Project Boussh: Shoving, Fighting, Killing, Dying
by Policrat'

There was a shudder as the Bantha-class assault-ship nudged through the 
hangar-bay force-field, and on the troop-deck, Sixtus Quin braced himself 
for the expected thunder of the touchdown. Then he shook his head, and 
allowed himself a slow, wry grin.

_You're getting old_, he cautioned himself. The days when landing-craft 
literally hit the deck were long-gone.

A single, simple acid-green light came on in the darkness, and the ship 
rocked to a stop on its repulsors. There was a brief, fierce hydraulic hiss 
as the armoured blast-doors of the bow-hatch shot back. Then silence.

Quin watched in professional satisfaction as the five-man point squad of his 
SpecNav unit jumped down from the open hatch, and moved across the deck of 
the hangar-bay, quick and noisless, like hunting _varn_.

There was no resistance.

The squad-leader gave a silent thumbs-up sign, and Sixtus nodded in reply. 
Motioning for the rest of the unit to follow him, he jumped to the deck 
himself, bringing up his E-web into a firing position, and sweeping his gaze 
around the stark, cold interior of the hangar-bay.

Beside him, the other members of the team's fire-support squad took up their 
own positions. They stood their ground, tense and alert, while the rest of 
the unit spread out, one squad moving to reinforce each man of the point 
team, establishing a secure bridgehead.

As an acknowledgement from each squad-leader crackled in his comm-link 
earpiece, Sixtus heard the whine of repulsors, and knew that the second 
Bantha, carrying Kapp Dendo's Commando Team One, had come through.

"Nicely done."

Sixtus spun on the balls of his feet, finger tensing on the trigger of his 
E-web. Something in his mind screamed "Imps!", but he held his fire. Then he 
relaxed, breathing again, as he recognized the two figures walking towards 
him.

The man wore the navy-black uniform of Imperial Special Services, but he 
seemed far too scruffy-looking to be a blackshirt. Over his rumpled tunic, 
he had the laquered cuirass of a field officer, and a pair of tac goggles 
were pushed back above the peak of his crumpled cap. He was cradling an E-14 
carbine, with a bandolier of spare charge-clips slung over his shoulder. A 
pistol and a vibro-bayonette swung in their sheaths on his belt, and a black 
pouch, fat with thermal detonators, jogged at his hip.

For all that, though, he wore an improbably cheery smile.

The woman was tall, tough and elegant, with close-cropped hair. She was 
hefting a nasty-looking repeating blaster, and had two E-11s slung over her 
free shoulder. Even in modified stormtrooper armour, she looked drop-dead 
gorgeous, and mercilessly deadly.

"Commander McEwok," he acknowledged, with a gruff cough. Then he smiled. 
"Princess."

Plourr Ilo grinned back.

"It's been too long, Sixtus," she agreed.

"Can the reunion wait?" came a cool, confident voice, cutting across the 
conversation like sharpened steel through flesh. "We have Imps to kill."

Without waiting for an answer, Elscol Loro tugged her silenced Czerka from 
her shoulder-holster, and started for the blast-doors.

Sixtus sighed, Plourr grimaced. McEwok cocked one eyebrow in amusement.

***

McEwok stood quietly while Kapp's slicers hot-wired the blast-doors to 
_Admonitor_'s secondary command room, casting an emotionless eye over the 
smoking wrecks of the two droid-troopers which had been the only oposition 
Bantha Force had encountered.

With the Star Destroyer at battle-stations, the few crewers and troopers 
they had encountered had given them no trouble. No man in the Imperial 
Military would try to stop a Special Services officer and a unit of SpecNav 
Infantry hurrying to repel the Rebel scum who had somehow managed to board 
their ship.

And two quick shots had dropped the droid-troopers, punching neat burn-edged 
holes in their chest-armour, but tearing their back-plates to shrapnel. They 
had pitched face-down to the deck, and McEwok could see that there was 
little left of their mechanical torsos.

The familiar clench of gears and the trembling of the deck snapped McEwok 
out of his reverie, and the blast-doors jerked half-way open.

Quin made a signal, and in silence, the SpecNav point squad disappeared into 
the darkness. Almost immediately, one trooper loomed back out of the 
shadows, giving a thumbs-up sign, and McEwok went in.

There was darkness.

Then, with an electric whir, the consoles flickered, the main lights snapped 
on, and the repeater screens came alive. McEwok blinked, surprised, and 
looked round. Thrawn had always preferred near-darkness, often with only a 
single soft spotlight on the Admiral's Chair, or else with whatever subdued 
arrangement best suited the holographic artworks on display.

