Working Class Hero
Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 1
A fanfic by Sisiutil
Chapter 5
"I don't like it," Axel told her.
Kilu turned in the co-pilot's chair where she was seated to stare at him in surprise. "What are you talking about?" she asked incredulously. "It was your plan--and it went off flawlessly!"
"That's what I don't like," he replied.
The plan had indeed come to fruition exactly as she'd said. He'd guided the Nomad through hyperspace skilfully, taking an even more indirect route than hyperspace travel normally required to avoid any potential intercepts the Imperials might have attempted. They'd dropped out of hyperspace the day before, just a few hundred kilometres from the comet--practically right on top of it, in astronavigational terms--and had promptly secreted themselves in its tail. Arf had complained vociferously, but the droid had kept their deflectors working as they closed in on B'Tel Four. Then, just over an hour ago, they'd left the comet when it had passed within a few hundred thousand kilometres of the planet. Axel had promptly piloted his ship, without incident, to the planet's main spaceport, a city called B'Ost that was just a few kilometres from the planetary capital, B'Omora. It had all gone smoothly--perfectly. And that's what bothered him.
"I've never done anything perfect in my entire life," he told Kilu. "Never. I don't believe in perfection. In my experience, the universe abhors perfection."
"The Force doesn't," Kilu countered.
"Yeah, right, and the dark side is part of that perfection," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He turned to glance at her, just in time to see a subtle tremor run through her slender frame.
"Don't talk about the dark side that lightly," she hissed at him. "It's not a joking matter," she added emphatically.
"Sorry..." he said, frowning. Clearly, he'd touched a nerve; this seemed like more to him than the usual Jedi disdain for the dark side of the Force.
"I sent an encrypted message to the minister just before we entered the atmosphere," Kilu said, obviously preferring to leave the subject behind. "Assuming he received it, I'll be meeting him at the arranged rendezvous point in a half hour."
"Wrong," he told her. "We'll be meeting him at the rendezvous point," he said as he pulled his blaster from its holster and checked its charge.
"Axel..." Kilu began to say.
"Forget it," he told her. "I've come this far, I'm going all the way."
"Aren't you afraid of walking into this trap you keep talking about?" she asked him.
"Best way to find a trap is to spring it," he said.
"Where'd you hear that expression?" she asked him.
"I made it up just now," he said. "It sounded good though, didn't it?"
His remark was rewarded with one of her rare, amused smiles that reminded him why he'd agreed to accompany her this far on her foolhardy mission in the first place. His stomach had been busy twisting itself into a knot ever since they'd left New Republic space, and he was certain every shirt in his wardrobe was now stained with the cold sweat he'd been perspiring for just as long. I'm a businessman, not a secret agent! he kept protesting silently, yet here he was, accompanying a Jedi on what was sure to be a suicidal mission. At least there's no one left who'll miss me when I'm gone, he thought, with a pang of guilt for once again thinking it was for the best that his father was no longer alive to see him doing something this risky.
In a way, though, what he'd said about springing the trap was true. The anticipation was slowly killing him. He wanted to stumble over the trip wire and finally have done with it. He'd quietly resolved to go down fighting; no Imperial torture chamber for him. Blasting away at Imperial Stormtroopers beside a beautiful woman warrior--there were worse ways to die. Though frankly, nodding off in a bed surrounded by fat grandchildren had always held a certain appeal for him, whenever he gave thought to preferred methods of death... which, before the last few days, hadn't been that often.
"According to the map, the rendezvous point is about ten minutes' walk away," Kilu said as she studied a console display beside the co-pilot's chair; her words snapped Axel out of his reverie.
"Right," he said. "So we leave here twenty minutes ahead of schedule and take an indirect route."
Again, Kilu smiled at him. He was, not for the first time, astonished at her preternatural calm in a situation that was wearing thin every single nerve in his possession. "Ever the starship pilot," she teased him, "even on the ground."
