Project Boussh: CorSec In The UK by Majick Corran pondered his fortune as his black and green X-Wing made land fall over the North of England. A trained intelligence and law enforcement officer, he'd been relegated to inactivity when Kelly -'keeper of all things Halcyon' he thought with a grin- had been taken ill. Trapped in her isolated room with a vicious but non lethal variant on the Krytos virus -she called it 'flu'- he'd been reduced to passive intelligence gathering. It wasn't a role he enjoyed. Eventually Piggy had e-mailed him with a vague report of an alien sighting in North East England. Corran had verified the sighting through news sources, and gotten in contact with AFW's resident nit-picker, Michael Clark. Corran hoped that the Terran's attention to detail would be an asset to the investigation. After a further twenty minutes, Corran sighted his target, the rusted airplane that the country's government had dumped in the area. A small figure at the base slouched against the statue, a single torch marking out Corran's landing zone. "Hope that's him," Corran thought, circling the 'Angel' once before landing in the shadow of the left arm. He hopped out of the ship, and jumped to the ground, then turned and pulled a small scanner from the X-Wing's locker. "Cool wings," came a voice from behind him. "Much better than the toys we have here." "You're Clark?" Corran asked as he turned. He measured the young man standing in front of him. Early twenties, unruly brown hair, lopsided grin, and tall. Corran wondered briefly what was so amusing to his contact. "Mike, actually. People use my surname only when they want to get on my bad side. It's not a name with a great deal of respect." Corran blinked, and filed that away for future reference. "I must say, you seem different to other reports I've had of contacts." "Oh? How's that?" "Well, Kelly nearly fainted when I showed up, and some of the uh, AFW'ers have been overawed by us." "You have to understand, we've been reading all about you, watching the films, everything since we were kids, in most cases. Imagine how you felt when you first met Wedge, or Luke," Michael's face soured on that name, Corran noticed. "people we're on first name terms with suddenly showing up, larger than life and with ruddy great big starships. it's not something that happens everyday." "I suppose that's understandable. Now, where do we start?" "Impatient much? I guess that's the Horns for ya. I suggest over here, where the Imperial shuttle landed." Corran shook off the strange feeling of having this stranger pick up on a family trait, and instead wondered at his utterly blase attitude to the extraordinary. "The Imperial shuttle? How do you know?" "Well, even your friends the eyewitnesses agreed on many details. That's the thing about the truly bizzare, people notice more about it than they do the mundane. Strangely. I'm sure you've noticed that during investigations. Here's some sketches that were in the local paper." He handed Corran a sheaf of paper, each of which contained rough sketches of what was unmistakably an Imperial shuttle. Mike also waved a small device in Corran's general direction. Corran looked at it blankly. "Yes?" "It's a geiger counter, it measures background radioactive activity," Mike explained. "I took it from the geology lab at university." "You stole it? Even in this case, I don't think..." but Mike cut him off. "Listen Corran, we needed this sort of thing, and from what I recall, you galaxy doesn't use a great many nuclear devices. It works fine at picking up the residual traces of the Imperial shuttle, so don't complain." Corran looked into Mike's eyes, and saw a determination that matched his own. "I've only been around on AFW for a few months, but the people there have made me feel welcome and at ease. If one of them is in trouble, we'll all help, whether we're newbies, Prophets, gypsys or changer's of oil. Let's save the finer points for when we have Quiara back and safe. Then you can arrest me for misappropriation of university property." Corran nodded, and set his scanning equipment up. Thrawn sat in his private room in the Imperial stronghold on Terra, studying the artwork of the Terran race. He had been wrong to underestimate these people, who seemed to alter their outlook on life from one small town to the next. He stared as a painting of a soup can was displayed, then a pickled sheep, sliced in half, then a series of pictures, showing a house being filled with concrete, and the walls torn away. Thrawn pondered exactly what the series of images meant, but knew that insight into this planet's inhabitants would take longer than normal. Meanwhile, Corran and Mike were discussing the differences between the real galaxy far far way, and George Lucas' vision. "So the Ewok's aren't really too cute after all?" "No. They're vicious little swines, actually. Oh, they look nice enough, but get between one of them and it's home, and you'll need a dip in a bacta tank." "Did they really kick those stormtroopers asses on Endor?" "Not in the way Lucas would have you believe. Oh, their booby traps were useful enough, but they didn't go in for anything actually brave. It was all down to Leia and Han leading the troops so well, and Page's commando's being so good at their jobs. "Something else your storys have wrong, is that a Jedi doesn't tend to fight against the Dark Side too often. There have only been a handful of Dark Jedi of any note, but between Vader and the Emperor, the vision got a little warped. More often a Jedi was a special policeman." "Which is where you come in." Corran nodded. "Exactly. I'm the product of a long line of Jedi and police marriages." "And the lightsaber?" "Useful enough, but you can only do so much with a sword. The Force is the main strength of a Jedi." The scanning equipment beeped to signify it's task completion. Corran turned to read the display. "The craft took off on bearing 291.2," he said. Seeing Mike's blank look, he pointed westwards. "The vapour trail indicates that it overflew Ireland, and continued over the ocean." "Back across the Atlantic, towards America, where most of your friends are. This is data that needs to be passed on to the rest of your Intel outfit. You should get going, before the sun comes up, anyway." "What about you? Do you go home now?" "Drive back to London? Forget it. I'm hopping a plane to Washington. I'm due to hook up with some of the other Rogues and Wraiths, and we're gonna hunt down which of the party's got their hands dirty." "It's been good working with you, Mike. Even if we didn't agree on anything." "Hey, you're Corsec and a Jedi. Strait laced goes with the package." "I'm a pilot. Strait laced doesn't even come into it. See you back in America, perhaps." "Yeah, well, as an amateur writer, I can tell you that we're all going to have to meet up at least once to set up the climax to this Q-hunt." "And I thought I had an ego..." "Corellian pilot's have nothing on me when I'm thinking about a story..." The two men shook hands and separated, Corran for his X-Wing, Mike for the airport. Mike was prepared to trade the snubfighter's speed for free champagne and acres of legroom.