Project Boussh: From Whence Comes My Help
by Durandir

"Memorial Stadium. Two days from now. Midnight."

Becki read the brief note once again, frowning as she considered it.
Everyone at the Hermitage had seemed rather antsy the past two days.
Even the cats were jumpier than usual, which, for some of them, was
saying a lot. They were following Runt around less than they had
before, as well. And the four members of the Hermit group had passed
two rather uneasy nights with the increased caterwauling outside their
windows.

Tyria's "bad feeling" about this meeting must be rubbing off on the
whole household, Becki decided. Or was there more? She had to admit
that she didn't much like the way this was going, either. It seemed so
risky, walking right into what could very likely be a trap.

But Kell was right: they had to do it, for the sake of appearances. Not
to mention, for what they could learn if their informant was
legitimate. So here they were tonight, once again in the all-black
commando's garb they had worn so many times before in their previous
missions to draw the enemy's attention. Becki wondered briefly whether
they were going to draw that attention tonight.

"All set?" asked Kell, walking through the living room where Becki sat
musing over the note, one cat on her lap, another chasing the hem of
her black coat, and a third perched on the couch behind her head. Kell
looked to be all set himself, with his blaster in its holster and
various items--explosives of some sort, she guessed--attached to his belt
and tucked into his coat pockets.

Swallowing her worries behind the bravest smile she could muster, she
replied, "Ready as I'll ever be. How about the others?"

"Tyria's getting the X-wings prepped right now, and Runt--um, last time
I saw him he was surrounded by so many cats it was hard to tell what he
was up to."

Becki had to laugh at that. "Poor guy. When this is all over and the
three of you leave, they're sure going to miss him."

"I suspect he'll miss them, too, though he may not admit it," Kell
grinned. "Well, I'm going out to give Tyria a hand."

"Right."

Once the door had closed behind Kell, Becki let out a sigh. "Macavity,"
she murmured to the huge orange tomcat on her lap, "whatever have we
got ourselves into?"

The cat responded only with contented purring.

"Oh, sure, Cavver. You can purr; it's nothing to you if the fate of our
planet--or at least Quiara's fate--rests on what happens tonight at
Memorial Stadium. Me, I'm way past purring at this point."

Macavity, wisely unconcerned with the fates of such vague things as
nations and worlds and universes, rolled over to let her scratch his
belly. At her feet, Tamarisk, the sleek black Abyssinian, batted
fiercely at the black coat, then she paused to wash her face. Molly, a
cozy-looking tabby cat, added a harmony to Macavity's purrs from behind
Becki's head. The girl sighed and allowed herself to relax for a moment
in the warm friendship of her three favorite cats.


Tyria came in several minutes later to announce that all was ready; as
if on cue, Runt appeared from the basement, carrying a smoky grey
kitten and followed by seven other devoted felines. After taking a few
moments to sneak Runt out the front door without the whole clan of cats
following, the whole group convened in the garage-turned-hangar. Since
they were all so high-strung about this meeting, and since this wasn't
going to be a mission that needed to stay unnoticed (since, after all,
they might be going only to keep up the appearances they'd
established), they had decided that the Wraiths would fly their
fighters out to the stadium, while Becki would drive the car. They felt
somewhat reassured knowing that the X-wings would be handy if anything
went wrong.

As the pilots got into their ships and prepared for flight, Becki ran
to the car parked beyond the garage. She was leaving first, since the
journey would take her longer in the Terran vehicle than it would the
Wraiths in their X-wings. Just as she pulled out of the driveway and
started down the road that led back to downtown Terre Haute, a
pert "meow" came from the back seat, and, to her surprise, a massive
orange cat leaped over the back of the front passenger seat to land
beside her.

"Macavity!" she scolded. "What are you doing here?"

The tomcat purred as if proud of himself, fixed her with a
philosophical stare, and meowed sweetly.