Axel nodded, his eyes still staring out of the cockpit's thick windows. He gazed into the darkness of the hangar, expecting to see the glint of his ship's landing lights reflecting off of several Imperial Stormtroopers' immaculate white armor. He then felt a hand on his shoulder, gasped, and nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Okay, you're as jumpy as an Oxemican Hwachee," Kilu said as she kneaded Axel's tense shoulder muscle with her hand. "You're going to have to calm down if you want to come with me. I can't have you on a hair trigger--you could jeopardize the entire mission."
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm just not used to this," he admitted.
"To be honest, neither am I," she replied calmly.
"Then how come you're as cool as a summer's day on Hoth?" he asked her.
"I'm a Jedi," she replied with a shrug and a smile. "We're taught techniques to deal with negative emotions... like fear."
"I'd love to learn a few of them sometime," Axel muttered.
Every muscle in his body felt tense and ached. Except, he noticed, the shoulder muscle that Kiru was still massaging. Then she rose from the co-pilot's chair so she was standing behind him. She placed her hands on his shoulders. She kneaded his tense muscles, prompting a low appreciative groan from him. Her fingers were surprisingly strong, but tender as well. How long had it been since a woman had touched him in some way? Too damn long, he reflected. Then, to his great disappointment, she stopped.
"We'd better get going. Sorry I had to give you the short version," she told him. Her hands were resting on his back, gently rubbing still, almost like a caress.
"Is that something they teach you at Jedi school?" he asked her.
Kilu laughed softly. "As a matter of fact, yes," she told him. "There's a longer, in-depth massage we're taught that goes on for a couple of hours."
"Sounds terrific," Axel commented as he rose from his pilot's chair.
"Tell you what," Kilu said as they walked down the passageway from the cockpit into the ship. "I'll give you the full treatment on the trip back."
Axel nearly tripped over his own feet. "Oh. Right. Massage treatment..." he muttered as he recovered his balance. Then he suddenly understood the hopeful message of confidence she was relaying through that promise. He decided to convey a similar one to her. "Okay," he said. "You do that on the trip back, and... I'll make you my dad's recipe for Karkan ribenes."
"It's a deal," Kilu said, favoring him with another one of her rare smiles. "You ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Axel said.
He pressed a command on the door console; the loading bay ramp lowered with a low, steady whine. Outside the ship, the hangar was calm and quiet. Axel crossed his fingers as he followed Kilu down the ramp, hoping that things would stay that way.
"I've got a bad feeling about this..." he muttered as he followed the young Jedi into the night.
"Where isss Cylusss Vaxss?"
The Halassian Foreign Minister stared hard at them both. He'd pulled back the hood he'd been using to conceal himself, revealing his reptilian features. His skin consisted of scales in a mottled tan and dark grey-green pattern. His mouth was broad; a forked tongue occasionally poked out of it when he spoke. The eyes that were fixed upon Kilu and Axel were golden, with narrow vertical pupils... and they were filled with suspicion. They were standing in a darkened alley; an old amber light above the back entrance to a spacedock tavern provided the sole illumination in the alleyway.
"Cylus Vax is dead," Kilu told him bluntly.
The Halassian's gold eyes widened at that. Kilu had known the question would be asked, and had considered lying, but Jedi were taught that telling the truth, pure and simple, even bluntly, was the best course of action in most circumstances. Not always, but most of the time.
"We are dissscovered!" the Minister hissed.
"We don't know that for sure," Kilu told him. "My pilot and I have made it through the border and here to your planet without incident. The attack occurred on another planet many light-years away... it may have been an unfortunate coincidence."
"Coinsssidenssse?" the Minister said contemptuously, his forked tongue flickering out of his mouth--something Axel was coming to recognize as sign of agitation in this species. "Halassssiansss do not believe in coinsssidensssesss." He waved one clawed, scaly hand at them dismissively. "The negotiationsss are canssselled." He turned to go.
"Minister T'Lon, wait, please!" Kilu said, but the reptilian humanoid ignored her.
