Yet Scarif’s planetary defenses were considerable. Draven’s spies had reported an energy shield built to withstand massive bombardment, and the orbital gate station appeared to be festooned with turrets and starfighter hangars. Combined with the Imperial fleet, the battle would be—at the very least—memorable.
For all that, the decimation of the Alliance navy was the least of Raddus’s concerns.
On Yavin 4, Jyn Erso had described a battle station capable of destroying whole worlds. Raddus had never known the Empire to be restrained in its use of weapons, and of all the planets in its grasp he could think of few as defiant as his own homeworld.
Mon Cala had resisted. Mon Cala had been punished. Mon Cala had, time and again, offered its warriors and resources to the Rebellion.
If the Rebellion failed to stop the Death Star, Mon Cala would be obliterated. For this reason—and for a hundred others—Raddus would fight as long as the Profundity endured.
—
General Ramda was a fool, and Krennic had already decided to have him tried and imprisoned for gross incompetence. Still, there was no one on Scarif whom Krennic trusted to replace him, and Krennic himself knew too little of the Citadel’s vulnerabilities. So he allowed the general to race about the command center while Krennic seethed, listening to cries and reports from troopers in the field. Krennic was not, at heart, a military man; he believed that if a battle had to be waged, something had already gone wrong.
The enemy’s numbers at first seemed impossibly strong—surely a product of confusion and disarray, but no less obfuscating for all that. Yet as the fighting proceeded, no breaches in the base’s defenses were reported and the conflict remained at some distance from the Citadel Tower. Soon a lieutenant shouted triumphantly and declared that walkers had routed the rebels and pushed them to the shore.
Krennic had no words of praise for the officers of Scarif, but this was enough to dampen his ire. The data vault was pristine. The Citadel was safe. The Jedha survivors would be sifted as ashes from the sand.
Again, he tried to recall the face of his attacker on Eadu. Had it been a woman? Would he recognize her if the troopers cataloged the dead? He’d give the order to sort the bodies once the battle was over. And he would interrogate any captives himself—if they were Galen’s revenge, he would learn the truth.
One of Ramda’s aides signaled the general. “Transmission from Admiral Gorin,” he called. Krennic watched Ramda hurry to a console and tap frantically at the screen. When Ramda approached Krennic, his jaw was set to defy a fresh terror.
“Sir,” Ramda said, “part of the rebel fleet has arrived from hyperspace and amassed outside the shield. However, the admiral believes they are no threat to the planet—”
“They aren’t trying to take the planet,” Krennic snapped. He would have struck the man if he hadn’t needed Ramda so. “Lock down the base. Lock down everything!” He was shouting full-bore into the general’s face.
Ramda stood, his breath hitching but otherwise unaffected. “And close the shield?” he asked.
“Do it!” Krennic roared, and Ramda and his men scurried to act. When the orders had been given, Krennic lowered his voice but still heard himself quivering with fury. “Is there any way,” he asked, “that the rebel fleet can break through the shield? Think before you answer.”
“The shield gate itself,” Ramda said with deliberate care, “is the only weak point. With massive amounts of firepower, an enemy could conceivably punch through the field contained by the ring. But Admiral Gorin is positioning his ships to prevent even that unlikely occurrence.”
Krennic nodded briskly and waved Ramda off. He fought down his blinding rage and updated his reconstruction of the attack: A team of rebels had infiltrated the planet somehow in an attempt to penetrate the Citadel and steal the Death Star schematics. When the attack had gone poorly, the rebels had brought in their fleet—if not in its entirety, then in irreplaceable force—fighting a battle they couldn’t possibly hope to win.
Was it an act of true desperation? Had some rebel commander decided that it was worth losing everything for even a chance at extracting the team seeking the plans?
There was logic in it, given certain premises. The Death Star was an existential threat to the Alliance. If the rebels believed—if Galen had made them believe—there was a weakness in the station, then they were taking the only conceivable path to avoid doom.
It hadn’t occurred to Krennic that the rebels might sacrifice so many lives for such an unlikely gain. He’d known they were individually suicidal; a mass death wish was something new.
