Project Boussh: Darwinia
by Durandir

MENDELLIA: RESISTANCE HEADQUARTERS

"Tide'll be in again in two hours or so," Rekla's voice interrupted
Kell's thoughts.

"Good," Kell answered without turning to face the young Mendellian.
Standing by his X-wing in the cavern that served as hangar for the
Resistance, he stared out at a calm sea. "At least the HQ will be
hidden from this end while we're out."

"The tunnels will be well guarded, too," Rekla reminded him.

"Yeah." He did turn then, and smiled to see the fascination on Rekla's
face as the boy took in the sight of the X-wing. "Beautiful, isn't she?"

"Yessir," Rekla grinned. "Wish you were flying them for this mission.
I'd like to see her in action."

"You'll probably have the chance soon enough; one raid on one Imperial
garrison isn't going to finish our work here, I'm sure. Anyway, you
know why we can't use the X-wings for this. Soon as the three of us
showed up in our fighters, the whole Darwinia base would be on alert;
they'd send up all their TIE fighters to shoot us down, and then
there'd be nothing for Reth and Thayer to fly out of there."

"I know. Still, it seems a shame to have such fine ships here and not
be able to use them."

"Can't argue with you there, kid. Come on, looks like it's about time
to head for the tunnels."


MENDELLIA: THE HIGH PALACE

"We've received a rather urgent message from the Darwinia garrison,
sir."

Tede stood still as a statue before the Dictator of Mendellia, holding
the Imperial-style salute with not the slightest movement nor the least
sign of emotion. General Eugor Atner looked up curiously from his desk.

"Well, what is it, Tede?"

"Apparently, they have intruders. The guard for the secondary entrance
was due to change twenty minutes ago, but the new guard hadn't reported
in yet. Control sent a stormtrooper squad to investigate, and that
squad hasn't reported in either. Control deduces that something or
someone is loose in the base; who or what has yet to be determined."

"I see. Well, it's no use for us to send help until we know how much
help they need. Tell Control to finish determining what they've got and
call us back."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, Tede, while you're here. Have you finished moving the prisoner
Durandir as I asked?"

"Yes, General."

"And you put her in solitary, of course?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good. Wouldn't want our other prisoners getting suspicious--wouldn't
want our dear Durandir getting suspicious, either. Best to keep her
isolated for now."

"Certainly, General."


MENDELLIA: DARWINIA GARRISON

"All clear," came Fir's hushed voice from the end of the hallway.

"Good," Kell called back, in the same loud whisper, as he and Runt
finished relieving the last of the stormtrooper squad of their blasters
and helmet comlinks. "Runt, you can reset the comlinks so we're all on
the same frequency and the rest of the base's stormies won't be
listening in, right?"

"Easier done than said," Runt grinned as he worked at one of the
comlinks. As the communications expert for the Wraiths, he had long ago
learned such tricks. "We are already halfway through the lot of them,
in fact."

"Wonderful." While Runt recalibrated, Kell passed the troopers' blaster
rifles out to those of his team who had started the mission carrying
only Terran weapons. In the proper hands--say, for example, Fir's or
Thayer's, as the Wraiths had seen earlier at Memorial Stadium and again
just now when this squad of stormtroopers had attacked--a Terran gun
could be effective enough. But for the majority of the Resistance
strike team, Imperial blasters would have a much better chance against
stormtrooper armor.

They'd been lucky, in this first skirmish. The stormtroopers would have
taken them by surprise if not for Tyria--whose Ranger skills had not
faded over the years but indeed seemed to have grown even more keen as
she added to them skills in the Force--scouting ahead of the main
group. After that, Fir's masterful handling of Terran firearms and
Thayer's keen sense of strategy had given them the advantage, and
they'd been able to take nearly half the stormie squad alive. Having
bound the prisoners with the cables from their own utility belts, and
having finished the distribution of blasters and newly calibrated
comlinks, Kell left two Resistance agents to escort the stormies to a
Resistance holding cell for later interrogation, and motioned the rest
of the group to move on.

At an intersection of hallways, their group split up. In their planning
sessions, they had decided on two objectives for the Darwinia raid: the
primary objective, intelligence--anything they could learn about Eugor
Atner's resources, his arrangement with the Empire, and especially his
prisoners--and the secondary objective, as many TIE fighters as they
could fly away with. For the sake of efficiency, the pilots of the
group--Kell, Tyria, Runt, Thayer, and Reth--would go after the TIEs
while the others sought out the information.