Axel moved quickly, stepping around the Minister and placing himself directly in his path.
"Hold on, pal," he said, one hand raised.
"Out of my way, human," the Halassian growled at him.
"Not until you listen to what we have to say," Axel told him, glaring back into those narrow, gold reptilian eyes. "This is a Jedi you're turning your back on. A Jedi. Do you know how many of them exist? A few dozen. And yet they sent not one, but two to come here to provide you with escort. And lost one in the process."
"Becaussse of the cortosssisss," the Minister hissed dismissively.
"Hey, I'm not saying there wasn't some enlightened self-interest involved," Axel admitted. "But that cortosis is your people's ticket out from under the thumb of the Empire, and you're just going to walk away from this?"
"Yesss," T'Lon replied.
"Oh, really?" Axel responded, his brows raised. He crossed his arms over his chest. "And what do you think it will do to your chances of higher office when word gets out that you got cold feet about this?"
The Halassian's eye slits narrowed even further. "Are you attempting to blackmail me?" he demanded, leaning closer to Axel.
"Absolutely not," the pilot responded, hands raised. "But if you show up to work tomorrow instead of flying off to Coruscant, questions are going to be asked, am I right? And regardless of what plausible explanation you come up with, people are always going to wonder about what really happened. And your political enemies--and don't try to tell me you don't have them--will have a field day when they discover the truth, won't they?"
The Halassian Foreign Minister stared at Axel for several moments while Kilu held her breath. Then the reptilian humanoid's shoulders slumped and he hissed out his species' version of a sigh.
"You make your point well, human," T'Lon said, resentment and resignation mingling in his voice. "You are an able pilot? With a fassst ship?"
Axel shrugged. "I made it all the way here, didn't I?"
The Minister nodded. "Very well. Lead on."
"Thanks," Kilu whispered to him as they walked down the alley, the Halassian Foreign Minister, his hood back up, following a couple of paces behind them. "Nicely done."
"It's all about zeroing in on someone's self-interest. I learned from the best," he whispered back. She cast an inquisitive glance at him. "My father was a master negotiator," he said reverently.
"I wish I'd had a chance to meet him," Kilu said in a sympathetic tone.
And Axel had the uncanny feeling, at that point, that his father would have actually liked her. A lot.
As they stepped into the hangar, Axel pressed one of the cheap imitation jewels on his gaudy belt buckle, and the Nomad's port side boarding ramp began to lower.
"After you, Minister," Axel said, gesturing up the gangway. "The passenger lounge is around the the main corridor to the left, past the cockpit corridor..."
He was interrupted by an audible gasp from Kilu. All his senses went on full alert as he turned to look at her and drew his blaster from its holster. The young Jedi's eyes were open wide, and the blood had drained from her face. He glanced around the hangar and didn't see anything, but he knew better than to discount her sensitivity to the Force. Here he'd been thinking they were, against all odds, actually going to make it, but now the trap had finally been sprung. And judging by her reaction, it was bad. Very bad.
"What isss it?" T'Lon asked.
"Just get on board and strap yourself in," Axel said, turning to him. When the alien politician hesitated, he waved at him with his blaster. "Go!"
As the intimidated Foreign Minister scrambled up the boarding ramp, Axel turned back to scan the interior of the hangar. He saw nothing there, but Kilu was staring out across the hangar to a distant second entrance that was behind the freighter's rear exhaust ports.
"Okay, like the lizard said," Axel muttered to her, "what is it?"
Suddenly, Kilu shrugged off her long, dark brown cloak and handed it to him. "Take this," she said, and he was startled to hear the tremor in her usually-confident voice. He was even more startled when she drew her lightsaber from her belt and activated it. The bright green blade of energy emerged from the hilt with a hiss, then hummed in the increasingly eerie silence of the spaceport hangar. The light from the weapon illuminated Kilu's face, allowing Axel to see even more clearly the trepidation displayed there.
