Draven swore inwardly and gestured rapidly at Weems. “Get the squadron leader on,” he said. “Get him on now!”
Weems looked as aghast as if he’d been accused of desertion. “They sent word three minutes ago. They’re already engaged, sir.”
Damn it all.
Draven nodded slowly. Possibilities sprouted in his mind. Desperate options bloomed. One by one, he cut down each.
If the squadron was engaged, asking the pilots to abort now would only give the Imperials time to entrench. The dead wouldn’t come back to life. Any survivors of Cassian’s team would be left without support and made vulnerable to capture. The mission would certainly fail.
“If you can get a message through,” he said, “let Blue Squadron know what we know.” Not that there was anything the squadron could do about it. “And as for Andor’s team…”
He sighed. Sometimes good people meet bad ends.
“Tell them,” he finished, “may the Force be with them.”
BAZE HAD ALLOWED CHIRRUT TO lead them up the ridge. He’d taken point often enough—pushed Chirrut to the side to stomp at a crumbling stretch of narrow rock, or gone hunting switchbacks where the ridge became less sheer—but it had been Chirrut to insist “Higher,” until they stood together on the apex, looking far below onto the twisted paths and the research facility.
“You said we were following Jyn,” Baze growled.
“Why are you so literal?” Chirrut asked. His smile was playful, almost smug.
Baze grunted in reply. It was an old habit, a way to assure Chirrut of his presence without words. He doubted his companion appreciated it in the slightest.
A short while later, he had his cannon adjusted and the scope to his eye. There was a gathering on the facility’s landing pad. He spied stormtroopers and officers, a shuttle descending. He looked at the pale, clean-shaven face of a young Imperial captain, haughty and smirking at something his neighbor had said.
It was the face of a man who had the luxury of thinking of something other than death. Something other than the ruin of everything he had loved.
“Baze,” Chirrut said.
Baze readied himself to pull the trigger on his cannon. To burn the platform with more blaster bolts than there were drops of rain on Eadu.
“I sense anger in you,” Chirrut said.
Let the Imperials sense it, too, Baze thought.
“This is not what we came for,” Chirrut said. There was no playfulness in him now. “This solves nothing.”
Baze jerked his weapon down and turned to his companion. “They destroyed our home. I will kill them.”
Chirrut said nothing. But the blind man’s unflappable calm, the wind tugging at his clothes and the rain beating against his scalp, seemed to leach some of Baze’s ire. In time, Baze spun back and lodged himself among the rocks, observing the goings-on on the platform with his naked eye. The Imperials were only smudges that way. Harder to hate a smudge.
“So what did we come for,” Baze asked, “if not vengeance? Are we lackeys of the Rebellion now?”
Chirrut tapped at the ground with his staff, searching out the edge of the cliff before crouching at Baze’s side. “Captain Andor is the only lackey of the Rebellion here. And even he may not last much longer.”
“Then why follow Jyn?” Baze asked.
He had allowed Chirrut to lead the way up the ridge. He had allowed Chirrut to lead him in many things, and learned long ago not to demand answers. But grief had turned all his lessons to tatters. Today was not a day for the evasions of a Guardian of the Whills.
Chirrut knew, of course.
So many years together, how could he not?
“Because she shines,” Chirrut said, and placed a hand on Baze’s shoulder.
For a few short minutes, there was serenity in the rain on the mountaintop.
Then the sky roared and starfighters blazed trails of fire above them, silencing the storm.
—
The alarm began to wail seconds before the first blast hit. Jyn’s aim slipped from her target. Then she saw the X-wing diving, saw its laser cannons flare. The volley cut across the platform, setting fire to metal and sending waves of sparks skidding in all directions. The stormtroopers and officers struck squarely by the blasts died instantly, burned to char. Those on the edges of the volley screamed and clutched their wounds and ran.
Jyn retreated behind the cargo crates, dragged in a ragged breath of the suddenly smoky air. The X-wing leveled out of its dive. She heard its cannons continue pulsing, the sound rapidly falling off as the vessel flew past the platform.
