With the news over, the show cut back to the challenge. Back on the Star Destroyer's hangar deck, Wes, Tycho, and Hobbie had finished making spot repairs to their rustbucket fighters. They stood in a huddle, reading from the datapad handed to them by a production team assistant.

'"Now that you have put your junk heaps through a combat test,"' Wes read aloud, '"you must now put your fighters through one final event. You are to test your starfighters' fuel economy, cruising speed, reliability, and comfort by flying from Kothlis to Zeltros in a race."

They looked up and traded surprised looks. Tycho frowned. 'But I'm married,' he said.

'And you're flying Koensayr,' Hobbie replied, 'so you lose by default.'

They shrugged and Hobbie continued reading aloud. After all, there was no point in Wes prepping early. They weren't allowed to start the race until the green light was given by the production team. '"You will deploy your fighters using your current fuel levels and are forbidden from stopping at a refueling station during this phase of the test. The first to reach the coordinates provided on this datapad will receive one free night at Panara's Party Palace."'

Tycho rolled his eyes. 'Well, maybe I'll be able to get Winter something nice,' he said.

Hobbie chuckled and ran to his fighter. Wes waited on repulsorlifts with a self-satisfied grin as the other two fighters lined up alongside him before the hangar's mag-con field. Well, Wes sure is acting like he's already won, thought Hobbie.

The production team assistant held up a datapad whose screen glowed red. With each tap on its screen, he changed its color, signifying a countdown. Red. Yellow. Green.

Wes exited the hangar with an enthusiastic whoop, pushing his rickety atmo-fighter to its limits as he maxed out the throttle. 'Yes,' he muttered to himself, 'get out of my way, civilians! Look at me, I'm speeding along, I'm going to get there first! Just need more powe-'

Janson's questionably sane soliloquy was interrupted by the bray of a wild animal on the squad band.

'JANSOOOOOOOOON!'

Back aboard the Star Destroyer, Hobbie banged his fists on his control board. The source of his anger blinked red on the fuel gauge, signifying an empty tank. It had taken him too long to realize that Wes had cut his and Tycho's fuel lines and drained their tanks, leaving their fighters empty. While the happily married Alderaanian calmly went about his refueling routine, Hobbie leaped out of his cockpit, grumbling something about a lanvarok and Wes' female relatives as he went to fetch a refueling line and a toolkit to patch up any cuts Wes had made.

Meanwhile, Janson, already at the first hyperspace buoy, had activated his hyperdrive's charge-up sequence, shutting off his sublight engines to conserve fuel and plugging his iHolo into the control board, singing along loudly despite his utter inability to carry a tune.

'Hoth ain't the kind of place to raise your kids

In fact it's cold as hell

And there's no one there to raise them if you did

And all this science I don't understand

It's just my job five days a week

A rocket man, a rocket man

And I think it's gonna be a long, long time in a galaxy far away...'

Minutes later, Hobbie and Tycho reached the same buoy and made the jump simultaneously. While Tycho rambled on about refueling and the Dianoga's fuel economy, Hobbie continued to grumble in his cockpit. To pass the time in hyperspace, he produced a pair of saurian figurines from a thigh pocket and began to act out a scene.

'Yes, this is a fertile land,' he said, mimicking Wes' voice, 'we shall rule over all this land and we shall call it...This Land.'

'I think we should call it your grave!' Hobbie continued, aping Palpatine.

The first reptile figure bobbed in alarm. 'Ah! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!'

Dino-Palpatine chortled heartily. 'Ah-ha-ha! Mine is an evil laugh! Now die!'

Dino-Wes collapsed as Dino-Palpatine hit him with very tiny Force Lightning, the sound effects provided by Hobbie's own voice. It continued like that for some time before the blue swirls and neon madness of hyperspace reverted to the starry view of realspace. Then another alarm began to ring in Hobbie's cockpit.

'Oh no,' he said. He opened a line to Tycho. 'Tych, you there?'

'Hobbie,' the Alderaanian responded, 'what's up?'

'Got a warning light. I think one of my coolant lines has failed.'

Tycho sounded utterly unperturbed by this. After all, it was Top Gear procedure to leave a man behind if he suffered vehicular issues, and the sturdy Koensayr fighter had held together so far.

'Well, you've got that little liquid coolant injection port in your cockpit, right? Yeah, good luck with that, mate. I'll see you on Zeltros.'

'You have to admire my genius,' Wes said to the camera. 'Cutting their fuel lines has put me at least fifteen minutes in the lead, possibly more if those two encounter hardware issues on the way. There's also the fact that my craft is probably the most fuel-efficient at this point. Tycho's flying Koensayr, and I'm not ashamed to admit that my favorite starfighter brand is a bit lacking in the fuel economy department. They gobble the stuff up like a Hutt at a buffet line.'

He took great bites of air with appropriate chewing sound effects to demonstrate.