And of course, in the meantime, they'd all be contributing as they
could to the third objective: to cause as much damage as possible to
General Atner's Darwinia base. "After all," Kell had explained with a
predatorial smile, "it's our motto. 'What do we blow up first?' We have
to live by our motto."

So the team now became two teams, Fir and Kirret leading the
intelligence group down one hallway while Kell and Thayer led the
pilots down another. The garrison was housed in what had, years ago,
been a private boarding school for the children of Mendellian nobles.
Thayer, being the son of the most noble of Mendellian families, had
spent some years there; so had Kirret, whose father, an aristocrat
loyal to Enad Atner, had been killed in Eugor Atner's coup. Drawing on
the knowledge these two had of the building, the Resistance team
guessed that the Imperials would have their starfighters in either the
old gymnasium or the old ballroom. Kell's group headed for the
gymnasium first. As for Fir's group, there was no telling where the
Imperials would have their computers, so they would likely have a
longer hunt ahead of them than the pilots would have.


MENDELLIA: THE HIGH PALACE

Tede stood again before the Dictator of Mendellia, his crisp Imperial
uniform offering hardly a single wrinkle to reflect the light from
Atner's hearth, so that his motionless figure could easily have gone
unnoticed in the dimly lit room, had he been as silent as he was still.

However, he had not come to be silent, but to speak and bear tidings to
the Dictator. "Further word from Darwinia, sir," Tede announced flatly.

"Yes?" asked the General eagerly.

"The intruders have now been spotted on one of the base's security
holocams. Control counts sixteen individuals, though it is of course
possible there are more, separate from this group."

"Sixteen? Hardly enough for them to be sending to me for backup. Did
they send an image? Yes? Well, let me see it, man. Let's see what our
good old Resistance Movement has sent against my base."

Complying with his usual steady efficiency, Tede moved to a holographic
plate that had been recently installed among the baroque furnishings of
Atner's office. He worked the controls a moment and brought up a still
image showing the sixteen invaders of the Darwinia base.

"Control wishes you to note one rather unexpected point, sir," he
said. "You can see one of the intruders--here, near the head of the
group--is a non-human. I believe, sir, the implications are clear."

Atner broke out in sudden laughter as Tede pointed out Runt in the
image. "Clear enough, yes. So it's not the Resistance after all. Or
maybe it is, and they've teamed up with our other adversaries. So,
Tede, the New Republic has reached Mendellia at last."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, this may alter things. We must think what to do." The General
studied the holoimage in silence for a few moments. "By Darwin's
beard," he cried out suddenly, straining forward in his chair, "is that
who I think it is?"

"I couldn't say, sir," Tede answered simply. "You have not yet made
your thoughts known to me."

"It was a rhetorical question, Tede. Look there. It is, good Grace, I'm
sure of it. That's my dear nephew Thayer," on the General's tongue the
name was half a sneer, "there among my enemies. So little Thayer has
returned at last. I expected he would, sooner or later. Ought to have
killed him, too, when I had the chance."

"Indeed, sir." In the wake of this revelation, Tede's stone face was as
passionless as ever.

"Probably, then, these intruders represent a new alliance between our
New Republic enemies and our Mendellian enemies. So Thayer's with the
Resistance now. Well, let him resist all he wants; he may have a heroic
death to secure his name's place in Mendellian legend, but I'll keep
the throne. Tede, contact the Beagle base. Have them send a few squads
of stormtroopers to Darwinia to assist in repelling the Resistance's
attack on that base."

"Yes, sir."

"We'll have them now, Tede," Eugor Atner's face twisted into a smile of
sheer cruelty. "Our Lady Durandir's alien-loving friends *and* my
sweet, noble, eternally accursed nephew. Two birds in one net."


MENDELLIA: DARWINIA GARRISON

"Problem, Hermit One," Kirret's voice chirped over Kell's
comlink. "We've found the computers, and Grace Four is already at work
on them. But there are a couple here that aren't of any make we
recognize. Suspect they're Imp technology. Also suspect the most
sensitive files will be on those machines."

"I copy, Grace Three," Kell answered, then he turned to Tyria. "Do you
think--"

"I'm not a slicer," she smiled before he could finish, "but Kirret and
Fenya are. And I do know more about our computers than they do. Between
the three of us, we ought to be able to manage. I'm on my way."

