Rogue One

by Alexander Freed

  Like a pilot should, he died with his ship.

  —

  Baze Malbus cradled the last true Guardian of the Whills in his arms and answered Chirrut’s dying words. “The Force is with me,” Baze said. “And I am one with the Force.”

  A flare rose in the distance. Something was burning on landing pad nine. In all likelihood, Bodhi Rook, too, was gone.

  Gone before he had ever sent his message? Gone, and rendering Chirrut’s sacrifice pointless?

  Once again, the Empire had stolen meaning from Baze. He might have screamed if not for the man he held.

  “The Force is with me,” he repeated. “And I am with the Force.”

  Did he believe the words? Did it matter? Had it ever mattered?

  The stormtroopers’ perimeter was intact. They’d momentarily drawn back after murdering Chirrut, away from the smoke of the explosion; now they were closing again, sweeping their rifle scopes toward Baze. Their actions seemed interminably slow—as if time had become Baze’s tormentor, so that he might suffer the anguish of a lifetime in a second.

  He spoke the words, and in them he found not comfort but conviction—or the memory of conviction, as if the words were a key to the forgotten faith of his youth. The unlocked memory strangled him, wracking and intense. He knew again the significance of the Force in every breath and action, knew all he had forsaken in years past; saw the vast gulf between the Guardian he had been and the man he was now, and wept in his heart for both. He gently laid the body down and raised his cannon, identified a trooper who was tensing to fire; he sent an energy blast through the trooper’s chest and sent him reeling into sand and dirt. As the rest of the squad returned a fusillade, Baze squeezed his trigger, held it and let his generator scream and his weapon writhe and buck. He alternated swift bursts and raging, aimless streams with precision killings. He advanced on the men and women who had taken his past, his home, his friend, his hope, his faith; but he did not stray far from Chirrut.

  He had nowhere to go. He would not leave Chirrut now.

  He recognized a pain he had felt before—the hot, half-numb agony of a blaster bolt, his nerves obliterated at the epicenter of the wound and screaming around the corona. He fell to his knees and forced himself to rise again. His body was caked in ash and sweat and he stank of burning hair, and he embraced the nightmare, raged with shot after shot until he had surely slain a hundred or a thousand stormtroopers.

  It was not enough. It could never be enough to restore Chirrut or the years he’d lost.

  Baze saw a dying trooper fumble for a grenade and lob it in his direction. The grenade would land short of its target; but Baze could barely stumble forward, let alone run for cover. He wrenched himself about, craned his neck to see Chirrut one last time.

  When death had come for him in the shadow of the walker, he had faced it with defiance. Now there was grief.

  There was no fear.

  Baze Malbus died in pain, but it did not last long.

  —

  Rogue One was alive. Jyn Erso had the Death Star’s schematics, and in those schematics was the chance to save the Alliance. A chance to save Mon Cala. There was no price Admiral Raddus would refuse to pay to see that chance realized.

  With the disabling of one Star Destroyer, the tide of battle above Scarif had turned. Yet while the advantage belonged to the Alliance fleet, bombardment of the orbital gate station uncovered no weakness in either the field or the station itself. A prolonged siege might result in victory, but Raddus didn’t doubt enemy reinforcements were en route; massive firepower might break the gate open, but the Alliance’s fiercest warships lacked the catastrophic might of the Empire’s.

  In silently articulating the dilemma, the solution had become apparent to Raddus. He had laid out his plan to his officers and they had not questioned him. But even to Raddus’s tastes, the price was high.

  He had chosen the Hammerhead Lightmaker and its captain, Kado Oquoné, to implement his vision. Oquoné’s ship had been badly damaged after being flanked by the twin Destroyers, and had since withdrawn from the field of fire to guard the line of retreat. For these reasons it would serve Raddus’s purpose.

  “Are you prepared, Captain?” He spoke to Oquoné from the bridge of the Profundity, his eyes fixed on his tactical display.

