Project Boussh: Influence
by Majick

    "Get into position."
    The most simple of orders. Find a place you can carry out your orders
from. Simple.
    But what if your orders suck?
    What if the person giving the orders hasn't thought things through
properly?
    What do you do then?
    Why, you make up your own orders of course.
    Duh.

    You circle around the guards using the secret passage which Thayer's
information showed. With luck, you can use it to sneak quietly past the pair
of stormtrooper squads, and out into the passage some twenty metres behind
them. Then, you and the rest of your team attack them.
    That's the plan, anyway.
    Like a lot of plans that your team leader has come up with, it sucks.
    "I mean, I've got a sword," you muse. "A kick ass shiny sword. I'm good
with it. That's fine. But what the hell am I supposed to do from twenty
metres away? One noise, and... Well, don't think about that. Think of his head
skewered on the sword afterwards."
    What do you do when your orders suck?

    "Cover us."
    It's a simple order. Protect your team members from unnoticed assaults.
    Simple.
    You've got a sniper rifle. You've got the best shot of anyone on your
team.
    Covering your teammates is a piece of cake.
    Except in your last engagement with the enemy, you were shot in the arm.
    Only a stun blast, true, but your arm now feels like lead. You can't
rely on it.
    So how are you supposed to cover your teammates?
    You can't.
    Duh.

    You hiss as your arm tingles. The feeling is beginning to return to it.
Maybe in half an hour or so, you'll have full use of it.
    "But Four wants this to go through now," you think. "Twelve is already
on her way to outflank the guards -all eighteen of them- and he wants me
ready for when the assault begins. 'Do your best' he says." You shake your
head.
    "I need two arms to do my best."
    You prop your rifle against the wall, and eject the spent power pack. It
slips through the fingers of your dead arm, and drops onto the palace floor,
where the carpet doesn't quite reach the wall.
    Four spins around at the sound, and crouch-walks to your position.
    "Are you okay?" he hisses.
    "My arm," you whisper in reply. "I can't use it properly yet."
    He looks at you blankly.
    "Well... Just do your best. Cover us, okay?"
    With a half smile, he turns away.
    What do you do when you can't follow orders?

    Get to the cloning chambers.
    It's not an order any other soldier has ever been given on your planet.
You're the first. You're leading a team of commandos in an assault on an
enemy stronghold.
    What do you do when you're not up to it?
    What do you do when the last combat you saw nearly killed you?
    And the time before that, it nearly gave you a nervous breakdown.
    You're not cut out for soldiering.
    You're really not cut out for leading.
    And there's nearly twenty bad guys a few metres away.
    They want to prove you're not even cut out for living.
    You've got some control over the Force. That has to be a bonus, right?
    Right.
    You look at your watch, and then try to reach out through the Force to
find Twelve, who's outflanking the stormies.
    She's not where she should be.
    Your plan's gone to hell.
    What do you do?
    Duh.

    Eight shuffles into position. She's favouring her left arm, you notice.
It's not something you can afford to think about. She only needs one arm to
shoot.
    You hope.
    "On three," you hiss. "One... Two... Three..."
    You slide out into the corridor, and stay as much in the shadows as you
can while you approach the guards. As many of them as possible you blind to
your presence. Inevitably, it doesn't work on all of them.

    Thayer's plans for the castle show a way up into a crawl way that will
put you right above the stormtroopers. When you get up there, you cut a hole
in the ceiling with your knife, and look down.
    You see one of the stormies suddenly shoulder his rifle, and call out to
his fellows. One or two of them tap the sides of their helmets, then all of
them turn to look up the corridor, towards where your teammates are.
    You stab your knife through the ceiling beneath you, and begin to slice
a circle around you.

    Your team leader is coming perilously close to being shot. You know he
has Force abilities that allow him to absorb vast amounts of energy. You've
seen him do it.
    You also know his ability to use the Force is something that comes and
goes.
    You haul the rifle into position, desperately trying to get it to stay
upright on the tripod.

    You raise your hands, praying that your long coat will conceal the
equipment you have clasped to your belt, not the least of which is a
lightsabre that will get you shot on suspicion of being a Jedi.
    Suspicion isn't proof.
    "Is there a problem, officer?" you ask, in your best tourist accent.
    "Check him out," you hear one of them say.
    You tag him as an officer, and make a note to take him out if the
opportunity presents itself.
    Then you notice the knife slowly sawing through the ceiling above the
troopers.
    "Cut faster!" you think, desperately.

