by James Luceno
Krennic continued to regard him. “You dare come to me after your betrayal at Salient?”
“But I didn’t betray you,” Has said in a rush. “None of us did. Zerpen refused to allow us to set down on the Epiphany moon and dispatched some of their fighters to scuttle us. Then Tarkin showed up and sicced his starfighters on us as well. We spent the whole of his campaign at Salient being chased all over the system, from moon to planet and back again. In the end he nearly caught up with me, but I managed to seize this ship and escape.”
Krennic tried to digest it. “Who was on the receiving end of your transmission about coming here?”
“One of my confederates. Just another smuggler. We’ve a date to meet at a level-five cantina. Then I was hoping to find some way to contact you.”
Krennic called one of his stormtroopers forward and ordered him to check the ship’s log.
“I had no other choice,” Has went on. “Oh, I suppose I could have tried to hide, but I’m not interested in living out my days as a fugitive. I thought maybe you could help me—for old times’ sake.”
“Old times’ sake,” Krennic said.
“For services rendered. However you want to label what I did during the war and since.”
Krennic was chewing it over when the stormtrooper reappeared.
“The log’s clean, Commander. No commo with Coruscant. Only the original transmission monitored by Governor Tarkin.”
Krennic listened, then shot Has a gimlet look. “You’re lying to me, Captain.”
With a downcast look, Has gestured broadly to the hangar. “If I am, Commander, then where are the Ersos?”
—
Galen was carrying Jyn in his arms as the three of them arrived at the small spaceport that had been built close to the former refuge to serve the needs of the Celestial Power complex. Travelers of many species were huddled at the terminal entrances and exits, most of them heading for or returning from distant parts of Coruscant now that the weeklong celebration was finally winding down. Three times the normal number of police had been deployed to deal with the throngs, but stormtroopers were circulating as well, seemingly on the search for beings of interest.
Galen and Lyra kept to the thick of the crowds. His eyes darting left and right, up and down, he would signal her when they were within range of a facial-recognition cam or a probe droid, and they would bow their heads and allow themselves to be carried on the living tide. They came to a halt well short of the first security checkpoint and extricated themselves to a parcel of open space along the terminal’s front wall.
“I don’t think we can risk going through,” Galen said, shifting Jyn in his arms. “If our absence has been reported, our identichips will trigger alarms all over the terminal. What was the plan?”
“There was no plan other than to reach the spaceport.”
“No destination concourse or hangar?”
Lyra shook her head.
“That leaves us no choice but to go through security. What’s the worst that can happen? It’s not like we’re breaking any laws.”
“Orson may have something to say about that, Galen. Besides, there are ways to avoid going through security.”
“Then I’ll tell him we were frightened,” Galen went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “We panicked and decided to spend time in the apartment.”
Lyra offered a faint smile. “That actually sounds reasonable. But he’ll see through it. There’ll be consequences.”
Galen nodded. “We’ll still have one play left—me. If they want my help, they’ll need to play by my rules.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
He squeezed her hand and kissed her on the cheek. They were two steps from merging with the crowd streaming toward the checkpoint when a tall, thin human with a streak of color in his thick black hair stepped into their path.
“I’m a friend of Obitt’s,” the man announced in a self-assured voice.
Galen looked at Lyra.
“You’re from Onderon,” she said, as instructed.
“Onderon it is.” The man smiled broadly. “I’m called Saw Gerrera. You’re Lyra, Galen, and…”
“Jyn,” Galen said, stroking his daughter’s hair.
“Good to meet all of you.”
Lyra directed a glance at the security checkpoint. “Do we go through, Saw?”
He frowned and shook his head. “We need to find some other way.”
“Where did you put down?” Lyra asked.
He motioned with his chin. “The ship’s at the eastern edge of the field.”
“Near the Warsi Tower or closer to the Salss skyway terminal?”
“The tower,” Saw said.
Lyra narrowed her eyes in thought, then nodded. “I know a route.”
