And Galen Erso stood among them.
This had to be huge. It was one thing to see the engineers get lined up outside like this in the middle of a storm, but for Galen to join them?
Bodhi handed the quadnocs back to Cassian. “That’s him! That’s him—Galen—in the dark suit.”
He pointed toward where Galen stood, and Cassian trained the quadnocs on the man. His face grew grim.
Bodhi felt strange spying on the man who’d sent him off with a message for Jyn not so long before. Now that they’d found him, what were they going to do?
A loud noise came roaring up behind them, and Bodhi instantly recognized it as the exhaust of an Imperial shuttle. He turned around to gape at it as it zoomed toward them, and he didn’t even realize he’d stood up as he did it.
Cassian grabbed Bodhi and hauled him back down just as the shuttle scudded overhead on its way to the landing platform. If anyone inside it—or in the base—had seen him, they didn’t show it.
Cassian motioned down the path they’d followed to the top of the ridge. “Get back down there and find us a ride out of here.”
That made sense, Bodhi thought. The U-wing was never going to fly again—not for them, at least. If they wanted to leave Eadu, they were going to need another ship.
Bodhi had just the one in mind.
Before he turned to go, though, he saw Cassian ready his rifle and start fiddling with the scope.
“What’re you doing?” Bodhi asked.
“You heard me.”
Was Cassian going to start shooting already? Before Bodhi even had a chance to snag them a new ride? The pilot wasn’t comfortable with that.
“You said we came up here just to have a look.”
“I’m here. I’m looking. Go.”
Bodhi frowned. Cassian was the spy, sure, and it was his operation. But something didn’t seem right.
Either way, they still needed that ship. Bodhi started to back down the way they’d come.
“Hurry!” Cassian barked.
Bodhi kicked it into high gear. No matter what Cassian was about to do, he wanted his hands on a shuttle—and fast.
KRENNIC WAS in a rage the entire trip to Eadu. Tarkin had stripped him of control of the Death Star, and worse yet, he’d laid the blame for that at Krennic’s feet!
The idea that it had been his own fault gnawed at Krennic. True, the renegade pilot who’d defected to the Rebellion—a man by the name of Rook, he thought—had done so under his watch, but he couldn’t be expected to keep track of everyone who worked on the Death Star. But according to Tarkin’s jabs, Rook’s betrayal didn’t encompass the full extent of the problem.
Although Krennic had dismissed that idea at first, the more he thought about it, the more he knew it had to be true. After all, how could a single pilot’s treachery cause any potential damage to the Death Star?
But this Rook, he reportedly had information about the Death Star that could be used against it. Krennic had no idea what it could be, but he suspected that Tarkin had been right about the source of it. The problems all had to stem from the base on Eadu.
That made him more furious with Tarkin than ever. It wasn’t enough the man was stealing his triumph; he actually managed to be right about the seeds of his downfall, too!
Krennic didn’t know if it would do him any good personally, but he planned to find the traitors and root them out. Permanently.
By the time his shuttle landed on Eadu, the entire base had been alerted to his arrival. A platoon of the research facility’s best stormtroopers stood on the landing platform, ready to greet him, along with the place’s top Imperial officials.
Krennic let them stand there in the rain for a bit longer than necessary, just to show them who was in charge.
There was no Tarkin present, no Emperor, no Darth Vader. When it came to this facility, he ruled.
He emerged from his ship into the chilly, rainy night, his death troopers alongside him. Galen Erso stood at the front of the group of officials, and he stepped forward to greet Krennic like the old friend he was. None of the others had the spine to manage it.
“Well, Galen,” Krennic said. “The battle station is complete. You must be very proud.”
“Proud as I can be, Krennic.”
Galen didn’t seem that happy, but then he never had smiled all that much. Not since Krennic had been forced to bring him back from Lah’mu. Krennic supposed that losing his wife and child could do that to a man, but Galen had adapted in the best possible way, throwing himself into the challenge of their work and hammering away at it until he succeeded.
“Gather your engineers,” Krennic told Galen. “I have an announcement to make.”
Let them think he’d come to praise them for the effectiveness of the weapons testing he’d overseen at Jedha. That would bring them up faster.
Galen went to relay the order to his underlings. Moments later, his entire team joined them on the platform. Some of the people squinted at the wind and rain as if they hadn’t breathed fresh air in a long time.
“Is that all of them?” Krennic asked.
“Yes,” Galen said, gesturing to the people standing in their white-and-blue jumpsuits.
Krennic stepped before the engineers and gathered them all together beneath his steely glare. There was only one way to deal with the kind of treachery he’d discovered: sheer and utter ruthlessness.
“Gentlemen. One of you betrayed the Empire. One of you conspired with a pilot to send messages to the Rebellion. And I urge that traitor to step forward.”
The sniveling weaklings glanced at each other. None of them wanted to own up to it. Among them, they couldn’t even find one person to pin it on.
Krennic waited longer than he felt necessary. Even in his thirst for justice, he could be charitable, he thought.
“Very well. I’ll consider it a group effort then.”
