Project Boussh: A Whole New Ballgame
by Nick Coghlan

Voort sat back admidst the clutter of Josh's room, pondering the meagre
tidbits of information they'd been able to get their hands on. Corran
had reported a successful insertion, but Piggy didn't know the current
status of any of the other Rogues or Wraiths (except Ooryl of course).
Without the information he was hoping they'd be able to dig up, there
simply wasn't much for him to do. The briefing had told him Quiara had
disappeared again a couple of months ago, and he still didn't know much
more than that. Corran had forwarded the information on the last attempt
to rescue her, but, somehow, this situation didn't seem to have the same
flavour. No, if he wanted information he'd have to look somewhere else.
But where?

There was a high pitched chittering, and something slammed into the back
of Voort's head. Turning in his seat, he glared at the small furry
animal responsible for the projectile. Jabbering madly the Ewok
scrambled back into the piles of books and clothes spread across the
floor of the room. Sometimes, just sometimes, Voort could understand the
sentiments that caused the Terrans to create these barbaric Ewok farms -
it appeared Mr Lucas had tried to make them _too_ cute and cuddly. Voort
thought about it for a while - yes, the Terrans he had met would have a
lot more respect for someone like Kolot, or even the fictional Kettch
for that matter. He just hoped no-one would let Kolot find out about the
existence of the Ewok farms. There'd be time to deal with this
particular barbarism after their mission was complete.

A buzzing alarm on his console interrupted his musing. The
communications and intelligence gear was wedged into a corner of Josh's
room, near the archaic piece of machinery Josh claimed was his computer.
The towering stacks of junk shielded both the comms gear and Piggy from
casual observation  - you had to be halfway across the room before you
could even glimpse the corner. Not even Shalla could have made that
journey without betraying her presence. Still, Piggy looked around him
before reaching over to shut off the alarm.

He brought up the sensor logs to see what had caused the problem. There
didn't seem to be anything of great significance - wait. A sensor blip
had come into existence in the vicinity of Terra's orbit and then
disappeared. Piggy thought for a second. Yes, the point where it
dissapeared would have been just about right for a geostationary orbit
over America. He brought up the sensor records of the incident and fed
them into intelligence gear. After a couple of seconds a couple of
options appeared on the screen. The first option was fairly mundane- a
fault in one of the sensor arrays Ooryl had concealed on the roof. As he
read the second, Piggy felt a chill wash over him. Dropping out of
hyperspace and slipping almost immediately into a cloaked orbit high
over the Terra - an Imperial Star Destroyer. Wedge hadn't mentioned
anything about capital ship support - so the appearance of the vessel
was a _very_ unpleasant surprise.

Piggy punched in a low-power connection to Ooryl's comlink. "We need to
get hold of the General. Now." They'd check the sensors anyway, but,
somehow, he figured they'd be perfectly fine.