Project Boussh: Exit Strategy By Josh Cochran Space around the Admonitor was so still you could hear a pin drop. If there was air to carry the sound, of course. And gravity to make it fall. The debris field surrounding the battered Star Destroyer was full of escape pods from the defeated vessel. Her crew knew their battle was lost, and with their leader dead they had no reason to continue fighting. They'd left the ship in ones and twos and fives, grabbing up every escape pod, shuttle, and fighter left aboard. They died in the same ones and twos and fives, their escape pods and shuttles and fighters turned into bits of metallic confetti by mines hidden in the debris field. Now, at the order of their enemies' leader, they waited for a rescue some weren't sure would ever come. "Lusankya, how many people are left on the Admonitor?" Wedge asked. "The evacuation is complete," Admiral Tabanne replied immediately. "Her crew is either in the minefield, or..." "Or dead." Wedge sighed. "How many escape pods from the Defiant?" "None, General." Wegde studied the debris field and the stranded ships trapped in it. "How many did we lose out there?" he asked. "We lost the Defiant and seven fighters. The Mendellians lost three TIEs and the Imps lost twenty escape pods and shuttles." Wedge was doing the math in his head before the Admiral had even finished speaking. The Defiant alone had a crew of more than two thousand. Once you added in the pilots and the Imps in the escape pods... "About twenty-five hundred." "That's our estimate, yes." "Hyper, have you found a way to find the mines?" Josh demanded. POSSIBLY. "Possibly?" I BELIEVE I HAVE IDENTIFIED A PATTERN THAT WOULD ALLOW INDENTIFICATION OF THE REMAINING MINES. TO BE CERTAIN WOULD REQUIRE A CLOSER EXAMINATION. A shiver started at the base of Josh's spine and quickly traveled upward. "Closer?" he asked. "How much closer?" Becki found Thayer in the main hold of the Pulsar Skate sitting in a circle on the floor with several other rescued Mendellian pilots. Each of the pilots held several cards and a large pile of nuts and bolts lay in the middle of the circle. A generally friendly buzz of conversation filled the room. "Becki!" Thayer called when he saw her. "Would you care to join us?" She smiled uncertainly. "Um, I'm not sure. What are you playing?" "Poker," he said. "Just for spare parts, of course." "I'm trying to win enough to fix up my fighter," Reth explained with a grin. "I'm afraid I don't know how it's played," Becki said. "Well then, you can be my good luck charm. Come, sit with us," said Thayer, patting the deck next to him. The group of pilots spread out to make room for her, and Becki took the spot Thayer indicated. "I've got to say, I admire your patience," she commented. "This waiting is driving me crazy." "We learned to deal with long, boring hours in the Resistance," Thayer explained. "Though not all of us are as patient." "I still don't see why we can't just blast our way out of here," Reth grumbled. "We're not that far from the edge of the field. If we slag every piece of space junk between us and clear space we should be fine." "Oh, Mirax thought about it," Becki told him. "Why didn't she then?" "Because we might miss one." Wedge shook his head in disbelief as Josh finished explaining his plan. "Four, that's-" "It's NOT suicide, General," Josh interrupted. "I was going to say insane, Four." "That it is. But I don't think we have any better ideas right now." Wedge couldn't find a good argument for that. "Is Hyper sure he'll get what he needs out of this? I'm not going to risk you if you're not sure it'll do us any good." "He's pretty sure. I've gone over his plan and it makes sense. Believe me, I'm in no great hurry to get myself blown up, either." "That's too bad, because this would be a great way to do it." Wedge sighed. "Alright, Four. Go ahead." Josh settled further down into his seat and tightened his restraints as much as he could stand. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer before placing his hands back on the X-wing's controls. "Divert all power to engines," he ordered Hyper. ENGINES AT 100% POWER DISTRIBUTION, Hyper confirmed. SHIELDS AND WEAPONS AT ZERO. "Oh, and Hyper? If this stunt gets me killed I'm coming back to haunt you." Before the droid could respond, Josh shoved the throttle all the way forward. The X-wing leaped forward as if fired from a missile tube. With all her power going into the engines the little ship accelerated twice as fast as he was used to. He brought her around and aimed her nose at a distant piece of wreckage Hyper had marked on his HUD. REMEMBER, NO LESS THAN EIGHT METERS AND NOT MORE THAN TEN. "I may need some help with that," Josh sighed in exasperation. "I'm only human, you know." OF COURSE. The X-wing hurtled through space at twice her normal combat speed. The drifting piece of debris grew larger and larger in the windscreen every moment. Josh was glad he was wearing gloves. His hands were so sweaty they would likely have slipped right off the controls. An instant before the X-wing would strike the piece of scrap, Josh pulled back on the stick to jump the fighter up above it. Hyper quickly dampened his stick input to keep them close enough to their target for the sensors to capture the information they needed. The X-wing passed a mere nine meters from the target. As expected, the chunk of debris exploded spectacularly. The force of the explosion rocked the unshielded X-wing, but her fantastic speed instantly took her out of range of the fiery destruction. Her pilot let out an excited cheer fueled by relief and adrenaline. "YES!!!" The Katarn Commandos and their two Terran companions were clustered around their shuttle's viewports, watching the flight of the X-wing with baited breath. Several of them winced involuntarily as the starfighter narrowly evaded annihilation. Kristy just shook her head in disbelief. "Nice to see he listened to ME." she muttered. "Again!? What do you mean again!?" ONE MORE PASS. THEN I WILL BE SURE. "You didn't mention another pass when I agreed to this! Why didn't you get what you needed the first time?" Josh demanded. I THOUGHT ONE PASS WOULD BE SUFFICIENT. I AM CERTAIN THAT WITH ONE MORE THE DATA WILL BE COMPLETE. "I thought you were 'certain' last time," Josh grumbled. AS YOU HAVE SEEN, THIS COURSE OF ACTION PRESENTS LITTLE DANGER. "Easy for you to say. Okay, put it on the HUD." New steering cues appeared in front of his eyes. Reluctantly he turned to center the new object in front of the fighter. Once more he pushed the engines up to full throttle and firmly gripped the control stick. The starfighter again twitched just before impact, this time missing the mine by a scant eight and a half meters. The explosion swatted the rear of the X-wing, doing no damage but swinging the fighter's tail several meters off course. Josh kept the ship racing along at its enhanced speed until it was well clear of the debris field before he throttled down. "Hyper, if that wasn't enough..." he began. IT WAS. "Lucky for you." "Hyper's uploading his data to the Lusankya now, General," Josh reported. Wedge smiled, his first real smile all day. "Wonderful! So what are they?" "The clone fighters. Those last four squadrons that attacked us. The mines are in their wreckage. Apparently they were on those ships. When the ships were destroyed, the mines became active." Wedge leaned forward to examine the sensor data on the monitor in his cockpit. "Not exactly. The mines seem to be proximity-fused. That wreckage was probably hit hundreds of times during the battle. Something must have armed them." "And proximity fused means sensors that are susceptible to ion blasts," Admiral Tabanne broke in from the Lusankya. "We're launching Champion Squadron to disable the mines now. Shouldn't take long - we're only detecting eighteen mines remaining." "Good work, Red Four," Wedge said. Josh leaned back in his seat and sighed in satisfaction. The Y-wings of Champion Squadron flew straight into the debris field. Now that they knew exactly where the mines were they could navigate freely, without fear of sudden destruction. The escape pods and larger vessels that found themselves clear of mines immediately began evacuating the area. The Y-wings zipped around the fleeing vessels, blasting away at the hidden mines. The mines were small and used surprisingly delicate targeting sensors, so they were disabled by just a couple of shots from the fighters' ion cannons. As the mines were disabled more and more ships