Empty now, the command throne - an exact double of the one on the bridge, 
surrounded by banks of keypads and repeater-screens - stood aloof in the 
centre of the deck, but several control-stations surrounded it at a 
respectful distance, and huge holo-projectors studded the bulkheads on three 
sides, each vast lens apparatus more than the equal of a capital ship's main 
tac display.

The far wall was dominated by a pair of blast-doors which matched those that 
led in from the companionway. But here, instead of battledroids in 
stormtrooper armour, two huge, silent monoliths stood sentinel - MCS-327 
mainframe processors.

"Main interface is over there," McEwok said, gesturing to the 
processor-stack. Two of Kapp's commandos nodded, dragging over a hulking 
MicroThrust data-core on a repulsor-sled, and jacking it in. The data core 
was huge - almost half the size of one of the 327s - and with its 
subspace-based storage circuits, massed more than a Y-wing. But it was a bit 
of bleeding-edge New Republic technology, with enough storage to take a dump 
of both Imperial mainframes and still have room for HoloNet porn.

McEwok jerked a thumb towards the second pair of blast-doors "The rest's in 
there."

The slicers hurried over, and he waited, drumming out a rythm on the deck 
with his boot-heel, until, again, the blast-doors shot open.

Without waiting for the SpecNav squad this time, McEwok fired up the torch 
slung beneath the muzzle of his carbine, and darted into the darkness, 
raking the beam around ahead of him. For a moment, he savoured the sight in 
silence.

Then, as the leaders of Bantha Force hurried in after him, he heard several 
sharp intakes of breath.

Even the normally taciturn Sixtus Quin muttered a loud expletive in 
amazement.

"Okay," he said, smiling at the sight of Grand Admiral Thrawn's personal art 
collection. "Let's get this stuff back to the Banthas before the _Addy_ 
falls apart."

***

Elscol Loro was not happy. Boarding a Star Destroyer to download a Grand 
Admiral's private database she could understand. But she had not been 
pleased to discover that her SpecNav troopers were to be used as glorified 
removal-men to recover works of art, and grew even angrier when they entered 
into the fetching-and-carrying with unbridled enthusiasm.

Scowling, she hurried impatiently past four troopers stumbling under the 
weight of a huge painting of a man on horseback, rearing against a mountain 
sky. Her trigger-finger twitched impatiently.

She was, she realised, looking for someone to kill.

"Company!"

Elscol whirled, and saw the first grey-armoured stormtroopers appear at the 
end of the companionway, and heard the first blaster-fire cut through the 
air around her.

"Kriffing Imps, always spoiling our fun," sighed one of Kapp Dendo's 
commandos, laying down the statuette he was carrying, and bringing his 
carbine up to his shoulder.

Elscol laughed harshly. The Czerka was already in her hands.

She squeezed the trigger, and watched in silent satisfaction as the first 
stormtrooper fell.

***

Isplourrdacartha Estillo, Princess of Ettiau, Major in New Republic 
Starfighter Command, screamed an incoherent war-cry, and sprayed another 
burst of hot light at the approaching stormtroopers.

They died, and for a moment, a profound sense of calm seemed to come over 
her.

Taking a deep, rasping breath, she glanced around the hangar-bay, surveying 
the chaos with adrenalin-pumped detachment.

She saw commandos heaving paintings and statues and data-cores aboard the 
Banthas, and dragging their injured comrades after them. She saw Sixtus 
Quin, his expression emotionless, raking fire from his E-web across the 
approaching Imperials. She saw Elscol wrestle a stormtrooper to the ground, 
and push a vibro-knife up under the rim of his helmet, through the weak seam 
in the bodysleeve at the back of the neck.

She saw a stormtrooper raise his rifle, and felt the heat of the aiming-bead 
over her heart, and, without really thinking about it, she shot him in the 
face.

Kapp Dendo limped up beside her, slamming a new power-pack into his blaster. 
When he looked at her, she saw that he was worried.

"What is it?" she asked, shouting to make herself heard over the roar of 
gunfire.

"Where's McEwok?"

Plourr had opened her mouth to reply when the first shot clipped her 
shoulder.

Staggering back, she dropping her blaster in shock, and quickly clenched her 
free hand over the wound, feeling the hot, sticky mess of blood and melted 
plasteel and burnt flesh beneath her fingers.

Before she even had time to feel the pain, the second shot hammered into her 
chest.

Her body hit the deck like dead weight.

***

McEwok raced through the _Admonitor_, spraying wild bursts of blaster-fire 
at the white-armoured figures at the far end of the companionway, grunting 
as he fought to pull his comlink out of the pocket under his tunic plastron.

