"Wedge, I hate to say this, but your suicide missions always end up being very useful."

Another chuckle. "Yeah, but I don't have you around to save me this time."

Luke felt his throat squeeze shut, and he struggled to hold back the deep emotions. Think of Kyp. Hearing that Luke didn't respond, not trusting his voice to speak at the moment, Wedge spoke up uncertainly in the silence.

"Luke?"

"Still here, Wedge."

"Look, if you have other things you need to be doing right now, it wouldn't bother me." It occured to Luke that his friend meant it. Not that he didn't want Luke around...he just didn't want to be a burden.

"Wedge, don't be an idiot! I don't care if a planet were blowing up. I'm your wing, alright? You're stuck with me to the end." Luke's voice shook a little, but he brought it back under control. He and Wedge weren't soul-mates, they hadn't grown up together, but they were something else; the comrades in arms who had seen each other through thick and thin. Wedge was the most reliable, trustworthy, honest, friendly-"

"Luke? Hey, I don't know if I ever told you..." his friend sounded embarrassed, and thoughtful. "I just wanted to thank you for all those times you saved me. And I mean, not even me. All of us. All that stuff you pulled, Luke; I've thought it out, and I think you're the reason we're all alive."

"Wedge-"

"No, hear me out. I don't know how I got lucky enough to be your friend, but I couldn't ask for a better one. You're the best type there is, Luke."

"What, the kind with psychic powers?"

"No, not that. Though don't get me wrong, that is pretty helpful sometimes. You just always see things through to the end. And you look out for everybody. You never think twice about climbing out on a limb for people. I just...I was always really proud to fight with you, right?"

Luke didn't trust his voice to answer. He stood staring at the static of the screen. Wedge must have been worrying at the silence again, because he came back in like before.

"Luke?" He was probably worried that he'd made him upset, Luke thought. And it wasn't because he was scared that his friend might be mad at him; he actually didn't want Luke to feel bad. It was probably killing Wedge that when he died, Luke would have to mourn. Wedge would probably sneak off and die in a corner if it meant no one would feel bad about it.

"I'm still here, Wedge. And...thanks." He meant it. Couldn't think of anything else to say. He looked over at Kyp. The boy was expressionless, probably shocked that a simple fighter pilot with no force abilities to speak of had put Luke into such an emotional state. Well, if Kyp wanted to think less of him for it, Luke told himself, then Kyp was just lessening himself.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Just two minutes later, Major Tycho Celchu had wheedled, yelled, and squirmed his way into the Intelligence center via comlink. An overwhelmed Orkwall had patched his X-wing comlink through to Wedge's audio. Tycho hadn't been happy when he found out his suspicions had been right, and that his commander really had absolutely no way of leaving the base before it blew.

He was, in fact, furious. "Sithspawn, Wedge, you told me you had a plan!"

Luke and Cracken stood not ten feet away, whispering intently to each other as busy intelligence agents hurried around. Iella was occupied at one of the data analyzation centers, conveniently within hearing distance of the static-filled exchange. Unbenowest to either pilot, every other agent within distance was trying to listen in as well.

"I did have a plan."

"Commander, I don't know if you've realized this, but when you say plan, it should be implicit that you mean GOOD plan."

"Well, that's implicit for most people. Come on, Tycho, you know most of my ideas aren't good ones."

They could practically hear the silent fuming on the other line. "Look, Wedge-"

"Save it, Tych. I'm running on borrowed luck. I have to obey the return policy sometime or another. How are the Rogues?"

"Hobbie, Gavin, and Fleur all had to punch out. They're in bacta. Except Nelson and you, we're all fine. We're guarding escape routes the imperials might use to get to hyperspace."

"Hobbie blew up my X-wing? Why am I not surprised. But this is good; once you get new fighters in, you'll still be at almost full fighting strength."

"Wedge, that's still once 'we' get new fighters in."

"We both know it's you, not we. It's not a big deal, Tycho."

"I could have stayed. I'm better with imp computers."

"Winter would have killed me, Tych. And knowing Hobbie, he would have lost three limbs before he reached the control room."

"It's still 'stupid egoist' on your gravestone. You know that?"

