The comm was full of noise, inchoate and intermixed, like a war zone filtered through a downpour. No sound came through the solid vault door. The arm, already stationed at its proper data bank, maneuvered among the cartridges and reached out needfully. “Stardust,” K-2 said, and Jyn heard strain in the droid’s voice.
Cassian still clutched the handles. Jyn couldn’t tell whether Cassian or K-2SO was performing the final maneuver. “That’s it,” she said. “You almost have it…”
The arm’s manipulators closed around the cartridge and pulled.
Then the lights of the control room went out, leaving the console, Cassian, and Jyn illuminated only by the sinister red glow of the vault shaft through the viewport. The refrigerated air pricked at Jyn’s skin, arousing gooseflesh down her arms and spine. The comm didn’t stop its static shrieking—until a moment and an eternity later, it did.
“Kay!” Cassian screamed into the silence, hunched over the console.
Jyn stared up at the rigid arm clinging to its data cartridge high above. In the artificial midnight of the control room, the tower shaft seemed very much like a cave.
—
K-2SO’s reprogramming by Cassian Andor had stripped the droid of certain ineffable qualities. He remembered, as if at a great distance, a sort of conviction that had come with serving the Galactic Empire. He remembered, too, the pride and confidence that had come with fulfilling exactly the duties he was designed for—with knowing that every servomotor and every processing cycle contributed to enforcing his Imperial masters’ edicts. Cassian had denied him that exquisite sense of purpose and replaced it with individuality. With individuality came doubt and cynicism: an awareness not only of the odds of success or failure but of those outcomes’ repercussions.
Cassian had killed K-2SO (whose true designation was far longer and far grander, rich with meaning and history that described his factory of origin, the date and time of his initialization, and more) and brought him back both smaller and larger than he had been. K-2SO did not mourn for his old self, but there were times he grew wistful over what he had been.
When the first stormtroopers had entered the antechamber to the data vault, K-2SO had suppressed his hardcoded obedience instinct, forced himself to attempt deceit (to little effect, despite having watched Cassian lie masterfully time and again), and finally resorted to activating his enforcement protocols. He had severed his connection to the console while leaving the comm open, and—after eliminating his opponents through force and a superbly aimed blaster bolt—spent twenty-seven milliseconds considering whether to return to the console at all. K-2SO was not a data pilot. He was not an astromech unit. The joyful rush of utilizing long-neglected skills was, in its way, intoxicating.
He could have abandoned Cassian and Jyn to proceed with further enforcement. He chose not to.
During this initial skirmish, K-2SO also suffered damage to the carboplast-composite casing of his midsection. The blaster shot itself did not harm anything vital, but the heat of the burnt casing melted a length of interior wiring. He rerouted his functions and continued.
He had attempted to comfort Cassian when his master asked for an update. This particular dissemblance was, on reflection, a poor use of resources; it diverted K-2SO’s attention from an increasingly variable combat situation as well as his attempt to locate the Death Star technical schematics. As additional stormtroopers entered the antechamber, K-2SO had deactivated his self-preservation warnings, maintained his connection to the console, and savored the pleasures of wielding a personal energy weapon.
At that time, he also took several additional blaster shots to nonvital sections of his chassis. Rerouting his functions was becoming more difficult.
After this, two equally unavoidable complications arose nearly simultaneously:
First, a stormtrooper (K-2SO identified her as TK-4012 but resisted the urge to download her Citadel personnel file) fired a blaster bolt that impacted just over four centimeters off K-2SO’s programming port access door—a normally nonvital area through which K-2SO had rerouted multiple vital functions. The irony was not lost on him. He estimated he now had well over twelve seconds before a cascade failure resulted in his permanent deactivation.
Second, another stormtrooper (unidentified) fired a poorly aimed burst that delivered multiple particle bolts into the control console. Despite the Citadel’s unusually redundant systems, K-2SO found himself unable to access various vault mechanisms.
