Project Boussh: Epilogue: Who let the Ewoks out? Yub, yub, yub, yub!
by Nick Coghlan

As the Imperial transport landed near the home of Mendellia's 
dictator, Nick shook his head over the archaic look to the 
entire place. Still, it shouldn't be hard to head for the 
biggest concentration of light and noise. Suddenly, he 
grinned. Sure, Josh had had a few Ewoks with him, but that 
group had been limited to what would fit in a single shuttle, 
and had apparently taken heavy losses in the attack on 
Thrawn's star destroyer. This time, Yarg had had an entire 
troop transport to fill. Then Nick's smile got even broader. 
Mike was _not_ going to be happy.

Safely on the ground, the pilot, Modeer Frofthgif, lowered 
the boarding ramp, and Ewoks began streaming out, mostly 
headed towards the castle and their celebrating brethren. 
With that, she turned to Nick and said, "Betcha that was a 
smoother ride than you get from those Imps."

Still grinning broadly, Nick nodded and replied, "Sure, and I 
appreciate it. But then, I didn't start by holding a blaster 
to your head, and there weren't any Ewoks pointing weapons at 
you."

Modeer laughed. "I guess that is a bit of an unfair advantage 
isn't it? Anyway, I'll just shut this baby down, and I might 
see you at the party."

"Cool, sounds good." Turning towards the exit from the 
cockpit, Nick gestured Yarg in front of him. "Well, shall we 
go see how everyone managed to survive this day's insanity?"

***

Nick took a quick look inside the med bay. It was deserted, 
save for a 2-1B droid, and the figures of Ooryl and Josh 
quietly talking, both with a half-finished beer in hand. 
Yarg, after a single look to satisfy himself that Josh was OK 
yubbed happily to himself, and headed off to find Kolot so 
they could get down to some serious drinking.

Hearing the motion near the doorway, Ooryl looked up to se 
Nick standing framed in the entrance. "Nick! I am pleased to 
see you made it here safely."

"Thanks, Ooryl. There were a couple of times where I wondered 
if I was gonna make it here at all. How's Josh?"

At the sound of his name, Josh seemed to shake his head and 
return his focus to the room around him. Standing up, he 
exclaimed, "Nick! You made it!"

"Yeah, I made it. How about you? You're still looking a 
little woozy there."

Josh shrugged. "Just got out of bacta. Ooryl's been filling 
me in on some of the stuff I missed." Josh frowned. "Korak's 
dead. I almost get killed protecting him, and then he goes 
and gets killed anyway."

Nick cocked his head to one side. "Josh, Korak was your 
bodyguard. He was supposed to put his life on the line to 
protect _you_, not the other way 'round."

"Yeah, well, I don't think my brain was really working at 
that level when it happened. I'm alive, you're alive, I guess 
that's what matters."

"Yeah." Nick looked down. "Wedge told me about Alison."

Josh sat back down on the bed. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Bit 
of a bugger, that."

"Yeah."

In the awkward pause that followed, Ooryl motioned towards 
the door and said, "Perhaps now would be a good time for 
Ooryl to go catch up with his squadron mates. I will see you 
both later."

Both Terrans looked up, Ooryl's voice bringing them back to 
the present. Blinking, Nick said, "Cool. Catch you later 
Ooryl."

With a brief wave, Josh added, "Thanks for bringing me up to 
speed. Next time, I'll have to bring the beers."

With that, Ooryl turned and headed back towards the 
celebration downstairs. His grin returning, Nick told Josh, 
"Yarg captured one of the droid transports in New Hampshire. 
We loaded it with the captives and as many Ewoks as would 
fit. The Imperials are safe on the Lusankya, but it just 
didn't seem fair to deny the Ewoks their chance at a 
celebration."

Josh covered his eyes. "Oh smeg. How many?"

Nick continued grinning unrepentantly. "No idea. I wasn't 
exactly with it when we boarded. Lots, though. A lot more 
than came with you. Anyway, what the hell happened to you 
lot? I get up to orbit and find a frickin' Super Star 
Destroyer hanging around, not to mention its friends, and 
then I get down here to find the place swarming with New 
Republic troops. Last time I checked, Wedge and Vickie had 
been captured, the Mendellian government was the enemy, and 
our primary assists consisted of a bunch of elite fighter 
pilots, and a few Terrans with delusions of grandeur."


Peeking out through his fingers, Josh said, "Yes, well, let
me explain." Dropping his hands, he paused to gather his
thoughts, and then continued, "No, there is too much. Let me
sum up. We came down here, hooked up with Becki's revolutionaries,
and managed to oust the Mendellian government. The guy they installed
as the new dictator actually looks like he might do a good job, you know."


Nick quirked an eyebrow. "You know my opinions about 
benevolent dictators."

"Yeah, I do, but that's exactly what I mean. Thayer really 
does seem to think the same way you do."