    You hear the voice in your head as you near the completion of the
circle. You feel the ceiling give way beneath you, and begin to sag.
    One last swipe of the knife, and---
    "Yeehaaah!!!"
    ---you drop ten feet downwards, the circle of plaster beneath you, crash
landing on a cluster of stormtroopers.
    A blast of pure light sears across your vision at astonishing speed as
you struggle to your feet. A stormy clutches his leg, and you stab the knife
deep into his side.

    You see Twelve fall from the ceiling, and fire quickly. The shot isn't
great, but it hits one of the soldiers. Twelve finishes the job with a quick
stab of her knife.
    But now she's unarmed, and your one-handed grip on the rifle stops you
taking aim quickly enough to stop another stormy swinging his rifle at your
teammate. His swing is interrupted by a blade of yellow-purple light rising
from the hands of Four.

    Between them, your teammates have already accounted for an impressive
number of the stormtroopers. The least you can do is save Twelve from a
nasty clubbing incident, and the backswing of your 'sabre slices across the
man's upper arm, disabling him, at least temporarily.
    A quick twist of the handle of your weapon, and a second blade springs
from the bottom end. Meanwhile, Twelve has drawn her sword, and the two of
you face one another across a sea of seething stormies.

    Four just saved you. Maybe you can respect him, after all.
    Later, though.
    Right now, you're gonna kick some ass.

    You're panting for breath already, and you've only fired one shot so
far. You swear as you haul the rifle into place, desperately trying to move
your limp left arm.
    No good.
    You fire anyway.

    Another of Eight's shots hits a stormy, this time full in the face plate
of his helmet. You look away from the dead man, but the smell still triggers
memories you'd rather leave well enough alone.
    It's not the time for memories, though.
    A stormy fires, and you swing wildly at the shot, batting it into the
wall just above Twelve. She glares at you briefly, before slicing through
the barrel of the stormy's weapon, pirouetting, and stabbing him in the
chest.
    "And you look so innocent, as well," you say to her.
    Her only reply is another hard look, before she returns to the attack.
    Another shot lances out from Eight's rifle.

    You feel the pain, exquisite in its totality. Someone screams out your
name as your leg seems to explode.
    The swing you were taking connects, slicing across the throat of a
stormy. You don't feel it.
    You don't feel anything, except for the all encompassing pain.
    You fall to the ground, as blackness envelops you.

    You see your misguided shot hit your teammate, and scream her name. Her
sword drops another stormtrooper, before she collapses silently to the
floor.
    You haul yourself to your feet, your rifle forgotten as you run forward.

    As Twelve drops, you hear Eight cry out, and a movement in your
peripheral vision tells you Eight is moving. You swear out loud, and try and
take down the remaining trio of stormies as quickly as possible.
    You feel the stress levels rising inside you. Slowly, your access to the
Force becomes more tenuous, and the lightsabre in your hands becomes a tool,
not an extension of yourself.
    Some tool.
    With a grin of pure evil on your face, you spear one of the troopers on
the blade, tearing open his shoulder as you yank the weapon away.
    Another trooper has his foot pinned to the floor. As he tumbles forward,
you kick him hard under the jaw, snapping his head back, knocking him
unconscious.
    You turn to face the final trooper, who has taken the time to draw a
careful bead on you.
    There is no time to move, no time to regain your grip on the Force.
    What do you do?

    You fade back into consciousness, your leg hurting like the blazes. You
look down, and see a streak of red, where the blaster bolt creased across
your thigh.
    Groggily, you raise your head, to see Four facing down a trooper with a
rifle.
    There's nothing you can do.

    Your wild charge terminates in the small of the last stormtrooper's
back. The armour-clad man staggers forward, and Four lashes out, kicking him
in the side of the head.
    The troopers crashes bonelessly to the ground.
    Quickly, you are by Twelve's side. Four rushes back to your original
position, and returns with your rifle and the medikit.
    You apply a bacta patch to Twelve's leg, to the accompaniment of some
choice epithets.
    Four helps Twelve up, and you each sling an arm over your shoulders.
Slowly, the three of you navigate the last flight of stairs, bringing you to
the third floor.

    The three of you have made it to the objective. You struggle to the
doors that open onto the cloning chamber, and note they are electronically
locked. Eleven, who is yet to arrive, or Twelve, who is drifting in and out
of consciousness, will be needed to get in.
    You return to the others, in a small alcove nearby.
    Good news, they'll both be back to fighting capacity in a short while.
    You might not be a leader, but your troops have made it through.
    While you await the rest of your team, you plan the assault on the
cloning chamber.
    It's what you do.