Wedge chuckled. "Yeah."

When Tycho spoke again, they could hear his voice was choked, even over the static of the comlink. "Wedge, do you have any idea how many people are going to miss you?"

There was a brief silence on the air, as he seemed to consider. "Well... I know you'll miss me."

"Just me?"

"Well, without me, you're responsible for raising Wes." Tycho snorted. "Listen, Tych, I'm sorry." Wedge's voice was quiet, and regretful. "I know what I would feel like if you died. If you feel at all the same, I'm sorry."

This time Tycho's voice was so choked he could barely get the words across. "It's alright, friend. I'll forgive you."

---------------------------------------------------------

"Wedge, are you there?"

Luke worried when a voice didn't respond instantly. The explosions on the com were getting louder, obviously hitting areas near to where Wedge was. Cracken's people had somehow uncovered the plans to the self-destruct cycle in the data that had already been beamed up. The explosions were planned to take out sensitive information centers first, while areas with personel were untouched until later. The final cycle would be one massive explosion that would demolish the entire base, but they hadn't been able to decipher when that explosion would take place. It could be anytime.

Luke felt relief roll off Iella when Wedge's voice crackled back to life. "I'm still here, Luke. I'm having trouble accessing the information you want, though. I'm not very good at slicing."

"That's ok, Wedge. Look, we need to see what the clones look like. Is there a way you can get one of them to the vid-cam?"

He heard a sigh come across the line. "I was worried you'd ask that. Just give me a moment."

Wessiri looked at him. She had given up pretending to be occupied with other tasks, and her whole attention was now on the communication console. "Master Skywalker, can you tell how badly he's injured? With your skills?"

Luke shook his head. "I don't have the power to pinpoint him at this distance and with all these people. If he was closer, yes." He noticed Kyp Durron was watching him with interest, felt it in the Force. Farther out he could also feel the pain of the hundreds of dead, dying, and wounded Imperials and New Republic troops in the system. Honing in on one man's pain in that mess of emotion, familiar friend or not, would have been extremely difficult.

Another wave of worry washed off from Iella, though her face betrayed little. He looked at her with sympathy. "It's possible that if he was seriously injured, I would have felt it. I've occasionally picked up on the pain of friends, even at a distance." Iella nodded, looking slightly reassured.

Another rash of swearing lit up the comlink, and Luke couldn't help grinning. He was one of the few people that knew Wedge had a smuggler's colorful vocabulary, which was rarely used because of the man's leadership responsibilities. Now, his Correllian friend had no such reservations.

Finally, there was a thump on the line, and they could hear rustled noises and more grumbles. Luke could sense all personnel within a twenty foot radius give the drama unfolding on the vidscreen their full attention...while pretending to attend to their tasks, of course. As trained intelligence operatives, they were doing a very good job of just that.

"OK, Luke, you're about to see one hell of an ugly face."

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Wedge. You don't look half bad in those wanted posters."

"Very funny, Skywalker. Here it comes-"

The screen flashed to life again, and several operatives nearby made little exclamations, turning to murmer with each other. Luke decided that Wedge's description had been pretty apt. He had somehow managed to prop a dead stormtrooper up into his seat, the white armored figure slumped back with its arms hanging listlessly. The helmet was off, obviously, and the clone was not a handsome man in death, and probably had not looked much better in life. The slack jaw was too thick, he had heavy jowls, a bulbous nose, a protruding forehead, and thin stringy blond hair. The glazed eyes stared blankly forward.

"Well, that is definitely an interesting cloning choice," Kyp observed, marking his first words of the afternoon.

As they watched, the body began slowly to fall forward, blood and drool dangling out of its mouth. "Oops, sorry about that-" The forehead thunked into the vid-cam, and a few lines of static ran up the screen. An orange-garbed arm appeared to yank the body back, but the body fell backwards too fast it began to list to one side. "Sithspit-" the body disappeared from the screen with a loud thud.

Wedge's friendly face, which had appeared on one side of the vid-screen, winced at the sound. "Sorry. Was that enough of a look for you?"

Cracken, who had come to stand next to Luke during the display, nodded in affirmation. "That'll do."

