I notice Rogue Squadron fandom has died down since the series ended, but hopefully there are still a few fans roaming around out there!

Takes place roughly 7-9 ABY, so Wedge would be nearing 30. Pre-Wraiths, I think (though that may change, depending on where the plot takes me).

Rogue Squadron

1. Commander Wedge Antilles

2. Jorram Nelson (oc)

3. Major Tycho Celchu

4. Lieutenant Hobbie Klivian

5. Lieutenant Corran Horn

6. Ooryl Qyrg

7. Gavin

8. Asyr

9. Wes Janson

10. Slee

11. Inyri Forge

12. Feylis Ardeyle

As Hobbie, Tycho, and Wedge sprinted out of the burning building, the bad aim of the few remaining stormtroopers whizzing by them, they all were concurrently thinking that their situation couldn't get any worse. At least they were still alive - the ground team they were supposed to be protecting was dead, to a man.

As they got to the dock where they had left their X-wings, they ground to a halt. Hobbbie's X-wing had been crushed under a falling pillar, a mass of twisted metal and smoke.

"Sithspawn!" Tycho turned to Wedge as they took shelter behind some destroyed machinery, wincing as the bolts scorched the metal around them. "Tonna's backup file was in Hobbie's X-wing."

"More importantly, my ride was in that X-wing," Hobbie cursed.

An idea dawned on Wedge. It wasn't a very good idea, admittedly, but then he had acted on worse. "Ok, here's my plan. Hobbie, take my X-wing, and you and Tycho fly back up to help the Mon Remonda."

We're not leaving a man behind, so don't even try." His second in command looked at him stubbornly.

Behind him Hobbie nodded in agreement. "Not gonna happen, boss."

"You trust me, right?" They all flinched as a blaster shot hit the metal right above their heads. Wedge looked at them expectantly. "Right?" Looking more suspicious than trusting, the two pilots slowly nodded their heads. "Good. Because this time, I actually do have a plan, and it's going to work. While you two fly up, I'm going to go back and beam the plans up to one of our Star Destroyers. They should both be in range by now."

"You're conveniently ignoring the fact that this place is about to blow up," Tycho snapped. "How the hell are you going to get back out?"

Wedge gave them his most rakish and confident grin. "The least of your worries, Tych. Not getting blown up is one of my special talents."

But both Hobbie and Tycho looked torn, considering. Wedge knew they suspected the truth, but he also knew that there was no other way. Time was in short supply, and about to get shorter. There was a huge crash, and they spun around to see another ornamental pillar come crashing down...just meters away from Tycho's X-wing.

Tycho energetically pointed a finger at him. "If this is a martyr self-sacrifice, Wedge, I'm not going to humor you; I'm just putting 'stupid egoist' on your gravestone, got that?"

Hobbie nodded. "And I'm going to give Rogue Squadron to Wes."

Wedge growled, a grin underneath the grimace. "That's beneath your power, Captain Klivan, and Janson couldn't deal with the mutiny, anyways. And Tycho, that better be 'universe's most brilliant and humble crowned jewel of Corellia.' And a really good smuggler."

"Wedge, you were an awful smuggler!"

"That's just Mirax talking," Wedge shot back, and then went into a crouch, checking the charge on his blaster. He could practically hear the adrenaline pumping through his veins. "Whatever happens, don't let the ties take out Mon Remonda's shields, and make sure the Star Destroyers get into the right quadrant."

Tycho gave in and grimaced. "They'll be there. And you watch your rear end, boss."

The three of them paused amidst the chaos to make eye contact. It was a look of comradery that only fellow soldiers could share, an implicit understanding beyond the comprehension of civilians or innocents. It spoke to how long they had been fighting together, throwing their bodies and fighters in the path of destruction.

"On the count of three," Wedge shouted over the roar of another explosion, breaking the spell, "we split! One...two...THREE!"

Wedge leaped out from behind the machinery and sprinted towards the other side of the hanger, spraying blaster shots in the direction of the unseen stormtroopers. Hobbie and Tycho hesitated for one moment, and then made like mynocks out of hell for the x-wings.

It was easy for Wedge to find his way back to the control room, and conveniently none of the stormtroopers in the docking bay bothered pursuing him. Not that he blamed them – a base-wide self-destruct system made what he was doing rather stupid. As he stumbled back into the eerily still room, tripping over corpses, he couldn't help shaking his head in regret. The mission so far was a disaster.

Several months ago, General Airen Cracken's agents happened upon a gold-mine of intelligence - a high ranking Imperial had quietly defected to the fledgling New Republic while retaining his command post. In short, Cracken could gather information without the Imperials knowing it had been leaked.