Saw grinned broadly. “Has told me I could count on you.” With Galen’s permission, he took Jyn into his arms and motioned for Lyra to assume the point. “Just don’t lose us.”
Smiling at him over her shoulder, she said: “We have a ship to catch,” and hurried off.
—
Krennic stormed from the hangar into the air of nighttime Coruscant and passed a long moment gazing at the traffic lifting off, arriving, traveling to distant areas of the planet.
Had he been tricked, or had he tricked himself? The Ersos hadn’t returned to the facility. Thus far their images hadn’t been captured by any facial-recognition cams and their identichips hadn’t been scanned at any stores, facilities, public transport stations, or security checkpoints. Was it possible they had simply gone out for the night?
He knew better than to hope.
They had escaped out from under him.
Beings had been known to hide on Coruscant for a lifetime, but Galen wouldn’t be one of them. He wouldn’t be able to stay away from his research. He would have a change of heart. He would turn himself in. He would reach out…
The anger and despair he had felt in the airspeeder returned and settled on him like a great weight.
“Galen,” he said, as if orphaned. Then: “Galen!” shouting it to the busy sky.
RETURNED AT LAST TO HIS old stomping ground, Has sat quietly with his drink, deciding that even the music sounded good.
Rumor had it that he had died at Salient, so on stepping into the Wanton Wellspring he received what had amounted to a hero’s welcome, friends and former shipmates insisting on buying him drinks and his lovely Dressellian dream girl surprising him with a kiss that lingered.
Even now, after months of traveling about, he wasn’t sure to whom he owed his good fortune; perhaps to the Ersos, or Wilhuff Tarkin. In some ways, Krennic figured into things as well. But probably Tarkin most of all. If Tarkin hadn’t been willing to trust that Has would willingly serve as his spy, he would never have been able to contact Lyra, and arrange for Saw to remove them from what Has perceived as danger born of Tarkin’s obvious competition with Orson Krennic.
Krennic, however, hadn’t simply allowed him to leave Coruscant after their reunion at the spaceport hangar—at least not immediately. He had kept Has locked away until the story of his escape from Salient could be substantiated, and Tarkin had been only too happy to oblige, since by then he had come to think of Has as his inside man. In short order, then, Has was back in the commander’s employ and tasked with hunting down the missing Ersos, progress on which he had furnished to both Krennic and Tarkin, confident that the two would never have cause to compare notes.
The Ersos had been identified by cams at a spaceport near the former B’ankor Refuge, but there was no record of them having passed through security. A thorough study of departing traffic had revealed that a starship had launched shortly after cams had acquired the Ersos’ images, but the ship’s signature was unknown and no trace of it had been found. The fact that the ship had been ID’d multiple times at Salient by Tarkin’s forces had clearly escaped Krennic’s notice, probably owing to Tarkin’s reluctance to share information of any sort with his rival in the Corps of Engineers—or in what
ever branch of the military Krennic was actually enlisted.
Several messages had been teased from the Celestial Power communications suite, but the most tantalizing of them—those exchanged between Has and Lyra—had been relayed through so many HoloNet transceivers that the origin sources couldn’t be pinpointed. Krennic, however, had focused on Lyra’s friend Nari Sable as the person most likely to have helped the Ersos complete their flight.
In keeping with the search for the Ersos, Has had located Nari, but the comely surveyor had been able to provide her Imperial investigators with an alibi and had been released soon after being questioned. So Has had devoted the next several standard months to following up on leads as to the Ersos’ whereabouts, which in fact had meant applying himself diligently to not finding them—even going so far as to avoid having any contact with former Onderonian freedom fighter Saw Gerrera, out of concern that Has’s communications were being secretly monitored by Krennic or Tarkin.
