This was, Navasi decided, the third worst date she’d ever been on.
It wasn’t her datemate’s fault this time, though; things had been going pretty well with Pakelia considering they’d met on Shelyn’s Boudoir. Navasi wasn’t usually one for dating apps, but she’d been recommended that one by Quig, of all people. Probably he was just sick of hearing her complain about her disaster of a love life.
So she’d nabbed a reservation at Angelfish, Absalom Station’s hottest new seafood restaurant, and to her surprise, Pakelia turned out to be a real person, not a scambot—and a charming one at that. They’d already moved past small talk by the time their server brought them their menus.
Then everything went to hell.
As another explosion rattled the chandeliers, Navasi tugged Pakelia further into the cover of their overturned table. The verthani woman’s shoulders were a taut line, soot staining the green silk of her dress; her gaze darted around, seeking an exit. They’d been seated in the back corner, and the attackers were between them and the panicked crowd of diners and staff fleeing out the front door.
Navasi glared at the menu lying on the floor by their broken cocktail glasses, its scrolling display of the day’s specials replaced by a sigil of a cat’s paw clutching a scimitar. She knew that sigil. And if Trace was here, it wasn’t because she’d lucked into a table.
As the dust cleared, she heard, “Navasiiiii!” echo from the extemporary exit Trace’s grenade had blown in the wall, and any hope she’d had of Pakelia not identifying her as the target of this chaos evaporated. She glanced over but couldn’t read any emotion in Pakelia’s ink-black eyes.
A hail of electrical bolts singed holes in the wall behind them. That was definitely Trace’s first mate, Arvann. Navasi muttered a word that would have made her childhood etiquette tutor revoke her vidgame privileges for a week and fished her laser pistol out of the thigh holster strapped under her skirt.
“They’re after you?” Pakelia asked, glancing briefly at the gun, then away. Navasi sighed, cursing Trace’s timing. Her lifestyle could be risky, and Pakelia was an accountant, for Besmara’s sake. An accountant she’d inadvertently dropped into a firefight. Oh, I am so not getting a second date.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry. It’s… complicated.”
“A soap opera plot is complicated,” Pakelia said. “This is what I’d call a problem.” She peeked over the table. “They’ve got all the exits covered.”
Was it her imagination, or had Pakelia’s posture relaxed?
“Navasi!” Trace’s voice rang out. “Get out here before I ventilate this ceiling!”
“Because you’ve done the décor so many favors already,” Navasi retorted. Disproportionate was the key word for Trace’s reactions to pretty much anything. She’d found it intoxicating, once, before she’d gotten tired of feeling like a moth crisping itself on a flame. She scanned the restaurant for options. Trace’s tendency to bombard first and ask questions later had worked to their advantage in one way, at least; there were plenty of broken chairs and tables to use as cover, and luckily, everyone else seemed to have escaped already.
“Dare I ask?” Pakelia murmured in her ear. The scent of her perfume, floral and subtly sweet, cut through the acrid tang of electricity, and Navasi spared a moment of wistfulness for lost opportunities.
“Don’t date a Free Captain,” she answered. “And if you do date a Free Captain and then break up with them, don’t take a protection job on her route and foil a score she’s been planning for months.”
“Might I suggest,” Pakelia mused, “that perhaps you shouldn’t have let her know who did it?”
“My ship’s pretty distinctive,” Navasi said, wondering if she was imagining the hint of amusement dancing on the edges of Pakelia’s voice. She tilted her head at the panorama windows on the other side of the restaurant, which provided a beautiful view of Jatembe Park below. “Okay. See those windows?” The table shielding them disintegrated, another grenade boom echoing through the air. Navasi grabbed Pakelia’s arm and yanked her away from the wreckage. The two scrabbled toward the next overturned table.
“They’re our exit,” Navasi finished, brushing splinters off her dress. The purple satin was shredded and stained, probably beyond nonmagical repair. “Damn it, Trace!” she yelled over the table. “This dress was expensive!”
“I like your blue one better!” Trace called back. “What happened to the blue one?”
Navasi contemplated taking a deep breath and counting to ten. Instead, she popped up long enough to fire a few warning shots.
“You borrowed it,” she shouted, in between laser blasts, “and spilled nitro fuel on it. Remember?”
“Is that why you broke up?” Pakelia asked.
“No,” Navasi admitted, “but it should have been. Would have saved me some time and trouble.” Trace’s response to that was another grenade. Navasi hissed in surprise as Pakelia slid an arm around her shoulders and swept her along to new cover as their second table met the same splintery fate as the first.
“Is she trying to kill you?” Pakelia asked. As they ducked behind table number three, her knee only narrowly avoided skidding across the remains of someone’s mango shrimp. The question wasn’t incredulous, but neutral, a mere clarification of fact stated in the exact same tone she’d used to ask their server whether the Castrovelian glowfish sauté had nuts in it. She was handling this better than Navasi would have expected.
“Probably not,” she said. Trace had a temper, but she wasn’t that extreme. “If I had to guess, I’d say she just wants to knock us out, steal all our valuables, and call it even.”
“Well,” Pakelia said. “I’m fond of this necklace—and also my skull—so I’d prefer to avoid that.” She inclined her head toward the far wall. “Making a break for the windows it is. I assume you’ve accounted for the main problem?”
“That we’re five stories up?”
“That’s the one.”
“Did you see that tattooed vesk guy out there?”
“I tend to notice people blasting arc emitters at me, yes.”
“He’s got an autograppler on his belt.”
“You want us to fight past your angry ex and her crew, snatch an autograppler off one of them, and then dive out of a five-story window?” Pakelia asked.
“Pakelia,” Navasi began, her stomach sinking. “I’m sorry I—” She wasn’t sure how she planned to end the sentence—ruined our date? have a chaos gremlin of an ex? am totally cursed when it comes to relationships?—but before she could try, Pakelia grinned.