"Thanks, hon. If you can't get back to us before it's showtime, don't
worry. Four TIEs will still be a good day's haul, if we can carry it
off. Just be safe." He blew her a kiss as she disappeared around a
corner. Into the comlink, he said, "Three, Hermit Two's en route to
your position. The rest of us are going on with the search. Still no
luck."

"Thanks, One," Kirret answered, then the comlink fell silent again.

The pilots had reached the gymnasium quickly, only having to shoot
their way through two small groups of stormtroopers and one stray
officer of a bureaucratic appearance who had wandered into their path.
The gym turned out to be in use as a hangar, sure enough, but they saw
only the larger types of ships, nothing the size of a TIE fighter.
Still, it looked like a good place for fulfilling their third
objective; so Kell had climbed across the scaffolding by which the
lights were suspended from the high ceiling to plant a couple of his
explosives--the same explosives that had hung at his belt days ago when
the Hermitage group set out for Memorial Stadium. It was a good thing
they'd not needed them then; Thayer's group didn't have anything so
powerful as what Kell routinely carried on Wraith missions. The handful
of explosives he had with him now were all set to go off at the same
time. It was just up to the Resistance team to make sure they were
clear of the base by then.

As Tyria made her way to join Kirret at the base's computers, Kell's
group hurried on toward the ballroom. Thayer had recalled that this was
an enormous room rising to a ceiling two floors above; the first-floor
entrance to the ballroom was a pair of heavy wooden doors that would
almost certainly be heavily guarded, especially if the TIEs really were
housed there. But there was another entrance, a second-floor door, less
impressive and also less defensible, leading to a balcony that
overlooked the old dance floor. The pilots headed for the second floor.

They were delayed briefly at the stairway; as Runt cautiously reached
the top step and peeked through an archway into the second-floor
hallway, a blaster bolt sizzled past his nose.

"Stormtroopers," he explained as he jumped back out of the way. "We
couldn't see how many, but it's a crossfire."

"Any is too many," Kell sighed. The troopers began to close in on the
stairwell, but the four pilots quickly opened fire through the archway,
down the hall to their right and left, shooting wildly since they
couldn't get a better view of their targets without becoming targets
themselves.

Kell was beginning to worry; the enemy blaster fire wasn't letting up,
and while Thayer and Reth were both proving to be fairly good shots,
the four pilots were hardly at an advantage here. He thumbed his
comlink and called to the rest of the team, "Hermit One here. We've run
into trouble on the second floor. Any chance of backup?"

"This is Grace Two," Iris's voice answered. "I'm sorry, One, but we
just sent Grace One"--that would be Fir--"with most of our fighters to
draw the Imps away from Three and Four at the computers."

"Right," Kell answered. "Well, maybe they'll meet up with us--sooner
rather than later, I hope. Thanks anyway, Two."

But on second thought, he realized as signed off, the enemy fire was
starting to let up, after all. It looked like it was only coming in one
direction, now, only from the left wing of the hallway. Maybe the
pilots had cleared out all the stormies on the other side. Thayer and
Reth must be better shots than he'd originally thought.

"Hermits, cover me," Kell said. "Concentrate fire to the left. I'm
going to see what we've got out there now." The other three
acknowledged; Kell braced himself and then, while the Hermit pilots
suddenly increased their firing toward the left hallway, he popped his
head out for a quick glance, first right, then left.

Just as quickly, he popped back in under the cover of the
archway. "Good news," he reported. "The right's clear. Still quite a
few of them to the left, though. Let's even things out." He pulled from
his belt one of the few explosives that had come from the Resistance's
stock rather than his own: a Terran grenade that Kell expected would be
classified as "vintage" even by Terrans. To him, accustomed to the more
advanced technology of New Republic weapons, it definitely belonged
with Thayer's antiquated map of Mendellia. But it would do the job he
needed it for, or at least Thayer assured him that it would, and that
was all that mattered at present.

"I throw left, we run right. Got it?" he instructed his team. They
nodded; he pulled the pin and threw the grenade towards the remaining
stormtroopers, and the Hermit group made a quick escape down the right
wing of the hall. The shock of the explosion hurried them along as they
rounded a corner into another hallway, this one blessedly free of white
armor and blaster fire.