  “Nonessential personnel have evacuated,” Oquoné replied. “It’s just me, a skeleton crew, and a handful of droids. Course is locked.” His voice did not tremble. Raddus gave him credit for that; when he’d explained his intent, Oquoné had reacted angrily—yet only for an instant. Since that moment, the captain had been nothing but resolved.

  “Then begin,” Raddus said. The comm went silent. The Lightmaker’s engines pulsed as the great vessel turned—first away from the battle, then back in a wide arc, adjusting its trajectory by fractions of a meter as it went. Raddus had not demanded that Oquoné and his chosen few remain aboard, but such precise work was best left with organics instead of droids alone. Oquoné knew it as well as Raddus.

  The swarm of Alliance starfighters around the second, surviving Star Destroyer formed a loose cordon, locking the vessel in place as larger rebel ships disengaged. These actions would leave both fighters and command ships vulnerable to TIE counterattacks, but Raddus had deemed that price acceptable as well.

  The Lightmaker picked up speed as it approached the fray, pulled by Scarif’s gravity as it pushed with its engines toward the disabled Destroyer. The second Star Destroyer seemed to realize what was happening, but much too late; caged by Red and Gold Squadron fighters, it could go nowhere in time to escape its fate.

  Raddus watched the Lightmaker descend like a spear into the mass of the disabled behemoth. Metal sheared and crumpled, and Raddus feared for a moment that Oquoné’s velocity had been too great—that the Lightmaker would be dashed to nothingness and the most delicate part of the plan, still to come, had failed. Yet the Destroyer absorbed the impact and began to tumble away, its frame marred but intact.

  He spotted the motes of escape pods against the stars. He did not dare hope that they had come from the Lightmaker.

  The disabled Star Destroyer drifted toward its caged twin. Oquoné’s course had been set with precision. As the Alliance starfighters broke away, the two Destroyers collided. Both ships flared with destructive power, and both tumbled more swiftly as Scarif’s gravity gripped them. Locked together by cataclysmic devastation, their entwined wreckage plummeted toward the inner ring of the orbital gate station.

  Where the Star Destroyers struck the energy field, the shield shimmered and radiated and finally broke, dissipating like foam on the crest of a wave.

  “Get us into geostationary orbit above the Citadel, now!” Raddus cried. “All fighters move to defend the Profundity. We must be in position to receive that transmission!”

  The TIE fighters would concentrate on his flagship once the Empire recognized his intent. But in truth, he didn’t need to hold out long. The shield gate would regenerate swiftly enough; Rogue One’s window of opportunity to transmit would be narrow, and if it closed there would be no other.

  Silently, Raddus pledged to name his great-grandchildren after Oquoné and the crew of the Lightmaker. Then he clasped his hands together to await word from Jyn Erso.

  CASSIAN WAS DEAD—ALONG WITH how many others, Jyn didn’t know. The man in white who had been there for the worst moments of her life was present again. The darkness enveloped her, broken by the thousand red eyes of the data cartridges. Her arms trembled violently every time she pulled herself higher, as if ready to wrench loose from their sockets.

  But she could see light above her.

  Climb!

  Her gloves were soaked in sweat turned cold by the data vault’s refrigeration. Wedging her boots into narrow footholds over and over had left her toes numb from compression. The cartridge on her belt felt heavy enough to drag her down below the crust
of Scarif.

  She could see the pulsing aperture in the ceiling clearly now. A series of vents opened and shut in sequence, suctioning the warmest air from the tower. It seemed to buoy her as it wafted free.

  Climb!

  She caught glimpses of blue sky. She was at the top of the data stack, close enough to the first vent to put her arm through. She pictured herself making the attempt and being crushed and bloodied and broken by the pulsing door. For a single despairing moment, she couldn’t bear the thought of another climb. Then the moment passed and she counted one, two, three, to time the movements of the vents.

  Liana Hallik and Tanith and Kestrel—old names, old lives—had done braver, bolder things than this. Jyn Erso could, too.