He slammed a fist onto the nearest console and ignored the frightened looks of the officers.
You must have told quite a story, Galen.
—
“This is Admiral Raddus. Red and Gold Squadrons, engage those two Star Destroyers. Blue Squadron, get to the surface before they close that gate!”
Merrick’s answer crackled through the comm on the bridge of the Profundity. “Copy you, Admiral.”
Raddus pressed his palms together and let his mouth hang open, allowing the thick, artificially humid air to condense inside his mouth and throat. Then he wet his lips and barked new orders to his crew. “I want one-third of the fleet each supporting Red and Gold Squadrons. That should force those Destroyers to engage. The remainder will protect our flank; when the Empire brings in reinforcements, I don’t want our escape route cut off.” It was an almost simplistic plan, cobbled together from skirmishes at Nexator and Carsanza, but there was no time to compose anything more elaborate; this was an opening gambit, not a strategy to win the day.
And improvisation had always been one of Raddus’s talents.
“What about Profundity, Admiral?” the tactical officer called.
“We cover Blue Squadron,” Raddus said, and jutted a finger at the viewport. “We target the shield gate.”
The battle was joined, and chaos ensued.
Raddus moved his attention calmly, surely, between the tactical holodisplays and the viewport. The former revealed the state of the battlefield; the latter revealed its timbre. He saw the motes of light signifying Blue Squadron bearing toward the shield gate; and he saw the first wild emerald volleys unleashed by the Star Destroyers, spattering and rippling against the deflectors of rebel Hammerheads. He said nothing during the opening moments of violence—he trusted his gunners and his captains to swim as the tide demanded.
Barely aware of his own motions, he rose from his seat and crept toward the viewport as the shield gate came into full view. The iridescent flicker of energy outside the ring had begun to diminish as—like water in a river lock—the gate regulated the energy flow and permitted the gap in the shield to close. It would take only moments before the shield was fully reestablished.
A wave of Blue Squadron fighters and U-wing transports hurtled toward the closing gate, flashing through before entering Scarif’s atmosphere. A second wave continued forward, and Raddus heard a panicked cry through the comm station: “Pull up!”
A single starfighter vanished in a burst of sparks and metal, battered into oblivion against the energy shield. The first Alliance loss of the battle.
Raddus turned back to the tactical displays.
Jyn Erso and her colleagues—Rogue One—had their ground support.
But delivering Blue Squadron had been the simple part. Now things would become more difficult.
—
The walkers stalked the rebels like hunting hounds, relentless and unafraid. Their blasts splintered trees and showered Baze with burning dirt and sand. They did far worse to the soldiers struck with any precision. A quick death, Baze thought, did not make a good death.
He emerged with Chirrut and the dozen rebel survivors onto the beach, racing along the shore as the mechanical grinding of walker legs drowned out the ragged gasps of his breathing, the beat of his b
oots on sand. A long trench ran near the water—built by the stormtroopers, he supposed, to help repel an invasion by sea—and one after the next the rebels leapt or swung inside. As if a mound of sand would stop the walkers for a fraction of an instant.
But then, if a fraction of an instant was all Baze had left to give Jyn Erso, it was better than no gift at all.
Besides, he had nowhere else to run.
He scrambled into the trench near Chirrut and didn’t pause to glance toward the walkers before dropping his cannon and seizing a rocket launcher from a rebel who hastily passed the weapon his way. If he aimed well, he might be able to shatter one walker’s cockpit—kill or expose the pilot, damage its controls, make the vehicle useless.
He would not have the time or the ammunition for a second shot. But he might earn the rebels a few instants more before the other walker buried them all.
He rose from the trench, turned to face the foremost walker—maybe fifty meters distant now, at the edge of the tree line. He set the launcher on his shoulder, lined up a shot while the rebels alongside him fired blasters uselessly. His body lurched as the rocket leapt forward, soaring toward the terrible machine.
