“Searching…”
A moment later, K-2SO spoke up again. “I can locate the tape, but you’ll need the handles for extraction.”
Jyn gestured to a set of controls that worked a pair of mechanical arms on the other side of the glass. Cassian dashed over and grabbed them, but he couldn’t seem to make sense of them. “What are we supposed to do with this?”
Behind the glass, Jyn spotted a retrieval arm whipping through the columns above them. Without notice, the arm stopped cold. Then, in a flash, it zipped closer and came to a halt again, hovering in place. The controls, Jyn saw, could work the arm to grab a tape and bring it to them. All they had to do—still—was find the right tape.
Jyn heard someone rushing into the room where K-2SO was, and she was relieved that she’d given the droid that spare blaster. He was likely going to need it.
The door at the end of the tube closed on its own. K-2SO must have done it, she hoped, to protect them.
Over the intercom, she heard the droid talking to someone.
“The rebels. They went…over there!”
Confused, Cassian called out. “Kay-Tu! What’s going on out there?”
“There’s one,” the droid said, clearly talking to whoever had interrupted him out there.
Then there was a huge commotion. Jyn heard K-2SO’s servos moving about, mixed in with voices grunting in pain. Then a blaster shot rang out, but without a cry of pain following it. A moment later another shot sang, and this time Jyn heard what sounded like an armored figure collapsing. A stormtrooper, she guessed.
The fight was over, but was K-2SO all right? And if not, could they find the tape without him?
SERGEANT MELSHI looked up at the sky to see the rebel ships dogfighting with their Imperial foes overhead. He felt grateful for the assistance, but he knew that such a fight meant the Empire would have closed the shield around the planet. He hoped the larger rebel ships that had brought the fighters could manage to punch a hole through that shield soon, or he and his troops would be stuck on Scarif for the entirety of their terribly shortened lives.
Meanwhile, Melshi had more pressing matters demanding his attention on the planet’s surface. Blue Squadron had been a huge help with the AT-ACTs, but there were TIE strikers, with their sharp, streamlined wings, inside the shield, too, harassing the rebel pilots every step of the way.
Through the raucous noise of the battle, Melshi heard Corporal Tonc trying to raise him over the comms. “Melshi! Listen up! Bodhi will send the signal from here—he’s patching us in—but you guys have to open up the line to the tower.”
Melshi understood at least part of that. Bodhi wanted to get a message to the rebel fleet but couldn’t get the signal through the shield on his own. They needed to help him. “How?” Melshi said. “Please advise.”
“There’s a master switch at every hub,” Tonc said. “Find the hub!”
Melshi scanned the nearest hub, which wasn’t all that far away, but he didn’t see what Tonc was talking about. He was a soldier, not a communication tech. “Master switch? Describe. What are we looking for?”
Melshi heard Tonc yell at someone else inside the cargo shuttle. “What does it look like?” he said. “The master switch! Where is it?”
Tonc relayed the description back from the Imperial defector, Bodhi. Melshi frowned at every word. It would be hard enough to get to a landing pad, much less to find a switch and activate it.
He hoped the effort would be worth it. From the way the battle raging above them seemed to be going, they didn’t have much time left.
FINDING THE TAPE was proving to be a real challenge. Cassian worked the controls of the data retrieval system while Jyn read labels of various tapes off the console in front of her.
“‘Hyperspace tracking’…‘Navigational systems’…” None of them seemed to have anything to do with the flaw in the Death Star that her father had told her about.
K-2SO tried coaching them through it from his side of the intercom system. “Two screens down,” he said.
Jyn did as the droid asked, bringing up yet another list of labels that meant little to nothing to her. K-2SO scanned them faster than she could, though, and he spotted something worth yelling about.
“‘Structural engineering’!” he shouted. “Open that!”
Jyn did as requested, and she heard the sound of the blaster she’d given to K-2SO firing again. More stormtroopers must have been trying to take him out. No matter how good the droid might be with the weapon, they’d overwhelm him with numbers soon enough, and then they’d come for Cassian and her.
Jyn scrolled through the files, reading off the labels as she went. “‘Project code names’…‘Stellar Sphere’…‘Mark Omega’…‘Pax Aurora’…”
None of it made any sense to her. They’d gone from being descriptions to code names, and she had no context by which she could interpret them.
“‘War-Mantle’…‘Cluster Prism’…‘Black Saber’…”
Then she spotted exactly what she was looking for, whether she’d known it or not.
“‘Stardust,’” she said. “It’s that one.”
“How do you know that?” Cassian asked. He’d been just as mystified as her until that moment.
It was the name her father had always called her. “I know because it’s me.”
BODHI DIDN’T like this one bit. He’d told Tonc what the master switch looked like, and the private had relayed the description to his sergeant. Now, though, Bodhi needed to make the connection on his end. He had to walk out on the landing pad and use a cable to attach the cargo shuttle to the Citadel’s communications system. Otherwise, the work that Melshi and the others were risking their lives to do would be for nothing.
That meant leaving the safety of the ship. That was something Bodhi had known might happen but had been hoping against ever since they’d set down on Scarif.
