Chapter 7

"We got a message, guys," Wedge announced without a word of greeting, surprising Tycho and Wes who were sitting in the mess hall having lunch. They exchanged a glance and without another word, followed Wedge.

Although Tycho had taken over Rogue Squadron from Wedge, Wedge often came by for a visit or if something important had happened that required the participation of the Rogues. Wes was willing to bet that it was the latter this time. Wedge was walking briskly and only stopped when they reached his old office, now Tycho's office, who merely keyed in the code and motioned for them to go inside.

"Who's it from? What happened?" Wes asked, remaining standing while Tycho sat down in his usual dignified manner. Wes was tense, it was palpable that he already had his suspicions as to what the message was about.
"It's Hobbie," Wedge said, looking at them. "Starfighter Command Main Secretary got an audio call from a young man on Ralltiir, a certain Helvin Mareen, working at Cambrielle Main Spaceport as aide to one of the hangar masters. He says that Hobbie was supposed to meet with him today and he did not show up. Apparently Hobbie saw someone at the spaceport, which was why he talked to Mareen in the first place and asked him for the address that someone would be staying at."

Tycho looked grim and Wes swore, dragging his fingers through his hair. "Who?"

Wedge exhaled heavily. "Moff Tarl Morth."

"Sithspit!" Wes yelled and brought his fist down on the table. That particular Moff had proven to be a great foe for the Rogues for a long time- he had cost them quite a few of their newbies, something that weighed heavily on all of them. The newbies were the one who were in need of guidance and protection for their first flights and as much as they tried to help them with that, they often failed and each failure felt worse than the one before.

Wes started pacing. "That idiot," he muttered, clearly referring to Hobbie. "I told him to call me and all I get is a dodgy message informing me that he is sorry but is unable to call at the time being because he is busy. He is busy! Ha! Busy trying to get himself killed."
Wedge held a hand up to stop him. "There is more, Wes. The boy also says that Hobbie looked really bad- very pale and shaky, almost as if he was fighting off some bad infection."

"Ha!" Wes gasped. "It keeps getting better! The nerf-herder goes on some foolhardy mission while he is hardly able to walk! I bet he just swallowed some painkillers, telling himself that it was not as bad as it looked. Oh – when I see him he better run fast and he better run far…"

Tycho rose. His voice, as always, was calm, but his eyes betrayed his concern for their comrade and friend.

"What is the plan, Wedge?"

Wes finally stopped ranting and looked at Wedge expectantly, although he was quivering with badly restrained energy and worry.

"There is a local intelligence team on the planet," Wedge said evenly. "I have already contacted them telling them about what happened- they'll act as our local support. Also, a platoon of Special Forces is ready to lend assistance. Regarding the Rogues, it'll just be you two and me who will be going."

Tycho nodded and said: "We'll need to work out a program with simulations and training flights for the next days and I am going to put Corran in charge and inform him about the situation." He looked at Wes, who was still looking anxious. "I need you to take care of the sims, Wes, while I will take care of the rest."

Wes merely nodded.

Wedge had been silent and withdrawn, but then he spoke up again: " Inform only Corran though- I want to keep this thing as much under wraps as possible. No-one needs to know the nearer circumstances."

No-one needs to know that Hobbie, while having some kind of mid-life crisis, first drowned his sorrows in alcohol and then went on a suicide mission while being as ill as a bantha, Wes translated in his head. Sithspit! How could his wingman have been so stupid? To be fair, Wes had watched Hobbie become more and more morose over the past few months, if not over the last year. The years of fighting were taking their toll on him- on them all, but maybe more so on Hobbie because he didn't have the support of a loyal partner. Fianna…Wes nearly snorted. Fianna had been a spoiled, ambitious shark of a girl, yet Hobbie had ignored it, love-struck as he had been. Wes winced a little at the memory of Hobbie on the day after Fianna had left- it had really hit him hard. Maybe not the loss of Fianna per se, but the loss of the notion that he had what Wedge, Tycho and him had, even if it was only the illusion of that same happiness. Oh Sith, hopefully he was alright.

