Project Boussh: No News Is Good News?
by Nick Coghlan

Nick negotiated his way through Josh's bedroom, as the Ewoks chittered
madly at him. It was strange - with Piggy and Ooryl here, he'd started
to feel vaguely guilty about the whole Ewok farming business. Still, he
was sure it was just a passing concern. If he watched Return of the Jedi
a couple of times, he was pretty sure his enjoyment of the job would
come back more strongly with every "Yub Yub". Right now, though, other
matters appeared far more pressing.

Slipping past the final stack, he reached the corner containing Piggy's
equipment. Unusually, though, the Gamorrean was in front of Josh's
terrestrial computer, instead of playing with some incomprehensible
calculations on the New Republic system. Just as Nick came into view
however, the Gamorrean pushed the power button on the monitor.

"What's up? Doesn't that do everything we need?" Nick pointed at the
console that had been installed when Piggy and Ooryl arrived.

"Well, mostly. I wanted to have a look at some of your standard news
sources." Even with his voice mechanised by the translator, Piggy didn't
sound very convincing.

"Uh-huh. All of which your gear can access just as easily and a fair bit
quicker than Josh's computer. And what I saw didn't look like any news
source I've ever seen. It looked more like Diablo II"

"Errm. Harrumph." The translator made a valiant effort at translating
Piggy's muttering. "Well, it's not like I had anything better to do."
The Gamorrean had managed to get himself on the back foot in this
conversation, and trying to defend himself just strengthened the
impression of a subordinate caught goofing off.

Nick cocked his head to one side. "Care to explain that last statement?
The reason I came in here was to get an update on how things were going.
I still haven't figured out how Ooryl thought going to the beach was
going to help." Josh had headed to the beach for the weekend. For some
reason, Ooryl had decided to go with him.

"Ooryl pointed out that if our enemy realises we are here, he may be
reluctant to interfere directly with people with direct access to New
Republic technology. Since Ooryl wasn't able to persuade Josh not to
make the trip, he decided the only option was to tag along as bodyguard.

Nick thought about it briefly. It still seemed kind of dubious to him -
still any chance sightings would be well away from here, making it into
a kind of extension of the plan involving Kell and some of the other
Wraiths. "Yeah, I guess it kind of makes sense that way. 'Course, could
just be the fact that Ooryl wanted an excuse to hit the beach."

"You're just annoyed because you didn't go with them."

Nick frowned. There was more truth to Piggy's last statement than he
liked to admit - a trip to the coast would certainly be welcome right
now. Looking up, he went back to his previous question. "To get back to
the point, why don't you have anything better to do? I thought you'd
have dozens of different ways of juggling the data."

Piggy nodded "I do. And the computer has access to more than can be
conveniently counted - not to mention the various combinations
available. But they don't help when there isn't any data to work with."

"No data? I thought the Rogues and Wraiths would be delivering it by the
bucketload."

"So did we all. But most of the hard data we have at the moment came
from our own sensors. All we have from the Rogues and Wraiths is various
"down and made contact" reports. Corran's hooked up with Kelly, Wes and
Hobbie are safely installed with Emily, and Alison has arrived with her
crew. We also have the well publicised arrival of Kell and company. But
nothing you could call data. A couple of news reports popped up about a
"mysterious mass hallucination" at a campus in Terre Haute, but nothing
to indicate whether or not the bait has been taken, or even noticed. As
for the rest of the squadrons, we don't even know where the _general_
is, let alone anyone else."

"I can see how that would be a problem. What about that sensor contact
you picked up the other day?"

"That's the hard data I was referring to. There appears to be a cloaked
ship in orbit up there - about the size of an ISD. Since its cloak
didn't become effective until it reached its final orbital position, I
knew where to look. The sensor signal matched an ISD, and the pattern of
occlusion since then fits with that assumption. The only obvious
activity has been the launch of a single cloaked ship that seemed to
come down somewhere near the nation-state you call Scotland. The sensor
array was able to pick up it's drive emissions, but I doubt any of your
conventional systems would have even flagged it as potentially
interesting."

"Well, that's something then. Can't we do something about that?"

Piggy's features took on what Nick assumed was a quizzical cast. He was
beginning to be able to make sense of the Gamorrean's facial
expressions. "And just what was it you were planning on doing? We have
no free assets. We have not re-established contact with General
Antilles. We have yet to establish any sort of link between the presence
of the ISD and Quiara's dissappearance. Remember that ship arrived
_after_ we did."

"I don't know. You could at least tell everybody."

"We could - and we have. All of the teams that have been in contact with
us have been periodically brought up to speed on current developments.
They're keeping an eye out for anyone who shows evidence of being
anything other than a stock standard Terrestrial. Other than that, we
proceed as planned."

"Ooryl agreed doing nothing was the best option?" Nick knew the
structure of this mission had played havoc with the normal command
channels. Tycho was with Wedge, wherever that was, and Nick wasn't sure
who command normally devolved to after that. Since all messages were
being routed through this point, Ooryl and Piggy were operating as de
facto mission coordinators until Wedge turned up.

"Short of flying up and checking it out in X-Wings, what else can be
done? Until someone turns up some useful information, our hands are
tied."

"Oh." Nick arched his back, stretching as he got to his feet. "Since it
looks like I'm being even less help than usual, I think I'll hit the
sack. Better luck getting past Andariel this time."

"Thanks," Piggy automatically replied. Then he looked at Nick's
retreating back wondering how the human had known where he was stuck.