Fighting with Monsters
Star Wars: The Bergeron Chronicles, Part 2
a fanfic by Sisiutil
Chapter 5
"You said ship. Singular. I heard you," he snapped.
"Do I look like a long-range sensor to you?" she replied sharply.
Aboard the Nomad, things were rapidly going from bad to worse. Axel had managed to launch the YT-1300 light freighter, but had been intercepted by not one, but by three other ships once the Nomad had left the atmosphere. Steady blaster fire buffeted the ship, making Axel and Kilu lurch in the cockpit's chairs, even with their restraints fastened. Axel had to focus all his attention on evasive maneuvering, which left him with no time to input coordinates into the navicomputer in preparation for a jump to hyperspace.
"No, you look beautiful. As always," he said testily.
She turned to stare at him in mild surprise, but the resentful tone in his voice kind of spoiled the compliment. The Nomad shook from another explosion and Kilu reminded herself that they had bigger concerns at the moment than how they felt about one another.
"Shields at sixty percent," Axel said tersely. "Arf! See if you can't divert more power to the shields!" The droid responded with a series of doubtful beeps and whistles. "I don't know!" Axel shouted back over his shoulder. "Draw it from the freight loader... the running lights... the damn caf pot, just do it!"
"Tell me we're going to make it," Kilu said from beside him.
"Why do women always want men to lie to them?" Axel muttered in response, earning him a questioning, anxious look from Kilu.
Another blast made contact with the ship's deflectors, and both Axel and Kilu were thrown in their seats. Axel's right bicep slammed against the back of his seat, and he gasped in pain.
"You're not looking so hot, flyboy," Kilu said to him as she took in the paleness of his face, which was covered with sweat. "We have to get out of here, into hyperspace. Now."
"I don't even know where we're going!" Axel responded, his teeth clenched. Another blast slammed into the ship. "Shields at forty percent! ARF!"
"Anywhere that isn't here would be good!" Kilu told him; her Jedi training was failing her, and the panic in her voice was rising.
"Hang on!" Axel said.
He reached out to his command console and punched in another defensive maneuver. The Nomad's maneuvering thrusters fired, and the ship suddenly lurched to port. Then the Nomad rotated a one hundred and eighty degree turn on its vertical axis so they now faced the three pursuing ships. Axel increased power to the sub-light engines, launching the ship past its pursuers and throwing he and Kilu back into their seats. The maneuver bought them a few precious seconds. Axel reached back towards his ship's navicomputer and quickly brought up a collection of pre-set coordinates for his most common trips. He selected one, ordering the computer to determine the hyperspace route to that destination. Then he turned his attention back to flying. At that moment, a warning light started flashing on the panel above his seat.
"Oh no," Axel said, his eyes opening wide as he stared at the flashing light. "No no no no no no NO!"
"What? What!?" Kilu asked anxiously.
"The hyperdrive just shorted out." He stole a quick, anxious glance at Kilu. "Must have got hit by a power surge--feedback from the shields during a blaster impact or something."
"That's really not good," she said, and then her body jerked forward as the ship was rocked by another blast. Obviously their pursuers had recovered from Axel's creative maneuver of a few seconds before.
"No kidding!" Axel replied, then turned to shout over his shoulder. "Arf! Forget the shields! Fix the hyperdrive! You hear me? Fix..." He was interrupted by another blast that shook the ship, and another warning light started flashing on the overhead console. "Shields at fifteen percent... ARF! Belay that! Fix the shields!" Axel pushed himself from his seat. The droid beeped a question back to him. "I'll fix the hyperdrive!"
"Wait!" Kilu shouted at him. "Who's going to fly this thing!?"
"You are!" Axel said to her.
"WHAT!?" Kilu shouted back, her eyes open wide with shock. "I've never flown anything like this ship before!"
"Use the Force!" Axel yelled at her as he leaned down and pressed a switch that transferred control of the ship to the co-pilot's station, where Kilu was seated. The young Jedi stared at the unfamiliar console in front of her in bewilderment, utterly uncertain as to what to do. All her carefully-maintained Jedi calm was gone. Then she felt Axel's hand on her shoulder. "I mean it," he said as she turned to look up at him. "You're a Jedi. I believe in you." He then turned and ran down the cockpit's access corridor, heading for the engineering section as the rear of the ship.
The ship lurched from another blaster impact, and Kilu's eyes read the shield levels: five percent. The next shot would reduce the deflector shields to nothing, and the shot after that, if needed, would blow them to pieces. Death seemed certain, survival next to impossible. Axel was going to work on the hyperdrive, his droid was working on the shields, and she was left to fly a ship she had no experience with whatsoever. It all seemed so pointless--they were moments away from death.
Suddenly, inside her mind, a light went on. She turned her head back over her shoulder. "Arf!" she called out to Axel's agromech droid. "Life support! Draw the power for the shields from life support!" The little droid beeped an acknowledgement. "Don't need it if we're dead anyway," Kilu muttered. A moment later, the shield level rose to twenty-five percent. "Better than nothing," she said. The air and heat that remained inside the ship would keep them alive for the few minutes they probably had left.
Accepting their fate seemed to have calmed her. She took a deep breath and called upon the Force. Then she lifted her hands to the touch-sensitive console and started tapping in commands.
The Nomad turned hard to starboard until its bow pointed towards Tatooine's twin suns. The bright orbs flared in the cockpit windows, which took a moment to automatically adjust their filter level. The sensors also overloaded for a moment before recovering. None of this affected Kilu, whose eyes were closed as she let the Force guide her. She hoped--no, she knew--that their pursuers' ships were experiencing the same temporary blinding effect. She was counting on it.
She tapped in another command, and the Nomad suddenly pitched upwards, flying in a high, tight circle, looping around in behind her pursuers. The Nomad's sole armaments were two laser blasters mounted in her forward mandibles. For the first time in the fight, those weapons had a target in sight. Kilu pressed the command to fire, and the blaster bolts tore into one of the pursuing ships' sub-light engines, crippling it. The other two ships suddenly veered off. Kilu steered the Nomad so it stayed behind one of them, forcing that ship into a series of evasive maneuvers to avoid a shot from the Nomad's blasters like those that had crippled her sister ship. Meanwhile, the second ship attempted to pursue the Nomad, but found she had to hold her fire; every time the freighter came within target range, the Nomad shifted suddenly, putting the first ship in the last one's targets.
"Try it now!" Axel's voice crackled over the ship's intercom, stirring Kilu from her Force-trance.
"Huh?" she exclaimed. "What?"
"The hyperdrive!" Axel's voice yelled to her. "Activate the hyperdrive!"
"Hyperdrive hyperdrive hyperdrive..." Kilu muttered as her gaze roamed over the controls. A blast from the pursuing ship rocked the Nomad, making Kilu gasp. She closed her eyes for a moment and forced herself to remember what Axel did when he activated the ship's hyperdrive engines. "Got it!" She opened her eyes and pushed a chrome-colored lever in between the pilot and co-pilot's chairs. In a heartbeat, the star field in the ship's windows elongated, then changed to mottled blue on a black background as the Nomad made the jump to hyperspace. Kilu sat back and let out a huge, relieved sigh.
"Nice flying, babe," Axel's voice said with genuine admiration, and Kilu bestowed a big, appreciative smile on the intercom speaker... a smile which she knew she could never again let him see in person.