With approximately twelve seconds until total shutdown, K-2SO considered his options while Cassian screamed his name.
He loosely projected eighty-nine ways to prolong his own existence (for periods ranging from point-eight milliseconds to forty-three days). Suspecting all of them would involve the capture or execution of Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso, he dismissed them without detailed study.
He reexamined his mission parameters and projected only two ways that Cassian and Jyn might retrieve their desired data cartridge and escape Scarif. Upon refinement, both appeared infinitesimally unlikely. K-2SO reexamined his parameters a second time (at a cost of several milliseconds) and deprioritized the survival of Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso.
He actively denied himself any opportunity to mourn or reflect. He chose to eschew further loose projections and estimations in favor of detailed simulations and hypotheticals.
He began with this premise: Cassian and Jyn now had the opportunity to manually recover the data cartridge.
With approximately nine seconds until total shutdown, K-2SO activated his vocoder assembly and spoke into the comm: “Climb!”
Retrieving the cartridge was not sufficient for mission success; the Death Star technical schematics needed to be relayed to rebel agents off Scarif.
This would be difficult so long as Cassian and Jyn were trapped. K-2SO had no way to free them.
He made internal inquiries. Could the data be transmitted to the Rebellion directly? The amount of data stored on a single cartridge was vast; secure transmission to Yavin 4 was out of the question under even ideal circumstances. These circumstances were not ideal, but a communications system was available.
“Climb the tower!” K-2SO said. He did not take conscious note of the blaster bolts blazing around him. “Send the plans to the fleet!”
Even the Citadel’s communications tower could not transmit an entire data cartridge with the shield gate in place. But Cassian had already taken measures, through Bodhi Rook, to open the gate.
Had Cassian foreseen this scenario?
“If they open the shield gate—” K-2SO’s protocol systems endowed his words with extreme emphasis. “—you can broadcast from the tower!”
With approximately three seconds until total shutdown, K-2SO listened to Cassian’s voice cry his name one last time. Then, without regret, the droid turned his weapon on the console. The comm cut out. With the controls now reduced to a melted plastoid-metal compound, the stormtroopers would have considerable difficulty entering the vault.
With one second left until total shutdown, K-2SO chose to mentally simulate an impossible scenario in which Cassian Andor escaped alive.
The simulation pleased him.
SUPPLEMENTAL DATA: SUNSET PRAYER
[Document #JP0103 (“Sunset Prayer of the Guardians of the Whills”), recovered from the outskirts of NiJedha; provenance uncertain.]
In darkness, cold.
In light, cold.
The old sun brings no heat.
But there is heat in breath and life.
In life, there is the Force.
In the Force, there is life.
And the Force is eternal.
KRENNIC TRIED TO FOCUS ON Galen Erso’s communications archive. He scrolled through endless memoranda and dispatches while General Ramda’s men shouted updates and orders across the command center. There was nothing Krennic could do for the stormtrooper
s on the beach or for Admiral Gorin’s fleet; nothing but dig for the truth of Galen’s treachery among engineering personnel transfer requests and complaints about thermal exhaust ports.
Galen had set this in motion. If he had reached out to allies in the Rebellion, sent the traitorous pilot to contact those allies on Jedha, summoned those allies to Eadu, arranged for them to hound Krennic even after Galen was rotting in a mudhole of a mass grave…
Krennic stopped short. He remembered now, on the Eadu platform—a flash of dark hair and a face covered in ashes. He recalled the voice saying: You’ll never win. But it was Lyra who spoke, not Galen.
“—unauthorized access at the data vault.”
His attention left his console, snapped into crisp focus on one of Ramda’s lieutenants. “What?”
“It’s just come in, sir.” The lieutenant’s head twitched to one side, as if he were seeking support. No one came to his aid. “There’s a security team already in place, but no details about the intruders. We’re waiting for more now—”
Krennic shut out the man’s nattering. The rebels were inside the Citadel. They were inside the vault. They were determined to steal the schematics, to find an imaginary weakness, no matter how many lives they lost. They were determined to haunt him on Galen’s behalf.