"One of these days, Cavver," she sighed, "I am going to figure out just
how you do that. How you're always showing up where I least expected
you, and how you manage to look so innocent in spite of it all. One
would think you were a Jedi cat, if a cat could be Force-sensitive. As
it is, you're just a mystery."

Macavity, seeming to approve of this analysis, settled into the
passenger seat and narrowed his eyes to watch her the more peacefully.

"I suppose I'm stuck with you now, anyhow. Just mind you behave.
There's no telling how things will go tonight."

Unconcerned with the possible outcomes of tonight's escapades, Macavity
set about washing himself in a businesslike manner. Becki drove on.
Back at the Hermitage, three X-wings had just emerged from the garage.

Becki arrived half an hour later at Memorial Stadium, to find that the
Wraiths had beat her there. The three X-wings had landed out on the
golf course surrounding the stadium. "Maintenance won't like the marks
that'll leave on their greens," Becki chuckled to Macavity.

She parked the car and went to meet the others; Macavity followed
silently. She had thought to leave him in the car, but...for some reason
she feared to do so. Whatever happened tonight, she would be glad to
have the cat close. And, after all, he had always been the best cat at
the Hermitage for behaving out in public; you could go on long walks
with him and he'd never run after imagined prey or disappear down
alleys. She knew, at least, she wouldn't have to worry about losing
him.

The Wraiths emerged from their ships as Becki approached; the four met
near the back entrance to the stadium. At this hour, the gate was of
course locked, but it was easily climbed over.

"Two and I will go meet our man," Kell whispered. "Three and Four, fall
back and cover us."

Runt and Becki acknowledged and, following at a distance, found shadowy
spots under the bleachers to watch from. Meanwhile, Kell and Tyria
advanced to the middle of the football field. And they waited.


Five minutes after midnight, he arrived. He no longer wore the cap by
which they had identified him at the basketball game; without it, Kell
could hardly tell if it was the same man they had chased through the
second half of that game. The informant advanced to meet them on the
fifty-yard line.

Stopping when he was still several yards away, the man spoke: "You are
pilots of the New Republic?" Kell, though he had not yet learned to
distinguish the majority of the variety of accents spoken on Terra,
still realized that there was something different about this man's. At
any rate, it would be a safe bet he was not from Indiana, for his
speech was wildly different from any Kell had yet heard here.

"We are," he nodded. "And you?"

"Who I am is not now of importance," the stranger insisted, almost
haughtily. "It is what I have to tell you that matters."

"Sure," Kell said, glancing quickly at Tyria. His wife, he knew, would
even now be putting her Force senses to work, detecting how much of
what their contact said was truth, and whether there was any deception
in him beyond his words. So far, she appeared calm, calmer than she had
been for most of the past two days. A good sign, Kell hoped.

"I was formerly--" the stranger began; but he was cut off suddenly by
the sound of blaster fire and a woman's shriek from the direction of
the bleachers. The bleachers--where Runt and Becki waited--in an instant
Kell and Tyria had their own blasters out. Kell started to aim his for
the informant, assuming that it had indeed been a trap and the trap had
been sprung; but then movement from the locker rooms caught his eye and
he shifted aim.

Stormtroopers. A whole squad of them, boiling out of the locker rooms
like maggots from a dead Hutt. And the three of them were stuck out in
the open, at dead center of the football field. Even as they started
running toward the relative cover of the bleachers, Kell and Tyria
managed to pick off four of the troopers. When Kell saw a fifth fall
mysteriously and turned to see their informant, with some Terran
version of a blaster in his hand, firing madly at the stormtroopers, he
began to think he might have to reconsider his conclusions about the
trap.

Tyria, laying a hand on his arm as they ran, confirmed his
thoughts. "It wasn't him," she shouted over the noise of the
firefight. "He's as surprised as we are."

"Who, then?"

"I don't know. Don't shoot to kill, and maybe one of them can tell us
when we're done here."