"Our fortune today is good," Thayer grinned as they ran. "The ballroom
is just at the end of this hall, around that far corner. It's a good
thing we weren't obligated to run left instead of right."

"Must be our lucky day," Reth answered, matching his friend's
grin. "It's always good to plan missions for your lucky days. I commend
you, Thayer, and you, Kell; you've picked a splendid day for garrison-
raiding."

"Happy to serve--" Kell began, then stopped suddenly as they passed one
door. "Wait! Did you see that?"

"What?" Runt asked.

Kell jogged back to the door in question. It was a thick metal door
with a forbidding lock, but it had a window of reinforced glass, and
through this the four of them could now see what had caught Kell's eye.

Kell and Runt gaped in astonishment. Reth and Thayer looked on in
bewilderment.

"What is it?" Reth asked.

"I recognize it," Kell said slowly, "from back during the Thrawn years.
After we'd found out that Thrawn was using clones in battle. The
Wraiths were part of the effort to sniff out his cloning chambers, for
a while, and we had briefings on what to look for."

"Briefings with holos," Runt nodded. "You are right, Kell. Those are
cloning cylinders. Exactly as in the holos."

"Never saw one up close," Kell muttered, his skin beginning to crawl as
the implications of what he saw began to close in on his mind. A room
full of cloning cylinders in General Atner's Darwinia base. How many
other such rooms were there in Mendellia, he wondered? And just what
did Atner have planned for them?

Or, perhaps, what did Atner's allies have planned for Mendellia--for
all of Terra, indeed? Kell recalled that one of the reports that had
come in from the rest of Team Boussh since the Hermitage group arrived
in Mendellia had mentioned that a couple of the team's undercover
agents working in Great Britain had spotted Grand Admiral Thrawn, there
in the UK. Thrawn was supposed to be dead, of course, but then with
evil geniuses of that sort, one could never be sure. If Atner was
working with Thrawn...combined with this roomful of cloning cylinders at
Darwinia...Kell shuddered at the possibilities.

"What is it, exactly?" Thayer's voice intruded on his morbid thoughts.

"Cloning cylinders," Kell explained. "Take a genetic sample of a living
being and you can clone an exact copy in one of those tubes there."

"Any living being?" asked Thayer darkly. "We have heard of animals
being cloned, but as yet...humans...is it possible?"

"Where we come from, it's possible. And those cylinders, by the looks
of them, come from the same place we do. Well, folks, I think it's time
to see to our Objective Number Three."

"Right," Thayer grinned. "Allow me." As the others stepped back, he
pointed his blaster at the door's lock and quickly shot it away. They
entered the cloning chamber carefully, alert for unseen enemies, but
soon it became apparent that the room was deserted; Atner must be
awfully trusting of his locks. After that, it was the work of a few
minutes to set the room up with explosives like those they'd left in
the gymnasium, and then they hurried on their way to the ballroom.

The balcony door was, as they'd hoped, not heavily guarded; the two
stormtroopers posted there didn't last long against the four of them.
Reth was the first through the door.

"Yes," he said, throwing a grin back in the others' direction, "this is
a splendid day for a mission. We found 'em, boys."

They had indeed. From the balcony, they looked down on the ballroom-
turned-hangar to see that it was indeed the cradle of Darwinia's TIE
fighters. And, as far as they could see, it was just as deserted as the
cloning chamber.

"Darwinia must not be terribly important," Kell noted. "It only rates
one squadron of TIEs."

"It is a fairly minor base," Thayer agreed. "Which is partly why it
suited our purposes today so well."

"Right. I wonder where everyone is, though?"

"Perhaps they do not expect us to go after the TIEs," Runt
suggested. "Perhaps they have all gone to guard something they hold
more valuable."

"Such as, maybe, the computers," Thayer said heavily. "I hope the
others will be all right."

"Don't worry; Kir can hold her own against any number of Imps," Reth
reassured; but concern showed on his normally cheerful face.

"Or maybe they have gone to guard the cloning chamber," Runt said. "In
which case, Reth is right: we are lucky today, to have finished there
before they arrived."

"Might be. All right," Kell directed, "Runt, you pick out the four best
fighters and get them ready to fly. Thayer, guard this door; Reth, you
watch the door below. I'll get to work on the ceiling."

They acknowledged and quickly headed off to their tasks. Minutes later,
they were ready to go, and still no enemy had appeared at either door.
Kell reached for his comlink.