He wished he could just send some of the rebel commandos out to do the job while he sat safe in the cargo shuttle and pretended he was still a loyal Imperial pilot. They didn’t know how to hook up the communications cable though. He could do it faster than any of them, which meant there was less chance of his being shot.
At a nod from Bodhi, the rest of the commandos still in the ship moved into the open air and spread themselves out around the landing pad. They offered him protection from incoming fire while he did his job, but Bodhi wondered if they might attract just as much trouble instead.
It was too late to question it any longer. Bodhi charged out of the cargo shuttle, toting a spooled cable pack on his back.
He reached the place where he needed to make the connection, without anyone shooting at him. Breathing a grateful sigh, he pulled the end of the cable out of the pack and plugged it into the comm station. Then he spun around and ran back the way he had come.
He had almost reached the shuttle when the cable snagged on something. He had to go back to untangle it.
He found the kink in the cable fast enough, but that didn’t do him much good. As he knelt there and tried to untangle it, a car arrived on the railspeeder and a patrol of stormtroopers spilled out of it. They spotted him instantly and marched straight toward him.
“Hey, you!” the one in the lead said. “Identify yourself.”
Bodhi stood up slowly. Maybe he could talk his way out of this. Maybe word that he’d defected hadn’t reached Scarif yet.
“I can explai—”
A blaster shot from one of the rebel commandos cut him off, and Bodhi found himself in the middle of an instant battle. Bolts flew past him from every direction, and he wondered not only how long he had to live but which side would wind up shooting him in the end.
K-2SO KNEW he was in trouble. He’d already been shot in the back once, and it was only a matter of time before the other stormtroopers assaulting the data vault took him down.
He
was grateful that Jyn had given him a blaster. Without it, the stormtroopers would have overwhelmed him long before. Their reluctance to believe that an Imperial security droid could possibly have been reprogrammed to work against them had helped him at first, but they had spread the word that there was a rogue droid in the entrance to the data vault. They showed no hesitation about trying to destroy him now.
Despite the fact he was dealing with armed foes actively trying to kill him, K-2SO still needed to help Cassian, the man who’d personally reprogrammed him in the first place. Cassian shouted for him over the intercom again. “Kay! We need the file for Stardust!”
The blasts from the stormtroopers’ rifles fell on the droid like sideways rain, and he moved like he could dance between the drops. A few blasts glanced off him here and there, but for the most part, he managed to avoid them.
It would have been so easy to just lie down on the ground and pretend he had malfunctioned, but K-2SO wasn’t programmed that way. While Cassian sometimes complained about how blunt the droid was when he spoke, that was rooted directly in how honest Cassian had made him.
Cassian had also made him selfless. Not only did he not think of people’s feelings, he didn’t think of his own needs much, either. If Cassian needed something so he could save the entire galaxy, then K-2SO was bound to find a way to give it to him, no matter what the odds of survival might be.
K-2SO reached for the console and ordered up the tape labeled Stardust. The retrieval arm would locate it soon.
The droid heard Jyn coaching Cassian in the use of the retrieval arm. “That’s it! You almost have it!”
In just a moment, they should have the prize they’d come for. From there, K-2SO could try to figure out if there was any escape from the Citadel, no matter how dire his calculations concerning that might seem.
Before that happened, though, a blast struck the console in front of the droid and blew it up. The explosion knocked him backward and loosed every circuit in his body. As he staggered forward, he noticed that parts of him had been knocked not just loose but free. They dangled from his battered frame by the thinnest of wires.
“Climb!” he shouted at the intercom.
He had to protect the console. If the stormtroopers reached it, they could use it to open the door to the data vault, and soon after that they would either capture or—more likely—kill Cassian and Jyn.
“Climb the tower! Send the plans to the fleet! If they open the shield gate, you can broadcast from the tower!”
It was then that K-2SO realized he didn’t need to protect the console any longer. In fact, he could no longer manage it. The best thing to do, then, was to destroy it. That way, the door would never open.
At least not until after Cassian and Jyn had grabbed the tape and gotten away.
“Kay!” Cassian yelled.
The droid could hear the anguish in the man’s voice. They’d put a lot of work into each other, after all. But without K-2SO performing this final act, Cassian and Jyn had almost zero chance of completing their mission. Even with his help, they’d face nearly impossible odds.
Nearly.
He fell on the display and tore into it as the blasts smashed into his body. He kept at it until his limbs had been blown away, until his motors stopped working, until all his circuits were dead.
As K-2SO’s mind faded to black, one last thought passed through it.
That door would never open again.
KRENNIC HAD THOUGHT he’d already had the worst week of his life. Worse even than the one during which Galen Erso had abandoned their work on the Death Star and gone into hiding, leaving Krennic alone to head up the project.
He’d already lost control of the Death Star to Grand Moff Tarkin. He’d been threatened by Darth Vader. And he suspected if he failed at his current task, he would probably be executed, perhaps by the Emperor’s own hand.
But this week kept finding ways to become even worse.
