As insurgent factions in different sectors began to coordinate and share resources, new challenges arose. One TIE fighter is little different from another—its mechanisms and its pilots can be swapped with ease when repairs or injuries warrant. Not so with the variety of ships flying for the rebel cause. Staffing and maintaining a patchwork fleet is a task that under less expert leadership (I do not include myself!) would have, should have been impossible.
Rebel captains proposed a threefold solution to our challenge. First, an underground pipeline was to be established through which both smugglers and legitimate merchants would obtain and distribute badly needed starship parts. This distribution network would need to rival those of some of the Republic’s larger corporations to operate effectively. The assistance of former Separatist advisers would ultimately prove invaluable.
Second, pilots would be encouraged to coordinate and learn from one another and to train on as many types of ships and simulators as possible. This would not only allow skilled pilots to be placed on new vessels should their personal spacecraft be destroyed, but also prove vital for multiship engagements. As Admiral Raddus puts it, “No one wants to fly in formation with a stranger.”
Third, rebel leadership would expend whatever resources were required to obtain additional starfighter squadrons. These efforts would cost credits and lives, and the details must remain confidential for now. Nonetheless, our access to X-wing fighters in particular is testament to our success.
As our Rebellion gained visibility, new opportunities arose as well. The arrival of the Mon Calamari city-ships was a shocking (and perhaps, given our limited effectiveness against the occupation of Mon Cala, undeserved) boon, emphasizing the significance of winning the hearts of the galaxy’s civilians above all else.
Over time, leaders like Raddus and General Merrick performed a startling feat, transforming what might have amounted to a pirate armada into a genuine fighting force. We’ve long since known that our pilots, crews, and commanders can easily match the skill and bravery of their Imperial counterparts; what remains to be tested is whether our vessels can engage in a full-scale fleet battle and triumph against a technologically superior opponent.
My hope is that such a test is never needed. But if the day does come, I believe we will emerge victorious.
BODHI ROOK SHOULD HAVE FELT guilty. From inside the cockpit of shuttle SW-0608, he watched black smoke rise from half a dozen landing pads—the sort of smoke that spilled like blood from a crashed cargo ship or a burning speeder. He’d seen Saw Gerrera’s rebels blow up installations before. He recognized himself in the black-clad figures that raced to extinguish fires or who took cover behind patrolling stormtroopers.
Bodhi had never thought of himself as a soldier or a killer. He should have felt guilty. But he’d picked a side when Galen Erso had told him of the crimes he was enabling. He’d felt his last doubts burn away in the fire that had consumed Jedha City.
“Troopers!” It was Corporal Tonc’s voice, from down the cockpit ladder and outside the ship. “Troopers on the left!”
Bodhi heard boots ring against deck plating as the five rebel fighters who’d stayed with the shuttle hurried inside. Through the viewport he spotted a squad of stormtroopers racing across the landing pad, sprinting past cargo crates and control consoles. None of them gave the shuttle more than a glance.
For the moment, at least, Bodhi could keep hiding.
Tonc scrambled noisily up the cockpit ladder, the barrel of his shoulder-slung rifle striking each rung as he went. Bodhi tried to look confident, tough in the man’s presence—Tonc had spent most of the flight to Scarif interrogating Bodhi before volunteering to guard the shuttle. Bodhi still wasn’t sure what the corporal thought of him.
Tonc struck Bodhi with the flat of his hand, square between the shoulders. “How’re we doing up here?” he growled.
Bodhi winced at the force of the blow. “Looks like they’ve grounded noncombat vessels, but overall they’re ignoring the shuttles. I can’t really tell what’s going on…” He gestured vaguely at the viewport and the smoke. Occasionally he made out the crimson flash of a blaster bolt, but the trees obscured his view of the pads, bunkers, and barracks closer to the Citadel.
“What’s going on is fighting,” Tonc said. “That’s the Pathfinders for you.”
Bodhi was adjusting his instruments, head down over his console. But the admiration in Tonc’s voice caught his attention. “I thought you were a Pathfinder?” he asked.