Nick grinned. "Well, it'll be nice if it actually works out 
that way. Get back to your story."

"Right. Anyway, we were all sitting down here trying to 
figure out howinhell we were going to get our people off the 
Admonitor, when suddenly there they are, Wedge and Vickie and 
Quiara, cruising down to land in the courtyard as casually as 
you please. Turns out Pol' is actually some sort of NRI 
spook, and was able to get them out of their cells and to a 
bunch of fighters to escape. Except it turns out it wasn't 
actually Vickie Pol' rescued, but Vickie's evil clone, who's 
now started calling herself Kelly, and is probably going to 
end up in some strangely disturbing sort of wish-fulfillment 
thing with Pash."

"Err, care to run that past me again?"

"You knew about the clones?"

"Well, a bit. We had that whole thing with Fel in New 
Hampshire."

"Yeah, well, turns out the whole Imp presence was fully into 
the whole cloning gig. Atner was doing it, and had abducted a 
whole bunch of international celebrities as patterns. Hey, 
did you see Rusell Crowe downstairs? He managed to get in on 
one of the Admonitor assault teams by pretending he was Wes."

"He what?" Nick rubbed his temples. "Someone's been putting 
acid in the water around here, haven't they? This is starting 
to sound like you've all been on a really, really bad trip."

Josh grinned. "Yeah, when I put it all together like this, it 
does start to sound a little insane, doesn't it? Anyway, the 
short story is there is now a clone of Vickie around, who 
calls herself Kelly, and she seems to have turned into a 
pretty nice girl. Despite the whole 'trying to kill Wedge' 
thing.  Now, to try and move this along a bit, a whole bunch 
of NR forces turned up, and we were able to stage a raid on 
the Admonitor in an effort to destroy its cloning facilities 
and to rescue our people who were still on board - which was 
basically Pol', Plourr, Brad and Dorset. Although the orders 
in Brad's case were more along the lines of 'Figure out 
whether to rescue or shoot him, and then take appropriate 
action'. Hey, you'll never guess what ended up happening with 
Brad."

"He stayed on one side longer than five minutes?"

"Well, yeah, but he was also the one who actually shot 
Thrawn. And it was a bunch of his droids that actually pulled 
me of the Admonitor after Vickie made a mistake and rescued 
my clone instead of me."

"Amazing. I could almost get to liking the guy." Then 
something Josh had said registered. "Wait a second. _You_ got 
cloned?"

"Uh, yeah. Apparently they made a clone of me with a stormie 
imprint, and it woke up and killed Korak, and then Vickie 
killed it, and then she started going mental until Ooryl 
dragged her down here to prove that I hadn't died when the 
Admonitor was destroyed."

"Right, it's official. You're all insane, and should be 
locked up."

"That's what you say now. You're just jealous that you missed 
most of it."

"Bah.  I will neither confirm nor deny that allegation.  Now 
finish your story."

"Right. Well, the end result was that it all sort of kind of 
ended up working out. The Admonitor got destroyed, along with 
the other Imp ships that showed up, most of our people got 
out safely, and everyone headed down here to celebrate being 
alive."

"Uh-huh. Anything else you think I should know before we head 
downstairs?"

"Hmmm. Oh! We have a new Terra Eight. Sharon decided to go 
work for the new Mendellian goverment or something, so Sci 
gave the spot to an ex-USAF fighter jock who not only took an 
F-16 into an aerial dogfight with starfighters, he also 
scored a few kills and then crashed the fighter into the oil 
spill setting the ocean on fire. After he landed, he headed 
into the palace and started taking on stormies with a 
handgun. Not a blaster. An ordinary, stock-standard, USAF 
service pistol. His crowning achievement was to land the 
killing blow on the Admonitor by using his X-wing to play 
billiards with a bunch of mines which had been distributed 
around the ship. I think his real name's Josh Cochran, but 
Ooryl tells me one of the girls christened him 'Psycho 
Suicide Boy'. I think it fits."

As Josh tilted his head back to drain the last of his beer, 
Nick stood up and said, "Are you quite sure no-one's been 
slipping anything into the water supply? Your story makes the 
sh*t that happened to me in New Hampshire almost seem 
sensible."

Josh laughed. "Maybe they have, maybe they haven't. One thing 
I do know is that I'm damned happy to be alive, and that's 
worth celebrating all by itself. Lets go find another drink."

"Well, a drink for me. I haven't had one yet."

"You came to see me before getting a drink? I'm touched."

"Well, it was more a matter of letting the Ewoks disperse a 
bit before venturing too close to the bar. After all, it 
doesn't look good to come in as the tail end of a rampaging 
horde."

Josh eyed his flatmate speculatively. "You do recognise the 
potential for carnage you've created don't you?" Nick just 
grinned. Josh sighed. "Of course you do."