Rogue One

by Alexander Freed

  “I’m afraid I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” Krennic lied, with a quizzical expression.

  You think I’m a fool, Tarkin? he wanted to say. You believe I don’t have my own people within your ranks, telling me everything they tell you?

  But if Tarkin thought him a fool, best to play the part.

  The governor kept speaking. “After so many setbacks and delays—and now this. We’ve heard word of rumors circulating through the city. Apparently you’ve lost a rather talkative cargo pilot.”

  “And what does a cargo pilot know that’s of consequence to us?” Krennic asked, as lightly as he could. “You acknowledged yourself that secrecy was becoming an impediment to progress some time ago. Rumors were bound to spread—”

  “The rumors are not the concern. The concern is proof. If the Senate gets wind of our project”—Tarkin spoke with distilled contempt—“countless systems will flock to the Rebellion.”

  Krennic countered instinctively. “When the battle station is finished, Governor Tarkin, the Senate will be of little concern.”

  Tarkin’s lips looked as chiseled as a crevice in a cliff, and just as good-humored. “When has become now, Director Krennic. The Emperor will tolerate no further delay—you have made time an ally of the Rebellion.”

  As if you speak with the Emperor’s voice.

  “I suggest,” Tarkin said, “we solve both problems simultaneously with an immediate test of the weapon. Failure will find you explaining why to a far less patient audience.”

  Krennic was taken aback. It was not the way the conversation should have gone.

  An immediate test?

  Look for the trap. Tarkin demands nothing that doesn’t serve him.

  But the old governor was waiting for an answer. If Krennic appeared less than confident in the Death Star’s capabilities then that, too, would be turned against him.

  “I will not fail,” he said. “A test of the weapon to wipe Jedha clean.”

  In a better world, he would have been able to say such a thing with triumph and anticipation. To see the battle station fully functional would be a glorious thing; and Tarkin had found a way to poison it.

  Tarkin turned away in dismissal and disinterest.

  Later, back aboard the Death Star, Krennic stalked through the voluminous corridors that honeycombed the massive station, inspecting the results of the day’s work. The black floors were polished to a mirror sheen, and the reflection of Krennic’s white uniform shone like a guiding beacon. Though he made a show of interrogating engineers and droids, of personally scanning conduits for microfractures, he knew there was nothing meaningful he might discover that wouldn’t appear in the daily activity reports. He walked because it helped him focus; because vigorous exercise gave him an outlet for his frustrations. His meeting aboard the Executrix raised too many questions, and he analyzed and clarified circumstances and stakes with every harried step.

  Lay it out as you would for a new development team. Solve the problem.

  Did Tarkin believe the Death Star was not ready to be tested? That the primary weapon would fail?

  Revealing the Death Star as impotent above Jedha carried substantial risk—it would be humiliating, as much for Tarkin as for Krennic. Yet Krennic had heard rumors that the Emperor’s right hand—Darth Vader himself—kept Tarkin as a close ally.

  Was it conceivable Tarkin sought to use Vader as a shield?

  A bold man, Tarkin. Bold and arrogant enough to orchestrate a public failure and deflect responsibility.

  Which raised another question: Why did Tarkin believe the test would fail at all? He had long belittled Krennic’s own ability, mocked Krennic’s every recitation of the engineering challenges before them, so perhaps his disdain had blinded him to success, but to build a risky plan on an ungrounded assumption seemed unwise even for Tarkin.

  Was it mere coincidence that Tarkin had summoned Krennic while the firing array was being placed?

  Would Tarkin go so far as to sabotage the installation?

  Krennic halted in his walk, spun about, and made for the outer decks where the firing array had been locked into place. His pulse quickened and his blood burned with ire. He commandeered a maintenance turbolift and dismissed its occupants with a gesture; only when he had arrived at the force field blocking a still-airless corridor did he begin to calm. Behind the shimmering field stood two stormtroopers equipped with oxygen tanks, as vigilant as ever.