Sipping from his drink, Has wasn’t entirely convinced that he had accomplished something worthwhile, but it sure felt that way. More, he was close to being back on his own after years of executing the commands of others, and as free as anyone could be in the ever-expanding Empire, despite being unemployed, without a crew, and still having to transmit the odd lack-of-progress reports to Krennic and Tarkin.
Lyra had been right when she told him during their final communication that the Force worked in mysterious ways.
Finishing his drink, he stood and walked to the bar, where the Dressellian server who had kissed him was busy trying to chat up a customer. Sidling up alongside her, he said: “What would you say to my taking you away from all this?”
Turning immediately from her target, she said: “It’s about time, Obitt.”
Her smile said the rest, and with arms linked, the two of them left the Wanton Wellspring in search of new horizons.
—
Tarkin and a contingent of stormtroopers arrived at Sentinel Base in his personal ship, the Carrion Spike. A wind-scoured gray moon, the base and several others in the vicinity supervised supply shipments bound for Geonosis, where the battle station was still under construction. Some in the Imperial court wondered why the Emperor had assigned one of his top moffs to control space traffic, but Tarkin wasn’t there to safeguard the battle station so much as to keep an eye on Orson Krennic, who, despite recent obstacles, remained in charge of the Special Weapons Group.
Wind-driven grit assaulted the cockpit viewports as Tarkin brought the ship down on the base’s targetlike landing field. As inhospitable as Sentinel was, the moon was preferable to the Western Reaches. Adjusting to a downside life after so many years spent aboard Star Destroyers would be the difficult part of the assignment. But gazing out on the complex of interconnected domes and hangars, Tarkin knew that he could endure a standard year or two there if it meant furthering his goals.
Has Obitt was still reporting to him on what he could glean of Krennic’s activities, and of course on the seemingly futile hunt for Galen Erso and his family. When the truth had emerged that Erso’s research into kyber crystals had been weaponized without his knowledge, Tarkin wasn’t surprised; nor did he feel any real sympathy for the situation in which the scientist had placed himself. The need to serve the Empire superseded personal goals, and sometimes personal morals also. More to the point, Erso should have seen through Krennic, the way Tarkin had. That Erso’s disappearance would delay completion of the battle station superlaser was certainly regrettable—and would have to be remedied immediately—but not the fact that Krennic had been somewhat crippled by the scientist’s unexpected departure. The headstrong and impulsive commander had been gaining too much prestige and influence with Vizier Mas Amedda and other advisers, and Tarkin was gratified to see him taken down a notch.
Fortunately, the Emperor agreed.
Tarkin wasn’t certain that Krennic’s team of researchers and engineers would find a way to equip the battle station with a suitable weapon on their own, but that wasn’t his concern at the moment. He would execute his new role and bide his time. Having succeeded in the Western Reaches and at Salient, he was a step closer to assuming command of the entire project.
—
“I refuse to accept a demotion to lieutenant commander,” Krennic told Amedda in no uncertain terms.
The pair were in the vizier’s temporary office in one of the original spires of the Jedi Temple, which was undergoing extensive renovations designed to transform it into the seat of the Imperial court, complete with auditoriums, conference centers, and private landing fields. It was precisely the sort of project Krennic would have been supervising were it not for the battle station, and during the long walk to Amedda’s headquarters he had recognized many of the current crew chiefs and foremen.
“It is hardly within your purview to reject a reduction in rank,” the Chagrian told him.
Dressed in a white uniform that included a cap, capelet, and black gloves, Krennic was moving through the room like a storm. “Few involved in the project are aware that the Ersos have disappeared. Therefore a demotion will be interpreted as my having committed some sort of blunder. Which is an outright fabrication. I was Erso’s handler, not his keeper.”
Amedda considered it. “Have you been able to learn anything?”
“Only that the entire family managed to slip out under our very noses, and that there has been no sign of them since.”
Amedda’s lethorns stirred. “What will you do without Galen?”
Krennic came to a sudden stop. His mouth was open, but no words emerged; then he managed to say: “He’s not the Empire’s only genius crystallographer.”