At his signal, his death troopers raised their weapons. There were no traitors among them, at least. They pointed their rifles straight at the line of engineers.
If that didn’t get them to crack, Krennic believed nothing would. Then he’d be forced to have them all executed. Until now, he might have hesitated to give such an order for fear of destroying a team he very much needed, but with the Death Star operational—and Tarkin having stolen it from him anyway—he didn’t see the harm.
Krennic raised his hand to signal his death troopers to prepare themselves. “Ready…aim…and…”
Just before Krennic brought down his arm and said “fire,” Galen leaped forward to intervene.
“Stop, stop, stop!” he said. “Krennic, stop!”
Krennic did as requested, although his death troopers did not stand down. Galen quickly went on to explain. “It was me! It was me. They have nothing to do with it. Spare them.”
Galen slumped forward, the fight all gone out of him. The man hadn’t even been facing execution, but he was willing to let the full extent of Krennic’s wrath land on him if it would save his people.
He’d always been a fool.
Krennic beckoned for Galen to come toward him, well out of the line of fire. Galen shuffled over, ready to suffer whatever punishment might be handed down to him.
Krennic looked to the engineers again. They were awash with relief that Galen would take the fall for them. They were too surprised—too unsure about what was happening—to thank him for his sacrifice.
Krennic stared at them, despising them all. He said one word. “Fire.”
The death troopers lit up the night with their rifles, and each and every one of the engineers collapsed, dead before they hit the platform.
CASSIAN STARED in horror and frustration as the death troopers gunned down the engineers. For the past several minutes, he’d been watching the entire scene play out through the scope on his rifle, waiting for a clear shot
at Galen Erso. He’d gotten one just a moment before, but he’d balked at taking it.
He didn’t know what had stayed his hand. He’d killed many people before, all in the name of the Rebellion. If blasting away one man would save millions of lives, the answer seemed clear.
But it wasn’t, and Cassian knew it. Galen had already completed his work on the Death Star. Killing him now wouldn’t stop the Empire from using the battle station again.
On top of that, Cassian had watched Galen try to sacrifice himself for the other people on his engineering team. He didn’t know how he could shoot a man right after witnessing such a selfless act.
There was also the fact that the man was Jyn’s long-lost father. Killing him would shatter her, he knew. They might have been apart for years, but she still loved him. Cassian could see it in her eyes every time the man’s name came up.
Cassian grabbed his quadnocs again and zoomed in on the slaughter happening on the landing platform. Galen stood there gawking at the death of his compatriots. As the last one fell, he turned toward Krennic, who backhanded him across the jaw.
Galen fell to his knees, holding his hand to his injured face.
Cassian lowered his quadnocs, and as he did, he spotted Jyn. She was just beneath the edge of the landing platform, climbing onto it from below, but she didn’t seem to notice the stormtrooper wandering toward her.
He didn’t know what he could do to help her. If the stormtrooper spotted her, she was done for. If Cassian shot the stormtrooper, the blast would draw attention to Jyn, as well.
The stormtrooper moved closer to the edge of the platform and stared out into the rain. All it would take was for him to glance down, and he’d spot Jyn in an instant. Then he’d take the rifle he was carelessly toting around and shoot her dead.
Jyn saw the stormtrooper. Rather than crawl back and try to hide, though, she reached up and grabbed the end of the stormtrooper’s rifle. Then she hauled backward with all her weight and pulled the man out and over the edge.
The stormtrooper disappeared, flailing, into the stormy darkness. If he cried out, no one seemed to notice. Perhaps they were too busy listening to Galen’s anguish.
Right then, Cassian’s comlink came on, and K-2SO spoke. “Cassian!” the droid said. “Cassian, can you hear me?”
Cassian grabbed his comlink. If the stormtroopers couldn’t hear their friend fall to his death, then they weren’t going to be able to hear Cassian speaking into the comm from so much farther away.
“I’m here,” Cassian said. “You got it working.”
“Affirmative,” the droid said. “But we have a problem. There’s an Alliance squadron approaching. Clear the area!”
Cassian almost dropped his comm. He glanced down to see Jyn still under the platform. She was creeping around to where she could climb up on it and not be seen.
“No, no, no, no!” he said into the comlink. “Tell them to hold up! Jyn’s on that platform!”
Cassian grimaced. He knew how these kinds of attacks went. The squadron would maintain radio silence after a certain point. They didn’t want the Empire to know they were coming, after all.
No matter who might be trying to shout at them to stop—from General Draven on down—it might already be too late.
KRENNIC GLARED down at Galen, whom he’d knocked to his knees. The man might have been one of the most brilliant minds Krennic had ever encountered, but he was lousy in a fight.
He could barely believe Galen had been the one to betray him. To have stayed quiet for so long, silently working against him—against the Empire? He hadn’t thought the scientist had such doggedness in him.
Krennic saw now that he must have been wrong. Anyone who could work so long and hard to help him figure out how to power the Death Star with kyber crystals had more than enough determination to do whatever he wanted.
And of course, Krennic had given him the motivation, hadn’t he?