  There were a hundred other entry points to the construction areas that a saboteur might take, of course. Even the stormtroopers might have been in Tarkin’s employ. But the scene was tranquil enough to drain Krennic’s rage.

  Sabotage. The possibility galled him, yet he could adjust. He would reach out to his contacts within Tarkin’s inner circle, learn what—if anything—they knew.

  Meanwhile, he had a day, perhaps two, until the evacuation of Imperial assets from Jedha was complete. In that time, he could order every diagnostic imaginable for every focusing lens and kyber crystal and conduit in the firing array. If there was sabotage, his people would find it.

  Nothing aboard the Death Star could be hidden from Krennic. He alone—or at most he and one other—could comprehend its magnificence as a work of mortal invention.

  With those thoughts to comfort him, Orson Krennic finished his walk-through and returned to his sparely elegant quarters—his home, more than any planet or moon. He sat at his desk and drank wine and distributed orders and read his reports. His confidence was renewed. The Death Star would soon be complete—every last toggle operational and every hull plate ground smooth. The test on Jedha would be a triumph rather than a failure, and he would see the galaxy respond in awe and terror.

  No one—certainly not Wilhuff Tarkin—would deny Krennic that pleasure.

  —

  In her dream, Jyn was five years old—or maybe four, or maybe six; it was long ago—and she lay in the most comfortable bed she would ever know in her life. She clutched Beeny (her favorite toy, her best friend) against her face, so close that Beeny’s fur was damp with Jyn’s breath. She held Beeny tight and she listened.

  “Whatever atrocities they seek to commit, they have no movement, no organization. That’s the upside of having anarchists as an enemy.”

  Jyn didn’t understand the words. She didn’t like that. Sometimes it was nice, lying in the dark (she wasn’t afraid of the dark at all) listening to the grown-ups talk, but tonight wasn’t nice. They were talking about fighting.

  “Even the Separatists wanted more than just destruction.” Mama’s voice. “And if they’re so far gone, how is building a shining new Empire going to win them over? We’re talking about—”

  “We’re talking about a very delicate time in our history.” The first voice again. Jyn rolled over, peering through the door at the gathering in the living room: Mama in her pretty cloak, Papa in his gray uniform, and Papa’s friend in white. They were gathered around the dessert table, and the man in white was pouring a drink, offering to refill glasses as he spoke. “If people believe in the Empire, military victory over Separatist holdouts and malcontents is inevitable. If people lose faith—” Mama was trying to interrupt him; the man waved her off. “—well, you know about Malpaz. Coruscant will be fine, of course, but we’ll all feel guilty enjoying these meals while terrorism flourishes in the Outer Rim…”

  Mama laughed. Not a real laugh, but the quiet sort of laugh she used when she was supposed to laugh but didn’t really want to.

  Papa looked over at Jyn’s bedroom, at Jyn, and she saw that he knew she was watching.

  Mama was talking again as Papa stood and walked toward Jyn. Jyn drew her knees up, shrank back into her bed, as if she could hide. She didn’t want Papa to shut the door. Not because she was afraid of the dark (she wasn’t afraid of the dark!), but because she wanted to keep listening, she deserved to keep listening�
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  Papa didn’t close the door. Instead, he stepped inside and sat beside Jyn on her bed. She felt the mattress sink under her. “What’s the matter, Jyn? You look frightened,” he said, and pushed back a strand of her hair. He smelled like his uniform, sour and scrubbed clean.

  “I’ll always protect you,” he murmured.

  Then the dream changed.

  Papa’s body looming over Jyn was no more than a shadow. Jyn was alone in a cave, slamming a hatch shut, trapping herself in the dark. Mama was a corpse in the dirt by the farmhouse, and Jyn had nothing. Even her song wouldn’t emerge from her lips—she couldn’t speak, and her lungs were full of smoke and ash and soil.

  “Why do people fight?” she asked, and she was back in her bedroom again, the horrors of her future forgotten.

