Working Class Hero

Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 1

A fanfic by Sisiutil

Chapter 2

"I'm in hangar forty-two, Ms. Branon," Axel told his new client as they walked out of the bar and into the street.

"Just call me Kilu," she said.

"All right, Kilu," Axel said with what he hoped was a charming smile, "The hangar is about a half kilometer that way," he said, pointing down the street. "Just go up one block, follow the main drag past the fuel depot, and you can't miss it. I'll see you there in twenty minutes."

Kilu Branon turned and looked down the street where he was pointing. It was night, and a brief rainfall had soaked the streets of Carnaxa so that they reflected the bright, colorful lights of the seedy bars and shops that clustered around the fringes of the spaceport city's hanger area. The buildings were mostly low-rises, one to three stories at most, their heights limited to better accommodate the spacecraft that flew overhead day and night; the high-rises were located back in the more respectable city center five kilometers to the west. It's a wretched hive of scum and villainy, his dad used to joke, but it's home.

"Can't we both go straight there?" she asked him.

Axel turned to look at her and understood why she'd kept herself covered up so much before. She had the hood back up, but had pulled it back far enough so he could see her face now, including her eyes. The rest of her body remained still and calm, as did her facial expression, but her eyes betrayed her. Those big brown orbs were expressive as well as beautiful, and he could read her anxiety in them, clear as day. He was certain she was well aware of the effect her eyes had on him, and that she was playing him, but he also felt powerless to resist it. As proof, he was about to fly halfway across the galaxy into Imperial territory based on a down-payment of a mere one thousand credits... and a pleading look from a pretty face.

"What's your hurry?" he asked her.

As if in answer, a non-human voice speaking a low, guttural alien tongue suddenly erupted from Axel's left. He turned to see a short, heavily-built creature with large, dark eyes, dark grey skin, and a protruding lower jaw staring straight at his client, then turn and shout in its incomprehensible language over its shoulder, apparently calling to companions of some sort. As it did so, one of its large, powerful hands lowered to a holster on its right hip.

"Get down!" Kilu yelled.

She then surprised Axel by throwing her shoulder into his chest and making him follow her order whether he like it or not. As he fell backwards, winded, he heard the unmistakable high-pitched sudden whine of a blaster firing, the bolt of high-energy particles searing the air just above his head. Axel found himself falling unceremoniously onto his backside, but had enough sense to keep rolling back and out of danger into an alleyway, with Kilu following. Somehow, even as his adrenaline began to surge, he discounted the luck of his location and realized that his mysterious client had intentionally pushed them into it. In a heartbeat, she was back on her feet and ready to run while he was still pushing himself up onto his hands and knees.

"MOVE!" she shouted, her eyes glancing briefly at him before she looked back to the alley entrance, watching for their attacker.

As he scrambled to his feet, Axel reached down to his left thigh for the blaster he always had strapped there. He disliked the thing, but it was a necessity of life for any freighter pilot, smuggler or not. Very few spaceports anywhere in the galaxy were respectable places. He raised the blaster in his left hand and pointed it back down the alley as he back-pedaled behind his client.

When they were about ten meters down the alley, the creature that had attacked them suddenly appeared at the entrance. Before it could bring its weapon to bear, Axel fired off three quick if inaccurate shots, forcing the grey-skinned alien to duck back around the corner in retreat.

"Come on!" Kilu told him.

Axel saw no reason to argue. He followed right behind her as she ran towards the opposite end of the alley. Then she suddenly dug in her heels in a desperate attempt to come to a stop, and he nearly ran into her. Before he could ask her why she'd stopped so suddenly, he looked over her shoulder down to the end of the alley and saw the reason. Two more humanoids were there, their exact species indeterminate in the dark, and they were advancing towards Axel and Kilu with blasters drawn.

He might not like using a blaster himself, but this was no time to indulge in his distaste for firearms and violence. He raised his weapon and fired off several shots at the two newcomers, but as soon as they'd seen him raise his weapon they'd quickly ducked behind two stacks of crates that were piled on either side of the alley's other entrance. Just for good measure, Axel turned around and fired a shot a back down the alley where, sure enough, the first alien had reappeared. The shot forced their pursuer to throw himself behind a large dumpster.