"Alright, you two, are there questions? No?" Wedge took a look at them. Long years of knowing each other had made it possible for them to read each other's expressions fairly well and right now they all showed worry and concern for Hobbie.

"We'll get him back," Wedge said determinedly. "Let's go."


"You win!" a black-haired boy gasped. He, like his sandy-haired companion was splattered with mud from head to toe. His statement elicited a wide smile from the mud-covered face of the other boy.

"I knew I would win!" he replied smugly.

"You dream of it," the smaller boy yelled back, his pride challenged and launched himself again at the other. They wrestled in the mud for a long time, before they finally gave up and fell on their backs next to each other, still laughing.

"My Mother is going to kill me," the sandy-haired one gasped in between heaves of laughter.

"Mine too, Hobbie," his friend said in between chuckles. "Probably more than yours."

Hobbie raised himself up on his elbows and looked over to him skeptically. "How can you kill someone more? I thought you can only kill someone, not more or less, Janne."

Janne stuck his tongue out at him. "You don't know my Mother. She can kill anyone more."

Hobbie looked at him doubtfully. "If you say so…come on!" he added, pulling Janne to his feet. "Race me to the meadow!"

In the meadow by the river, just beyond the street they lived in, they finally collapsed in the grass. The sun made the mud on them dry quickly and Hobbie laughed: "Look, Janne!" He indicated the mud that fell off of him in large clumps. Janne grinned. "That's fun!"

After a while though, they grew tired and dozed in the warm sunshine.

"I am going to be a pilot when I grew up,"Hobbie murmured drowsily.

"I know," Janne replied. "You told me three-million-thousand times already, Hobbs." He frowned. "I don't want to be a pilot." Hobbie looked over at him. "What do you wanna be then?"

"I dunno," Janne replied, his brown eyes thoughtful. "But no matter what we are going to do, we will always defend the Empire's honor, right?"

"Right," Hobbie confirmed. "And we will always be friends."

Janne was silent for a long time and then a smile spread on his face. "You are my best friend, Hobbie," he then said quietly into the sunshine and the blue sky.


Hobbie gasped awake in a dimly-lit room. He opened his eyes half-way. Sweat was beading on his forehead and he felt, to be short, like bantha-poodoo. His head was killing him and made it hard to form any kind of coherent thought.

"Wha-at-?" he slurred slowly and tried to sit up. A sharp pain in his shoulder made him gasp and try to double over, but he was prevented from doing so by the bonds that held him on the chair he was tied to. No-one answered to his question, so Hobbie concluded that he was alone.

Gingerly he tried to sit up again and panted through the pain with gritted teeth. How- how had he come to be here? Where was here anyway?

The walls of the room were bare and the only thing spending some light was a small flickering lamp in the corner as well as the small square window in the room's door. There were no windows to the outside. Hobbie shivered. Looking down at himself he discovered that he didn't have his boots anymore. They had also stripped him of his jacket, his shirt and his combat trousers which just left him in his thin white undershirt and his shorts. He could taste blood in his mouth, along with the unpleasant taste of vomit and saliva and nearly gagged. There was a stain of congealed blood on his undershirt too, which explained the pain in his shoulder.

Hobbie tried to move again, but fell back as pain shot through him and he let out a choked scream. His vision whitened and then blackened, while he hung on his chair and exhaled in little painful gasps.

It took minutes that felt to him like hours or maybe days until he could resume his earlier position of sitting half-bent over in his chair again. His mouth was getting very dry and he tried to moisten it in vain. It had started to get very cold and so he curled up on himself without jostling his injuries too much. The headache was a steady pounding between his eyes and the dizziness and nausea had not gone away either. Add to that the new pain in his shoulder and his left temple and Hobbie felt as if he was something a Sith had spat out. He felt too hot and too cold at the same time. Small shivers raced down his spine and he whimpered quietly, feeling how tears came to his eyes due to the pain.