Wedge nodded, and when he began reaching for the video controls, he stopped when Cracken, Iella, and Luke shouted "No!" in perfect unison.

Wedge blinked up at the screen, and Cracken glared at it. "Keep the vid setting on, Commander. That's an order."

Wedge looked rather unhappy, but complied. "Yes, sir."

The pilot sat down gingerly in the chair just vacated by the dead clone. When he had rather blearily refocused on the screen, he noticed Luke and grinned. "You really are here! I thought you were still at the Maw, Luke!"

Luke grinned back at his friend. "I got bored. Master Jedi don't get to blow things up very often."

"You should rejoin the Rogues. That's about all we do nowadays."

"Did we ever do anything else?"

Wedge looked deep in thought, then looked back in amusement. "No."

"Antilles, you look like a starfighter landed on you." Cracken meant it, too. The left side of the man's face was matted in blood, and his flight uniform had almost as much red as it did orange. Wedge was also favoring his left side, though he was trying hard not to show it.

Cracken and Kyp and everyone looked at Luke in surprise when he couldn't hold in a snicker. Wedge glared too, confused. "What's so funny, Skywalker?"

"You look like one of those heros in a really bad Imperial melodrama."

Wedge sighed. "I was trying to avoid that..."

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It was a new feeling, knowing you were going to die. Wedge was surprised to feel that it also came with an incredible sense of freedom. For years, he had literally pushed himself in the very path of death; those early desperate battles with the Alliance had been just that: desperate, and by all chances, he knew he should be dead a hundred times over. Most everyone else was. People he felt were smarter than him, more charismatic that him, better looking than him, hell, he felt many were probably better pilots than him, had blown up in every way possible, but still he flitted free.

Knowing death could be seconds away made you numb to the reality; and you learned to ignore it. But when he was responsible for others, when risking his own life meant that good people might die with him, death once again became a terrifying monster, something to be avoided, something that settled as an awful sensation in the pit of your stomach.

Now, he faced death with no-one around to suffer the side-effects. Just him. The lack of choice in his survival completely eliminated the responsibility of keeping friends, innocents, and himself safe. As he typed away at the computer, he actually smiled.

It would be alright if he died right now. He'd had a good life, and he'd pulled off some pretty great stunts. He regretted everyone he had lead to their deaths, but he had done well in keeping others alive. No one was dependent on him. His close friends all had others to lean on if they wanted to mope about his death. He'd paid his dues to Booster and Mirax for all they'd done for him.

Who else did he have unfinished business with? He had always purposely distanced himself from all but a few friends, and it was those friends, Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie being at the top of the list, that he worried the most about. But then again, they were all hardened soldiers, and they had a quiet, unspoken agreement. When one of them would die, it was with the trust that his friends would remember the good times and move on. It was something they'd all had to do dozens of times before.

A tiny piece of ceiling bounced off the keyboard, and he blinked at it. It was somehow a bit funny. Raining ceiling? He could see someone writing that into the voice-over narration of his melodrama death scene, camera zooming out from some giant explosion- 'Commander Antilles, the second leader of Rogue Squadron, died an honorable death as the evil shards of a dead empire rained down around him in a flurry of ceiling tiles- And now, the exciting life and death of Corran Horn, a two-part series-'

"Commander Antilles? This is special operative Wessiri."

Wedge had frozen the second he recognized her voice, and he looked up with an expression of befuddled surprise. Which almost immediately turned into a big smile.

"Iella!" He tried to cover how happy he was to see her when he saw her mask of professionalism was in place. It wasn't hard to do, as his was just as practiced. "What can I do for you?"

"Two things, Commander. First, you can recheck the construction log in storage drive C394 for anything more on the cloning tanks. We've just beamed an entry code to your console." Wedge found that he was staring at her, and he shook himself out of it, nodded. She really was beautiful.

"Alright, that's no problem. Should I just stream it all up, or go through it manually?"

"Both, if you can. The stream should be able to handle a little extra data."