"We're boxed in," Axel told Kilu.

"You're very observant," she noted sarcastically. "There must be another way out of here..."

A few meters ahead of them, in the direction they'd been heading, both of them spotted a ladder, apparently a fire escape, that led up to the roof of the low-lying building on the right-hand side of the alley. They glanced at one another, but then had to duck behind another dumpster themselves as several blaster shots were fired from the far end of the alley.

"We need to get to that ladder!" Axel said as he crouched behind the rusting, stinking garbage receptacle. He fired another shot back towards their first attacker's hiding place to ensure he didn't duck out from under cover and fire upon them.

"I know!" Kilu responded. "You keep our first friend busy. I'll take care of the other two."

Axel frowned in confusion. As far as he could tell, his new client wasn't carrying a weapon.

"How are you going to..." he began to ask, but was cut off as blaster bolts from the two attackers further down the alley whined overhead.

"Just do it!" she told him.

Axel turned and pointed his blaster down the alley, towards the other dumpster where the first attacker had taken cover. He took aim and waited. His heart was pounding, his blood rushing loudly in his ears. He was breathing heavily and could feel that despite the coolness of the evening air, his shirt was soaked with sweat; he had to blink some of it out of his eyes as well. He was prepared for confrontations, but he wasn't used to them; he did his best to fight off a growing panic. It felt like he'd waited several agonizing minutes, when in actual fact only a few seconds had passed before the grey-skinned alien decided to try his luck and poked his head and blaster around the side of his dumpster.

He was greeted by several blaster bolts fired from Axel's weapon, one of which ricocheted off the side of the dumpster and at least managed to singe the creature's sleeve, making it retreat back under cover. At that very moment, Axel heard a crash from behind him. Instinctively, he turned. Kilu was still there, right behind him, concealed by the dumpster. But further down the alley, the high stacks of crates had collapsed upon one another, creating a jumble that effectively blocked that entrance to the alley.

"Come on!" Kilu shouted as she leapt from behind the dumpster and ran towards the ladder.

Axel ran backwards behind her, firing the occasional wild shot at the other dumpster where the first assailant remained hidden, to ensure he kept that way. As they reached the ladder, he urged Kilu to go up first.

"I'll cover you, then toss you the blaster to cover me," he told her.

"Right," she said, then quickly scrambled up the ladder while he fired shots at either end of the alley.

As he did this, and just as Kilu reached the roof of the two-storey building, Alex saw three more humanoids appear at the end of the alley behind the first assailant. Behind him, he could hear the other two attackers angrily tossing aside the crates that blocked their path.

"Quick!" Kilu called from the roof.

Axel tossed the blaster up to her; she caught it and began firing a series of covering shots at either end of the alley that forced their pursuers to all take cover while Axel, his hands slick with sweat, struggled up the ladder. At the top, Kilu grabbed his arm and, with strength that surprised him, hauled him onto the roof.

Where they quickly realized they were just as trapped as they'd been in the alley. The building was surrounded by streets on its other three sides--too far to jump to another building. And back across the alley from which they'd come stood a three-storey building, a floor too high for them to access from the rooftop where they now stood.

"Great," Kilu said. "Now what do we do?"

For the first time since the whole desperate fight had begun, Axel took a deep breath and smiled. "Just keep an eye out for any of them coming up that ladder," she said to her. "I'll have us out of here in a couple of minutes," he added confidently.

His client looked at him, a mixture of doubt and surprise on her face. "What, are you a magician or something?"

Axel just kept smiling. He reached down to his belt buckle, which was a large, gaudy metallic number studded with several cheap imitation jewels. Kilu watched as Axel first pushed one of the jewels from one side of the buckle to the other with his thumb, then pressed in another jewel with his forefinger. He then turned towards the hangar district and watched the sky expectantly. Kilu turned from him in time to see the grey-skinned alien's head appear at the top of the ladder. A quick blaster shot convinced him of the folly of attempting to pursue his quarry onto the roof.