  Papa took a long time to answer. When he finally spoke, he spoke as if he were thinking about it for the first time. “That’s a good question,” he said. “My friend Orson says some people just fight because they’re angry. But I think—” He stopped talking and half closed his eyes. The voices in the other room continued. “I think, usually, people are unhappy, and they don’t agree how to make things better.”

  Jyn watched her father, tried to tell what he thought of that idea. “Maybe they’d agree if they stopped fighting first?”

  Papa looked at her kindly. Jyn thought she’d surprised him, in a good way. “Stardust. Don’t ever change.”

  He leaned in to kiss her on the forehead. She wrapped her arms around him, felt his smooth and sour-smelling uniform press against her. “I won’t,” she promised. Then, softer: “I love you, Papa. You’re a good man.”

  Papa returned the hug, in her bedroom in the city and in her bedroom on Lah’mu, both at once. With her chin on his shoulder, Jyn looked past her father to her bedroom door. Mama stood in the living room, watching them. She smiled very gently. Behind her stood the man in white.

  The arms around Jyn’s shoulders became thin and rough like string. Now Mama was right in front of her, putting her crystal necklace around Jyn’s neck.

  The hatch opened, and Saw Gerrera looked down.

  —

  When Jyn woke up, she was no longer a child and she was no longer in a comfortable bed in an apartment on Coruscant. Her mother and father and Beeny were long gone. (Beeny had been the first casualty of her private war, never even making it as far as Lah’mu.)

  The hatch, she knew, was irreparably broken.

  The U-wing trembled as Jyn, in the dark of the ship’s cabin, fumbled to find her mother’s crystal necklace against her breast.

  SUPPLEMENTAL DATA: BATTLE STATION DS-1

  [Document #YT5368 (“Official Statement on Battle Station DS-1 General Directive”), timestamped approximately two years prior to Operation Fracture, sent from the office of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin.]

  To Director Krennic:

  I find these communiqués distasteful, but since you evidently require written reminders of your duty I will oblige. It is incumbent upon everyone involved in the construction of the battle station (of clearance level DS/30 and above) to share a unified vision for the technologies involved and, in turn, our doctrine of use.

  The time for painstaking compartmentalization of development cells is past. Lying to your engineering teams about our ultimate goal let you recruit energy researchers and materials experts more interested in revitalizing Coruscanti infrastructure than in building a weapon; for this, I give you credit. But we are building a weapon, one with a specific purpose that must not be compromised.

  Quite simply, it’s time to stop playing games.

  A project of this scope has never before been attempted. I do not care what motivates your engineers, but it is imperative that they comprehend our priorities. In a battle station with eight billion component parts, even a handful of poor decisions could compromise our ultimate effectiveness.

  Shall I elaborate? I shouldn’t have to, but to wit:

  The battle station is not a military force unto itself. It is part of a system, and individual elements must be manufactured to Imperial standard. If there are incompatibilities with the Star Destroyer fleet, these must be remedied.

  The battle station is not a testbed for new technologies. Promising your people opportunities for innovation was a mistake. Update only where necessary, and if we must add a hundred reliable, proven reactors instead of developing a single new one, so be it.

  The battle station is certainly not symbolic, meant only to demonstrate the Empire’s might in ceremonial planetary executions. The main weapon must be built to fire repeatedly within a short span, as it might during the course of a single fleet battle. Both the mechanisms and the control scheme must support this practice.

  We are building a weapon not to prevent a war, but to end one. Time and again we have seen the galaxy dissolve into instability and chaos, and the rise of the rebel terrorist movement is only the latest iteration of a cycle. The rebels have no chance of overthrowing us, but they threaten our order nonetheless.

  The Death Star will not put an end to treason. Yet never again will a conflict consume our galaxy as did the Clone Wars. When an enemy rises, we will strike with decapitating vehemence. If one strike does not suffice, we will repeat the process and burn planets until either our enemy is annihilated or the galaxy is so terrified that further resistance is unthinkable.

  The new peace will last until the cycle begins again. At which point the battle station will be redeployed. The interruption of stability will be brief and illuminating.

