Project Boussh: Can You Feel The Heat? by Majick Hot. Cold. Pain. Shalla and Elassar paced the room they were trapped in, eyeing the attentive guards. Every time one or the other of the two would walk too close to the exit, or one of the guards, a blaster rifle would be pointed in their direction. The two officers exchanged frustrated looks. It hadn't helped that they had been prevented from sleeping by their guards, and their chronos made them well aware of how long they had been awake. It was a standard pre-interrogation technique, designed to drastically reduce a subject's resistance. Burning. Freezing. Agony. In the medical centre of the Mendellian embassy, Bror Jace bobbed limply in the bacta tank that the Imperial security forces had brought with them from the Admonitor. He tried to discern something -anything!- through the transparisteel of the tank, but the pink fluid in which he floated utterly distorted every image. Blistering. Shivering. Excrutiating. In a soundproof room, Mike screamed, as he had, near continuously, since being placed in the device that held him. It deprived him of any sensory input, save for those of the heat, cold and pain his sensory receptors told him his body was experiencing. Even the thick leather straps that bound him at waist, shoulders and ankles, went unnoticed. He took a deep breath, and screamed again, as he felt his skin crisping, under the intense heat he felt. In a booth beside the soundproofed room, Rawa T'Cab, Mendellian Ambassador to America, watched the video feed as a technician altered the feed to the sensory injectors. The Ambassador smiled, as she contemplated the interrogation she would eventually begin. Bror was eventually taken from the tank, cleaned off, dressed, and taken to the other members of his team. The three New Republic Intelligence agents smiled grimly, as they accepted that, even with the new reinforcement to the team, there was nothing they could do against the forces arrayed against them. They were guarded by a 3PO droid, an Imperial captain, and, most worryingly, an assassin droid. Any one of the three would be able to cut down the three Boussh agents, long before any useful gains could be made. Nonetheless, Bror looked at the guards with the faintest of smiles on his lips. In the technical booth, Rawa T'Cab was alerted by a beeping from the datapad she carried in her inner pocket. She looked at it, and tutted as she realised she had a meeting with the Presidential candidates this morning, to further discuss Eugor Atner's plans. She ordered the technician to leave Mike in the device for a further five minutes, before taking him to the rest of the prisoners. She left the room with a small smile playing across her lips. Boiling. Chilled. Hu- Mike dropped limply against the straps, and screamed once again as he became aware of the leather straps digging into what he knew was the tortured flesh of his body. The technician lit a cigarette, checked his pockets, then turned off the recording equipment before walking out of the booth, and heading into the soundproofed room. He slowly released the straps, letting Mike drop gracelessly to the ground, where he curled foetally, sobbing fitfully. The technician sighed and called for a stormtrooper to help him, over his comlink. The armoured guard marched briskly into the room, and the two hauled Mike upright, causing more howls of pain from the young Terran. Eventually, he passed out, hanging limp between the two. They hauled him by his shoulders, his arms dragging along the floor, bouncing bonelessly off the door jamb as they manhandled him through the narrow doorway. The NRI team snapped round to face the door as it was booted open. Mike came flying through the doorway, and Bror spotted the stormtrooper clapping his hands together on the other side of the entrance, as though to clean any trace of Mike off of his gloves. Mike lay on his stomach, his limbs contorted around him, and his breathing heavy. Shalla looked nervously at their guards before moving over to care for her fallen teammate. Elassar, as team medic, was right behind Shalla, and checked Mike's pulse, airways, and pupils. As he held Mike's wrist, he was surprised to feel the Terran squeeze, very lightly, against his arm. When he checked Mike's pupils, he found them bloodshot, but lucid. As if in confirmation, Mike winked slightly, and tugged lightly on his shirt hem. Elassar twigged to what his teammate was trying to say. He eased Mike's shirt upwards, blocking the guard's view with his own body. Tucked into the hem of Mike's trousers was a stormtrooper blaster pistol. 