If only Lyra hadn’t been so stubborn. She’d been the one to lure Galen away from his work in the first place. Then she’d gone and trained her blaster on Krennic in an effort to make him leave her family alone.
What choice had he had at that point but to execute her?
That’s what had put them on this road. If Lyra had only been willing to go along with Krennic’s plans, she’d still be alive, and Galen would have been happily solving the problems with the Death Star. They might even have finished work on it years before.
Now that he knew Galen for who he really was though—a traitor to both the Empire and their friendship—Krennic wanted him to pay for his crimes. He wanted to make the man hurt.
“I fired your weapon,” Krennic told Galen. “Jedha. Saw Gerrera. His band of fanatics. The Holy City. The last reminder of the Jedi. An entire planet will be next.”
Galen set his bruised jaw and stared up at Krennic with defiance. Had the man ever had that kind of passion before, or had Krennic just never noticed?
“You’ll never win,” Galen said.
Krennic couldn’t help smirking at that. “Now, where have I heard that before?”
Lyra had said the same thing just before he’d had her killed. Galen could hardly think he was about to fare any better.
An alarm began to blare then, and it took Krennic a moment to figure out what it was for. They used different patterns for different troubles. This particular alarm was reserved to warn people about an imminent air attack.
Krennic looked up at the sky. Was this a drill? If so, it was a terribly timed one.
He got his answer when the first X-wing appeared out of the storm clouds and opened fire on the landing platform. The first salvo stitched blasts across the platform, sending stormtroopers and the bodies of the dead engineers flying.
Krennic, though, remained unharmed. If the rebels planned to try their luck with him there, they were going to pay for their audacity.
“Return fire!” Krennic barked at his death troopers. To the rest of the stormtroopers and officers, he shouted, “To your stations! Get our fighters in the air! Now!”
More laser fire rained down as an entire squadron of X-wings zoomed overhead, strafing the platform as they went. Then it grew quiet, but Krennic knew it would only be for a moment. They would be swinging around for another pass for sure.
Smoke billowed across the platform, obscuring Krennic’s view. For a moment, Krennic wasn’t sure which way he should move. He hoped the smoke would at least keep the X-wing pilots from seeing him when they came around again.
He saw Galen stagger to his feet, and he considered shooting the man dead right there to keep the rebels from robbing him of his revenge.
Despite that, he was more concerned about his own skin. He was about to race inside to take cover when a woman appeared out of the swirling clouds. She was young, with blazing hazel eyes and tied-back dark hair, and she seemed entirely out of place.
She wasn’t a stormtrooper or an Imperial officer, and she wasn’t wearing one of the jumpsuits the engineers favored. In fact, she looked dirty, tired, and more than a little desperate. As she approached, she shouted a single word.
“Papa!”
Galen spun around to see who could have said that word and who she was talking to. As he did, the woman raised a blaster pistol and leveled it at Krennic. For a moment, he thought he might die without any idea who his killer was.
Then a Y-wing roared in low and let loose a proton torpedo that blasted the landing platform apart.
JYN HADN’T been sure she’d be able to make it onto the landing platform, but the sight of her father standing there above her had pushed her to take insane risks. When the stormtrooper had wandered over to peer over the edge of the platform, she’d thought he would have seen and shot her instantly, but she struck first, bold and fast. That’s why she was still breathing and he wasn’t.
She’d finally managed to wo
rk her way to a secluded edge of the platform and climbed up to hide behind a shipping crate someone had left there. From that new vantage point, she spotted her father once more, and she wanted nothing more than to race over to him and reveal that she was there. She knew, though, that Krennic would have her shot on the spot. She had to wait until she had her chance.
Then the X-wings appeared in the sky. Crazy as it was, she decided that was her time. If Krennic managed to survive the attack, he’d have her father executed for sure, just as he’d done with those innocent engineers. The confusion and terror—and smoke!—the attack produced gave her cover, and she meant to use it.
She vowed to herself that Krennic would not steal her father away again, as he had years before, back on Lah’mu. She called out to Galen, and their eyes met.
Then the torpedo hit the platform.
The blast sent Jyn flying. Stunned, she glanced up, convinced that the X-wings had come gunning for her. Then she spotted a flight of TIE fighters racing into the air to meet them. She’d never been so happy to see Imperial pilots doing their job in her life.
Anti-aircraft turrets joined in then, blasting away at the rebels in the sky. Normally, Jyn would have wanted to take down the stormtroopers manning them as fast as she could, but they were the only thing keeping another torpedo from blasting her and her father to bits.
Her ears rang with a high-pitched whine, and for a long while, it was all she could do to try to catch her breath. As her lungs struggled with that, she spied a pair of Imperial officers racing out of the smoke. They darted straight over to Krennic and began dragging him toward his shuttle.
Overhead, a turret found its target. A wounded X-wing spun out of control and crashed somewhere in the mountains. A boom marked its passing.
Jyn saw the distinctive bolt of a lightbow shoot out from another spot in the mountains and lance straight through a TIE fighter. The spacecraft spun like a runaway top and came smashing down into the turret. Everything flared white in a massive blast that shook the platform once more.
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