The explosion nearly deafened him. Fire and smoke streamed from one side of the walker’s cockpit, and the machine twisted its head away as if in pain. One of its temple-mounted cannons was a wreck. But Baze’s aim had not been true. The walker was not disabled. It turned back toward the soldiers.
Death had chased Baze for a long time. He bared his teeth at it in defiance.
The burning walker targeted the trench. Before it could fire, the sky above Baze wailed and a shadow crossed the sea. Pulses of light hotter and faster than the rocket impacted the walker’s cockpit and a second blast of fire tore the mechanical head asunder, sent sheets of smoking metal tumbling through the air and onto the beach. As the walker’s body began to topple, its attacker sped above it and over the green of the jungle: an X-wing starfighter.
The Alliance had come to fight after all.
Baze’s comrades were cheering, raising fists in the air and shouting in triumph. To his surprise, he heard himself laughing with them.
THE DATA VAULT WAS UNLOCKED. Jyn wanted nothing more than to rush inside, to snatch the tape containing the Death Star’s schematics, and race back to Bodhi and the shuttle. Every moment they delayed was another chance for the Imperials to catch them inside the Citadel; and out on the beaches and in the jungles, people were surely dying by now.
How many rebels were even left? How many stormtroopers could they hold off?
Would anyone have told her if Baze and Chirrut were gone?
Instead, Jyn was helping Cassian drag the unconscious lieutenant out of the screening tunnel and back to the antechamber. “In case there’s another biometric lock on the console,” Cassian had muttered. “I don’t want Kay-Tu to have to unplug.”
He was sweating under his officer’s cap, and she’d seen him reach reflexively for his comlink more than once. He wanted to know what was happening outside as much as she did.
They dropped the body roughly by K-2, still linked to the console port. “I’ve accessed internal Citadel communications,” the droid said. “The rebel fleet has arrived.”
“What?” Jyn shook her head in confusion.
“Admiral Gorin has engaged them.” The droid went on, as if reading from a list: “There’s fighting on the beach, they’ve locked down the base, they’ve closed the shield gate, they’ve alerted—”
“Wait—what does that mean?” Jyn cut him off, trying to comprehend the implications, to sort positive from negative. They’ve closed the shield gate? “We’re trapped?”
She looked to Cassian. His expression was grim, his mouth tight. It was answer enough for her.
She swore under her breath, a parade of every obscenity she’d ever heard uttered. She saw the walls of the cave closing in, darkness creeping at the edges of the bright hope that had brought her this far. She racked her brain for a plan, and found nothing—locked down or not, they could find a way out of the Citadel, but if they had no way off Scarif…
“We have to tell them we’re down here,” she spat. “We’re close!”
“They wouldn’t be here,” Cassian said, “if they didn’t know.”
Jyn leaned in close enough to smell the cleaning chemicals on his Imperial uniform. “Last we saw those people, they didn’t want to be here at all. I’m not giving them an excuse to leave, and if they’ve got a way to get us out I’d like to know.”
Cassian held his ground, staring down at her until his lips finally twitched into something like a smile. His eyes remained hard and troubled. Jyn wasn’t sure if he’d gotten worse at hiding things or if she was simply getting to know him too well.
She was ready to call him on it, to ask what he knew that she didn’t, when K-2 interrupted. “We could transmit the plans to the rebel fleet. We’d have to get a signal out to tell them it’s coming. It’s the size of the data files. That’s the problem. They’ll never get through. Someone has to take the shield gate down.”
Cassian brought his comlink up. “Bodhi. Bodhi, can you hear me?” The moment of reflection, of confusion was over—he was all tense action again. “Tell me you’re out there. Bodhi!”
Be alive, Jyn thought. All of you, be alive.
“I’m here!” Bodhi’s voice came through, rapid and short of breath. “We’re standing by. They’ve started fighting—the base is on lockdown!”
“I know,” Cassian said. “Listen to me! The rebel fleet is up there. You’ve got to get a message out.” He squeezed his eyes shut, mouthed something to himself, and then spoke aloud again. “You’ve got to tell them they’ve got to blow a hole in the shield gate so we can transmit the plans—”
“I can’t.” Bodhi sounded aghast. “I’m not tied into the comm tower. We’re not tied in—”
“Find a way.” Cassian cut off his link and pocketed it. “Good enough?” he asked Jyn.