Tonc laughed. “I can’t do half what those SpecForce guys do. But I heard Captain Andor needed volunteers, so I volunteered.” His voice took on a gruffer quality as he added, “Still a better shot than you.”
Bodhi didn’t doubt that.
The comm crackled and a voice came through, urgent and angry. “Pad twelve! Close it down!”
Bodhi slapped his thighs in triumph. “I’ve found the main security channel. We can track their movements from here.”
Tonc pursed his lips and nodded approvingly. The chatter was fast and overlapping: The Citadel demanded status reports and assessments of rebel troop numbers while stormtroopers called for emergency reinforcements. “We have rebels everywhere!” one voice called, and Bodhi couldn’t help but smile.
“We just going to sit here and be smug? Or are you going to help out?” Tonc asked.
Bodhi bristled, though the words were more friendly than challenging. He reached for the comm controls again and bit his lip.
Baze and Chirrut were out there, probably shooting and getting shot at along with all the rebel soldiers. Cassian and Jyn and K-2 were inside the Citadel by now. If everything went well, even if everything went perfectly, not everyone would make it back alive.
They weren’t his friends. They hadn’t gone drinking with Bodhi after his crush on Bamayar had rejected him, or helped him reassemble his astromech after he’d stupidly taken the droid apart on a dare. But they had saved him from Saw Gerrera, believed him when Saw and his people hadn’t. They’d never once put him in cuffs. They’d needed him on Eadu and never once pretended they hadn’t.
They wanted to stop the Death Star.
They didn’t deserve to be hurt.
Bodhi should have felt guilty.
You don’t have to feel guilty.
He punched a button, lifted the link, and shouted into the open comm, “Pad two! This is pad two! We count forty rebel soldiers running west off pad two!”
Then he muted the comm and adjusted the settings with one shaking hand. He felt a rush of energy, terrifying and invigorating, as he passed the link to Tonc. “Tell them you’re pinned down by rebels on pad five,” he said.
Tonc grinned broadly and took the link. “Who needs SpecForce?” he asked. “We can do this all by ourselves.”
For an instant Bodhi felt sure that was true. But he was glad not to be fighting alone.
—
Jyn’s fears had begun to multiply. In the starkly revealing light of the cave in her mind, she seemed to find another with every moment that passed. Fear for her companions, and the danger they were in; fear for how she might fail or abandon them; fear of what the Death Star would do if not stopped; fear of failing to deliver the redemption her father sought.
It was fear that guided her hand to her blaster as she walked with Cassian and K-2 down a Citadel subcorridor and saw thirty stormtroopers rush toward her in formation. It was fear that made her eager for a fight, eager to channel her dread into pitiless blows and the pain of bruised ribs.
Eadu and Jedha had given her numbing solace in the form of endless marches and racking storms and sunlight gone cold. Scarif’s comforts let her think too much. And when the stormtrooper platoon passed by without a glance, footsteps in sync as they made for the main entrance to the Citadel, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed.
“Guess our distraction’s working,” Cassian murmured
.
Jyn forced herself to look approving. “It was a good plan.”
They hadn’t heard from Melshi or the others since the detonators had gone off. The rebels were supposed to signal if they had anything Jyn or Cassian needed to know.
Unless, of course, they all died.
Stay focused, Jyn.
She tried to remember how she’d kept radio silent during runs for Saw; how she’d managed to wait back at base for comrades like Maia and Staven to return. But the vague, inchoate memories made her feel ill. And even then she hadn’t needed those people the way she needed Bodhi and the Guardians and Cassian: to keep her on-task, to keep her from just surviving.
Stay focused and do your damn job.
“This way to the data vault,” K-2 said.
They moved as swiftly as they could without drawing attention. The corridors emptied while they traveled, officers withdrawing to their stations and troopers racing for the perimeter. At last they reached a heavy blast door. “Inside,” K-2 said. The door opened without a code.