"Hermit One to Hermit Two."

"Two here, One."

"What's your status?"

"The Graces are ready to move. We've salvaged everything we can from
the Terran computers; weren't able to get past the security on the Imp
computers, but we did pull a few low-security level files there too.
Grace One is back; we have the explosives in place in the computer
room, and we're on our way out the door even as I speak."

"Great. Get clear as fast as you can. We have the birds and are ready
to fly. See you soon."

And with that, the four pilots availed themselves of some of the TIE
pilot suits hanging in what was once a cloakroom tucked away in a
corner of the ballroom, climbed into their ships, and set the TIE
fighters in motion. The normal ships' entrance to the hangar, a great
sheet of metal that would rise by gears and pulleys to leave an opening
for the TIEs, was locked down and they had been unable to find a
control for it. So Kell simply directed his fighter toward one of the
other walls, a row of high windows set in ancient brick. A couple of
shots from the TIE made quick work of the bricks, and the four
starfighters flew out the hangar's newest entrance.

Moments later, the sensors in the TIEs noted a sudden increase in
temperature behind them, as a series of explosions rocked the old
school building that had lately served as the Darwinia garrison. Kell
let out a sigh of relief, and the Resistance movement's four new TIEs
set their course northwards, towards the little island where Thayer and
Reth had once practiced with their first TIE.

"Hermit One," Thayer's voice came over the comm suddenly, "look behind.
Something's on my sensors, though I'm not sure what."

Kell glanced at his own sensors. "Well, what do you know. Looks like an
assault shuttle. Ol' Atner must be sending backup troops. Wonderful
timing. But we can get to them before they get to our friends on the
ground. Let's go, Hermits."

The four TIEs looped around and flew back towards the garrison. They
were, indeed, just in time to intercept the assault shuttle before it
could reach the Resistance troops hurrying towards the tunnel entrance--
an old well in Darwinia's city park. Apparently, the backup troops
hadn't been expecting to find their own TIEs flying against them any
more than Darwinia had expected to find them being stolen. The TIEs
came at it with their weapons blazing, and in a matter of minutes the
shuttle was out of the fight. Hermit Flight flew on to the north once
more, just as the Resistance ground troops reached the well and began
working their way down the footholds carved inside it.


MENDELLIA: THE HIGH PALACE

"Well, what is it, Tede?"

"It's about Darwinia, sir."

"Ah, of course. Is it over yet? Surely ought to be, by now."

"It's over, sir. But I'm afraid it did not go as you had expected."

"What?"

"We lost contact with the Darwinia base hours ago and had to send a
team out to investigate. They found the place in ruins."

"But--how can that be--"

"It appears to have been bombed, sir. Both hangars were targeted, and
the computer center, and--" even the passionless Tede seemed to brace
himself before uttering the next-- "also the cloning chamber."

"What!" Eugor Atner roared, coming up out of his chair, his face
flushed so red it nearly matched the scarlet uniform he wore that day.

"Yes, sir. We have confirmation of that. They think perhaps one or two
of the cylinders may yet be salvaged, but--"

Atner's voice, interrupting this report, was cold as death, but his
face didn't pale from its sudden fiery red. "What of the intruders?"

"No sign of them, sir. It's possible they are buried in the rubble, but
as yet the team has found nothing."

"Of course. Of course. I should have known. Oh, Tede, I should have
killed him when I had the chance. So Darwinia is lost. I do not like to
think what Thrawn's reaction will be when he learns of this."

"No, sir."

"At least we still have the cloning cylinders here. And, after all,
none of the primary subjects were being held at Darwinia, just the
cloning facilities were there. So long as the Palace stands, Tede, we
shall prevail."

"As you say, sir."

"Ah, just think of it, Tede! At last we shall make this dream a
reality. While all other nations chatter over the cloning of sheep and
such lot, here in Mendellia we'll be cloning super-men. The pinnacle of
evolution: the perfection of human genetics: the most pure samples of
humanity that now live; we will take these and make of them a race of
super-humans. And every last one of them will live to serve *me*."

"An admirable scheme, General."

"Yes. Well, this apparent alliance between our accursed Resistance and
the New Republic bodes ill. We must take care. Perhaps we can learn
something from our prisoners. Tede, see to the interrogation of
Durandir and Quiara, will you?"

"Of course, sir."