“Good enough,” she agreed. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t; but she tried to pretend the arrival of the fleet was good news. Their escape plan hadn’t exactly been foolproof before, and if the Alliance couldn’t punch through Scarif’s shield, what hope did it have against a Death Star?
If nothing else, someone was finally on their side.
Cassian looked between the door to the antechamber and K-2. “Cover our backs,” he told the droid, and started toward the screening tunnel.
Jyn pictured stormtroopers rushing inside and spotting the body of the unconscious lieutenant. Out of instinct more than reason, she pulled the sidearm she’d taken from the lieutenant out of her belt, checked its readings—fully charged, no stun setting, hard to work wrong—and held it grip-first toward K-2. “You’ll need this,” she said. “You wanted one, right?”
K-2 snatched the blaster with a disconcerting eagerness. His other hand remained plugged into the console as he turned the weapon about and placed a finger on the trigger. He kept the barrel pointed at the ceiling. “Your behavior, Jyn Erso, is continually unexpected.”
I couldn’t ask for a nicer compliment, she wanted to say. But she decided she could do without the inevitable correction.
“Jyn.” Cassian stood framed in the entrance of the screening tunnel. “Come on.”
She flashed a vicious grin at the droid and went to steal what she’d come for.
—
Bodhi hadn’t cheered when the Alliance had arrived. He’d managed a sickly little smile for Tonc’s sake, but he’d known immediately how the Empire would respond. By the time X-wings were blazing over the jungle and U-wings were delivering SpecForce troops to the beach, the shield gate had already closed.
There was no way off Scarif.
He didn’t blame the Rebellion, but that gave Bodhi little solace. Maybe it was his fault for not suggesting an infiltration of the orbita
l gate station. Maybe he’d explained the planet’s defenses poorly to Jyn and Cassian and the soldiers, hurrying through it all in the excitement of the flight to Scarif. Maybe he should’ve been up there instead of down here.
Or maybe Cassian was right, and they had to tell their new allies exactly what they needed. Somehow.
The technical details swam in Bodhi’s mind as he climbed down the cockpit ladder. They were a distraction, a welcome distraction, from what he was about to do—though the sounds of distant explosions and blasterfire from outside and the angry shouts of Imperial troops from the comm were equally distracting and far less welcome. Tonc and the others were spread around the cabin with their weapons aimed at the boarding ramp, but they looked his way as he hurried to the equipment hold. “All right,” Bodhi said. “Listen up.” Breathe deep and sound like a flight instructor. “We’re going to have to go out there.”
He wasn’t afraid the rebels would refuse. He was afraid they wouldn’t believe him. And afraid of dying, of course. He knelt by the hold and started sorting gear, hoping for the best. He needed KS-12 cable, or anything L-series with a connection adapter. A signal booster, if he could find one. A multitool for the hookup…
“What’re you doing?” Tonc asked.
Bodhi hauled a spool of cable out and grimaced at the weight. He set it aside and forced himself to face Tonc. “They closed the shield gate,” he said. “We’re stuck here.” Tonc knew that much already, but it meant Bodhi could delay the rest a little longer. “But—the rebel fleet is pulling in. We just have to get a signal strong enough to get through to them and let them know we’re trapped down here.”
“Fine,” Tonc said. “I won’t complain about planning a rescue. But why do you need to go out there?”
The emphasis wasn’t lost on Bodhi; he just ignored it. “For that?” he said. “To get a signal out, with the shield gate shut? We need to connect to the communications tower; that’s the whole point of the thing, to let the Citadel keep talking to the rest of the Empire without opening the defenses.” A deep breath. “Now, I can patch us in over here, out on the landing pad—” If I’m not cut down in the crossfire, or crushed by a falling starfighter. “—but you have to get on the radio, get one of the guys out there to find a master switch.”
Rogue One Page 26
