by Greg Rucka
It was Chirrut’s turn to laugh.
They rode out into the desert for almost an hour, far enough from the city that Chirrut wondered if what he suspected was caution was, instead, paranoia.
At length the engines lowered their pitch, and the speeder slowed, then came to a stop.
“Where are we?” he asked Baze.
“We are in the middle of nowhere. They clearly do not trust us enough to take us to their base of operations.”
Fortuna spoke. “Trust is earned.”
“You approached us,” Chirrut said.
“Which is why we are here. You may get out.”
Baze led the way, reached back to guide Chirrut out of the vehicle. As soon as Chirrut had his feet on the ground once more, Baze’s hand was gone. Chirrut planted his feet firmly on dirt, squared his shoulders, lifted his head. He breathed, the walking stick in his hands pressing hard into the ground.
“Head that way,” he heard Tenza say. “You don’t want to keep him waiting.”
“He will wait,” Baze said. “Until we are ready.”
Chirrut breathed, listened, felt. The echo-box was calm at his waist, and between its feedback and his own senses, he began to form an impression of the space. They were in the open, he knew, far out in the frigid desert, beneath the stars. He began to discern the larger shapes around them, the almost imperceptible slope of the ground beneath his feet, the thin sheen of sand blown across hard stone. He felt they were in a very old place, an ancient place, as old as the Temple of the Kyber or older, perhaps. He felt as if there were memories buried all around them, and stories, and that if he had a hundred years or a thousand to sit and listen, he might learn them.
He tapped his walking stick hard, once, on the ground, and started forward. Baze moved to follow him.
The path wound down, meandered, and beneath his feet Chirrut felt the skein of the sand and pebbles disturbed by their steps. Yet his footing remained sure, and he was not worried. This was not the first time he and Baze had been outside of the Holy City, and the desert of Jedha was familiar enough, even if it was not as well-known to him as the paths of their home. Still, for all his occasional journeys off the mesa, this place was new to him, and he was certain he had never visited it before in his life.
He had the impression of being watched, and part of him knew that this was certainly because either Tenza or Fortuna or another, or even several others, was doing just that. But it was more than that, too, not a sense of surveillance but rather of being observed , as if some great, unknown presence watched their progress with only the most passing interest, the most restrained curiosity.
“What do you see?” he asked Baze.
“The old monuments,” Baze said. “The Three Faces.”
“Tell me about them.”
Baze grunted. “The desert has eaten at their features. One is a man, I think human. Another, I cannot tell, but from what remains of the body, perhaps a woman. The other a species I do not know. Perhaps Duros, once upon a time, before the sand and the wind did their duty.”
“Do they face us?”
Baze hesitated ever so slightly, then said, “They surround us, Chirrut.”
The temperature dipped yet again, and Chirrut knew they had passed into some deeper shadow cast by one of the enormous, ancient carvings. The path turned steep for another twenty paces, then abruptly leveled, and both the echo-box and his own hearing, his own sense of space and his place in it, told him they were now where they were meant to be, in some canyon between these forgotten monuments, surrounded and yet in the open.
Someone was there, waiting for them. Chirrut could feel him as certainly as he could feel the walking stick in his hand.
“What does he look like?” he asked Baze.
“I do not see anyone.”
Chirrut pointed with the walking stick. An instant later, he heard Baze’s movement, imagined him raising his new weapon.
“They take everything .” The voice echoed off the stone around them, harsh, strained. A man’s voice, full of pride and pain. “They take it all .”
“Move where I can see you,” Baze said.
“To give you a clean shot?” The voice seemed to choke for a moment, as if biting back a laugh. “That would be a mistake. You do not want to fire upon me.”
“I will wait and see,” Baze said.
Chirrut stepped forward, right across where he knew Baze was aiming.
“We come at your invitation,” Chirrut said. “If this is an executioner’s field, it is far too much effort spent on the likes of us.”
“My invitation, yes.” The man speaking seemed to consider this, then added, “Yes, that is true. We must be careful, you understand? We who fight them, we must always be careful.”