  She scrambled through a vent, leapt to the next; climbed and waited. Resting was as agonizing as motion. While she paused between apertures, counting seconds, her muscles begged for momentum or eternal stillness—not a tortuous stop-and-go. One, two, three, go! Wait, two, three… She barely noticed the air turn from frigid to warm, the balmy humidity moistening her lips and throat. One, two, three, go! Then there was nowhere for her to climb and she was sprawled on metal plating, the surface uncomfortably hot in the sunlight as she crawled forward.

  She was out of the data vault. Out of the dark.

  She lacked the strength to feel triumphant. She forced herself to stand, fumbled at her blaster as she searched for stormtroopers, for black-clad killers or the man in white. But she was alone atop the tower, on a broad platform in the shadow of an enormous antenna dish. Her knees knocked as she surveyed the bright sky, dense with white clouds that met the sea at the horizon.

  The serenity was marred by the scream of starfighters, cannons blazing in fiery red and sickly green as rebel pursued Imperial and Imperial pursued rebel. The smell of ashes rose from somewhere far below.

  Yet she was alone.

  You don’t have long, she told herself, and coaxed her body into motion.

  She spotted a control panel built into the outer railing across from a turbolift and hobbled over to it, trying to kick life back into her legs. She didn’t recognize the layout—it looked like a comm terminal, but there was no audio input and a dozen toggles she didn’t recognize. She found a slot for a data cartridge, however; half disbelieving, she probed it with her fingers before loading the Stardust tape.

  The screen flashed with options and technical jargon. An authoritative, electronic voice repeated sternly: “Reset antenna alignment.”

  She swore and slammed a fist against the panel. She wanted to kick K-2SO for sending her here, kick him until the droid fell to pieces; and immediately, she felt sick with guilt at the image. Back aching, she leaned in to examine the screen.

  She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. Had K-2SO configured the dish to send to the fleet? Had Bodhi, if he’d made contact? Was the shield down, so the antenna had to be reset in response? She didn’t know, and the panel didn’t tell her. But images flashed on the screen indicating another control unit off a catwalk extending from the tower platform.

  Fine. We’ll reset the antenna alignment.

  She wasn’t going to be the woman who doomed the Alliance because she couldn’t figure out a damn comm panel.

  Clutching her blaster tight, she made her way to the catwalk and spotted the cylindrical control unit rising at the far end. The wind sent her swaying as she stepped onto the plank, and the guardrails looked much too low to do any good. She hurried to the unit, found a dial, and turned it awkwardly between her fingers, one way and then the next, until the voice announced again: “Dish aligning.”

  She heard servos grind and turned to see the great antenna dish in motion. It rose and adjusted until it pointed straight overhead. “Dish aligned,” the voice said. “Ready to transmit.”

  Please be right.

  She started back along the catwalk. The shriek of a TIE fighter rose on the wind, but at first she ignored it. Then the vessel itself swept into view, descending toward the platform with its great cockpit eye fixed on her. She froze, unsure whether to run or to drop to the catwalk in the hope of hiding.

  She ran, and the fighter’s cannons pulsed.

  Emerald light and fire stained her vision. The catwalk undulated like a flag in the wind, then dropped away altogether. The sound of ripping metal filled her ears as shrapnel tore at her legs and sleeves. Her face felt like it was aflame. She reached out desperately, felt her fingers close around something—the remnants of a guardrail or the underside of the twisted and dangling plank—and she screamed a breathless, silent scream as the muscles in her overtaxed shoulders seemed to tear.

  The broken catwalk swung haltingly in the wind. Jyn clung as tight as she could and tried to slither upward as her sight began to return. Through a smeared and smoky filter she made out the blackened edge of the platform, barely an arm’s length away.

  Climb!

  There were no data cartridge handles this time. No convenient footholds. The burning and sunbaked metal felt blisteringly hot against Jyn’s body. She dragged herself upward a centimeter, a millimeter at a time, as the wind tried to prize her fingers free. She was close enough to touch the rim of the platform when she felt a shadow pass over her. She raised her eyes from the catwalk and saw a smudge against the blue sky that she tried to blink away.

