Project Boussh: Hollow Comfort
by Josh Nolan

Corran picked his way down to the jetty, his breath steaming in the
chilly dusk air.  The happy ruckus from the cabin carried a long way
near the lake, echoing at odd angles, as if from a joyful ghost.  Corran
smiled faintly - the figure hunched at the end of the jetty was, in a
strange way, still surrounded by the party he'd come here to escape.

As Corran reached the jetty, his footsteps began to thump loudly on the
wooden slats.  The figure looked around at the disturbance, and Corran
waved cheerily.  The figure stared at him for a second, waved
half-heartedly, and went back to staring out over the lake.  "G'day,"
called out Corran, in what he was assured was the common parlance of
Josh's homeland.

Josh turned again and stared at the Jedi blankly.  "G'day yourself," he
replied dully.
He turned back to stare over the lake again, his breath clouding slowly
and regularly.

As Corran drew nearer, he realised that the Terran was still dressed for
the southern hemisphere's summer.  The temperature had to be close to
freezing, and Josh was sitting in shorts and a T-shirt, his bare feet
dangling over the water of the lake.  "Aren't you cold?" Corran asked
gently.

"Yep," said Josh curtly, not even turning around.

Corran reached the end of the jetty and asked, "Do you mind if I sit
down?"

Josh shrugged.  Taking that as a no, Corran lowered himself to the
ground and swung his feet out over the water, mimicking Josh's posture.
"Ooryl's told me a lot about you," he said.

"Good on Ooryl," said Josh tonelessly.  He turned to Corran and gestured
towards himself.  "Well, you've met the bacta boy.  Did you want to take
a photo or something?"

"He told me you were a bit upset about what happened in Melbourne,"
Corran continued, ignoring the question.  "Did you want to talk about
it?"

Josh turned back to staring over the lake.  "Not really."

"What, not to me, or not to anyone?"

Josh glared at Corran.  "What's there to say?  I tried to get Brad to
talk by pretending to be an Imp, it didn't work, Brad tried to hit me, I
tried to kill him, Ooryl stopped me.  The end."

Corran met Josh's gaze, and said, "There's a lot more to say than that.
For instance, why did you try to kill him?  Why are you sitting out in
the cold when there's a party going on?  How did it all make you feel?"

Josh dropped his gaze to the edge of the jetty and snorted.  "How did it
make me feel?" he parroted, adopting a nasal tone.  "You're an
uncontrollable homicidal psychopath, Josh, how does that make you
*feel*?"  He shot a look at Corran, and continued in a more normal tone
of voice, "I feel like I'm dirty on the inside.  Happy?"  Josh turned
his head, looking out over the lake again.

"Did Brad make you angry?"

"Not really.  I thought by questioning him I might be able to get
something out of him, but I knew he might get violent.  I'd thought it
out, you know?  'If he gets violent, I restrain him until someone comes
in with a stun bolt.'  That was the plan."

"What happened?"  Corran tried to suppress a smile.  He'd seen behaviour
like Josh's before, during his time with CorSec, when a witness would
refuse to say anything about what they'd seen.  But generally, with
enough patience, they'd find out they actually wanted to talk - and
Corran was adept at getting them to realise this.

"I don't know.  When he tried to hit me, all of a sudden that turned him
into an enemy, or something."  Josh looked back at Corran, and said,
"Ooryl told you about the indoctrination tape in the bacta tank, didn't
he?"

Corran nodded.  "Yeah.  He also said that it hadn't really affected you
much."

Josh smiled bitterly.  "Not true.  I hear that bloody stormtrooper voice
in my head night and day.  I've always had a bit of a temper, I guess,
but what happened with Brad - it wasn't anger.  It was - I guess it was
pleasure.  Sheer, sadistic abandon."  Josh shook his head.  "And you
know what?  Even though it was the stormie cheering me on while I was
mutilating Brad, now it's upbraiding me for breaching the mission
parameters.  No part of me's proud of what I did - and I can't even
figure out why I did it in the first place."

Corran reached out and shook the kid's shoulder gently.  "I've got a
story that might help, if it makes you feel any better."

Josh snorted, clouding the air around his nostrils.  "I doubt it can
make me feel much worse."

Corran chuckled understandingly at this, and began, "My first undercover
job at CorSec was infiltrating a glit smuggling ring.  I'd had to work
my way up from being a street-level 'dealer', and it was my first
meeting with some bigwigs in the racket.  Iella was my backup - she
wasn't undercover, but she was nearby in case things got ugly."  Corran
paused for a second, dredging up the memory.  "Boy, did things get
ugly."  He smiled slightly, and shook his head.

