Project Boussh: Sliding Doors
by Policrat'

Grand Admiral Thrawn glanced up as the doors of the Secondary Command Room
hissed open. His eyes flashed, and he smiled.

"Commander McEwok," he said to the man who had joined him, his tone level
and conversational. "How's the General doing?"

"Out of bacta and into the machine shop," McEwok answered. "But still
bitchy. She sees smirks and sniggers every time a crewer walks past."

"She'll get over it," Thrawn said. "It's a character-building experience.
But to business. These images just came in from the surveillance net."

He tapped a key on his repeater pad, and a holo-image flared alive in the
darkness - a starfield, with scrolling lines of text and data superimposed.

"Far enough out that the Cronau flare is lost against the background light,"
McEwok mused, glancing at the display. "I take it our Rebel friends have
finally decided to punch up their presence in the system, and they thought
they could sneak up on us while we weren't looking."

"Quite," Thrawn nodded, as lines of pseudomotion flickered across the sea of
stars, and six ships raced back into realspace.

McEwok studied the New Republic task-force with a grim smile. Five assault
frigates - two of them with rebuilt  mid-hull sections housing gaping
hangar-bays - and a dark-hulled dreadnaught in the lead.

"Thoughts, Commander?" Thrawn asked.

"That's a _Katana_-class ship," McEwok commented, nodding at the
dreadnaught. "So I take it our old Corellian friend is in command. And two
of the frigates are _Mountain_-class. Troop carriers. With Atner defeated,
they can hardly want to deploy a planetary garrison, and there's no siege
fortifications here; but they can carry Bantha-class transports equipped as
boarding-craft. In short, they came ready in case things weren't quite how
they expected, but they're planning to attack the _Admonitor_ and rescue
General Antilles."

"Exactly," Thrawn agreed. "_Inexorable_ and _Intendant_ are already en
route. The Rebels should have something of a surprise waiting for them."

***

The tall, crop-haired woman lying on Pol McEwok's bed glanced up and smiled
as the cabin doors shot open and he walked in, but her smile turned to a
worried frown when she caught the look in his eyes.

"Bad news?"

"Depends on your point of view, Princess," he said. "Things are on the move
again, and faster than I'd thought."

When McEwok had told her everything, Plourr Ilo - ex-gunnery sergeant, Rogue
Squadron ace, genuine princess, nominal Prisoner-of-War, and ersatz
stormtrooper sergeant - rolled off the bed, and went to check over her
private arsenal one last time before they went to war.

***

The officer on duty in detention block 1138 glanced up as the doors shot
open. He recognized Commander McEwok, and began to salute.

But something was wrong.

McEwok was wearing combat armour, carrying pistols, grenades, a carbine and
a sword. Beside him stood a stormtrooper cradling a sawn-off E-Web and with
half-a-dozen carbines slung across his shoulders.

McEwok's stun-shot laid the lieutenant out cold before he could say a word,
while the sergeant dropped the two guards with quick bursts from the
hand-cannon.

Then they walked quickly towards the cells.

***

The cell door slammed back, and a stormtrooper swung in, gun in hand.

"This time," Plourr Ilo commented, tugging off helmet, and throwing her last
spare carbine to the prisoner. "we really are here to rescue you."

"Won't the crew notice?" Wedge Antilles asked, catching the gun.

"I've not spent a week re-routing the security feeds and slicing into the
logistics dossiers for nothing," she said. "I'd forgotten how much I loved
crawling through hatches and swearing at circuitry."

Wedge laughed. "Don't tell me you're wanting a transfer back to
ground-crew?"

"Not quite, General," she told him, grinning. "In my spare time, I've been
learning how to fly TIEs."

***

The sound of the blast-doors rolling shut echoed in Vickie's ears as they
hurried down another deserted corridor.

Wedge and McEwok had thrown her into a regime of TIE-simulator training and
intensive induction exercises as soon as she was hauled out of the bacta,
and they assured her she'd be fine once she got into the cockpit, but she
still felt unsteady on her feet in shipboard gravity, and with so many
ysalamiri aboard, the Force felt frayed and shadowy around her here.

"Explain this to me again," she said, rubbing her forehead. "We're just
*leaving*? And leaving the clones and the Grand Admiral here?"

"I've done all I can," McEwok explained. "But to finish the job properly, we
need something big, bright, noisy, and *very* heavily armed. Plourr probably
_could_ do a hundred horrible things to all the clones... if she could spend
half an hour working at the systems console in the spartii facility, right
next to a row of bottle-grown Princesses of Ettiau. And believe me, there's
no way we could hustle Thrawn off his flagship. Sweet as I've been able to
keep Erisi up to now..."

"You call that *sweet*?" Vickie interrupted, scowling and laughing all at
once.

"Oh yes," McEwok agreed, grinning. "Trust me."

Vickie scowled, and another thought struck her.

"What about Brad?"

But no-one answered.

***

The turbolift doors slid open, and they hurried into the hangar bay.

Above them, six sleek TIE fighters sat cradled in their launch-racks, black
sigils stencilled on the slate-grey curves of their cockpit balls.

"TIE Omegas," McEwok, leading the way to the flight-suit locker. "Special
Services variant of the Avenger. Right now, my men are enjoying the
stomach-cramping effects of the laxative that found its way into their last
meal, and Lieutenant Ilo has very kindly cut more appropriate IFF markers.
From the left - Wedge, Plourr, myself, Vickie, Quiara, Dorset."

"Hang on," Plourr frowned, turning round. "Where _is_
Dorset."

"She was right behind me," Vickie said.

But there was only the sound of sliding doors, echoing across the hangar.