“We understand.”
The sound of movement bounced off the stone around him. A rasp, the drawing of a labored breath that made Chirrut think back to their meeting with Killi Gimm that morning—or, more precisely, the morning before—and the touch of her hand upon his. He tried to find the speaker through the Force, reaching out for a sense of him, and what came back to him was an emptiness, a frame built of sadness and grief, filled with pain and rage and, deep within, an ember of light.
This man, whoever he was, had suffered horribly.
“Baze Malbus,” the voice said off the stone around them. “Chirrut Îmwe.”
“We know who we are,” Baze said. “Who are you?”
The laugh again, not quite possessed of mirth. “Too difficult a question for a simple answer. Your friend would agree. Do you not agree?”
Chirrut smiled. “Perhaps, then, a name to start with?”
“Saw,” the man said. “Saw Gerrera.”
“If the name is meant to be known to us, I apologize,” Chirrut said. “It is new, at least to me.”
“If it were better known, I could not be here. If you knew it, then our enemies would know it, as well.”
“Our enemies?”
“You know of whom I speak. You both know. You fight them, in fits, in starts. You strike and fade. You know the enemy.”
“We fight for our home,” Baze said.
“Is that all?” Saw Gerrera asked. “I fight for more. I fight for the galaxy.”
“Then you will find Jedha very limiting,” Chirrut said.
“Not as limiting as you might think.” More motion. He was coming closer. “We have to start somewhere. Now, we fight on Jedha.”
“We have an insurgency already,” Baze said. “For all the good it is doing. Thank you, no.”
“We are not insurgents. We are partisans. We are a rebellion. I bring battle-hardened fighters. I bring experienced tacticians. I bring pilots, a squadron of them. I bring the means with which to fight back. I am inviting you, both of you, to join me in this.”
Chirrut leaned forward on his walking stick. “That is very kind of you, but if you have accomplished all you say, and if you can do all you say, why do you need us?”
Now Saw Gerrera was close enough that Chirrut could feel his presence. He was moving slowly, speaking to Chirrut and Baze both, focusing on the one, then the other.
“Because you know Jedha,” Gerrera said. “I have not approached you by chance. It has taken us months to move into position here, and that has given us months to prepare, to learn. I have learned who you are. Four precision strikes against Imperial resupply convoys. You hurt them. Good. Together, we can do more.”
“On Jedha,” Chirrut said. “Why?”
“Where do we draw the line?” The man was speaking with a sudden intensity, now, a conviction that Chirrut imagined would be quite inspiring on the battlefield. “I saw Onderon fall beneath the Imperial flag. Countless other worlds. Innocent lives destroyed. Freedom stolen. Faith destroyed. Why not Jedha, in a city so holy to so many? What better place?”
Chirrut felt Baze responding to Gerrera’s words, felt the big man shifting beside him, resettling himself, shifting the blaster in his hands. Passion answers to
passion, Chirrut thought, and thus Baze answers to Saw Gerrera. If Chirrut was honest with himself, he could feel it, as well. The opportunity to act on behalf of the righteous. The chance to strike back at the Empire.
It was almost enough to make Chirrut ignore his instinct, the acute sense that Saw Gerrera’s war was not, perhaps, as altruistic as he made it sound. That there was more to his presence on Jedha than a straightforward desire to send the Empire packing.
“We will take the fight to them,” Gerrera said. “I would have you with me when we do.”
Chirrut said nothing. Baze, perhaps despite himself, said nothing. Gerrera’s heavy footsteps turned, moving away.
“Consider my offer,” Saw Gerrera told them.
Fortuna accompanied them back to the Holy City; the speeder was driven by the same pilot who had brought them out, or so Chirrut thought. It felt like the same pilot, at least.
When they parted company, Fortuna pressed a tiny metal tube into Chirrut’s palm.
“That can be used to reach me,” Fortuna told him. “If you use it, I will conclude that you have decided to join with us.”