"We can't stay here forever," Kilu remarked, then frowned as she heard a high-pitched whine and roar in the distance.

She kept glancing back at the ladder, but less and less so as, behind her, a saucer-shaped freighter with two forward mandibles and a port-side, glass-enclosed cockpit rose up above the hangar district and slowly closed in on their position. She tensed as she prepared to meet another threat, but then she noticed Axel standing calmly beside her and watching the ship approach with an unmistakable expression of pride on his face.

"Let me guess," she said. "Your ship?"

Axel nodded. "The Nomad. A Corellian YT-1300fp--the smuggler's special."

"Not that you're a smuggler," Kilu remarked as the ship approached. She kept the blaster trained on the top of the ladder.

"Absolutely not," Axel reaffirmed. "And of course, I've made a few modifications to her."

"From what I understand, it wouldn't be a YT-1300 if you didn't," Kilu remarked. "Would these custom modifications happen to include a beckon call system hidden in that hideous belt buckle of yours?"

"Hey, lady," Axel said somewhat indignantly, "this hideous belt buckle just saved your life. So show a little respect, will ya? And it's more than just a beckon call--I can pretty much pilot the ship from here. This isn't the first time it's come in handy."

A few seconds later, the freighter was hovering above the roof, its port-side boarding ramp lowering towards them. Axel and Kilu could hear the agitated shouts of the beings pursuing them emanating from the alleyway. They sounded understandably angry over the prospect of their quarry escaping. Kilu handed the blaster to Axel and he kept it pointed at the top of the ladder as first she, then he, ran up the boarding ramp and into the ship. Axel slapped his hand against the ramp's controls to close it, then ran up to the cockpit, Kilu right on his heels.

"For someone who says he isn't a smuggler," Kilu commented as she settled into the empty co-pilot's seat, "you sure take a lot of smuggler-like precautions. That remote control, the blaster, and your ship--what did you call it? The smuggler's special?"

Axel coaxed his ship into a steep climb through the planet's atmosphere. The steadily-climbing g-forces pushed him and his client back into their seats despite the efforts of the inertial dampeners to compensate.

"Yeah, well, just because you're not a smuggler doesn't mean you don't get mistaken for one," he said as they soared out of the planet's atmosphere.

"Isn't this cockpit on the wrong side of the ship?" Kilu asked.

Axel cast an appreciative glance her way. So she knew a lot more about ship types than most people did. Not everything, though. "It's a less popular configuration for the YT-1300," he told her, then shrugged. "My father was left-handed--runs in the family--and he said he always felt more comfortable with the cockpit on this side. Uh-oh."

Kilu looked at him sharply as a warning light began flashing on his console, accompanied by a far-from-comforting steady beeping noise. "What is it?" she asked.

"Looks like your friends have themselves an RV," Axel remarked; despite his attempt at levity, his voice was tight. "The computer doesn't recognize the ship's configuration, but I'll bet every credit you've promised me that she's armed."

"That would be consistent with their behavior and my luck," Kilu grumbled. "You can outrun them, right?"

Axel stole a glance at her. Once again, her body and face were utterly impassive, but those brown eyes of hers hinted at the fear she was struggling to contain. It was a reflection of his own.

"I can outmaneuver them," he said. "I hope," he added in a less certain-sounding undertone. "Once we get into hyperspace, we'll lose them."

"Anything I can do to help?" she asked.

"Use the Force," he said. "Any way you can or want to, I'm fine with it." He stole another glance at her and was pleased to see the genuine surprise registered on her features as she realized that he wasn't joking.

"What are you talking..." she began to say.

"Oh, come on," he said as he turned in his seat and punched some figures into the navicomputer. "How else did you make that pile of crates fall over, when they were several meters away from you? You're a Jedi."

Out of the corner of his eye he could see, with some satisfaction, that her mouth had dropped open slightly. But his satisfaction was cut short as his ship was suddenly rocked by a violent explosion.