Project Boussh: Exit Wounds by Josh Cochran Corran Horn pushed through the cockpit door of the Pulsar Skate as it was still opening and rushed across the small space to grab Mirax up in a passionate embrace. Becki smiled at the sight of the two of them holding each other as she quietly followed Corran through the door. Macavity lay in her arms, purring contentedly and kneading his paws on her stomach. "I'm so glad you're safe!" Mirax whispered in Corran's ear. Corran smiled and somehow managed to pull his wife even closer. Becki hung back by the door, not wanting to interrupt the moment. There hadn't been enough of these moments in the last month. And this was a big one. The hulk of the Admonitor filled the forward viewport. Large portions of her hull were blackened by weapons fire. Her dorsal ridge was buckling and most of her viewports were dark. All her external running lights were off. Fires fueled by the ship's atmosphere leaked out into space from large gashes in her surface. Corran and Mirax finally, reluctantly broke away from their embrace. "I guess we should help pick up the others," Mirax sighed. Corran smirked at her. "Couldn't hurt." Mirax and Corran settled into the pilot's seats and Becki sagged into a chair behind them. Macavity turned around in circles a few times before making himself comfortable on her lap. Her aching legs made her realize just how long it'd been since she'd really been able to sit down. She smiled at Cavver, glad that she would now have plenty of time to rest. "What's the final count, Hyper?" SEVENTEEN. AND BEFORE YOU ASK - AGAIN - THAT DOES INCLUDE RED TWO. Josh's X-wing orbited lazily in a broad arc around the Amdonitor. Below him, the dying vessel lay at the center of a cloud of drifting battle debris. The wreckage of hundreds of Imperial starfighters drifted side by side with the hulks of New Republic and Mendellian fighters and pieces of a larger Imperial vessel. Some pieces glowed the color of molten steel while others sparked and sputtered from not yet depleted enerygy sources. Most of the wreckage simply hung dead in space or floated along lazily on its remaining momentum. For the first time in the three hours he'd been in space, Josh took a long look around. The eternal night was blacker than the darkest sky and filled with more stars than he'd ever dreamed existed. A tiny sliver of the waning moon hung in the distance...but not so distant as it normally was. Earth turned slowly below him, a vast expanse of sea and cloud with the Americas barely visible in the east. In the mid-Pacific a tremendous strom raged. Lightning flashed in the swirling clouds and violent winds whipped the edges to a froth. Josh sighed. "Well, that's over. Now what?" Wedge clicked over to his private frequency with Tycho. "You know, Tych, that's a sight I never get tired of seeing." "Me neither, boss," Tycho replied, the smile evident in his voice. In the distance, the massive Super Star Destroyer Lusankya stood waiting, apparently untouched by the battle. Directly in front of them the broken and beaten Admonitor drifted in a sea of wreckage and escape pods. Every second that passed more and more escape pods and shuttles joined the mass exodus from the Star Destroyer. Nearspace was becoming very crowded. Crowded with enemies who could no longer fight, no longer kill his people. Wedge smiled one more time before clicking his comm button again. "We need to start rounding up the Imperial TIEs. This is what we're going to do..." "I'm picking up a New Republic signal from an escape pod at 206 by 315. Twenty kilometers," Corran reported. Mirax advanced the throttles and pointed the Skate in the direction of the signal. Becki felt a small vibration through the deck plates as the ship got underway. Here in the heart of the debris field she could hear pieces of scrap metal pinging off of the Skate's shields as it moved through space. She guessed that Mirax kept the shields up to prevent any serious damage to her ship. It wasn't likely, but it would be ironic if the ship made it through the battle only to get banged up rescuing survivors. Macavity stood suddenly and jumped off her lap onto the floor. He looked up at her from the floor and meowed loudly. The cat turned in circles several times and paced back and forth in the small space available to him. Every few steps he would pause, look at her, and meow again. Corran turned to look at the cat's strange behavior. "What's with him?" Becki shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "Cavver, what is it?" she asked with a frown. Macavity put his front paws on her leg and scratched at her pants. He looked up at her with his ears turned back and let out the longest meow she'd ever heard from him. She was completely baffled by this odd behavior. "I have no idea what he's trying to tell me. It's like-" Becki was cut off mid sentence as a massive explosion nearby rocked the Pulsar Skate. The explosion threw the ship off course and out of control faster than her acceleration compensators could handle. She and Macavity were thrown hard against a bulkhead as the Skate spun wildly. On the opposite side of the battlefield, the New Republic Assault Frigate Defiant slowed as it approached another escape pod. Her fighter bays already contained ten pods and her brig was quickly filling up with rescued imperial crewers. The Defiant's captain found picking up stranded Imps much more satisfying work than the earlier battle. "Easy..." the Captain cautioned the helm officer. "Slow to five meters per second. Ready tractor beams." "One hundred meters to pod. Tractor beam ready," the crewman manning the tractor beam reported. "Lower shields," the Captain ordered. The tractor beam fired as the shields dropped, pulling the escape pod steadily closer to the Defiant. The bridge