“WAKE UP, COMMANDER ELBEE!!!”

Werdna jumped out of his medical bed with a startle. This induced a head rush though, and he collapsed back into his bed.

“Well done, Elbee! You’ve just destroyed two, highly expensive, TIE Defenders in as many days.”

Slowly, Werdna opened his eyes again, to see FO Kessler’s craggy face, rather more peeved than the last time he saw him…which was quite hard to comprehend considering the last time he saw him.

“Yes, yet again, I’m doing a favour for Kramer!” Kessler noted, “He’s still even more pissed off with you than I am.”

Werdna just stayed lying down staring blankly at the ceiling, trying to work out in his head what was going on.

“Thanks to your ‘amazing’ piloting skills, you’ve wrecked another fine ship, making me consider if we should just make a separate factory line of ships for you to blow up.”

The words were just washing over Werdna. Hell, he thought, this feels worse than a hangover. What did I do to deserve this? After a moment, Werdna remembered what he had done. As he put his hands over his face, there was a little murmur of “Oh no…”

“Damn right, ‘Oh no’! These little stunts of yours are getting you a lot of attention for all of the wrong reasons,” Kessler continued on. Does this man never shut up? Werdna thought to himself.

“It’s lucky for you that your Squadron Commander seems to like you, or else you would have been shot by now! But if this happens one more time, I will do everything in my power to see it done!” Kessler shouted at Werdna, “I’ll speak to you again when you get out of the medical bay. Goodbye, Elbee!”

Werdna pulled his sheets over his head and scrunched his face up to block out as much of the light out of his eyes as possible. A part of him wished that he didn’t get out of his crash alive.

“How are you, Werdna?” came a familiar voice, “that was a cool stunt you done out there.”

Werdna crept out of his sheets and replied, “I’m sure that enjoyed every second of it, Sequoh.”

“Sure did, got me out of bother anyway,” joked Sequoh.

“You know if I didn’t wreck my ship every time I saved you, I would have a full uniform of medals,” moaned Werdna, “…like you do.”

“Some of us are just lucky I suppose! I must have a guardian angel or something.”

“Yeah…ME!!!”

“Good point,” noted Sequoh, “Anyway, talking about good luck you’ve got a weeks leave because of your injuries. I’ll also sort it so you that promotion to CPT when you come back.”

“You know I don’t want to get promoted, Captain is as far as I can go as a Flight Leader,” reminded the injured pilot, “I’ll get power hungry and want to move.”

“You won’t…I know you won’t. You’re too loyal!!!”

“Probably. Go on then, you’ve twisted my arm…”

Sequoh thought to himself for a moment, “You were quicker to concede that I thought you would be, it only two months for you to accept the promotion.”

Werdna smiled at Sequoh, “See…I’m already power hungry!”