joined the exodus from the space around the derelict Admonitor. Within just a few minutes, the area was almost empty, save the genuine battle debris. "Control, this is Champion Lead," Josh heard in his helmet. "We have a problem." "Go ahead, Champion Lead," replied the voice of Admiral Tabanne. "The last two mines are sandwiched between two escape pods. We're not sure we can get both mines without hitting the pods." Silence reined on the comm for a long moment. Josh pulled up a tactical display of the area on his cockpit monitor and studied it carefully. "Hyper, what sets off those mines?" A VESSEL OF SOME SORT PASSING NEARBY. "Not an impact?" NO. WE DID NOT IMPACT EITHER OF THE MINES WE SET OFF EARLIER. "Don't remind me," he muttered. "How far forward could you project double shields if we leave rear, port, and starboard shields down?" EIGHTEEN METERS. Josh pushed his throttle forward and clicked the comm button on his throttle. "Red One, this is Four. I'll handle it." "Wait, Four! Handle it how?" "Trust me, General," Josh replied. He was glad Wedge could not see the twinkle in his eye as he again pushed his throttle all the way up to full. He lined his ship up in a straight line with the two remaining mines. The two escape pods were dead ahead of his port and starboard laser cannons. He twitched his stick to the right to roll the pods into position above and below his track. "Hyper, give me double forward shields, as far forward as you can get them." AFFIRMATIVE. "Imperial escape pods, this is Red Four. Prepare to hit your escape engines on my mark." Just as they had earlier, the two mines quickly grew larger in his forward view. This time he didn't break off. "Eight ball, corner pocket!" he said to himself with a grin. "NOW!" he yelled over the comm. Both escape pods engines lit off instantly and drove them quickly away from the mines and the X-wing. His forward shields, eighteen meters ahead of the fighter's nose, rammed the first mine at full speed. The impact instantly dropped his forward shield strength to fifteen percent. The first mine slammed into the second, and both went speeding ahead of the X-wing... ...and headed straight for the Admonitor. Kristy watched the X-wing ram the mines and immediately realized exactly where they would land. "Oh, they're going to hit right outside the-" "Yup!" Korren said with a nod and a broad smile. The last two mines struck the Admonitor aside the buckled dorsal ridge, just above the cloning chambers. Instantly they flashed into small novas, vaporizing hull plates and interior walls. The force and the heat of the explosion set off the charges the commandos had placed in the cloning facility. Explosions rippled outward through the Admonitor from the cloning chamber. They consumed the remains of the hangar decks, the turbolaser batteries, the sensors, the engines. Everything that once made the ship a proud Imperial Star Destroyer was reduced to molten metal. On the bridge of the warship, a blue-skinned corpse stared unseeingly at the blasts ripping his ship apart. His eyes were open and his mouth still hung wide in an expression of eternal surprise as an explosion rocked the bridge around him, reducing him to mere molecules of biological material. Red Four rocketed away from the destruction of the Admonitor as fast as its one-human-and-a-droid crew could make it go. Josh glanced over his shoulder in awe at the explosion consuming the Star Destroyer. "Wow, did I do that?" Ooryl smiled as he saw his wingmate's X-wing emerge from the Admonitor's fireball. "Beginner's luck," he chuckled to himself. Admiral Tabanne's mouth drew back into a cold, grim smile. "That's for the Defiant, you bastards." On the comm there were screams of joy and congratulations from the members of Red Group. Wedge beamed proudly. *We did it,* he thought to himself. *Again.* In the cockpit of the Pulsar Skate, Mirax, Corran, Becki, and Thayer all rushed to hug each other in celebration. Macavity stretched his paws up as far as he could on Becki's leg, trying to join in the group hug. "We did it!" Becki exclaimed. When the orange light from the Admonitor's explosive destruction no longer bathed the cockpit, the group finally pulled apart. "Now," Corran said with a broad smile, "we go home."