Chapter Text
The job isn’t illegal, in the sense that politics move slow. For someone like Migs Mayfield, whose chain code says he’s a dead prisoner of the New Republic, it’s about the best sorta job he’s gonna get.
Plus, it pays good. A perk of the sort of job that might wind up with him actually dead.
“Come on, what are you doing, smelling the flowers, get a move on.”
“You try doing this, Magshole,” Jeffers shouts up at him through the respirator. Migs is not fond of his boss or the nickname he’s selected for him.
The tractor beam in the belly of the ship is low powered but plenty decent enough to slurp the gas off Bespin’s sloughy surface when they’re positioned deep like this. The trick is getting enough gas to fill the carbonite freezing chambers in the ship’s loading bay, but not so much that they all blow up. Migs is content to leave that job the hell alone.
“You’re doing great, Jeffers. Just great. Fabulous, even. But we have another ship, looks like eight minutes away at current speed.”
“Shut up, I’m almost there.”
Bespin looks kinda pretty from Cloud City, or so Migs has heard. From here, practically in the gas layer itself, it looks much more like something out of a nightmare. The viewfield on the ship is almost entirely orange gas, noxiously swirling around them. They’re in one of the naturally occurring flares that crop up on the surface where gas-- that sweet, sweet tibanna gas-- spurts up to a height where a ship with a mid range tractor beam, a high tolerance for risk and potential death, and a carbonite freezing set up has a shot at a priceless haul without the infrastructure or the permits of a place like Cloud City.
And where there’s a flare of priceless gas there’s going to be more than one ship looking to cash in.
“Okay make it four minutes, they’re fast little kriffers!”
“Almost there!”
Migs watches the steady progression of the green dot on the radar. It’s making him sweat under the dank respirator. “Seriously, come on already!”
The flare’s temperature starts to drop and shows signs of waning which means that this new ship won’t be gentle when it comes, trying to get its bite of the tibanna crop before it flickers out. And if that ship comes in too hot, burning a little too much thruster?
Boom.
Kinda like dejavu, actually. Migs swallows.
“Got it!” Jeffers is shouting, and there’s the pneumatic hiss of the bay doors closing and the even sweeter hiss of seven blocks of carbonite all freezing over at once.
Migs jams his finger over the air recycler and then eases the ship off the gas flare as gently as he can. He’s not a gentle guy, but when he’s in a tin can above a giant bomb he does his best.
Jeffers drops into the seat beside Migs and slaps off his respirator. “They gonna blow it?”
Migs chances glancing up from the readouts to the viewscreen. The ship is taking their place on the waning edge of the gas flare, but moving a little fast. Running a little hot. Kriff, how did Migs end up here? How did he once again wind up driving a rig with his ass riding right next to certain fiery death...
“Might do, yeah.”
They don’t stay to find out. When there's enough space between them and the gas giant Migs punches it for hyperspace, his gentleness evaporating alongside Bespin’s wispy memory. Once it’s frozen in carbonite tibanna gas is as stable as a rock which is more than Migs can say for his nerves.
His heart is still racing and he turns to Jeffers. “By the way, I quit.”
---
He sticks around long enough to land them on Herdessa, offload their seven glorious carbonite-frozen bricks of gas, and get paid. Even after Jeffers takes a cut for owning the ship, a cut for the carbonite used, and takes yet another cut for being the boss and running the most dangerous part of the operation, Migs is left with a real pretty payout.
Ever since the Empire moved out of Cloud City and the New Republic moved in and they started having to actually pay the Ugnaughts for processing the volatile gas, export of tibanna out of Anoat Sector has been short. And since tibanna gas goes into hyperdrive fuel... Supply and demand go hand in hand his mama always used to say.
Migs rolls the stack of credits happily in his hands.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the job, Jeffers--”
“Whatever Magshole. Stick around long enough to help me re-fit the carbonite for another run and I’ll give you another two hundred credits. You’re not the only getaway pilot out there and I’ll replace you easy.”
Jeffers isn’t a nice guy, but he’s fair. “Got yourself a deal.”
Herdessa doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s ugly. It smells. But it’s on the Corellian hyperspace run and there’s no shortage of people buying, selling, and stealing in whatever order they choose.
Jeffers is arguing loudly with a carbonite vendor in Huttese in one of the many pop up refit shops while Migs leans against the landing gear of Jeffers’s ship. The first thing Migs will buy with his credits will be jula juice. It’s hot as Jakku here, and there’s nothing sweeter than jula juice over ice, and he hasn’t had any since he went to prison. Or maybe he’ll buy some of those buns that one kid was selling a few streets over...
Something glints in the bright Herdessa sun and catches his eye.
And huh. Migs can honestly say it’s a surprise. Turns out his mama was right about that, too. It is a small galaxy.
For a minute Migs thinks about running. He’s got a pocket full of credits and Jeffers isn’t the kind to chase after him. But there’s a curiosity pulling at Migs’s belly, and he’s never been one not to chase that feeling.
He shoves himself to his feet and goes to chase that shine.
“Oi! Mando!”