“That contradicts what you were telling me four years ago.”
“Erso didn’t tamper with any of the research data. Professor Sahali and Dr. Gubacher are confident that they can take up where he left off.”
“At least they are still with us,” Amedda said, fixing Krennic in his gaze.
“Trust me, Vizier.”
“We have, and perhaps beyond your abilities. There are some who think you should be here, in this building, supervising the renovations.”
Krennic didn’t believe it for a moment, and decided not to dignify the remark with a response.
“An overseer is certainly in order,” Amedda added.
Krennic snorted. “Is that why Tarkin has been assigned command of the Sentinel bases?”
Amedda spread his large hands. “He is merely there to safeguard against further setbacks. It pleases the Emperor to keep him close to you.”
“That’s Tarkin’s job—to monitor me?”
“Not entirely. But should the need arise.”
“It won’t.”
“Then the Emperor will be even more pleased.” Amedda paused, then said: “Finish what you started, Commander.”
Krennic marched from Amedda’s office with four stormtroopers falling into formation behind him. A shudder went through him as he passed teams of droids at work in the wide, colonnaded hallway.
He could hope that Amedda had been persuaded to accept that the Special Weapons Group was picking up the slack. The fact was that work on the superlaser was stalled, and Galen’s insights were needed more than ever. After all he had done for Galen! Fame would have come to him. Grandeur. Legacy. Without his science, Galen was a nonentity.
And Lyra…
Flushed with anger, he peeled his gloves off as he walked and threw them violently to the polished floor.
He would leave no stone unturned in the search for them.
—
Jyn stared out the front window of Saw Gerrera’s spaceship. There were too many lights to count. But she knew that some of them were balls of fire—stars—and that others had houses and buildings, inhabitants. Planets.
“Which one?”
“It’s too far away to see,” Saw said.
“But we can go there?”
“If your mom and dad want to.”
“Through hoope
rspace.”
He smiled at her. “Hyperspace.”
She corrected herself. “Hyperspace.”
“Should we go tell them what we found?”
“You can tell them.”
She unfastened the restraints and put her boots on the deck. When Saw stood up from his seat she reached out to take his hand, her small pink one in his big brown one, and they walked out of the cockpit together.
Mama and Papa were standing by a window in the large cabin. Mama’s arm was around Papa’s waist, and his arm was around her waist. They smiled when they looked at her and Saw, and Papa bent down, opening his arms to her.
“Come here, Stardust,” he said.
She hurried to him and he picked her up, so that she was almost as tall as he was, but not as tall as Saw was.
“I think I’ve found the perfect place,” Saw told her parents. “Remote. A bit desolate, but tranquil.” He nodded his chin toward Jyn. “Plenty of room for this one to run around.” He pulled his datapad from his pant pocket and showed them the image of a green, black, and blue planet with a wide ring. “It’s called Lah’mu.”
Papa looked at the image and said, “It looks unspoiled.”
“It’s getting harder and harder to find worlds the Empire hasn’t swept into its grasp,” Saw said. “More and more star systems are knuckling under; more and more planets are being ravaged and sucked dry for resources. Lah’mu is one of the exceptions.”
Papa carried her away from the window. “What do you think, Stardust? Should Lah’mu be our new home?”
“Can Saw come and live with us?”
Papa looked at Saw and smiled. “Saw is a very busy pilot. But I’m sure he’ll visit us. Right, Saw?”
Saw nodded and made his eyes smile. “Someone needs to keep an eye on you three.” He looked at Papa. “I applaud you, Galen. I applaud all of you for taking a stand. You’re my heroes. It’s people like you who continue to inspire me to play a part in exposing the Empire’s machinations.” He considered for a moment, now looking down at Jyn. “Not everyone understands the sacrifices necessary to stop them. If we don’t use every opportunity, every secret, every weapon available to stop them, how can we face our children? How can we hand them a future filled with such injustice?”