting through the noise.
"The name's Jax. I'm a pilot. And I think I can solve your problem."
Valerius looked up from his datapad, his eyes taking in Jax's worn tunic and the lingering dust of the hangar. A short, cynical laugh escaped his lips, a dry, rattling sound.
"A pilot?" he scoffed, gesturing with his cybernetic hand at Jax's appearance. "Kid, you smell like hangar grease and desperation. I saw you with my own two eyes, hauling crates for Grakk like a broken-down maintenance droid. You're a dust-hauler, not a pilot."
Jax didn't flinch. He met the captain's dismissive gaze with a calm one of his own and, without being invited, slid into the booth opposite him. "A man's got to eat, Captain," he said, his voice even. "Doesn't mean he forgets who he is." He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice to be heard over the cantina's din. "And it gives a man a lot of time to observe."
Valerius snorted, turning back to his drink. "Observe what? The color of the dirt?"
"Your ship," Jax said simply. "A good old YT-1250. She's got good bones, but she's tired. She's hurting."
That got the captain's attention. He paused, his glass halfway to his lips. Jax pressed on, his voice steady and professional, laying out the facts as he had memorized them.
"Your port thruster, for instance. It has a cyclical misalignment. It pushes out a heat shimmer you can see from the ground every time you land." He saw a flicker of recognition in the old man's eyes. "My guess is you're wasting about eight percent of your fuel just compensating for it on any atmospheric maneuver."
He let the first piece of data sink in before delivering the next. "Then there's your primary power converter. It's failing. That's why your landing lights flicker just before touchdown. It's not a faulty bulb, it's a power fluctuation. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't blown the whole circuit."
Valerius slowly put his glass down on the table. His cynical smirk was gone, replaced by a hard, focused stare.
Jax delivered the final, most damning piece of evidence. "And the real problem? You've got a micro-leak in the hydraulic line for your forward landing strut. Every time you set her down, she leaves a little ghost on the ferrocrete. Evaporates in seconds under the heat, but it's there." He leaned back, his case made. "You're losing pressure, Captain. Slowly, but surely."
The captain was silent for a long moment, the chaos of the cantina seeming to fade around their table. He glanced from Jax's steady eyes down to the glowing red numbers on his datapad, where the words HYDRAULIC SYSTEM OVERHAUL were listed next to an astronomical price. The kid wasn't guessing.
"Who are you?" Valerius's voice was different now—a low, suspicious growl. "No box-hauler sees that kind of detail. You some kind of corporate spy? A repo man sent to list my ship's faults before you take her?"
Jax gave a small, humorless smile.
"I told you," he said, his voice unwavering. "I'm a pilot. And I'm observant."
Valerius stared at Jax, his weathered face a mask of conflicting emotions: suspicion, intrigue, and a deep, profound weariness. He broke eye contact first, looking down at the damning list of repairs on his datapad. He let out a long, slow sigh that seemed to carry the weight of a dozen failed ventures.
"Damn droids can diagnose a leaky pipe, but they'll bill you a thousand credits to look at it," he grumbled, more to his glass than to Jax. "A good co-pilot costs a fortune you don't have. A bad one costs you your ship. There's no winning out here. Never has been."
It was the concession Jax was waiting for, an admission of the corner he was backed into. This was his moment.
'He's hooked,' Jax thought, keeping his own expression neutral. 'He's looking for a way out. Give it to him.'
"I'm not asking for a salary, Captain," Jax said, his voice steady. "I'm offering a business proposition." He leaned forward again, his forearms resting on the sticky table. "Let me fly co-pilot on your next run. Looks like you're prepping a cargo hop to Ryloth." He'd seen the destination manifest on the datapad when the captain had first looked up.
"No pay up front," Jax continued, pressing his advantage. "If I'm as good as I say—if I can smooth out that thruster's output and cut your fuel consumption by even five percent—you pay me one hundred credits for the single trip. A bargain, considering what you'll save on fuel and repairs down the line."
He paused, letting Valerius process the offer before delivering the final, crucial part of the deal. "And if I'm wrong, or if I so much as scratch the paint, you leave me on Ryloth. No questions, no cost to you. I just disappear." He held the captain's gaze. "It's a free test flight. You have nothing to lose."
Valerius was quiet, his cybernetic fingers drumming a soft, rhythmic tattoo on the tabletop. Jax could almost see the gears turning in the old man's head. The risks were clear: letting a complete stranger, a kid he'd seen hauling freight, into the cockpit of his only asset, his home. But the rewards were just as clear. The kid talked a good game, a scarily good game. And if he was telling the truth… a hundred credits was nothing compared to the thousands he was facing in repair costs. The offer was perfectly tailored to his desperation.
Finally, the drumming stopped. Valerius fixed him with a hard, unblinking stare.
"One run," he said, his voice low and final. "That's it. You touch a control without my say-so, you're out the airlock. You give me any trouble, I'll sell you to the spice mines on Kessel myself. We clear?"
"Crystal clear, Captain," Jax replied without hesitation.
Valerius grunted, a sound of reluctant agreement. He extended his cybernetic hand across the table. It was scuffed and scarred, a piece of utilitarian machinery, cold and unforgiving. Jax reached out and shook it. The grip was powerful, the metal cool against his calloused skin. It wasn't a handshake of partnership; it was the sealing of a grim contract.
"Bay 7. First light," Valerius said, releasing his hand and turning back to his drink, the dismissal absolute. "Don't be late."
Jax stood up and walked away from the table without another word. He moved through the smoky chaos of the cantina, but he no longer felt like an outsider. The noise, the smells, the menacing glares—none of it touched him. He pushed through the energy curtain and stepped back out into the oppressive heat of Port Anteris.
But the heat felt different now. He looked up at the bruised ochre sky, at the space between the towering buildings where ships became distant stars. The hangar floor was behind him. The cockpit was ahead. He was going back to the sky.