And Ramda wasn’t up to the task. The shield gate was shut and escape was surely impossible; yet too many impossibilities had already occurred for one day.
He hurled his words behind him as he marched toward the stairs. “Send my guard squadron to the battle! Two men with me!” There was someone in his way; he roughly shoved the body to one side, not bothering to identify the man’s face. “And get that beach under control!”
He didn’t wait for acknowledgment. As he emerged from the command center, two death troopers fell into step behind him and he thought of another day long before: another planetfall; another squad of troopers; and another danger to his life spawned by Galen. That day on Lah’mu had ended in victory, too.
Orson Krennic was going to war.
—
Tonc was dead. Bodhi hadn’t seen it happen; he’d crouched low to shuffle half a pace forward along his sheltering wall of cargo crates, and when he’d looked up and across the landing pad he’d spied the soldier motionless on the ground. He fought down the urge to rush to Tonc’s side, to yell for aid from the rebels who still survived; there was nothing he could do. People were dying all around. And the stormtroopers kept coming.
A blaster bolt crackled over Bodhi’s head, close enough for him to feel the heat and smell the ozone of vaporized atmosphere. He smoothed the cable on the ground with one hand and looked helplessly toward the shuttle.
“Bodhi? Are you there?” Bodhi snatched the comlink from his pocket. Cassian’s voice sounded hoarse. “Talk to me!”
“I’m here!” Bodhi said. “I’m here. I’m pinned down. I can’t get to the ship, I can’t plug in!” He didn’t mean to sound desperate, but what was the point of lying? The situation was bad. It wasn’t his fault, but it was bad.
“You have to!” Bodhi had heard Cassian angry, heard him determined, but this was something new—almost pained. “We need the fleet, Bodhi. You have to get a message out!”
“Are you okay?” A thought too awful to dwell on crossed Bodhi’s mind. “Is Jyn okay?”
“We’re fine,” Cassian snapped. For a moment Bodhi heard only long, ragged breaths. Then Cassian seemed to steady. “We’re changing tactics. We’re not sure—we may not make it back for extraction, but we can try to transmit the schematics from the comm tower.”
Bodhi wanted to argue—what exactly did we may not make it back mean? But Cassian kept talking. “That’s a lot of information,” Cassian said, “and even the tower won’t be able to push it through the shield without data loss. Tell me I’m right about this, Bodhi!”
Bodhi forced himself to concentrate. Audio was one thing, but sending a data cartridge through the shield would be like trying to broadcast it across the galaxy. Too much data, too much interference. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right.”
“So you need to let the fleet know,” Cassian said. “They need to get in position to receive, because I doubt we’ll get two shots. And they need to hit that gate! If the shield’s open, we can send the plans!”
“What about—” What about you? What about Jyn? But Cassian sounded ready to crack under the strain, and Bodhi couldn’t bring himself to keep the man on the line. “All right,” he wheezed. “I’ll find a way.”
He roughly pocketed his link and looked toward the shuttle again. The barrage of blasterfire wasn’t stopping, wasn’t even slowing. Tonc’s soldiers weren’t winning. Maybe, Bodhi thought, if Baze and Chirrut returned to the landing pad—but no. He’d already sent them to the master switch.
How long did he have before the pad was overrun?
Don’t talk yourself out of it.
Just go!
His first stride almost sent him sprawling as he went from a crouch to a barreling run. He caught himself and kept going, listened to the cable hiss and writhe behind him as it trailed from the spool on his back, saw flash after flash of crimson scorch the air between him and the shuttle. A bolt struck the undercarriage of the vessel as he approached, dropped a burning spark between his forehead and his work goggles; he ignored the distraction and the pain and climbed the ramp, dashed across the cabin to a terminal. He fumbled at the spool with sweat-slick hands, wrested the cable free, and plugged it into the socket.