"So this is the Imperial design philosophy?" he asked. "Where's Tricia 
Biggar when you need her?"

"Terra Seven?" came Elscol's voice, static-scratched, raised above the 
background crackle of blaster-fire, but strangely calm. "This is Bantha 
Leader, do you copy? Over."

"Bantha Leader!" he yelled, finally pulling the comlink out. "I copy. Over"

"Then where are you, Commander?" she asked.

"Imperial entanglements," he shrugged, lobbing another concussion grenade at 
the 'troopers. "Get clear. I'll make my own way..."

"We can-..."

"Go!" he said, snapping off the comlink and darting into a narrow 
companionway which ended abruptly in a blast-door. He heard the 
concussion-grenade explode, and the deck seemed to lurch beneath his feet. 
As the blast echoed off the bulkheads, and choking smoke began to billow 
towards him, he tapped a code into the key-plate lock. There was a grinding 
of gears, and with a whoosh, the blast-door opened for him.

The hangar-bay was silent, and almost empty. The last TIE-Omega sat gleaming 
in the launch-rails.

McEwok punched the key-plate, and shot it out as the blast-door dropped 
shut. Then he smiled.

***

"Eight ball, corner pocket!" someone said, far away. "NOW!"

On the flight-deck of Bantha Two, Plourr Ilo watched in painful silence as 
the Star Destroyer _Admonitor_ died.

She had come to in the makeshift med-bay on the troop-deck, with a crude 
bacta-patch on the stiff, sticky mess of her left-shoulder, and a burning 
pain shooting through her chest with every breath she took. She would need 
bacta, she knew, and a quiet, analytical voice in the back of her 
tranq-drunk mind told her that where the second shot had struck, beneath the 
warped and fractured plasteel of her blackened breastplate, the melted 
synthetic of the bodysleeve and her own charred, flash-roasted flesh had 
fused into a single filthy mess.

But there and then, in the charnel-house chaos of the med-bay, she was just 
taking up space - space needed by some of the sobbing, scalded things which 
had, when she had last seen them, been SpecNav troopers and NR commandos. 
So, with a cold stare at an orderly who tried to make her 'get some rest', 
she had got to her feet, and walked away.

Somehow, she supposed, had staggered to the flight-deck. But the next thing 
she remembered was a fresh-faced Mon Cal with an ensign's tabs swimming on 
his collar, appearing in front of her, and asking if she was 'all right'. 
She had nodded mutely, and the squid had hurried away. The landing-craft 
crew seemed to be distracted by some new crisis, and had hardly noticed her.

So she just stood there, without speaking, and wateched the _Admonitor_ die.

Deep, dark scars, flecked with gleaming silver, disfigured the ship's 
armour. Whole sections of the hull were dark, or lit only by the feeble 
flickering of failing emergency lights and shorted-out electrics. 
Incredibly, one of the flak turrets on the brim-trench was still firing, 
spitting impotent anger towards the distant ships of the New Republic.

And a holocaust was brewing in the vast maw of the main hangar, as the 
containment-shields on the docking-bays collapsed, and vented air and flames 
to space. The ship bled, spilling out oxygen and fuel from its gutted hull 
to feed the hunger of the electric fires burning beneath the broken, 
blackened plating of its fatal wounds.

She had almost given up hope, when a lone TIE screamed out of the heart of 
the inferno.

Plourr thought she recognized the long-limbed silhouette of an Avenger, but 
the tranqs were wearing off, and as the pain got worse, her head seemed to 
spin even faster. Glancing at the tactical display, she saw that the 
approaching fighter was broadcasting an Imperial IFF transponder, and she 
frowned.

Silently, carefully, she stepped over to the unmanned comm-scan station, and 
toggled the comm to the Omega Flight frequency.

"Terra Seven?" she heard the ghost of her own voice whisper.

There was a pause, a sharp intake of breath - then the _Admonitor_ exploded.

The Bantha lurched as the shockwaves hammered against its shields, and 
Plourr stumbled, and slammed into a console. Her shoulder screamed. Her 
chest seemed to explode.

Everything went black.

When she could stand again, and blinked the stars away from her eyes, she 
couldn't see the TIE any more.

Only static crackled over the comm. Her eyesight blurred, and she felt a 
pain in her gut that had nothing to do with organ trauma.

"Plourr?" she hear McEwok say, right next to her, and she realised that she 
was dreaming.

Then a lone TIE-Avenger streaked past the viewports, corkscrewing 
exuberantly in a victory-roll, so close that the subspace shock buffeted the 
Bantha, making the deck-plates roar.

And far away, on the troop-deck, she heard the sound of cheering.