She didn’t bother to ask herself where the attacker had come from. She knew, however, it wouldn’t have come alone. The alarm’s wail seemed faint in the aftermath of the assault. Someone was screaming orders to scramble fighters, to return fire. Jyn took the opportunity to creep out from behind her cover and scan the platform for her father.
He was where she had left him, still near the furiously yelling man in white—the ghost standing in the midst of mayhem, threatening to kill Jyn’s mother again with the mere fact of his existence.
But her father was pushing himself upright, standing unsteadily. He was alive.
She wanted to run to him. She forgot every fear she’d had of their reunion. But now two more X-wings had begun a strafing run and the blinding crimson of laserfire, the heat of boiling rainwater against her cheeks, overwhelmed Jyn for one second, two, three. She blinked spots from her eyes and cinders from her lashes and sprinted, head low and rifle cradled in both arms. She shouldered a panting officer to one side, leapt over the burning body of a stormtrooper.
“Papa,” she screamed.
Galen turned. He saw her. For the first time in nearly fifteen years, Jyn’s father was looking at her.
She kept running, struggling to find traction on the wet metal. She saw the man in white stop shouting orders and whirl toward her, drawing his sidearm. She didn’t break stride; she brought up her rifle, ready to kill the ghost to reach her father.
Whether the man in white ever fired, Jyn didn’t know. Her body went numb as a shock wave slammed into her, as thunder and shattering metal assailed her ears. She felt her feet leave the ground and her skull strike steel. All she saw of the proton torpedo that hit the platform was a blinding incandescence.
She wondered whether her father had even recognized her.
—
The platform was burning. There was nothing Cassian could see besides oily smoke, low-burning flames, and silhouettes crawling through the pandemonium. He had no target, no means to intervene.
“Jyn,” he whispered. “No.”
He didn’t even know if she was alive.
With his rifle slung over one shoulder, he ran. He half slid down the muddy ridge, digging his front heel into the scree to avoid doubling over into a roll. When he had enough purchase to maneuver, he set out toward the research facility and the platform, hoping his path would be clear through the darkness.
He knew he was running toward catastrophe. The odds of him reaching Jyn—if she’d survived—were slim. The Imperials would shoot at him on sight, and there was no time for stealth. The rebel squadron would continue attacking until it was driven off or until the facility was buried in rubble. But he was free of his mission now, and if he failed to save Jyn…
He had to save her.
The sky was ablaze with green and red energy. TIE fighters had joined the battle, swooping to intercept rebel X-wings and slower Y-wing bombers. Volleys of turret fire from points around the research facility and along the canyon rim glimmered and hummed. Cassian spotted an X-wing caught in crossfire; it spun and plunged toward the rocks. He couldn’t see where it struck, but the roar of its death echoed across the valley.
He fell as much as he ran, dropping through open air and landing on his heels or tumbling before he
rose and resumed his stride. A thought sparked in his brain: If he found Jyn, where would they go? They were still trapped on Eadu. But it didn’t matter; didn’t change the immediacy of his needs.
A great bright bolt streaked overhead like a meteor. The bolt lanced one of the TIE fighters, sending it spiraling through the rain until it collided with a turret. The white bloom that followed illuminated Eadu as far as Cassian could see. When he glanced behind him, traced the afterimage of the bolt’s path toward its source, he saw two humanoid silhouettes standing far above him on the ridge.
One of the silhouettes was carrying a staff.
—
The U-wing was on fire, struck—intentionally or not, Bodhi wasn’t sure—during a TIE fighter’s berserker maneuvering over the canyon. The Rebel Alliance X-wing squadron, much like Saw’s rebels on Jedha, seemed to have no particular interest in whether Bodhi lived or died. And of the companions he’d taken up with—the companions who’d almost started to tolerate him—the only one left was the droid who, Bodhi suspected, wanted him locked away.