'He must have taken it when he was being carried here,' Elassar realised. He looked once at Shalla, and raised an eyebrow. Shalla's eyes widened as she looked down and saw the blaster. She looked up again, and nodded slightly in acknowledgement. Bror, meanwhile, had moved closer to the 3PO droid that was one of their guards. "What is your designation?" Bror asked the droid. "Sir, I am P3PO, perhaps more commonly, I am known as Poe." "And you used to serve under Captain Sair Yonka aboard the Virulence, latterly the Freedom, am I correct?" "That is quite correct, Master Jace. I remember you clearly from the debriefings following the Thyferran assault. Would you care for this blaster rifle, sir?" The silver droid passed the rifle to Jace. Jace snatched the rifle, and pushed Poe to the ground, eliciting a terrified yell from the droid. Bror pulled the trigger on the rifle at the same time as Elassar spun and fired the stolen blaster pistol, catching the assassin droid in the crossfire. The droid took several hits, and in the meantime, Shalla dived at Captain Namor, the third and final inroom guard. Several swift blows dropped the unfortunate man, and suddenly the odds for the NRI team looked significantly better. Bror eased the door open carefully. Poe had assured them that the wing of the embassy in which they had been held would be quite deserted, but the team didn't want to take any chances. Seeing both ways clear, the four Bousshers slipped out of the office, and along the darkened corridor. The first door they encountered led into a bedroom, and Shalla slid quietly inside, returning a brief time later carrying their own weapons and equipment, including Corran Horn's spare lightsaber. Mike winced as he took the black cylinder from Shalla's outstretched hand. He knew that the only injuries he'd suffered were the pinpricks around his scattered across his body. He *knew*, however, that every inch of his body, from the marrow of his bones, to the hair on his arms, ached with a pain he'd never imagine. His mind felt scrambled, too. He didn't remember any interrogation, but didn't know if that had been because there was none, or if he'd simply been injected with a truth drug. He had no idea how long he'd been in the device, only that he'd been apart from the remainder of his team for nearly 18 hours. Elassar looked at his patient, and grimaced as he wondered what was going through the young Terran's mind. Mike had insisted on walking with the rest of the team, but Elassar could tell that only adrenaline and willpower were keeping him from collapsing. Bror, as senior officer of the group, knew that his team was struggling. Mike had been put through horrific tortures, he was still uncomfortable with his freshly healed leg, and Shalla and Elassar were suffering from sleep deprivation. They desperately needed to get away. Poe had been right about the Embassy. It was almost empty, only a very few staff were in at this time of a Saturday. There was still a number of Imperial agents in the building, but they were mostly centered in their own separate area. Only one obstacle prevented the NRI team simply walking out of the Embassy. Ambassador T'Cab moved down the grand staircase, away from the briefing room where the Imperial agents had laid out a detailed plan for the first stage of their occupation. She sighed as she walked. They had treated her like an imbecile. To make up for it, she would similarly treat the poor fools she was about to meet. Mike was the first to spot her, and his hand snatched Bror's blaster from its holster on the way up. He sighted in on T'Cab before any of the other Bousshers realised what was happening. "T'Cab!" he rasped, stepping forward, away from his team. Shalla moved to stop him, but Bror put out a hand to stop her. "Let us see how this plays out," he murmured. Shalla watched in frustration as her friend kept the blaster on T'Cab. The Ambassador turned, slowly, and watched indifferently as Mike stared down the barrel of the blaster at her. "T'Cab," he said again. "Is that all you say? My, I am glad that I never got to interrogate you. How boring would that have been?" She shook her head derogatorily. She pulled a holdout blaster from behind her back. She aimed it at Mike. "Shut UP!" Mike fired, reflexively, the red bolt fizzing past T'Cab's ear. "Well? Are you planning on sunburning me to death?" "No." More than anything, it was the quiet way in which he said it that finally broke T'Cab's resolve. As Shalla dived at Mike's blaster, he fired. The blood red bolt flashed from Mike to T'Cab in the time it took for T'Cab's mouth to drop open in shock. Then the shot hit, and T'Cab's body was thrown backwards, her face burned away by the impact of the blaster bolt, the blaster firing as her hands twitched reflexively. The shots pumped into the ceiling, and plaster rained downwards. Mike stood and watched as the corpse twitched fitfully. When it lay still, he handed the blaster back to Bror, and slumped into the arms of his teammates.