They reached the bleachers. Runt was there, crouched behind a concrete
pillar, holding his ground against a second group of stormtroopers
coming in from the opposite direction to that of the group that had
attacked Kell, Tyria, and their contact. With the four of them now
standing back-to-back, they did their best to hold off both groups at
once, picking off a stormtrooper here and there whenever they could.
Finally, almost without warning, it was over. Amidst the crumpled piles
of white armor, the four of them were somehow still standing. And
except for a shot the informant had taken in his shoulder, they were
still whole.

"Hey," Kell said as he looked around, "where's Becki?"


They had come out of the chilly November night like all her earlier
worries about this mission materialized into the form of glittering
white armor. Runt had spotted them first, coming up behind the two of
them; had called, "Four!" so that she turned to see; and then the
shooting started. As blaster bolts started sizzling past her, she'd
shrieked in the moment of paralyzing fear before she remembered what to
do; a heartbeat later, she was crouching with Runt behind the concrete
pillar, trying to stop her hand from trembling as she aimed the blaster
she'd borrowed from Tyria.

"I ought to have been practicing this long ago," she muttered to
Runt. "I've never shot at anything before. I don't think I've got much
chance of hitting anything, at least not intentionally."

Even in the midst of battle, Runt had to smile when he glanced over at
her. "You might find it easier if you open your eyes when you shoot."

"Oh. Right."

"And I do not think the stormtrooper you just shot would agree with
your assessment of your ability."

"Huh?" Indeed, it seemed that one of her wild shots had found its mark,
or at least a mark. "Oh goodness. Was that me?" she gasped.

But there was no time to think over the import of the thing; so she
kept shooting, although in her own opinion there seemed to be little
improvement in keeping her eyes open.

After a while, Runt spoke: "We'll split up and try to divide them. When
I say, run to the right and get behind the next pillar. I will cover
for you. Then you cover me while I run left. Eventually we ought to end
up on either side of them and can catch them in a crossfire."

Becki nodded. "Now!" Runt commanded, and, choking her heart back down
out of her throat, she ran for all she was worth. And made it, somehow,
miraculously. Gasping for breath, more from fear than from the run, she
looked back to see Runt preparing for his move. As he broke out from
behind the cover of his pillar, she reached out from behind hers to
fire at the stormies, drawing their attention long enough for Runt to
make it to the next pillar. And so they continued, spreading farther
and farther around the enemy.

After a while she found that she had circled nearly to the main gate of
Memorial Stadium. She prepared to run again, but was startled to a stop
by a commanding voice from behind her, outside the gate.

"Freeze!"

She spun around to face this new threat, and paled with fright when she
saw what it was. Another group of stormtroopers waited just outside the
gate. Every one had his blaster trained on her.

"I think I'm in trouble," she whispered.

And in the instant before the stun blast hit her, she was quite sure
that she was.


"We've searched this whole area," Tyria reported. "She's not here. We
found her blaster, though."

"Sithspawn," Kell muttered, worrying and searching his memory for any
way the fight could have gone differently, anything he could have done
differently to prevent the loss of one of his group.

"But if her body is not here," Runt reminded him gently, "we may hope
that she was not killed."

"Taken prisoner, then. That's not much better. It compromises the
mission. We've got to find her."

"Of course." From the sympathetic look in Runt's deep brown eyes, Kell
knew that he understood what had gone unsaid: They had to find her, not
just for the security of the mission, not just because the Wraiths were
now alone in a strange world without their guide, but because Becki had
been a friend, and he felt responsible for her.

"We all do," Tyria whispered. "Don't worry, we'll find her."

Kell blushed. "Do you have to read my thoughts over my shoulder like
that?"

"I wasn't. I was reading your expression," she winked.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that Jedi make terrible liars?" he grinned
back at her.

"Excuse me," said a new voice from beside him. Kell turned to see the
informant, pressing a hand to his shoulder where Tyria had rather
hastily cleaned and bandaged it.