The antechamber to the vault was as starkly appointed as the rest of the facility. A single squat lieutenant sat behind a console, guarding entry into a brightly illuminated tube ringed with devices Jyn didn’t recognize.
“Can I help you?” the lieutenant asked.
“That won’t be necessary,” K-2 replied, and brought a metal fist down onto the man’s skull. The lieutenant slumped onto the console as the droid maneuvered around him, shoving the unconscious body aside and plugging into a dataport.
Cassian rushed to drag the man out of view of the doorway. Jyn stood in the circular frame of the tube, blinking at the light and peering at the massive vault door at the far end. A long-forgotten recollection of a bad night in the crawl space of an Imperial treasury flashed in her mind; she could still feel the sparks burning on her cheeks, the calluses from four hours working a plasma cutter. Carving through the metal, she decided, wasn’t an option.
“How does it open?” she called.
“Biometric identification. Lieutenant Putna should do.” K-2 gestured absently at the body in Cassian’s arms. “I must remain here.”
“What for?” Cassian asked. Jyn repositioned herself to help grapple the unconscious lieutenant, lifting his legs as Cassian hoisted him beneath the shoulders.
“No data tape can be removed from the vault without authorization and assistance from this console,” K-2 said. “In this way, any single would-be thief is denied success.
“In the event of a security breach,” the droid added, “the screening tunnel can also be energized to wipe all data storage. I prefer to keep my memory intact.”
Jyn craned her neck as Cassian led the way down the tube. The rings of equipment seemed no less threatening, even knowing they were designed to thwart electronics instead of people.
Cassian grunted at Jyn. She dropped the lieutenant’s legs and Cassian rolled the man over, slapping his hand against the scanner in the vault door. For several seconds, nothing happened; then a short, low buzz indicated rejection of the scan.
Jyn swore to herself and felt her skin prickle with heat.
“It’s not working,” Cassian called.
K-2’s voice came echoing through the tunnel: “Right hand.”
“You’re a terrible spy,” Jyn hissed. She was surprised by her own intensity, the easy jibe laced with frustration.
Cassian ignored her and rearranged the body. The vault door chimed swiftly this time. Metal locks disengaged and a current of vibration ran through the floor.
Slowly—excruciatingly slowly—the door opened.
—
For the better part of five minutes, the rebels held the advantage. The stormtroopers who survived the initial detonations were stunned, deafened, blinded, injured by the blasts and thunder and shrapnel. They did not panic—they raced dutifully to their posts and clustered their shots in well-timed volleys—but they were scrambling to compensate for casualties before they had even spotted the enemy. They were easy to kill and easy to herd.
Baze took satisfaction in the cries of alarm and the tumbling of bodies as his companions caught Imperial squads in particle barrages; he took no less satisfaction each time Chirrut emerged from the shadows to send a stormtrooper sprawling, or when his own meticulous cannon shots burst through one suit of armor after the next.
Baze had heard once—he could not recall from whom—that the Jedi considered anger an abomination; a path to what they called the dark side of the Force. But the Guardians of the Whills were not Jedi; and Baze’s anger was righteous, able to guide his shots where the Force would not.
And if anger had not sufficed to save the holy city? Then Baze would need to be twice as fierce on Scarif to give Jyn Erso the distraction she required.
Baze, Chirrut, and the rebels swarmed and regrouped, separated the squads of their enemies and picked off the reinforcements who arrived one by one. But soon the stormtroopers regained their strength and their reinforcements came by tens and twenties.
That was when the rebels began to die.
Baze did not know their names. He did not hear their wails over the endless reverberations of blaster bolts and the lower thrumming of his cannon. He left smoking bodies behind as he fell back. The fallen would not receive proper death rites, but Baze decided that if anyone lived through the day, he would honor the dead with his fellow survivors.
The air smelled like ashes. It was better than the tang of sea salt.
