Project Boussh: Fly Away
by Majick 

    The turbolift doors opened, and I stumbled forwards. The pain wracked my
body as the medication Decras had filled me with wore off in a second.
Behind me, I heard a grunt, what I assumed to be Decras similarly feeling
the effects of his injuries. My arm, I remembered, had been broken, along
with various other knocks and bumps. The medication had allowed me to blank
it out for all of half-an-hour, but by God I was paying for that now.
    "Are you okay?" Morwen asked, a look of concern in her eyes.
    In reply, I managed to gargle incoherently. Eripme had hoisted me up by
my throat, and that was one area that was really, really, aching.
Thankfully, we'd made it to the right level to board the Red Home, and
hightail it out of there. I grimaced at the thought of ordering Elassar to
leave. He wouldn't like the idea of abandoning our friends anymore than I
did, but we wouldn't be able to wait for too long.
    Kirney had identified the problem by jacking into the turbolift's
computer. There were progressive system failures throughout the ship. These
failures, small right now, were gathering momentum. A blocked nozzle in a
chicken soup machine could rapidly become a reactor core breach, I knew. I
shook my head. Wrong show.
    The data Kirney and Morwen had dug up suggested that artificial gravity
was fluctuating ship wide. It seemed to mostly be affecting the bridge area,
with random breakages elsewhere, but we had so far avoided it. But the
gravity generators were merely one symptom of an evolving problem.
    I didn't cotton on at first. My body felt utterly neutral, and in my
pain addled state, that felt like a good thing.
    "Sithspit!" Morwen swore as she floated past me, and that made my mind
focus a bit more. She was flailing wildly, and I realised her equipment
pouch had slipped free of her shoulder. Kirney was hovering placidly nearby,
upside down, with her legs in the lotus position. I suspected she'd had zero
gee training.
    As, evidently, had Decras. Wounded leg and all, he pushed off a bulkhead
and intercepted Morwen's gear. A gentle shove carried it back to her
welcoming arms, and she immediately pulled her New Republic issue datapad
clear of it's holder. Rebounding from a bulkhead, she bobbed over to Kirney,
and the two conversed rapidly in what I'd long come to call 'geek speak'. I
wondered if they had computer components implanted directly in their skins,
as even Decras looked a little lost, listening to them. I knew he knew more
about computers than I did, so rapidly gave up hope of understanding the two
femmes digital.
    Almost as quickly as I gave up hope of making it back to the Red Home in
a conscious state, in fact. The ladies chose to re-engage gravity to our
section of the ship without warning -whoops- and I endured a graceless and
painful landing on the metal decking. That's when the stormies decided to
make my day complete.
    I don't know why everyone says stormtroopers are identical. This bunch
certainly weren't. Different heights, different equipment, different
weaponry. They looked like a squad of reserve stormies, only called into
duty because of the damage done to the real thing.
    But they were armed, they outnumbered us, and they were all in full
control of their faculties. We, in contrast, consisted of two injured and
tired people, and two slicers. While I had no doubts about Kirney's ability
to handle herself in a fight, Morwen was an unknown quantity. So, then, when
she pulled a thermal detonator ("Fire in the hole!") from her pouch and
lobbed it into the middle of the stormie 'formation', (Hey, it *might* have
been militarily precise... I was in no state to consider such things) well,
to say the least, I was surprised.
    The slicer pair helped me and Decras to our feet. To see any Noghri
yielding to assistance is a scary thing. To see Decras, who'd saved my life
at least twice, and who seemed invincible to me, leaning on Kirney's
shoulders, well, it was a shock. Thank God the Red Home was so close.
    The four of us limped and hobbled our way back towards the hangar,
skirting around the slippery remains of the stormie squad. The door to the
hangar eventually slid open, and we were greeted by another annoying site.
The Red Home was being besieged by a crack stormie squad. It was just too
much for me, watching the ship trying futilely to repel the fast moving
stormtroopers. I slid from my position leaning against Morwen, to a position
leaning against the bulkhead. As my broken arm bumped against the
unforgiving metal, my vision blurred, blackened, and...