"Get on board," she told him, her voice strained. "And get out of here. Get back to Coruscant with T'Lon as fast as your ship can take you."
"I'm not leaving you here!" Axel protested. "What's..."
Then, across the hanger, at the secondary entrance where Kilu had been staring, an answer to all Axel's unasked questions suddenly appeared. A tall human male was standing there. He was dressed in a long cloak, tunic and pants, all as black as space itself. His hair was equally black, and long, and pulled back into a queue behind his head. Even at this distance, Axel could discern some sort of strange black-and-red tattoo pattern upon his face. Most significantly--and worst of all--he, too held a light saber, its blade glowing an angry, threatening bright red.
"No freakin' way..." Axel murmured, his eyes widening in shocked recognition. He'd read about them, but he'd never thought he'd see one, and frankly, he'd never wanted to. Especially not now. "A Sith? I thought they were gone."
"The Force cherishes balance," Kilu muttered, striving for more of a detached, philosophical tone than she actually managed to achieve. "Sometimes in a perverse way." She briefly shot a sideways glance at him. "Do what I told you," she said. "Get out of here. I'll hold him off."
"I'm not leaving you," Axel retorted, even though every fibre in his being was screaming at him to do exactly that.
"Yes you are," Kilu said. She suddenly raised her left hand from her light saber's hilt, opened her palm, and gestured towards him.
Axel's eyes went wide and his breath left his body as he found himself flying backwards, up his ship's boarding ramp. He landed unceremoniously on his backside at the top of the gangway. He pushed himself to a sitting position and looked back down the ramp. Kilu looked up at him, bestowing one last, pleading look upon him with those expressive eyes he'd been admiring for several days, then she turned and marched towards the rear of the ship, where the Sith was waiting.
He sat there for a moment, his spirit torn nearly in two. His instincts were screaming at him to get out of there, off the planet and back into the relative safety of hyperspace, as fast as possible--to obey what may very well amount to Kilu's last wish. Another voice in his head, however, emanating from some more noble, selfless side of himself that he would have sworn did not exist before today, was telling him that he couldn't abandon her. That sentiment was mingled with the attraction and, yes, the growing admiration he felt for her, which had just grown a hundredfold a moment ago in the face of her apparent self-sacrifice. The dilemma froze him in place for a moment.
For all his life, he'd been taught to make the sensible choice, to do what was best for the family business. Above all, that meant two things: preserving the ship, and his own skin. His upbringing and his instincts were both urging him to leave. After a moment's consideration, his upbringing and instincts won.
"May the Force be with you," he muttered down the ramp to where Kilu had been standing only a moment before. Then he pushed himself up onto his feet.
"What isss going on?" T'Lon demanded from his seat in the passenger lounge just before Axel disappeared down the cockpit corridor. "I demand to know what isss happening!"
"Listen, bub," Axel snarled, turning on the alien politician. "This is my ship. I'm the captain here. I make the demands. So strap yourself in and shut up. I'm getting your sorry scaly butt out of here, and that's all that matters."
Except it wasn't all that mattered, Axel thought as he strode down the corridor towards the cockpit. Kilu was out there, buying them time by facing down an opponent that Axel could tell had her scared half to death. And the Sith would probably take her the rest of the way to that destination. Even if she didn't die, even if she managed to win, she'd be stranded on a planet inside Imperial territory--a virtual death sentence for a Jedi, especially a young, inexperienced one like her. As he sat down in the pilot's chair, the fact that he was doing exactly what she'd asked him to do was absolutely no consolation.
The sound of three sets of wheels motoring down the corridor barely intruded on his thoughts. A tentative series of beeps and whistles had slightly better luck.
"Shut up, Arf," Axel snapped back at his droid. "Go and get yourself ready for lift-off, too." The droid beeped a reluctant acknowledgement. "I know what I'm doing," Axel muttered.
Yes, he reflected, he knew exactly what he was doing. That was the problem. He activated the cockpit controls and started tapping in the pre-flight sequence.