Squads of stormtroopers crept away from the barracks, forming a spearhead aimed at the hillock where the rebels were attempting to hold ground. Baze saw the opportunity when Melshi did—one brief chance to break the enemy—and as Melshi cried, “Forward!” Baze provided cover for the rebels to shatter the spearhead. An allied rocket blasted armored bodies through the air; then the moment was gone, and as one the rebels scampered into the cover of the jungle, allowing the stormtroopers to give chase.
In the relative shade of the trees, Baze’s eyes spotted with streaks of color as blaster volleys flashed by. His back had begun to ache from the weight of his generator, and sweat plastered his beard to his chin. He did not stop moving until he realized, with a start, that he had not seen Chirrut in some moments.
He spat a curse, spun about, and fired at a stormtrooper over the head of a rebel half crawling through the underbrush. If he yelled for the blind man now, a dozen guns would be aimed his way. But if he’d lost Chirrut…
The smoke was everywhere. Trees burned as their trunks absorbed bolt after bolt. Baze stalked back the way he had come, concentrating his focus, narrowing his cone of vision as if sheer intensity would allow him to penetrate the haze.
“Baze! Baze!”
He heard Chirrut before he saw him. The blind man’s robes were marred with soot and soil and his expression was wild with alarm, but he appeared uninjured. Baze felt a rush of fury and an equal rush of relief.
“What?” he snapped. “What is it?”
“Run,” Chirrut said. “Run!”
With those words, as Chirrut grasped Baze by the arm and pulled him toward the shoreline, Baze’s senses expanded again. He heard the heavy snapping of wood—not burning wood, not wood ravaged by a grenade, but the broad-leafed trees of the jungle being compressed beneath an unfathomable weight until they broke and burst.
He turned and saw the towering metal forms of Imperial walkers on the march. Their legs dwarfed the trees, and the laser cannons attached to their cockpits pumped ruin toward the scattering rebel soldiers. The stormtroopers had slowed their pursuit, staying out of the crossfire as they attempted to cut off the rebels’ routes to escape.
The rebels had already begun to die. But death was not failure.
Failure lay in the shadow of the metal beasts.
Go, little sister, Baze thought. Go!
—
Dozens of vessels winked into existence against the shroud of space, filling the void as if some mythological deity had upturned a bottle of fresh stars over the heavens. Admiral Raddus—Raddus of Mon Cala, Raddus of the Floes, Raddus of the Clutch of Zadasurr and the Spear of Tryphar—knew many of the ships by their silhouettes: X-wing and Y-wing starfighters, U-wing and Gallofree transports, Dornean gunships and Hammerhead corvettes. All of them had served the Rebellion well.
It was a tremendous sight, unique in the history of the Rebellion. If the fleet had a vulnerability, it was that selfsame uniqueness: We fight as siblings who have never known a shared home, Raddus thought, against an Empire that knows naught but tyrannical discipline.
Raddus did not avert his gaze from the main display as he gestured to his comm officer. “Are all capital ships accounted for?”
“Yes, Admiral,” came the answer in that rasping, human voice.
Raddus had yet to adjust to keeping aliens aboard his bridge, no matter how skilled; the Profundity had been built by Mon Calamari and only recently refitted for war by the Rebellion. With the refit had come unexpected diversity. “Very good. And General Merrick?”
The general’s proud bellow came through the comm with a burst of static. “Ready to fight, Admiral—sending possible attack runs now.” There was a brief pause before the voice continued, “This is Blue Leader. All squadron leaders, report in.”
Raddus turned from the viewport to the tactical holodisplays, scanning the battlefield as the squadron leaders replied.
“Blue Leader, this is Gold Leader.”
“Red Leader, standing by.”
“Green Leader, standing by.”
The Profundity had detected—and its crew or its allies had visually confirmed—two Star Destroyers, at least nine distinct TIE starfighter squadrons, and innumerable midsized vessels ranging from shuttles to patrol cruisers, all situated between the rebels and Scarif. Other enemy craft, as yet undetected, could have been hidden behind planets and moons or running dark on auxiliary power. On its own, the Imperial fleet would pose a formidable challenge—but not a dispiriting one.
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