“Sounds fun,” she said, giving Navasi a wink. “I’ll cover you.”
With what? Navasi opened her mouth to say, when Pakelia made a graceful motion, her forearm unfolding to reveal a pistol. She decided to file her many questions away for when they weren’t under attack. Time to go. She stood, pointing at Arvann. “Get him!” she called, aiming a laser blast at his arm to punctuate her directive. She didn’t want to kill any of them, but Arvann was sturdy; he could take a few hits.
Pakelia sidled around the table, shooting off covering fire as Navasi made a dash for the overturned chair closest to the window. Trace’s vertical pupils were narrowed and her fur bristling, her ears pinned back against the top of her head. Oh yeah, she’s mad.
“You got in my way!” Trace hissed. “That score was supposed to set us up for years.”
“I just took a job!” Navasi said. “How was I supposed to know you were the one after that ship?”
“Like it would have changed anything if you’d known!” Trace lobbed another grenade, but this time Navasi dodged out of the way, nearly tripping on the silverware scattered across the floor.
“So what if it didn’t?” Navasi demanded. “You don’t get immunity just because we used to date!”
“I’ll keep that in mind should I decide to get up to anything nefarious!” Pakelia called, executing an impeccable tuck and roll to the table on Navasi’s other side. Her shots stayed perfectly steady throughout the entire maneuver.
“And,” Trace snarled, her pupils retracting to a line, “you still have my favorite Strawberry Machine Cake t-shirt!”
“Seriously? That’s why you’re blowing up the restaurant?”
Giving up on reasoning with Trace, Navasi made a dash toward Arvann. She only got halfway there before Trace’s gyrojet pistol unleashed a rocket, slamming her into the wall. Her dazed mind registered the incongruous view in the security cams—the restaurant’s mural of an angel holding a platter of fried calamari overlain by her in her ruined dress, two elegantly painted wings extending outward behind her—before she fell to the ground. She shook her head unsteadily, then looked up in time to see Arvann raise his arc emitter again.
“Watch out!” she called to Pakelia, but it was too late; his shot struck her in the leg. Pakelia stumbled, muttering a curse in Vercite under her breath.
Illustration by Emanuel Pantaleon:
Oh, that is it. “Leave! My! Date! Alone!” Navasi snapped, scrambling to her feet. She grabbed Pakelia’s wrist, towing her along. Still clumsy from the electrical blast, Pakelia faltered, her ankle turning under her next step.
“Hey,” Navasi said, deciding that getting out of here overrode any concerns about being affectionate during a first (calamitous) date. “He barely grazed you.”
As they ran toward Arvann, she kissed Pakelia on the cheek. The effect was immediate: Pakelia’s gait quickened, the burns on her leg somehow no longer hindering her. This time, Trace’s shot whizzed past them, obliterating an unfortunate potted plant in the corner. Arvann steadied his stance as they neared him, no doubt expecting Navasi to try to bowl him over—
She let go of Pakelia, but she’d needn’t have; her date backflipped right along with her. She snagged the autograppler as Pakelia grabbed one of the overturned chairs and flung it through the window glass. In unison, they swan-dived, Navasi shooting the grappler at the exterior wall and grabbing Pakelia around the waist in one smooth motion.
“Navasi!” she heard Trace snarl. “You’ll regret this!”
“I’ll mail you your shirt!”
The wind rushed past as they dropped, the lights from the surrounding buildings blurring to streaks around them. As soon as the two hit the ground, they both collapsed, sprawling onto the grass. The ceiling’s vid display of a night sky twinkled peacefully above them, in marked contrast with the clusters of bedraggled restaurant patrons and staff gathered on the lawn, patching up minor injuries and calling the Stewards on their comms. In the distance, approaching sirens wailed closer. Navasi knew Trace and her crew would be long gone before they arrived; wiggling out of trouble was what she did best.
Navasi took a deep breath, the adrenaline rush fading from her veins. Replacing it was the sense of warmth radiating from Pakelia beside her…and the newfound certainty that her date was no ordinary accountant. “So,” she said. “Do I get to know why you’ve got a hideaway limb with a gun in it?”
Pakelia smiled. “I think that’s more of a second date conversation, don’t you?”
Second—?
Relief swept through her. Maybe Trace hadn’t ruined everything. Maybe Navasi had found someone who wouldn’t cut and run at the first sign of trouble.
And maybe this date was one of her better ones after all.
“Since seafood’s off the menu,” Navasi said, sliding her hand closer so their little fingers brushed, “I know this great noodle place in Sparks…”
About the Author
Kendra Leigh Speedling (she/her) is a frequent contributor to Paizo. Her recent projects include work on Starfinder Galaxy Guide and StarfinderAlien Core, as well as some exciting, yet-to-be announced publications! She has a lifelong love of space, pirates, and space pirates, which made Navasi’s little tale here a dream assignment. In addition to her RPG work, she writes fiction, with several published short stories and a novel currently in the agent-querying process. She lives with her partner and their polydactyl cat, Milly, who has a bottomless appetite for shrimpie treats.About the Iconic
Navasi (she/her) is a female human envoy who gave up her plush upbringing for love and a life of piracy—same old fairy tale—until that life ended. Now she’s wheeling and dealing around the galaxy with her crew, always ready with a directive or well-timed quip. But when talking doesn’t work, she goes in guns blazing.About Iconic Encounters
Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.
Learn more about the envoy class in Starfinder Player Core, releasing at Gen Con 2025, on paizo.com, and at your friendly local game store! Be the first to play Starfinder Second Edition by subscribing to the Starfinder RPG or Starfinder RPG (Special Edition) lines and receive a free PDF when your book ships!
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