“That will be a reasonable conclusion,” Chirrut said.
The speeder departed, and Chirrut followed Baze back into their home, the room they shared. Neither had spoken on the return journey, and now, alone, Chirrut knew that Baze’s patience was nearly exhausted. To his credit, Baze waited until the door was closed and locked before speaking.
“You know what I think,” Baze said.
“Oftentimes, yes.”
He heard Baze chuckle. “And what do I think now, Chirrut?”
“You think that fighting alongside Saw Gerrera and his…partisans is better than not fighting at all. And you think the time to fight is upon us.”
“The time to fight has been upon us for a while, now. We help one at a time, we help Killi and Kaya. You try to keep the faith and the traditions, and I try to keep you from becoming so lost in the spiritual that you forget the physical. But every day the Empire’s shadow grows over all of us. Every day the suffering increases.”
Chirrut said nothing.
“They are killing us. Some of us faster than others. But they mean to take every last one of us before they go.”
“But they will go,” Chirrut said.
“Only when there is nothing left for them to take. And they will leave us with little, they will leave us with nothing.”
“But they will leave.”
He heard Baze sigh.
“The gun, my new gun,” Baze said. “I found it at Denic’s. It was part of the shipment we stole. It was meant for the stormtroopers. This weapon, Chirrut, it’s a support weapon. It’s supposed to hook into a vehicle’s power and coolant systems. It’s that kind of firepower. It fires thousands and thousands of bolts. I couldn’t understand why the stormtroopers would need it. On a battlefield, yes, that would make sense. But here? In the city? Why would they need this firepower on one of their vehicles here ?”
“They would need it if they knew about Saw Gerrera’s partisans.”
“Do you really think, if they knew about Gerrera’s partisans, they would allow them even the smallest foothold on Jedha?”
Chirrut thought, shook his head slightly.
“So not for the battlefield,” Baze said. “I asked Denic. Why this gun? Why do they need this gun? You will not like her answer. She said, ‘Crowd control,’ Chirrut. And the more I think about it, the more I think Denic is right. The Empire doesn’t care about a single life in this city, not a single soul on Jedha. The fight is here , Chirrut. It is on us, and we must enter it.”
“With Saw Gerrera.”
“We stand a better chance with him than alone.”
“If he is all he says he is.”
That stopped Baze, at least for a moment.
“You think he was lying to us?” Baze asked.
“By omission rather than declaration,” Chirrut said. “How did he seem to you?”
“In pain. Cautious. Hunted. Cunning.”
“Did he have the face of a killer?”
Baze again paused. “He is no stranger to death.”
“Did you trust him?”
“No,” Baze said. “But I did believe him.”
Chirrut sighed.
“Yes,” he said. “Sadly, so did I.”
From this moment I step into my next.
From this place I step into my next.
From this life I step into my next.
For I am one with the Force,
For ever and For ever.
—Coxixian Prayer for the Departed
From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,
Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills
THE DOOR to the orphanage had been blown open.
It was a sliding door, two panels that came together at a midpoint, as was common in much of the Holy City. Its heavy metal construction had been designed to resist the elements, its paint long since worn away by the sand that blew through the city. Now, in addition to its weathered and scrubbed surface, a black scorch mark marred its center. The metal had bowed inward from the force of the blast, wrenching the door out of its track. Someone had tried to reset it, but the result was that one panel seemed to be about to tip over, top-heavy, and the other was tilted backward and crooked.
Baze looked at Chirrut. Sometimes, his friend would ask what he was seeing, how something looked. When he had first started doing so, Baze had presumed Chirrut did this because, being blind, he wanted the use of Baze’s eyes, for lack of a better phrase. But it hadn’t taken Baze long to realize that this wasn’t why Chirrut was asking at all. He didn’t want to know what Baze saw, not literally; Chirrut wanted Baze’s impression . If Chirrut asked, What does the service droid look like? he didn’t want Baze to say that the machine was a meter and a half tall, or half a meter wide, and covered in laminate with scratches along its torso. What Chirrut wanted was for Baze to say that the droid was friendly, or past its sell-by date, or had seen better days, or looked like it was fresh off the assembly line. Chirrut wanted the perception as Baze saw it , and thus, in a way, he was asking for Baze’s opinion.