"Yeah?" Kell answered, still somewhat uncomfortable with trusting this
man, despite Tyria's assurances and the stranger's own actions in the
firefight.

"It seems to me," the man began, "that our situation has changed
somewhat. With the discovery of our meeting by those stormtroopers-and
I assure you, though I know you have only my word on this, that their
attack was no more known to me than it was to you before it occurred-
and with the loss of your comrade, matters hasten toward an end I did
not foresee and cannot discern even now."

"You might say that," Kell arched an eyebrow in bemusement. "And your
point would be...?"

"I wish to offer you my assistance. I had meant to offer only
information, but as things stand now, I feel I owe you much more than
that."

"Assistance? How so?"

"I believe I know where your comrade has been taken."

"What?" all three pilots exclaimed in unison.

"Allow me to explain. But first--earlier I told you that who I am is no
longer of importance. It was not at that time; now, however, it is
everything. To tell you my tale I must give my name, but first, it
occurs to me that while I know you for New Republic pilots, I do not
know what pilots you are. Will you trust me so much as to tell me your
names?"

The Wraiths exchanged rather befuddled glances. "Well," Kell said at
last, "I suppose it won't hurt, at this point. I'm Kell Tainer, this is
my wife Tyria, and this is Runt Ekwesh."

"Thank you. I assure you that it is," he swept into a graceful
bow, "the utmost honor of my existence to make your acquaintance. That
honor, however, will be surpassed by the honor of assisting you in your
quest. I, my friends, am called Thayer Atner. I am--was--" he emphasized
the point by spitting vehemently at the ground--"the nephew of one Eugor
Atner, dictator of Mendellia."

"Mendellia?" Tyria asked. "Is that in Terra?"

"It is. My uncle's domain is a small country in the Galapagos Islands.
If you have not heard of it, I am hardly surprised, for it has to this
point been of little consequence in Earth's history. However, lately it
has been of great consequence beyond this planet."

"How so?" Kell asked.

"The Empire," Thayer intoned gravely, "has formed an alliance of sorts
with my uncle--" he again spat at the ground.

"I take it you're not on the best of terms with your uncle," Kell
quipped.

"Eugor Atner," Thayer growled, "is the decayed remains of Mendellian
rotweed torn from the soil and piled far away from the cities so that
its stench will not defile good men's nostrils; he is the lowest piece
of fetid filth that ever called itself a man; he is the apish lowlife
to which centuries of great Mendellian rulers have finally degraded in
their slow devolving crawl back into the chaos of prehistory. No
wickedness on earth is beyond him; nor is any unknown where his
influence reaches. The very light of day would shun him, did it not
fear his depraved wrath."

"Wow," said Kell, "what'd he do to you?"

"He killed my father."

"What!"

"My father, Tainer, was Enad Atner, the last True King of
Mendellia: as good a man, as wise a ruler, as just a king as Eugor
is wicked, depraved, and cruel. Eugor killed him and took power."

"Wait a minute," Tyria said, "is the government of Mendellia the sort
that passes from father to son? Would you have followed Enad to power?"

"I should have," Thayer nodded. "But Eugor conspired against me. I was
forced to flee for my life."

Tyria pressed her lips together tightly in thought. "He didn't marry
your mother after killing your father, did he?" she asked, vaguely
remembering some book Becki had loaned her to read at the Hermitage.

"No," Thayer looked slightly confused. "No, why would he? He sent her
into exile instead. The good lady was fully dishonored when Eugor
accused her of various detestable crimes--crimes anyone who knew her
realized she never could have committed. But no one could speak against
Eugor Atner." Again he spat, as if the more words he spoke of his
uncle, the more his distaste for the man built until he had to release
it by more than just words.

Thayer continued his story. "So I had to flee into the remote regions
of Mendellia. For some weeks I hid from Eugor's wrath; then I began to
gather to myself Mendellians who thought as I did, those with whom
Eugor's wrongful dictatorship did not sit lightly. Since then I have
led the resistance movement against my uncle. We have seen little
success," he admitted sorrowfully. "But we did learn of my uncle's
alliance with the Empire. Soon after that, we learned of the prisoner
he held."