Wedge typed away in concentration until he had pulled the correct entry screen up. He reached up to reset some of the controls, and then gasped and gritted his teeth when it stretched the wound in his side. Fighting through the pain, he shoved a bit farther to hit the button, and tried to sit back with as much composure as possible. He considered turning the vid-cam setting off again, but decided against it when he looked up and saw Iella looking back at him. She seemed to be trying very hard not to say something.

He punched another button and met her eyes, feeling slightly light-headed. "It's streaming. Now what was the other thing I could do for you?"

"Get out." Wedge stared at her in complete surprise. "Just, try to get out, Wedge. Please." Iella was leaning into the screen and speaking in a near whisper. Her mask was completely gone, and he could see the fear on her face.

"Iella..."

"Do it for me, Wedge. Please, just start walking."

Something constricted his throat, and he still just looked at her, not knowing what to say. Finally, he just shook his head, slowly, his eyes showing pain, and regret, and grief.

He was going to lose Iella. Suddenly, dying didn't seem as nice as it had been just a few minutes before.

The images on both ends shook and began to run with static as the next set of explosions hit, and then they flashed into darkness as the final self-destruct cycle took out the broadcast.

Iella could look over at another screen and see the heat sensor grid displaying the final destruction of the base that held the man she loved.

--------------------------

Luke felt the explosion throught the Force and sprinted from where he was on the bridge for the intelligence room, leaving Kyp in the middle of sentence. No. Wedge wasn't just his friend, he was a pivotal figure in the New Republic, more so than anyone, superiors or subordinates, probably realized...but now Wedge Antilles was dead. He reached the console with the heavy truth settling around his feet. Iella Wessiri was leaning on her hands on Orkwall's station, the young Calamari standing off to one side, looking unsure of himself. Luke walked straight up to her and put his arm around her shoulders, and squeezed her into a hug. It was as much for him as it was for her. He felt and heard Cracken and Kyp walk up behind them.

Cracken's voice was solemn and regretful as he spoke. "We're leaving for hyperspace as soon as the fighters have returned." He saw Iella nod her head, and continued, clearing his throat. "I know Antilles was close to both of you, and I'm sorry for your loss." It wasn't condescending or ironic, just but a heartfelt condolence from a hardened warrior, and one who had seen too much death in his own time. "There will be time for proper grieving soon. Now, we need to finish the work that Antilles and Tonna started."

Her body posture one of complete grief, but her face calm and unswollen, Iella straightened and turned to look at Cracken. Luke let her go, and shoved back his own feelings. There was still work to be done. As they walked away, the entire control room was a hushed silence, honoring the dead.

Bungung turned as his communications officer waved for his attention. "Sir, message from the Mon Remonda's intelligence unit. It looks like the Imperial fleet in the Yamaka system just entered hyperspace, en route for this system." Bungung chittered in exasperation.

"Have you told the general?" he asked the young man.

Said young man looked slightly bashful. "Doing so right now, sir."

Bungung looked back out of the bridge's viewport into the sparkling space before him. The crippled Mon Remonda had almost left the planet's gravitational field and was preparing for hyperspace. Their other Star Destroyer, Freedom's Victory, was in a stand off with her Imperial sister, their tiny fighter craft battling in a series of flashes and lines in between. The Executor was simply trying to block their exit from the system until reinforcements arrived. The Yamaka system was only an hour away via hyperspace. They were deep in Imperial territory, hence the short travel time. He wondered what spies Cracken had situated in the Yamaka system such that they could inform them of the fleet's departure. If, after such a strong communication burst, they were still alive.

Making a sudden decision, he twirled his small figure to face the bridge crew. "I want all starfighters returned to the ship, all spaced pilots brought in. No one gets left behind. We have half an hour to get into hyperspace."

A chorus of 'yes sirs' greeted him, and he turned back to the massive window. No doubt the general would be disappointed at their necessary departure; extra time to poke around the demolished base would have been precious. With the Empire coming in full force to defend this tiny planet, they would have to leave or face a massacre. But the fact that the Empire still wanted to protect a destroyed base, after all sensitive information had theoretically been taken or destroyed, was interesting. Bungung smiled, his big black eyes shining. He had a feeling that the New Republic would be back to this place, whether the Empire wanted them to or not.