  Are we of like minds now, Director? The Death Star is the ultimate weapon of war. It serves no other purpose. It is not a monument to your workers’ scientific prowess or the cornerstone of a new navy designed to your personal ideal. Crude but functional is an acceptable watchword.

  See to your staff immediately.

  [Document #YT5368A (“Reply to Official Statement on Battle Station DS-1 General Directive”), sent from the office of Orson Krennic, advanced weapons research director.]

  Respectfully, Governor, I request clarity.

  My understanding is that the battle station project was initiated at a level above either of us. I know you have the ear of the Emperor; can you confirm that the vision you’ve elaborated comes directly from him?

  I would hate to see anything spawned from his mind described as crude but functional. Indeed, I endeavor to exceed his expectations.

  [No follow-up documents found.]

  IF JEDHA HAD EVER BEEN more than a barren rock of a moon, some years or centuries past, Jyn couldn’t see it now. There was nothing to see from space—no great oceans, no churning clouds. No glittering cities of metal and glass that spread across continents like mold. Only amber dust and cold desert.

  “That’s Jedha,” Cassian announced. “What’s left of it, anyway.”

  Winds tore at the U-wing as it breached the atmosphere, rocking the vessel and causing Jyn to sway in the cockpit doorway. It was enough to leave her nauseated—Cassian and the droid seemed unperturbed—and she retreated to the cabin for the landing. Unwanted images of Saw Gerrera, of Galen Erso (My father is alive. My father is a bastard…) crept into her mind, spilling out of the hatch and crawling behind her eyes like parasites.

  She couldn’t afford to sit and think. She’d go mad. Ignore the nausea and do something useful, she told herself.

  By the time the transport alit on a cracked desert mesa, Jyn had already sorted through everything she might need on the moon’s surface: thermal layering—gloves and jacket and hood—to ward off the chill; a pair of combat truncheons for close-quarters fights; a satchel full of codebreakers and ration packs and maps, because she’d found them on the U-wing and she had an empty satchel to fill. While Cassian and K-2SO were still in the cockpit, she left the ship and found a seat on a boulder like an icy knife.

  From there, she looked onto the valle
y and toward the distant walls of the city—the Holy City, Jedha City, NiJedha, depending on whose data bank you checked. Dust and smoke obscured dully painted spires and palisades, ancient stone plazas and gold-topped manors. From so far away, the settlement looked like a smudged painting of a history Jyn didn’t recognize. All she could make out with certainty were the shuttlecraft drifting like flies near the belly of an Imperial Star Destroyer hovering overhead. Where the city was rough and decayed, the Destroyer was sleek and impermeable.

  Cassian and the droid emerged from the U-wing behind her, sending small pebbles tumbling down the side of the mesa.

  “What’s with the Destroyer?” she asked.

  “The Empire’s been sending those since Saw Gerrera started attacking their cargo shipments,” Cassian said.

  That didn’t surprise Jyn. You don’t stop Saw Gerrera with a few extra TIE fighters. She wondered if she was proud or simply resigned to Saw’s doggedness.

  “What are they bringing in?” she asked.

  “It’s ‘what are they taking out?’ ” Cassian passed a set of quadnocs to Jyn. She raised them to her eyes, scanned the horizon, let the automatic tracking systems fix and zoom in on one of the shuttlecraft. She saw a half dozen cargo crates colored hazard-orange strapped to the undercarriage, but she didn’t spot any markings.

  “Kyber crystal,” Cassian went on. “All they can get. We believe the Empire is using it as fuel for the weapon.”

  “The planet killer?” She sounded more sardonic than she felt.

  “You don’t think it’s real?”

  Jyn shrugged and passed back the quadnocs. “Could be. Your boss was right when she said it seems like the sort of thing the Empire would do—”

  “The natural culmination of everything the Emperor has done,” Cassian corrected. His lips curled in a wry smile.

  “Either way. It’s not surprising the Empire wants a planet killer. It’d just be surprising if it works.”

  The droid spoke cheerfully. “It might not. Not much crystal left at this point.”