'There's also the fact that Hobbie's probably putting an obscene amount of power into his life support system due to his Tracker's rather glaring hull problem. Now, the C-73 was a good little ship. Nippy, just enough power to make you feel like you're actually going fast when you floor the throttle, and a truly ingenious little engine that could keep you going for longer than even a Z-95 if you flew properly. With Hobbie's life support system on overdrive, though, he's probably got his fuel consumption rate up to Tycho's level, probably more.'

His Zeta-19 cruised leisurely past a bright blue star. Asteroids and ancient starship wreckage drifted lazily in the distance, the testaments to some long-forgotten battle. Wes only saw one world in the system, a forlorn and barren rock of a planet orbiting close to its star. His navicom gave the system an alphanumeric designation rather than a proper name, indicating that it was either unsettled or that the few foolhardy settlers in this system were spectacularly boring. The navicom also indicated that he was only a few more hyperjumps away from Zeltros.

'Yeeees,' Wes said, 'Zeltron hospitality here I come.'

Hobbie zipped up his flight suit's pants and grumbled angrily to himself. His fighter's cooling system had finally brought the engine to reasonable levels, but there was no way to make up for lost time unless Wes suffered a catastrophic malfunction of some sort. Even catching Tycho would be tough. Despite the Alderaanian's sluggish ship choice, he had his skills and a seemingly supernatural ability to squeeze more speed out of any fighter he used than was statistically possible. Such advantages would be useful. Well, they would be if Tycho's fighter hadn't broken down in the next system.

Tycho had pulled his fighter to a full stop and gone extravehicular, opening up his engine compartment. He was elbow-deep in the thing's innards when Hobbie dropped out of hyperspace.

'Shut up, Hobbie,' he said, cutting off any potential snark his co-host had to fling.

Meanwhile, Wes had entered the Zel system. Of course, like all entrants, he would have to go through customs at the local space port before he could touch down planetside, and unfortunately for him, Zeltros' services were in high demand this season. He queued up behind an aging Ghtroc freighter and pulled up a game on his iHolo.

'Damn,' he said to himself, 'I underestimated the size of the customs queues. Waiting here alone is going to cost me my entire lead, more if Hobbie and Tycho happen to line up by a more efficient customs officer. I can only hope they suffer more problems along the w-'

Just then, his comm system beeped.

'Hobbie,' he said.

'Wes,' Hobbie replied, 'where are you?'

'Queued up at Zeltros Station. The line's pretty long and it's getting longer, my friend, so you'd better hurry.'

'No problem with that,' said Hobbie. 'Check your sensor board. I just exited hyperspace.'

'Dammit-er, I mean, welcome to the Zel System, Hobbie. Where's Tycho?'

'Up to his elbows in his engines.'

'Not anymore,' Tycho said suddenly, having popped out of hyperspace mere seconds after Hobbie.

'Faulty power converter,' Tycho continued. 'Kept shorting out and putting my fuel readings at zero. Fixed it, managed to improve the power feed to my engines along the way.'

Wes banged his head on his control board. Well, at least the line was moving along quickly. He was next up and grinned as he searched his cockpit for his landing credentials. After several minutes of searching, he stopped and slumped in his seat.

'Hobbie?'

'Yes?'

'Do you happen to know if the producers gave us visas for Zeltros?'

Hobbie smirked and pulled out the producers' datapad. 'Why yes, they did. It was stored in the challenge datapad. Tycho copied the details down on his own pad as well. Why?'

'I don't seem to have my visa. Could you send me a datalink with the datapad's contents?'

Hobbie feigned static by rubbing his glove on his helmet mic. 'Sorry, Wes, too much interference. Must be solar activity. Can't send data bursts. See you planetside.'

Tycho's chuckling, however, could be heard quite clearly.

Hours later, Wes arrived at the rooftop cantina that served as the race's stopping point, haggard and sweaty. Hobbie and Tycho, meanwhile, reclined on beach chairs. Hobbie enjoyed a backrub by a nubile young Zeltron while Tycho sipped from a sunfruit cordial.

'You bastards,' Janson said, his voice full of murder. 'Do you know how long it took to get cleared for landing? Do you know what the customs guys did to me?'

Hobbie shrugged, failing to keep a smug grin down.

'They searched me. Everywhere. And the guy doing the searching had a very large ring.'

Tycho and Hobbie burst into laughter. 'Well, sorry, mate,' Tycho said, 'but grab a drink. I'd offer you a seat but you probably don't want anything near your bum just yet.'

'So which of you got here first?' Wes asked, grudgingly accepting a glass of champagne from a passing waitress.

'Actually, we tied,' Hobbie said. 'Tycho and I decided to step on the finish line simultaneously. Good thing one of the production assistants had to go home sick, because that freed up another reservation for Tycho. Nothing for you, though, sorry.'

Groaning, Wes adjusted the strap on his duffel bag and headed back to his starship to make the trip back to Coruscant. He turned to the camera droid.

'And on that bombshell, back to the studio.'