"What happened?" asked Josh dully, as if following a script.

"A couple of things.  First off, they'd gotten a slicer to do some
background checks on me - and cross-referenced them with pictures from
the CorSec Academy.  Somehow, the slicer had gotten through the security
on the system, and pulled up a picture of one Corran Horn.  Strangely
enough, this Horn guy looked virtually identical to the small-timer they
were just about to meet.

"So I got in there, and they sat me down, held me at gunpoint and
gloated.  They told me how they'd rumbled me, and told me they were
going to kill me."

Josh frowned.  "I think I see where this is going.  Because they did the
Master Villain thing, and you were wired, Iella came and kicked their
arses?"

"Actually, no.  She couldn't come in just then because a rival gang had
decided to attack the place.  So as they were about to pull the trigger
when the front door of the place blew up, and people with blasters came
pouring in."

"How did that make you feel?" asked Josh mockingly.

Corran grinned.  "It scared the Sith out of me. I'd been in lightfights
before, but I'd always had backup.  Here I was, alone in the crossfire,
and I was still pretty much a rookie."

"How'd you get out?"

"Luck.  I managed to stay below the crossfire, and snuck out a side
door.  I'd just about soiled my pants.  This is when I hear a voice
behind me, a woman's voice, calling my name."

"Iella?"

"No, but it sounded like her.  The thing was, I was so scared that I
just turned and fired, without thinking.  Then my brain caught up, and I
thought I recognised the voice - but I'd already shot her."

"Who was it?"

"It turned out to be the slicer.  She must have had some weird notion of
wanting me to see the blaster bolt coming, or something.  But Iella saw
the whole thing - and she said the slicer had a blaster pointed at me."

"So it all turned out okay, then."

"Not for a while.  You see, while I hadn't shot Iella - hadn't even shot
anywhere near her - I kept telling myself that I *might* have.  I even
thought about resigning from CorSec, though I'm sure Dad would have set
me straight if I'd tried.  Finally, I went around to Iella's one night,
and begged her to forgive me for nearly shooting her."

"So what'd she say?"

"She said there was nothing to worry about - that she was glad it had
happened.  You see, the way she saw it, people make mistakes.  She knew
that next time something like that happened, I'd check before I fired -
and next time, it might be her."

"So, how does this help me?  Is Brad supposed to be grateful?"

"Not so much that.  Just that you didn't know that you've got the
potential to be a murderer -"

"Gee, thanks."

"Let me finish?  The fact is, you didn't kill Brad.  Ooryl stopped you.
Now, it's not a good thing that you tried to kill him, just like it's
not a good thing I didn't check who I was shooting at.  But it doesn't
matter now.  And next time, you'll be on your guard."

"I don't know how much good that's going to do."

Corran placed a hand on Josh's back.  "Josh, the Dark Side is always
trying to get at us.  The fact is, we have to be on the lookout.  We
have to be strong."

"We have to trust in the Force."

"If you like.  But the Dark Side doesn't just try to snare Jedi, you
know.  It's always trying to test us.  You failed the test with Brad -
but I think you've learned from it.  You're not going to fail again in a
hurry."

"But I still did it.  Am I supposed to just say, 'Oh, well," and ignore
it?"

"You'll deal with it, sooner or later.  But if you stay on the lookout
for the Dark Side, it'll never own you.  Just losing one battle doesn't
mean you've lost the war.  Even Luke Skywalker failed occasionally.  You
know what to look out for now.  Just remember to be vigilant, and you
won't fall to the Dark Side."

Corran read in Josh the intention to reply, but was puzzled when the
Terran changed his mind.  Instead, Josh said, "Thanks.  You've been a
real help."

Corran made to stand up.  "Are you going to come back to the cabin?"

"In a while.  I've got to convince my limbs to move first.  It is bloody
cold out here, you know."

Corran grinned, and nodded.  "Okay, I'll see you there."

As Corran made his way back up the track, he considered Josh's aborted
reply.  The Corellian had opened himself up to the kid, so he had been
able to decipher at least part of it - but Corran couldn't, for the life
of him, figure out why the Terran had thought of Ithor.  Corran grinned,
and shook his head.  AFW were a weird bunch.  He'd never be able to work
out all their injokes.  He lifted his head towards the cabin, where a
whoop of mock terror rang out over the insistent yubbing of an Ewok, and
smiled.  The cabin was the place to be tonight.