    There'd not been a single thing that had gone right with our mission.
From being assigned the Sky harlot as a 'bodyguard', to compromising mission
integrity, to my trip into the garbage compactor, through to being 'rescued'
by Four and Decras... Even though Morwen had calmed a little, I still hadn't
enjoyed today. And now our ride was under attack. I gave into the inner rage
that I hold against all things Imperial, and unshipped the blaster rifles I
stole from the dead stormies.
    Perhaps surprisingly, it's quite easy to fire rifles one handed. You
just have to find the balance. Having Myn as a husband has taught me all
kinds of useful things. I sprayed blaster fire across the hangar bay without
any attempt to warn the stormies. They were firing on my ride, and we need
to get out. They panicked, unsurprisingly, and lost their advantage. The Red
Home cannons began to find targets as well, and before very long, Dia
radioed to us that we were safe to come aboard.
    Dia and I embraced as we climbed aboard. I looked at her, knowing she
would be hurt badly, but not being able to bring myself to bring pain to her
bright, sparkling eyes. I tried, though. I bought Face into the
conversation, and she insisted on dragging me to the medbay. There I found
Elassar and a couple of NR medtechs putting Mike and Decras through the
process, and, sitting wearily on one of the other beds, was a familiar
tousle-headed man.
    "I know about Face and Alison," Dia said to me quietly. "She left me a
datacard with a message. That's what you wanted to say, wasn't it?"
    I turned and nodded mutely, blinking back tears. I could see the look of
confused concern in Dia's eyes. I cast my eyes ceilingward, but to no avail.
The tears streamed freely down my cheeks as I feared for the life of a
seriously brave young woman.

    Ten minutes later the Red Home crew had gathered in the cockpit. The
news of Thrawn's death had cheered everyone, but the lack of news about the
others dampened spirits. Even Elassar remained sombre, fiddling
unnecessarily with comm buttons. Kirney looked up to catch the eye of
everyone in the small cockpit.
    "That's not the worst of it," she said. "The comlinks are now being
jammed, and we have news the rest of the Group needs to hear."
    "Which is what?" Mike asked, his arm plastered and slung, his expression
slightly vacant from the painkillers he'd had shot into him.
    "Which is that the damage the Admonitor has received is worse than it
initially appeared. Structurally, it's teetering on the edge, and a few more
salvoes of torpedoes will push it over. I think we'll be okay, because the
snubfighters must be out of torps by now, but damage to a key structural
point could tear the ship apart. As it is, stress from the engines is very
slowly doing that, not to mention he possibility that the failing systems
could, at any time, include the structural integrity field."
    "So, what you're saying is," Elassar mused, "we are in deep trouble, no
matter what."
    "What I'm saying is, we have to leave. Now. Get clear of the Admonitor,
try and cut through the jamming, get the fighters to break off their
attacks, and prey the people aboard can get to an escape pod."
    "Do you have any idea on what key structural points might be?" Morwen
asked.
    "The one that'd be most attractive to the commandoes is the cloning
chamber," Kirney said, pointing to her hastily downloaded schematic of the
Admonitor. "But there are danger points ship wide. Hangars, the bridge area,
the engine rooms..."
    "Anywhere a good commando team might decide to cause damage," Face said,
his face and voice emotionless.
    "Or a starfighter squadron," Dia added, her lekku curled around her.
Face reached over and took her hand in his.
    "Then let's go," Elassar said suddenly. "We can slave the Gaia to us,
and get out."
    "Then we might doom the others," Mike said. "If we leave with the
transports..."
    "That's what escape pods are for," Sharon said.
    "Agreed," Kirney said. "We have to hope they can make the pods. We can
pick them up later, once this has calmed down."
    "It's a plan," Elassar said, igniting the Home's engines. Dia set up the
slave link to the Gaia, while Sharon headed back to her gun turret. Mike
left for the medbay to check on Decras, and Kirney found herself at the comm
console. She reached over to brush her fingers over Tonin's dome, and the R2
unit chirped quietly.
    She nodded once, and murmured to him. "Don't worry, Tonin. As soon as I
crack through the scanning, I'll tell the group to watch out for Alison."