The diamond; a small planet in the heart of Imperial space was revealed to be a major communications planning center. It was here that all the software and new codes for Imperial data transfer and communication were programmed, and where much of the encrypted information transfer between planets and fleets passed through. If one could get in and quickly steal the information before it was destroyed, they would have weeks, if not months, of access to oblivious Imperial channels.

Cracken had organized a ground mission to stage a simple strike and take. It seemed a feasible plan, considering that base's defense was not in machine power or manpower, but in the secrecy of its location. Another case of Imperials falling on old Alliance strategies to survive, Wedge thought.

Just an hour before, the Mon Remonda and two captured Star Destroyers appeared without warning in orbit around the planet, releasing fighters to combat the few tie squadrons and raining fire onto the earth surrounding the central base.

The infiltration squad flew in on a Lambda craft, with Wedge and Wing One of Rogue Squadron flying cover for the atmospheric mission. The lambda landing went smoothly as the Rogues handled the few ground-based ties and the anti-starfighter batteries. Tonna and her crew exited into a hairball of stormtrooper fire, which Wedge and his three squadron mates could only do so much against. Strangely, they had noticed that the imperials firing on the commando team were not doing so methodically, but seemed to be fleeing to several shuttles in the hanger.

After the team blasted their way into the building, a wounded stormtrooper made it apparent why the planet was so lightly guarded. The Imperials had installed a massive self-destruct system in the entire base; if compromised, the sensitive information on the planet would simply blow up. Fortunately, in a show of humanity uncharacteristic of Imperial planning, the system was timed such that all the base inhabitants would have time to evacuate. Wedge realized now that this wasn't humanity; not only was it inconceivable that a ground crew could infiltrate as quickly as Cracken's commandoes had, but the struggling Empire couldn't spare the hundreds of technicians and troops that were stationed on the planet. It would have been a heady blow.

The stormtrooper had revealed that the explosions would happen in stages, with external structures targeted first. And they were; the hangers, most empty except for a few tardy stormtrooper transports, exploded in balls of flame that the starfighter pilots could see dotting the massive base. Collateral damage; thirteen of Cracken's commandoes. The terrified stormtrooper told Tonna that the sensitive control centers would be next. With no time to lose, Tonna had led her crew straight to the central database, and they had managed to disengage the self-destruct mechanism for that wing of the building. How, Wedge had absolutely no idea. But then, he wasn't used to diffusing bombs, just setting them off.

They had begun streaming the codes in the database to Mon Remonda, until Mon Remonda's communication center was taken out by a suicide tie-bomber. The next sequence in the self-destruct mechanism then went off, taking with it Rogue Two, Jorram Nelson, an excitable new recruit from Borleias. A tie hit by debris from an exploding command tower had spun directly into his fighter. There was no time for Jorram to register Tycho's shouted warning or for him to eject, and he had disappeared in a ball of sickly yellow and orange.

At this point, most of the base personell seemed to have evacuated, but some of the remaining imperials had the sense to realize that New Republic troops had actually reached the planet, and were inside the base. It was these few stormtroopers that picked off another significant portion of Tonna's crew.

Next Tonna's people had tried streaming the data to the Torlan's Freedom, one of their Star Destroyers in orbit, but the sattelite dish that projected to that particular region of space had been destroyed in the second self-destruct sequence. In order to receive the data, one of the two Star Destroyers would have needed to enter the region that the crippled Mon Remonda was in, something that would have taken time they just didn't have. They tried streaming to their Lambda craft, but a rogue tie-bomber destroyed the grounded ship while Wedge, Hobbie, and Tych were still reeling and distracted by the loss of Nelson. Tonna had frantically commed the pilots, and they could hear screams and blaster fire behind her voice. She needed foot backup, they heard, and then static.

At this point, the entire base seemed abandoned. The tie-fighters were vaped, the batteries were quiet, and so the three x-wings landed in a desperate attempt to see if they could help the commandos they were supposed to be protecting. They'd found their way to the database room by following a trail of dead bodies, corpses of both imperials and their friends and acquaintances. The room itself was the scene of a massacre. Part of the bomb sequence had apparently gone off despite Tonna's efforts, and while the important computer equipment was largely untouched, the blast and shrapnel had taken out a dozen of the remaining commandoes. It was a gory sight.

Tonna's body was leaning over the control panel, a stormtrooper blaster shot steaming from the back of her head.

"Sithspan!" Gagging from the smell of blood and burning hair and flesh, they had set about finishing what Tonna had started at the console. They used the entry codes from her datapad and began streaming the data to Hobbie's shipboard computer and R2.

A second attack had forced them to run while the data was still streaming.