  Her eyes stung as ash mixed with tears, but the smudge only grew clearer. A perfect gray sphere hung high above the planet, its surface etched with lines like circuitry.

  She hadn’t seen it on Jedha. Not really, not in the state she’d been. But she recognized it anyway, knew it with her subconscious mind, and felt no surprise.

  The Death Star had come to Scarif.

  —

  The deck shuddered lovingly as the battle station dropped out of lightspeed. Dozens of objects flashed onto the overbridge’s tactical displays—Imperial and rebel vessels in conflict throughout the system—and Wilhuff Tarkin made his assessment after seconds of perusal.

  The Empire was losing over Scarif, but that was about to change.

  Duty officers called out status reports for their assigned sections of the Death Star. The hyperspace journey had gone smoothly and the station was ready for war. Its gunners and fighter pilots were at full alert; more Imperial ships were on their way.

  “Sir, shall I begin targeting their fleet?”

  There was proud enthusiasm in General Romodi’s voice. Tarkin looked to the old warhorse, then shook his head. It might be amusing—even illuminating—to test the station’s capabilities against a rebel armada, but now was not the day to toy with the enemy. Director Krennic, General Ramda, and Admiral Gorin had all failed to solve the problem at hand, granting the rebels opportunity after opportunity to seize the schematics from the Citadel.

  At last report, the data vault itself had been breached. It was a show of incompetence so great that Tarkin was almost curious to know how Krennic might explain it away.

  Almost curious.

  No. Best to start fresh—to eliminate the threat of the rebels, however slight, and clear away the deadwood of the Imperial military.

  “Lord Vader will handle the fleet,” Tarkin said. “The plans must not be allowed to leave Scarif, at any cost.”

  Romodi understood. “Yes, sir,” he replied, and began calling orders to his aides.

  Tarkin looked to the viewscreen and to Scarif: an ocean-drenched sphere of islands rich with rare metals, useful as a construction outpost and research incubator away from the Senate’s prying eyes. But Tarkin would not miss it. Over the years, too many officers had treated it as a place for unofficial retirement; a tropical paradise where they could neglect their duty in comfort. The loss of the Citadel and the planetary shield would be a pity—but no more than that.

  “Single reactor ignition,” Tarkin said. “You may fire when ready.”

  —

 
Orson Krennic turned his pistol over in his left hand, tracing the ridges of the grip through his glove. He rarely ever drew the weapon—his custom DT-29, maintained with exquisite care over the years—but he had chosen it for the brutal force it delivered in a single shot. It was a killing tool, meant to end a foe at close quarters.

  The circumstances in the vault had negated its effectiveness. Even his death troopers had been unable to fell the woman. Her accomplice didn’t concern him—the man was a stranger, and a dead one at that—but the woman…

  She’d looked at him.

  From her perch among the data cartridges, with wide eyes full of mockery and hatred, she’d looked at Krennic. The same woman who had come for him on Eadu; who had, he did not doubt, received Galen Erso’s message on Jedha and escaped the destruction of the Holy City. She had recognized him, and he now felt with wrenching certainty that he had seen her long before her infiltration of the research facility.

  He could not say when or where. But he knew.

  Whoever she was, Galen had selected her to be his vengeance from beyond the grave—turned her into his weapon. Krennic wanted to scream at Erso, to rage at the injustice of a dead man placing fresh obstacles in his path. You were a hypocrite and a coward in life. There is no changing that now!

  But exorcising Galen would require more than words. So Krennic rode the maintenance turbolift to the top of the communications tower, where he might put an end to the man’s last act of sabotage.

  As it approached the top, the lift shuddered violently and its lights went dim. Krennic nearly dropped his pistol as he set a palm against the wall for balance. The carriage had halted. Once it steadied, he raised a fist to strike the door before thinking better of the choice. He did not know how precarious his situation was.

  He activated the control panel comlink and adjusted its settings. “General!” he snapped. “What’s going on at the top of the tower?”