Project Boussh: To Fall From On High
by Brad Corletti

"Shoot me down!"

"No! I can't!"

High above the surface of the Earth, Brad cursed. He let his B-wing
drift to the side, behind Dorset Konnair's A-wing.

"You can now," he said, and pulled the trigger. An ion cannon burst
smashed into her shields. Immediately the nimble A-wing spun and dove,
causing the second burst to miss cleanly.

"What are you doing?" Dorset asked frantically.

"If you don't shoot me down, Dorset, we'll both die." He lined himself
up for yet another attack.

Of course, the A-wing pilot was not about to be taken that easily. She
threw her craft into yet another evasive manuever, taking her clean
out of his sights.

She put on a burst of speed and accelerated away, then began a loop
back towards him. His missile-lock indicator flashed orange, then red.

Seconds passed, and the fighters hurtled towards each other. Still the
A-wing did not fire. And his sensors showed an A-wing heading for the
two of them. Corran Horn. Come to shoot Brad down and save NRI the
paperwork.

She wasn't going to do it. Maybe another ion burst would harden her
resolve. He pulled the trigger.

The A-wing fired a concussion missile.

The two attacks flashed past each other, each landing to devastating
effect on the other. When the missile hit, Brad rode the explosion
out, and began shutting down his systems. The fighter began to fall.

The A-wing took the ion burst in the nose. The shields collapsed and
lightning played over the fighter. It, too, began to fall.

Brad stared in shock. "What have I done?"

Then he began to hear it. The sound of air rushing past his fighter.
As he watched the falling A-wing, he saw the hull begin to redden as
the friction began to build. He noticed the same thing on the nose of
his own fighter.

The fighter began to tremble as it fell. He had to do something for
Dorset. Her fighter was disabled and plummeting to Earth. The only
idea that came to mind was so risky that he wanted to reject it; but
he couldn't.

He reactivated his ship's inertial dampeners and disengaged himself
from the harness. He got up from his seat and turned to face his Droid
gunner. "Drake, use the B-wing's control surfaces and maintain a
position a meter from the A-wing. Use the vector thrusters if you have
to."

He hoped the droid's programming was up to the task, but it seemed a
straightforward enough problem for a droid to handle, albeit a
delicate one.

He opened the cockpit hatch. Wind whipped past him as he secured
himself to the inside of the B-wing. And there was the A-wing. Falling
deceptively gracefully, it almost looked as if Drake could stop it
with an outstretched finger. But he knew that if he were to try, he'd
be lucky to just lose the arm.

Inside the cockpit, Dorset Konnair could be seen desperately trying to
restart her powerplant. He fired a shot at her hull with his blaster
to get her attention. It worked.

Brad held up a piece of survival rope. She got the hint, appeared to
think it over, then began trying to get her fighter's fall stabilised.
Soon the rotation ceased and her canopy was to the B-wing.

The canopy jettisoned. It narrowly missed Brad's face as it whipped up
into the air. He ducked back instinctively, shaken. Dorset was
disengaging herself from her harness. He threw her the rope and hoped
desperately that this would work.

She flailed for the rope for a few gut-wrenching seconds, then caught
it. She grabbed onto it and disengaged the harness. Brad heaved on the
rope.

She'd almost made it across the gap when the A-wing suddenly spun and
smashed into Dorset's legs. She screamed, the sound barely audible
over the wind, and slammed into the B-wing. Brad hauled her into the
hatch, simultaneously angry and thankful for their luck.

When he shut the hatch he saw that Dorset had been rendered unconcious
by the strike. Not surprising, he thought to himself. I wouldn't want
an A-wing smashed against my legs like that.

Drake looked out the cockpit window and saw the A-wing still sitting
there, a meter from the B-wing. "Drake, you can seperate us from the
A-wing now. Disable all systems but inertial dampers and life support
and return to a freefall."

The A-wing began to drift away from them. He turned his attention to
Dorset's wounds. Blood had begun to seep through the legs of her
flightsuit. He felt tears threatening to form as he began
administering basic first aid. She's going to need bacta treatment, he
thought to himself. He cursed the New Republic that had forced his
hand like this. 

It had been such a small thing at first. Building droids. Selling them
to the Empire for a tidy profit. Preventing human lives being lost.
Keeping Inquisitor Piggy from finding out about it. Then Piggy got
suspicious because he'd been in the right place at the right time, so
he'd been forced to bluff his way out. And that had required letting
Piggy see his droid. Oh, that and holding him at gunpoint. That had
caused Piggy to brand him a traitor.

And so, to keep Corran Horn from killing him, he'd had to shoot down -
and seriously wound - Dorset. His wing.

All because it's illegal to build droids that don't have anti-weapon
protocols.

The fighter continued its uncontrolled plummet towards the Earth.

Damn the New Republic.