A/N - I don't own Star Wars. This is just a nice little early Christmas present for you.
Enjoy.
Life of a Smuggler.
Han Solo stood stock still as he stood by the boarding ramp of the Millennium Falcon, watching as the workers silently went about their business gathering the crates of illegal spice for another trip to Tatooine, for Jabba the Hutt. It was telling they were using workers who were living flesh and blood and bone, and not droids; he privately wondered if the workers were slaves which would make sense given how few people would actually want to get their hands dirty.
A richly dressed plump alien of a kind Solo had often seen but had never really bothered to get to know approach. He shouted at the workers which gave Solo more credence for his theory of them being slaves.
"Hurry it up!" He barked in a voice that sounded more like somebody about to puke all over the duracrete ground rather than somebody actually angry. "You don't load, you don't eat!"
Solo had to swallow his anger as he listened and observed the spectacle in front of him, and he needed to remind himself of Jabba's very real threat before embarking on this chartered smuggling flight. Surprisingly enough, for a Hutt who didn't really care about anyone or anything knowing anything about his operations, Jabba had proven how seriously he was taking this particular charter by having his guards clearing everyone out. Everyone.
The slug-like gangster had turned his slimy face towards Solo and spoke in that disgusting language of his was soon as everyone was out.
"I want this shipment and delivery to go smoothly, Solo," Jabba said in his usual menacing manner. "If I find you have jeopardised this deal, I will ensure you become food for the Rancor, you and the Wookiee."
Han had taken the threat seriously, Jabba had been in an irritable mood of late partly due to how the Empire, who wanted Jabba's help in policing the Outer Rim territory had set up a number of blockades around worlds Jabba was investing in to show the Hutt crime lord motivation in helping them. The Empire was sending out a warning to Jabba, work for us or we will ensure you never have a profit again for as long as you live, and since Hutt's lived for a very long time, it was no wonder why Jabba was taking the threat seriously. And so was he. Jabba's irritated mood recently had already seen the deaths of more people this month than Han would have liked, and he did not want to find himself chewed to death by the Rancor.
But watching all of this… It was hard for Han to resist the urge to take out his blaster and shoot this scum down where he stood. He had never liked slavery and he had always been a sucker for sufferers. Ever since he had saved Chewie from a life of Imperial servitude which was even worse now since the Imperial Empire had been set up from the final days of the Clone Wars and the bastard Palpatine had shown his true colours, Solo had shown a strong and terrifying antipathy towards slavery.
He didn't regret throwing away his career in the Imperial Navy, not one little bit. Sure, while he'd had a stable and fixed income which was now in flux thanks to the jobs which came from being a smuggler and a pirate, Solo had developed a strong loathing for the Imperial's so-called cause, which was nothing more Palpatine sending ship after ship to squeeze the life out of planets and systems for no other reason than because he was a psychotic megalomaniac. Solo's reason for joining the Navy in the first place was mostly financial, but he had quickly become disenchanted with the life in the Imperial Navy, and that was before he'd saved Chewie from a life of slavery.
Solo had always hated slavery and so just looking at the small group loading the cargo on to the Falcon, he wanted nothing more than to whip out his blaster, and set them all free.
But he didn't.
The fewer people who knew of this operation, the better. In any case, he was in enough trouble with Jabba as it was.
As he flew the cargo back to Tatooine, making sure to choose obscure routes to ensure the increasingly tight stranglehold on the Outer Rim territories from the Empire did not mean he had to undergo an Imperial inspection.
It would be tough; the Empire was more unforgiving than the Republic had been, and every time he left the comparative safety of Tatooine there was always the risk he and his missions would get him arrested.
But that was the risk all smugglers knew.