The terminal registered the connection. Bodhi screamed in triumph, ignoring the warning light that indicated the ship’s computer couldn’t find the comm tower. Baze and Chirrut and Melshi’s team would get to the master switch soon. Bodhi would tell the fleet about their new strategy.
And when Cassian and Jyn were atop the tower, transmitting the tape? He’d swoop in and find them like he had on Eadu, and they’d all make for the open shield gate together.
That was the plan. That was his plan. He hoped Tonc would approve.
He hoped his comrades could work fast.
How long now, before the pad was overrun?
—
Cassian’s hands were trembling, but his eyes were steady as he lowered his comlink. “Bodhi’s working on the fleet. He’ll get it done.”
The vault control room remained dark save for the red glow of the shaft. The refrigerated air was heating rapidly and filling with a sharp, metallic stench; Jyn could hear the muffled hiss of plasma torches on the far side of the sealed vault door.
We may not make it back. She’d heard Cassian say the words to Bodhi, but not to her.
She craned her neck and looked up the shaft, up the center of the Citadel Tower. Her father’s data tape was there. Somewhere, beyond the red glow, there was also a way out.
“Step back,” she said, and gestured Cassian away from the viewport.
She drew her pistol, took steady aim with both hands, and fired into the glass. Jagged shards, melting and blackened, exploded onto the console and down into the vault shaft. They rang like wind chimes. Jyn stepped forward to study the broken pane, then began stripping off the helmet, bulky chestpiece, and heavy overclothes of her security uniform. She was long past the point of disguises, and she didn’t need extra weight during a climb. Cassian followed her lead, pulling off his officer’s jacket.
When she had stripped down to vest and pants, Jyn scanned the shaft for grips. Data cartridge extraction handles protruded at regular intervals, and the stacked data banks jutted with slender metal flanges. It wouldn’t be an easy climb, but she decided against shedding her boots for extra traction—she remembered one very long night after leaving Saw that had ended in bloody soles, broken toenails, and a valuable lesson about proper footwear.
“Come on,” she said. Before it all closes in, she nearly added. But Cassian didn’t see the cave walls.
>
She mounted the console, bent her knees, and leapt across the gap to the nearest data tower. She caught a set of cartridge handles and scrambled to find footholds. After an instant, she felt the cartridges shaking under her hands and feared she might pull them loose; but it was only the vibration of the data banks themselves, rattling with the mechanisms that cooled and cataloged the tapes.
She climbed a meter, testing the force she could apply to the tapes and feeling out the distance between them. She looked down into the yawning darkness in time to see Cassian leap tentatively out of the control room. He, too, caught hold.
Jyn looked back up, fixed the retrieval arm in her sights, and began ascending in earnest.
She heard Cassian struggling behind her over the noise of recirculating air. She knew she should have said something more to him: I’m sorry about Kay-Tu, or We might still get off Scarif, or We’re going to finish this. But she’d never been much good at commiseration or encouragement, and she’d spent so many words—on the Alliance councilors, on the rebel soldiers—in the past days. She didn’t have the strength to spare for him; just the drive to haul herself up one row of cartridges at a time, drag herself away from the darkness and toward the hope of light.
She counted fifteen rows to the retrieval arm, then ten. She glimpsed a doorway in the shaft wall—secure maintenance access, she imagined—but she wrote it off as a means of escape. The Empire had to be watching. Five rows more. Her shoulders began to ache, and her wrists felt stiff from trying to grip the cartridges without yanking them free. The sounds of Cassian’s climb were receding below, but she couldn’t wait for him.
One row. Then she was perched beside the retrieval arm. It grasped the Stardust cartridge like a dead miser.
The cartridge was unlabeled, no different from any other. No different from the thousands surrounding her, except that her father had given his life to reveal it.
Rogue One Page 28