Right now, Chirrut was frowning, head down.
“How does it look?” he asked.
“Not,” Baze said, “good.”
Chirrut shuffled forward a half step, held out one hand, feeling along the plane of the broken door. His fingers found the gap between the panels, traced the edge where the space opened. He leaned forward farther, moving closer to the opening.
“Killi Gimm!” Chirrut called. “Kaya Gimm!”
They heard no response.
Baze checked over his shoulder, looking up and down the narrow street. It was very quiet, though that was not to be mistaken for deserted. Movement in the surrounding buildings, shadows at windows. He looked along the street again. Too narrow for any of the standard Imperial GAVs or an AT-DP to make its way down. This would’ve been a detachment of stormtroopers either on specific assignment or perhaps on some sort of patrol, but already his instinct told him it was the former and not the latter. Maybe a half dozen of them, and this the only door damaged along the street. They’d known where they were going, Baze thought.
“We need to get inside,” Chirrut said.
Baze grunted, shifted his new blaster cannon from his hands to its holster on his back, beside the coolant tank. He stepped forward as Chirrut stepped back, giving him room, and took hold of each of the panels through the gap. The metal was cold against his palms, and he could feel where the door had puckered with the blast against it, the way the surface bit at his skin like tiny teeth. He grunted again, louder, trying to pry the door open, then shifted his footing and tried the left-hand panel exclusively. It moved, grudgingly, and he leaned into it even harder, heard the metal grinding against the frame, against the sand, until it gave with a sudden snap of broken cable.
Chirrut ducked beneath his arm and turned sideways, slipped throug
h the newly created opening. Baze wiped his hands on his pants, tried to follow him through the gap, and got hung up halfway through, as if someone had grabbed him from behind. He almost went for the cannon, then realized it was the cannon—or more precisely, the coolant tank—that had snagged. He backed out, ducked, tried again, and with some maneuvering got himself inside.
“They are not here,” Chirrut said. He was standing in the middle of the common room, not moving.
Baze stepped past him. The room was much as he’d last seen it, minus the children and Kaya, of course. Chirrut sniffed at the air.
“No blasters,” Chirrut said.
Baze grunted. He felt the weight of the weapon on his back, the coolant tank, the cannon. He felt, again, the strong desire to find someone to try it out on. He felt, in particular, that stormtroopers would be the ideal choice for this.
“I’ll look around,” Baze said.
“They are not here,” Chirrut repeated. “And we already know what happened.”
“I’ll make certain.”
“Check the kitchen first.”
Baze grunted once again, then went off to check the kitchen first.
Stormtroopers were waiting for them when they emerged from the orphanage.
“You there,” said the one at the front of the group. “Stop.”
Chirrut, who had been leading the way back onto the narrow street, did as ordered. At the same time, his shoulders dropped and seemed to grow more rounded, his head drooped, and a smile appeared on his face that managed to appear both innocent and simple at the same time. Baze stepped through the broken doorway behind him, shifting to the right, keeping his hands at his sides where the stormtroopers could see them. There were five of them, including their leader. None of the troopers had their blasters raised, though they of course all had them in hand, and Baze took this to mean that they weren’t looking to shoot them right that moment , but would maybe wait until they were certain they had a reason to do so. If he went for his cannon, that would change.
Baze adjusted his position slightly, keeping his back to the wall, careful not to scrape the coolant tank against the stonework. People went armed all the time throughout the Holy City, had done so even before the Empire’s arrival, and carrying a weapon wasn’t—in and of itself—an issue. But he had no idea if any of the troopers in front of them at this moment might recognize the Morellian blaster cannon that Baze now considered right and truly to be his own, nor if, upon recognizing it, they might wonder where he’d acquired it or even want it back.