The rebel fleet should have fled as soon as it saw how outmatched it was. Instead, it had fought like a cornered rancor, desperate to tear apart anything nearby. The rebels couldn’t possibly prevail against the two Star Destroyers in orbit over the planet—not to mention the TIE fighters and TIE strikers swarming about the place—but they could certainly bloody the Empire’s nose before they went down.
Was that really their only goal? To make a final, pointless gesture of defiance before the ascendancy of the Death Star rendered the Rebel Alliance moot?
The rebels had focused most of their firepower at the Star Destroyers, but they’d also made a strong effort against the gate. Krennic didn’t see how they could hope to penetrate the shield. It had been built to last.
Still, they refused to stop trying. They’d even sent a squadron of Y-wings to make a bombing run. As if they could simply batter down the gate like a wooden door on an ancient castle.
It wasn’t like they would be able to break a hole in the shield large enough for any of the rebel ships on Scarif to escape through it. The rebels trapped inside would be rooted out and destroyed, one by one, like the vermin they were.
But the Y-wings had done more than slap the Star Destroyers around. They’d actually managed to disable the electronics on one of the gigantic starships with an ion bomb. It wasn’t a permanent condition, but until the crews on the Star Destroyer managed to fix it, the craft was floating dead in space, a sitting womp rat for the rebels’ weaponry.
And then Krennic got word that his worst suspicions were true. Lieutenant Adema relayed a report to him and said, “Unauthorized access at the data vault.”
“What?”
Krennic froze, unable to believe the news for a moment, but then it all made sense. The attack on the ground. The appearance of the rebel fleet. They were all there for one thing. The last thing Krennic wanted them to find.
The Death Star’s plans.
“It’s just come in, sir.”
At least now Krennic knew what was at stake, and he knew what he had to do.
“Send my guard squadron to the battle!” The death troopers would help break the back of the rebel assault, but Krennic had to hit the heart of the problem himself. “Two men with me! Get that beach under control!”
Krennic shoved his way out of the room, leaving others to worry about the rest of the battle. If he wanted whatever was going on in the data vault stopped, he would have to put an end to it himself.
BODHI HAD never been so scared in his life. Not when Galen Erso had approached him about betraying the Empire. Not when he’d finally defected to join the rebels. Not even when Bor Gullet had probed his mind.
The battle on landing platform nine raged about him. Blaster fire whizzed so close he could feel its heat on his skin.
Corporal Tonc tried to be brave. He stood up and started firing back at the stormtroopers. For his courage, he was shot dead.
Bodhi gawked at the young man in horror. Just a moment before, he’d been fighting against the Empire, and then he was gone. The only thing Bodhi could do was hunker down with his still unconnected communications cable and hope it all ended before he took a fatal blast, too.
Then Cassian started shouting at him again through the comm.
“Bodhi, are you there?”
The pilot’s heart leaped with hope. Cassian had saved him before. Maybe he could do it again.
“I’m here. I’m here! I’m pinned down! I can’t get to the ship.”
He stared at the Imperial cargo shuttle he’d stolen on Eadu. It wasn’t actually all that far away. A quick dash, and he’d be inside it for sure.
But blaster bolts filled the air between it and him. The same kind that had cut down Tonc, a trained soldier.
“I can’t plug in!” Bodhi said, trying to explain.
“You have to!” said Cassian. “They have to hit that gate! If the shield’s open, we can send the plans!”
Bodhi cringed. Cassian wasn’t coming to save him. The man was going to get him killed instead.
Still, Bodhi knew Cassian was right. If he didn’t get that cable plugged in, it would all be for nothing. Tonc’s death. The rest of the commandos’.
Even—when the stormtroopers finally caught up with him—his own end.
It would all be in vain.
Bodhi couldn’t let that happen, not without giving that cable his best shot. He gritted his teeth and braced himself.
He charged across the open space between his hiding place and the shuttle. Blaster fire singed him from all sides, but not one of the shots struck true. He made it back to the shuttle and slammed the unattached end of the cable home.
Bodhi didn’t have time to collapse in relief. He snatched up the ship’s radio and turned it on.
“Melshi! Melshi! Come in, please! Anybody out there?”
No one answered.
“Rogue One! Rogue One! Anybody?”
WITH THE CONSOLE K-2SO had been protecting now destroyed, Jyn and Cassian had no way to get the tape labeled Stardust. At least not with the retrieval arm Cassian had been controlling. Without the console’s power, it had frozen in place.
Jyn stared up at the glass separating them from the data tower, and she realized something. If the system couldn’t bring the tape to them, they’d have to go get it themselves.
She drew the Imperial blaster from the stolen holster on her hip. “Step back,” she said to Cassian.
As he cleared the way, she pointed the blaster at the glass and fired. The window shattered. Now there was nothing between them and their goal.
Nothing but a steep and dangerous climb up a data tower that had never been meant to be accessed that way.
Jyn’s stolen uniform would be too restrictive for such a task. It was meant for ordering people around, not scrambling up precarious towers. She slipped it off of her regular clothes, which she’d kept on underneath, and Cassian did the same.
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