crew watched its approach on the viewscreen. What they didn't see was the mid-sized piece of debris drifting towards the bottom of the ship. The sensor operator noticed it on her screen, of course. She was a diligent officer and tracked everything in close range of the Defiant and decided whether they posed a threat or not. She decided this piece of debris was no threat. It was moving slowly enough that it would barely scratch the frigate's paint. She turned her attention back to the main viewscreen. A few seconds later the drifting piece of scrap struck the Defiant. It didn't even have time to bounce off before it exploded into massive ball of expanding plasma. The shockwave ripped the ship open instantly, snapping her keel like a twig and opening her six lowest decks up to the vacuum of space. Loose tools and nearby crewmembers were sucked into space with the ship's breathable air. Josh spun his X-wing around in the direction of the explosion and shoved his throttle all the way forward in time to catch the last of the explosion ripping through the Defiant. The frigate had been ripped almost in half in an instant. It looked for all the world that some giant animal had taken a bit out of her amidships. Hyper searched vainly for a target, and enemy vessel of some sort that could have caused the damage to the Defiant, but he came up empty. There was absolutely nothing there but the assault frigate, the escape pod she'd been pulling aboard, now forgotten, and the detritus of the battle. Alarms blared on the bridge of the Defiant. The Captain was shouting orders to evacuate, but most of his bridge crew was busy shouting orders of their own into the comlinks. The main power connection to the forward part of the ship was severed and the bridge was bathed in red emergency lighting. The crimson light cast a hellish glow over the bridge as one station and then another went dark. The sensor officer tried desperately to locate the source of the destruction, but she'd lost several scanners in the explosion and her link to others was severed. She effectively had no instruments left on the bottom of the ship. She turned back to the upper sensors - and then she understood. Too late, though. At the same instant, another hunk of flotsam turned itself into a miniature sun on the Defiant's upper hull. The force of the blast broke the Defiant into two pieces and sent them drifting slowly in opposite directions. "MINES!" she screamed, just as the last of the oxygen evacuated the bridge. Pash Cracken led a mixed flight of A-wings and surviving Mendellian TIEs on a desperate, hopeless race to assist the Defiant. They were more than a hundred kilometers away and there was little good starfighters could do there, but he knew he had to try. He could feel his pulse racing in his throat and sweat beading on his forehead. He shook his head sharply to keep it from running into his eyes. The extra speed the A-wings possessed quickly gave them a lead over their slower wingmen. The followed as fast as they could manage, but without shields they were forced to dodge wreckage as well as follow their leader. No one dared say so, but it was clearly too late to do the crew of the frigate any good anyway. As they entered the debris field, a violent detonation instantaneously vaporized all three of Pash's TIE wingmates. Their constituent atoms slammed into the A-wings' rear shields and tossed the starfighters around the sky. "MINES!" The shout over the comm echoed the one in Wedge's mind. He watched in horror as more of the star-bright eruptions rocked the debris field around the Admonitor, destroying starfighters, defenseless escape pods, and anything else unlucky enough to be near one. "Control, Red One. Find those mines!" he shouted. The voice of the controller on the Lusankya was both apologetic and perplexed. "There are no mines on scanners, One." "They're out there *somewhere*," he insisted. "Find them! Find where they came from!" In the debris field, the explosions continued. Becki pushed herself up off the deck of the Pulsar Skate. She didn't seem to be hurt. Macavity was, of course, already standing on a seat waiting for her. He didn't seem bothered in the least. In the forward part of the cockpit Mirax and Corran watched explosions bloom all around them. The escape pod they'd been trying to retrieve was just.gone. Not even a trace of wreckage and certainly no chance for survivors. The scene was repeating itself all over the sky. The controller was right, though. There were no signs of mines anywhere. "Wedge, the mines are in the debris. They *are* the debris," Mirax said. Josh couldn't argue with Mirax's assessment. Right before his eyes he saw an X-wing pass near a chunk of twisted metal and watched as both vanished from existence in a flash of blinding light. "Hyper, find a way to locate those mines." WORKING. A new wave of escape pods blasted clear of the Admonitor. Within seconds eight had been incinerated as he looked on. "All ships, emergency stop! Hold your positions!" he heard Wedge call over the radio. Most of the ships in the debris field followed Wedge's order immediately. Traffic all over the sky came to a quick stop, and the explosions all but stopped. Half a dozen of the Imperial escape pods ignored him and tried using their powerful escape engines to make a break through the debris field. Half of them were instantly shredded by mines. "Dammit, I said halt!" he yelled. "All ships, full stop!" This time, no one disobeyed him. Mirax sighed and pulled the throttles back to idle. The Skate quickly came to a stop, as did most of the other ships in the Admonitor's debris field. Mirax and Corran looked at each other, unsure what they should - or could - do. "Now what?" asked Becki, once again seated behind Mirax. "Now," Corran said, "we wait."