Project Boussh: Night Attack
by Policrat'

"Welcome aboard the _Admonitor_, Major Defel. You're just in time for
things to get interesting."

Grand Admiral Thrawn turned away from the knot of officers on the
quarterdeck to greet the newcomer with a broad smile, his red eyes flashing.
Brad Corletti found himself wondering how much real warmth there was in that
smile, and hoped his own fear didn't show.

"Interesting?" he asked carefully, trying not to gawp when he saw the
Admonitor's command staff.

He recognized Baron Fel instantly, tall and strong, with bloodstripe piping
on his uniform breeches and a Gascon face which made him look like a feudal
knight. He could only guess that the Star Captain with the iron-grey hair
was Dagon Niriz, and he didn't recognize the man in the navy black of Special
Services, but he was surprised to realise that the young woman wearing the
red uniform of the Ubiquorate and the rank pips of a General was Erisi
Dlarit.

*Corran Horn's gonna be pissed*, he found himself thinking, smiling ever so
slightly.

Something about the dark-haired General - the way she carried herself,
leaning on the CommScan desk to disguise her limp, or some aspect of her in
the Force - made him realise that, unlike Miith'raw'nuru'odo and Soontir
Fel, she was not a clone.

But, clones or not, the leaders of the mission to Terra were probably the
greatest warriors to ever wear the Imperial uniform. And that made them very
dangerous enemies indeed.

"It's time to teach these Terrans what war is all about," Thrawn was saying,
still smiling.

"Some of us are Terrans too," Brad pointed out, almost regretting it
instantly.

"Of course," the Grand Admiral agreed. "I don't believe you've met Commander
McEwok... you know him better as Terra Seven."

Brad almost hissed in shock, but he found himself smiling, shaking the
blackshirt's hand.

"Brad," Pol McEwok was saying, in a light Scots burr which sounded
incongruous on the bridge of an Imperial Star Destroyer. "It's good to be on
the same side as you."

Brad mumbled something in reply.

"Tell me, Major Defel," Thrawn said, breaking in with the ease of a
practiced dinner-party host or a general outflanking his enemy's scouts,
"what - from your perspective - has been going on down there."

So Brad told him, trying to tell as straight a story as he could while
hedging every bet he had. Trying, he realised, to play a bluff to the
greatest of the Imperial Grand Admirals.

*I should be scared,* he thought. But all he felt, all through his summary
of the situation and the cross-questioning that followed, was a quiet,
confident exhilliration.

And then he had done it.

"Thank you, Major," the Grand Admiral concluded, with that same soft smile.
"You are an honour to the Empire, and I'm glad you could join us before the
start of the attack."

"When does it start?" Brad asked, trying to sound professional while he
fished for one last bite of information.

Thrawn half-turned, glancing at the chrono mounted below the deckhead, and
smiled again. "Just about now."

The deck shook beneath their feet, and Captain Niriz turned back smartly from
the tactical station.

"The bridgehead force is launched, sir. Operation Cliffface is underway."

"Thank you, Captain," Thrawn said quietly, his smile narrowing to a hunter's
tight grin. "Stand by to move us to the next holding station once we recieve
the landing reports from New Hampshire."

*New Hampshire?*

"They have Ewoks," Brad heard himself say, his voice flat.

"This isn't Endor, Major Corletti," was Thrawn's only reply.

***

Lieutenant Chase shuddered uncontrollably in his seat as the cloaked
drop-pod barrelled down its entry trajectory into Terra's atmosphere.

"Five seconds!" he called out, just as the regulations demanded, just as he
had been trained to do, even though, with the pod shaking and the lights
flickering, he was barely able to read the countdown on the monitor, and
even though his shout was lost in the thunder of the repulsor drive.

Drop-pods were cheap, one-way craft designed to get Imperial troops dirtside
to establish a bridgehead without having to throw lumbering landing barges
with the sensor profile and manoeuvrability of thousand-tonne bricks and all
the armament of a feather bed against the enemy's untested defences.

The engineers had assured them that the inertial guidance system could fly
the cloaked pod better than a human ace with lobot-input sensor feed, and
that the gyro-stabilized braking repulsors would set them down lightly
enough that they could land on eggshells.

But they punched into the atmosphere with enough force to smash flesh.

Chase felt the shaking rise to a crescendo as the brakes kicked in, and the
headlong hypersonic dive gave way to the queasy disorientation of momentary
weightlessness. As the dampers struggled to cope, he coughed down the urge
to vomit.

Then, suddenly, it was all over. The shaking stopped, the cockpit lights
flickered from emergency red to combat-ready white, and even before he had
quite realised they were down, Chase heard the familiar grinding rumble as
the hatches swung open and the pod walls fell away around them.

Glancing out the viewport, he saw the cold, eerie darkness of midnight.

Beside him, Sergeant Yagger was keying in the engine activation sequence,
and, almost automatically, he leant over and thumbed on the comm.

"Three troop," he ordered, "this is Chase. Report in."

As Chase checked off the acknowledgements from the other walkers of his
unit, each clambering out of its own pod well within the one-mile radius of
their projected landing zone, and then made contact with the other troops of
the squadron, the Sergeant eased up on the drive yoke, and the AT-ST
unfolded from its crouch, rose up, and took its first steady steps across
the dark New England landscape.

***

Wedge Antilles was dozing in an armchair in front of a fire, with a book in
his lap, dreaming the disoriented, happy dreams that only a man who had
fallen asleep reading a novellisation of his own life could dream.

"Sounds like thunder," he heard someone comment, far away. "Storm coming
in."

Wedge nodded absently, and remembered hearing the same thunder once before,
on Hoth. He remembered it because it had rolled suddenly across a clear sky
in the calm, early morning after the worst storm he'd ever seen.

The morning of the Imperial attack on Echo Base.

"Sithspit!" he swore, suddenly very awake.

"What is it?" someone asked. Vickie, he realised. One of the Terra Group
operatives, the one with the Pash Cracken fetish.

"Terra has no orbital-lob troop transports?" he asked, hauling himself out
of his seat and turning to face her. He already knew the answer, but he
couldn't believe it: he didn't want to believe it.

"I don't think so," she replied. "Why? Would Atner?"

"Not unless the Empire was selling him thousand-year-old ships," Wedge told
her grimly. "No. That was an Imperial strike force coming in."

"Oh... marbles," Vickie groaned.

And then, to confirm their fears, the first blaster-fire from the oncoming
Imperial walkers crackled through the night like lightning.

***

"The squadron is safely deployed and down," Nriz announced. "No casualties
from the drop."

A flicker of something - was it relief? - crossed Thrawn's eyes, but he was
no longer smiling.

"Move us to holding station three," he ordered crisply, "and patch me
through to Sabre Leader."

There was a brief whisper of static, and then Fel's filtered voice crackled
across the bridge. 

"Sabre Leader here," he acknowledged. "We're ready."

"Thank you, Baron Fel. Strength and honour. And good luck."

"We'll do our best, sir. Sabres out."

The comm fell silent, and Thrawn turned to Niriz, hovering on the quarterdeck
wing.

"Launch," he ordered.

There was near-silence on the bridge for a moment as the command was
relayed, and then Brad saw engines flare in the night as the first flight of
TIE Defenders loop out from the hangar, forming up in attack formation above
the Star Destroyer before screaming away towards Earth.