Project Boussh: Casting Far And Wide
by Josh Cochran

*Someday they'll make a movie about all of this.*

The battle was winding down and the adrenaline was wearing off. Josh 
had settled into a rhythm with each TIE he faced. Drop  in on its 
tail. Five seconds to settle into position and align the crosshairs. 
Hold down the trigger just long enough to fire  a four-shot burst. 
Splash one TIE. 

It was so routine now it was boring. Josh had taken to livening 
things up a bit by firing his four shots in different  patterns. Two 
paired shots, or a single quad-linked blast, or four separate 
individual trigger pulls. When that got old and  he started getting 
really cocky, he shut off the targeting computer and fired manually. 
Unfortunately, that increased his  average time between kills enough 
that he eventually had to turn it back on and quit clowning around. 
Besides, Hyper was teasing him about hot dogging.

So with his last small diversion gone, his mind was wandering.

*Okay, so no one's going to believe this movie when it comes out. 
That's not the point!*

Josh sighed aloud. "These guys are *really* bad, Three."

"It does lend credence to your theory that they are clones, Four," 
Ooryl replied.

"How do you figure that?" Josh asked with a frown.

"They are all uniformly bad."

Josh currently led their wingpair. Ooryl gave him the lead nearly 
half an hour ago, and had yet to see fit to take it back.  Since 
then he'd been hanging back in a loose fingertip formation, keeping 
TIEs off of Josh's tail. 

*Hmmm... I wonder who they'll get to play me.*

It seemed as though the biggest danger to the friendly strafighters 
now was battle debris. Space in the battle zone was  littered with 
the hulls of TIE-series fighters and pieces blasted free of the 
larger ships during the battle. With the  arrival of the Lusankya 
the battle had become decidedly one-sided. The enormous ship's big 
guns made short work of the  remaining Star Destroyer and her 
smaller turbolasers vaporized any TIEs that strayed too far from the 
furball. So far the SSd  had only committed two of its starfighter 
squadrons to the battle. 

*Tom Cruise maybe? Nah, too short.*

Josh sighed as he dropped in behind a TIE Defender. "Try it again, 
Ooryl."

"Attention all Imperial starfighters. Bring your fighters to a full 
stop and surrender and you will not be harmed. If you do  not comply 
you will be fired upon." Ooryl was beginning to sound bored with the 
speech. As well he should; he'd made it half  a dozen times. so far 
none of the enemy pilots had taken him up on the offer.

This one wasn't going to be any different, Josh decided with a 
grimace. He centered the Defender in his cross hairs and  pulled the 
trigger. The ship disintegrated under the hale of scarlet light. 

*Scott Bakula? Is he even still around? Haven't heard anything about 
him in years.*

"How many is that, Hyper?"

THAT MAKE'S FIFTEEN.

"Still counting Vickie?"

YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT.

"ooooh....attitude droid! And that's still harsh."

*Russell Crowe! Yeah, that's it!*

"Is it just me, or are these Defenders and Avengers built tougher 
than the earlier TIEs?" Josh asked no one in particular.

Unfortunately he pushed the button for the mission frequency while 
he was thinking out loud. "ComSec, Four? Now what do you mean?" 
Wedge asked.

"Sorry sir. I just mean that their chunks seem to be larger than the 
squints and eyeballs were," Josh explained

A chuckle was clearly audible over the mission frequency. "Their 
*chunks*?" Gavin asked.

"Yeah," Josh continued. "The earlier fighters are tiny little pieces 
of shrapnel floating around, but these new guys are leaving some 
pretty sizable pieces behind."

"Mystery for another time, Four," Tycho replied.

"Yes sir."

*Yeah, Kristy'd just love that. Oh well, Russell's a little too old 
anyway. And *way* too Australian.*

"Hyper: next target," Josh ordered. The droid tootled and targeted 
the nearest enemy fighter. Josh began a sweeping turn towards it 
with Ooryl right on his wing.

"This really sucks," Josh said to himself as the fighter appeared 
off his nose and his weapons began to line up.

Just then the mission frequency again crackled to life. "Attention 
all personnel. Our Moment Of Triumph, Underestimated Chances. 
Repeat: Our Moment Of Triumph, Underestimated Chances. Implement 
immediately. That is all." 

Wedge's voice replaced Sci's almost immediately. "Okay Red Group, 
you heard the man. Let's provide some cover for our team mates, and 
check your fire around the escape pods." 

*One thing's for sure...we're going to have better codes in the 
movie.*