“Would you like to be carried?” K-2SO asked as they hurried away from the burning hulk of the U-wing. The droid’s strides were markedly slower than Bodhi’s, but his spindly limbs crossed twice the distance with every step.
“No!” Bodhi said. It was more breath than he had to spare.
“I could carry you anyway,” the droid said. “That way you wouldn’t have to choose.”
Bodhi staggered to a halt and clapped his knees, hung his head panting for what he knew was too long. “No,” he managed at last. “No, listen. I need you to trust me, all right? You need to follow my lead and not say anything unless someone asks you to.”
Rain bounced off the droid’s chest plate. K-2SO looked at Bodhi appraisingly. “Trust is a matter of degree,” he said. “I really don’t know you, Bodhi Rook.”
Bodhi cringed and shook his head. There’s no time! The others were waiting. Galen Erso was waiting. He wanted to shout. Instead he talked.
“You do know me,” he said. “Look—you, me.” He jabbed his finger at the Imperial emblem on the droid’s arm, then at the identical symbol on his flight suit. “We’ve both got them, and we’re both here anyway. We both want to stop the Death Star, right? Both want to help the Rebellion?”
The droid didn’t answer. Bodhi was talking too fast now, but if anyone could understand him it would be a machine. “Cassian reprogrammed you, right? Maybe? You’re loyal to him, I get that. Galen Erso reprogrammed me. We can still get this mission right, and we want the same thing, but you have to let me lead the way…”
Something exploded on the canyon ridge. The light made K-2SO look wraithlike—a gaunt shadow with deathly bright eyes.
“All right, then,” K-2SO said.
Bodhi nodded briskly, raggedly, and turned to face the shuttle port.
He had never intended to come back to Eadu. He’d never meant to set foot in an Imperial garrison again after defecting. Galen had made it sound simple, like he could turn the message over to Saw Gerrera and sneak away somewhere outside the Empire, somewhere the Rebellion would hide him and pay decent money for all the good he’d done.
He suspected that plan had never really been in the cards. But he’d never been a good gambler, and he couldn’t blame the dealer for that.
“If a fight starts,” Bodhi said, “try not to hurt anyone we don’t have to.”
“I always try,” the droid replied.
Bodhi started toward the shuttle port’s bright lights and prayed he could find a way offworld.
—
Jyn woke to something burning in her lungs and the smell of death in her nostrils. When she coughed, the jolt sent needles of pain from her neck to the small of her back. She rolled onto her chest and climbed to her knees and reached with her right hand to steady herself on the platform, only to find her fingers tracing the hot, charred edges of a hole that spanned much of the landing pad. To her left was a corpse too black and bloody to identify.
She concluded she was alive.
Where was her father?
“Director!” someone called. “We have to evacuate!”
She looked toward the noise. Through thick smoke she spotted two officers supporting the man in white, leading him past sputtering fires up the boarding ramp of the shuttle. As the ramp began to close, the man in white cast a final glance toward a body across the hole from Jyn.
Galen’s body.
Jyn forced herself to stand and felt agony wrench her spine. She tried to run and took awkward, plodding strides instead. If anyone had tried to shoot her she would’ve died instantly, but no one bothered. She heard footsteps and shouting. She saw no one else through the smoke.
Raindrops sprayed against her and a harsh gust of warm air dropped her to her knees again. As the shuttle lifted off the platform, its engine backwash built until Jyn was sliding back toward the platform’s edge. She prostrated herself, clawed at the slick metal with her fingertips, and only the shuttle’s final ascension saved her from the fate of the stormtrooper she’d killed earlier. As she dragged herself from the precipice and stumbled upright, she saw her fingernails were cracked and caked with soot.
Trembling, she retraced her path. Soon she was steadier. Then she was running to her father’s side. She knelt in ashes, wrapping her arms around Galen and drawing him against her chest.
He was so light. A crumpled leaf of a man.
But he was warm. He was breathing.
“Papa,” she whispered. “It’s Jyn.”