Sith…oh Sith. He dimly remembered a voice telling him that he was out of luck, while he had chased that Moff down. And then pain and nothingness, except for that dream of himself and Janne when they had been children.

Sitting there in the half-darkness, Hobbie felt like the biggest idiot alive. Why had he not contacted Wes and told him what he was trying to do? Maybe he had been trying to prove something, he realized ruefully- trying to prove that he could crash and burn wherever he was? He had certainly managed as much, he thought cynically. After a while of not moving, he could feel pinpricks and needles all over his body, no doubt because of the cut-off circulation. He also was in dire need of a refresher station and at the same time felt completely dehydrated. His headache had increased to constant hammering and again he let loose a small miserable sound.

"Hello?" he finally croaked, trying to speak as loud as he could but over the dull buzzing in his ear it sounded weak and strained, barely enough to get to his own ears.

Minutes passed, or maybe hours, he couldn't have said while he was lost in the darkness there, dreaming of familiar faces and friendly touches that never came. He could feel consciousness starting to slide out of his grasp gradually and his head started to sink forward….was it this then? Was he going to die here? He had never wanted to die and no matter what Wes seemed to think of him lately, he had never been suicidal either…he had never tried to get himself killed on purpose…and he would have never done so. Life was something to value- his sweet Mother had taught him that and he honored it, no matter how many kriffing curveballs life threw him in the meantime.

He felt himself starting to wheeze. His breath rattled in his chest and he thought numbly that it was surely not such a good sign. He did…he did not want to die…not like this…

"Goin' out with a – with a bang," he muttered nearly inaudibly. "Not- n-not like this…" With that he felt how his grasp on consciousness failed him completely and he slumped forward in his bonds.

Then the door was opened. A man's voice yelled: "I told you to feed him! And I told you to give him water! We need him alive if we want to question him, you nerf-herders!" And then louder: "What are you standing around for? Fetch something, go!"

Two hasty salutes and two black-clad Imperial Intelligence officers ran off, looking for all sounds and purposes like scolded children.

The man who had yelled these orders sighed and entered the room slowly and then crouched down in front of the unconscious Rebel Major. Carefully he loosened the bonds around his arms and legs before taking one of the long-fingered calloused hands between his and rubbing at the wrist to get the blood circulation started again. The Major did not wake up, not even when the man sighed again, withdrew a knife and cut the ropes completely, lifted the Rebel up with a grunt of effort and sat him down on the ground, leaning him against a wall. Brown eyes serious, he assessed the Major's injuries, peeling the fabric of his undershirt away from the wound on his shoulder, to which the Rebel finally gave a hiss, but still did not wake.

A few minutes later, the Imperials returned, freezing in the doorframe at the sight of their commanding officer crouched down in front of the Rebel, gently disinfecting and cleaning his wounds before applying a bandage- and all that with a strange look in his eyes.

"What?" he snapped when he finally became aware of them. He eyed the water and bread they had brought. "Put it down in the corner," he growled eventually, "while I try to fix the damage you two have done. You nearly killed a valuable asset with your incompetence!"

Finally understanding what the Commander was doing- he was merely fixing up something that would benefit the grand Empire in the future, like a merchant would fix up broken goods he still intended to sell to his clients- they saluted: "Yes, sir, Commander Malsny." The Commander nodded at them and they went off. Before they had even left, he turned back to the Rebel.

Then something strange happened. Commander Malsny did not turn around and leave although there wasn't much he could do for their "asset" at the moment, but instead he leaned forward and took the limp hand of the Rebel officer in his own and squeezed it. His expression was bitter, but it did not seem out of place on his weathered face that seemed to have experienced a lot of bitterness judging from the thin downturned lines around his thin mouth and the dark shadows under his eyes that spoke of more than just sleepless nights. "Sith, Hobbie," the Commander whispered finally in the silence of the room and stayed in his crouched position for a long time, holding the limp hand in his own, motionless. Even when his hand was slippery with sweat, he kept holding on.