"Prisoner!" the Wraiths exclaimed in unison again.

"Yes. We learned that she was a person highly placed among those who
wished to see Terra united not with the Empire, but with its enemy the
New Republic. The friend of my uncle--that is the Empire--is my enemy,
and the enemy of my enemy is my friend; so I knew that I must seek out
the representatives of this New Republic. Then my group learned of your
activities here in America," he nodded at the three Wraiths. "I came
here to tell you what I knew of my uncle's prisoner, since we realized
that your mission here was to recover her. And now I have told you. And
now, as I promised, I offer you not only my information, but my aid, my
resources, my loyalty, and my highest honor." He bowed low again. "If
you will have me--let me help you overthrow this Empire."

"Not to mention your uncle's regime?" Kell smiled.

"I confess," Thayer returned the smile with a regal air, "that would be
my wish. It seems in this matter our two goals coincide most
conveniently, does it not?"

"So it would seem. All right then, Thayer. Your uncle's prisoner seems
to be the one we're looking for. And I take it you're assuming that
he'll be holding Becki prisoner in the same place?"

"Yes, in the High Palace of Mendellia."

"Great. Then it looks like we'd better get going."

They headed back to their X-wings; Atner, it turned out, had arrived in
an Imperial TIE fighter--stolen, he said, from the garrison in one of 
Mendellia's largest cities. Kell's eyes widened in newfound respect for
Thayer Atner's resistance movement.

Tyria reached her X-wing first and climbed in. As Runt and Kell were
starting up the ladders to their ships, she called out, "Hey! There's a
message here from Piggy, to all the teams. Must've come in while we
were busy with the fight and cleanup."

Kell leapt the rest of the way into his ship to check his comm for the
message. And there it was:

=======================
ATTN: ALL PROJECT BOUSHH PERSONNEL
ENCODING: Derra-Cyclical-with-Cracken-Twist
PRIORITY: FLASH
SOURCE: WRAITH EIGHT, AUTHORISATION CODE Yavin-Coruscant-Alderaan
RE: Potential Location of Package

Suspected location identified as Mendellia. Part of Galapagos Islands.
Dictator: General Eugor Atner. Convenient assets to attempt closer
inspection. Believe location is willingly serving as base for friends
upstairs. Message Ends.
=======================

Kell drew in a slow breath. "Well, what do you know. Guess that
confirms our new friend's story." Or at least, he thought, it confirms
the part about Eugor Atner. As for Thayer Atner's part in all this,
whether his tale of woes and his resistance group are legit--I guess
we'll know soon enough.

Shortly thereafter, a TIE fighter rose into the sky, followed by three
X-wings, heading for the Galapagos Islands.


Farther ahead in the same direction, an Imperial shuttle was making the
same journey. It carried a squad of stormtroopers, plus one prisoner,
still unconscious from the stun blast.

And in a dark corner, unnoticed by any of the stormtroopers, of course
unnoticed by the unconscious girl, one orange tomcat.

Macavity refrained from purring, knowing by some instinct that to make
any sound now would be to betray his presence to those who ought not to
know of it. Golden eyes narrowed, he watched from his shadows. What he
saw did not perhaps mean much to him, except for one thing: the girl,
lying so still as the cat had never seen her to lie. His person. He had
kept a distance from her when the shooting started, understanding
somehow that where she was was danger that, though she might survive
it, he would very likely not. Then when the shooting stopped as his
person fell to the ground, and the white beings had lifted her and
carried her away, Macavity had followed. He had slipped, silent in the
shadows, into the shuttle where they bore her, and had hidden himself
here where he knew the white ones would not go. Sooner or later, his
sleeping person would wake, and then Macavity would be there with her.
By some instinct, he knew this was what he must do.