His head lolled and he stared at the clouds before finally turning her way. There was pain in his face, bewilderment, and a joy he seemed not to entirely trust.
“Jyn?” he said, and she nodded. Her eyes stung with smoke and tears.
My father is alive.
My father is dying.
“Stardust,” he said, lips moving with overwrought care—as if he wanted her to recognize the word even if his breath failed him.
She stroked his wet and grimy hair. Like Saw, he was a shadow of the man she remembered. Where she had grown, he had withered. Even the man in the hologram had been more solid than the man she held now.
She was surprised to realize she felt no hate at all. There was nothing to hate. Just a dying man who loved her and who had exhausted everything else he was.
Her confessions, too, fled her. This was not a man who needed to hear what the Death Star had done, or the faith she’d lost in him, or the deeds Liana and Tanith and Kestrel had committed when he’d been telling himself, If you’re happy, Jyn, then that’s more than enough.
He was speaking again, watching with sad intensity.
“It must be destroyed,” he said.
“I know,” she said, soothing, reassuring, shivering as she leaned as close as she could. “I’ve seen your message.”
She wasn’t sure he heard her.
He wet his lips. “Someone has to destroy it.”
Painfully slowly, he lifted one arm. His wrist was twitching almost imperceptibly as his muscles strained. Three soft fingertips dragged across Jyn’s cheek and then fell.
“Papa…” Her throat felt thick. “No. No…”
She smoothed hair away from his forehead. He was warm, but his chest no longer rose and fell—not even with the tiny, wounded-animal breaths he’d struggled to take before.
“Papa…Papa! Come on.”
She looked inward, to the cave in her mind, but the hologram was gone and its words no longer echoed. Now there was only darkness and emptiness. Nothing to shelter her or guard her or guide her remained.
She didn’t let go of Galen, of her father, as a white-armored body stepped out of the smoke and took aim. She felt for her rifle and found nothing; she couldn’t remember when she’d dropped it. She clutched the body tighter and braced for one last shock of pain.
She heard the shot. She watched the stormtrooper fall. Cassian emerged from the smoke behind him and was by her side in an instant, hands on her arms and trying to coax her upright, tug her away from Galen. “Jyn, we’ve got to go. Come on.”
She didn’t understand where he’d come from, in the same way she didn’t understand the attack by the X-wings. Understanding wouldn’t make any difference.
“I can’t leave him,” she said.
“Listen to me.” Firm, but not harsh, he uncurled her fingers from her father’s body. Galen’s warmth slipped away, replaced by the chill of the rain. “He’s gone,” Cassian said. “He’s gone. There’s nothing you can do. Come on.”
Her father dropped to the metal. “Help me,” Jyn said, and she was surprised to hear the force in her voice.
“Come on,” Cassian pressed. He hoisted Jyn to her feet. The pain raced through her body and seemed to activate her nerves. The smoke hurt to breathe. Footsteps were racing toward them. The platform itself was groaning.
She had to leave or die with her father.
“Move!” Cassian urged.
She took his hand and let him show her the way out.
—
Cassian had seen Jyn broken and trapped inside herself in the monastery on Jedha. What he saw now was different—she was alert, keenly aware of her surroundings and her decisions. He only needed to make sure she decided to stay alive.
He’d failed her father already.
He kept one hand on Jyn’s arm and the other on his rifle as he picked his way around the fires and gaping holes of the platform. He knew their time was short. He’d seen the rebel squadron pull out of the sky shortly before he’d found Jyn; now the Imperials were scrambling as the inferno unleashed by the bombs spread through the facility. Half the garrison was hunting for intruders while the remainder raced to evacuate.
Cassian had found a cargo turbolift, unguarded in the chaos, to bring him to the platform. He’d led Jyn half a dozen meters to the door when a stormtrooper squad emerged from one of the neighboring structures. Cassian raised his rifle—too many to take out, but he could give Jyn cover—and watched a rapid volley of particle bolts topple the soldiers like toy dolls.
Rogue One Page 17
