Star Wars: Guardians of the Whills (Star Wars: Rogue One)

by Greg Rucka

  He tossed it aside with a grunt.

  Denic jerked her head around to him, almost snarling. “Quiet.”

  Baze shrugged. That the Imperials were out in search of the stolen cargo was a given, but he and Chirrut had been as quick and efficient and quiet—relatively, given the four shots—as was possible, and there’d been no race to hiding, no fear of being pursued as they made their way to the garage. Tomorrow would be different. In the daylight, the Imperials would descend with their iron fist. Tomorrow would be a hard day for much of the Holy City.

  He hoped it would be worth it.

  It took less than four minutes to determine that it was.

  You say:

  I cannot name the nameless,

  Nor praise the unknown,

  Nor swear upon that I do not understand,

  When all ends in Death.

  And I say:

  Then you are not alive.

  —Aurek, Pupil of the Central Isopter

  From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,

  Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills

  “IT’S TARINE,” Killi Gimm said. “I’m afraid it’s all we have.”

  “Tarine tea would be very nice, thank you,” Chirrut said.

  There was a pause that almost became awkward before Baze said, “Yes. That would be nice.”

  Chirrut grinned.

  “Please sit,” Killi said. Her voice was soft, raw, and hoarse. “It won’t be a moment.”

  Chirrut found his way to a stool, rested his staff against the high table near his thigh, sat. He set his hands on the tabletop and spread his fingers, letting his palms press lightly against the cool metal. He could feel the subtle vibration of movement around him through its surface, the stronger shivers as Baze moved past him, settling his bulk on a neighboring seat. Other hints of motion, of sound, of life, spread out from where Chirrut sat—Killi, moving through the large, empty kitchen, and out beyond into the common room, where her sister was attending to the orphanage’s children, and even the children themselves, the sound of their voices, their play. One of them laughed.

  His smile grew. It had been a while since he had heard a child’s laughter.

  Killi coughed. It came up suddenly, hard and dry and from high in her chest, and the first opened a floodgate for more, and he heard the sound of crockery clattering on a counter, and he started to rise, but Baze was already up and moving to her. Chirrut sat back down. His smile had vanished.

  “You are still having trouble breathing,” he heard Baze say.

  Killi drew a breath, held it a fraction longer than needed, and Chirrut knew she was fighting back another bout of coughs. When she exhaled, he could hear her wheezing.

  “I do not like wearing the mask indoors,” Killi said. “It reminds the children of the stormtroopers and frightens them. I think we can all agree that they have been frightened more than enough.”

  “It has gotten worse,” Chirrut said.

  “The fear? Or my breathing?”

  “Chirrut means both,” Baze said. “Sit. I’ll do the tea.”

  “It’s bad some days.” Killi Gimm sat on the stool Baze had vacated. “Better others.”

  “What day is today?” Chirrut asked.

  “Do not make me laugh, Chirrut Îmwe,” she said. “You’ll make me cough again.”

  Chirrut reached out to find her hand, and she laced her fingers through his. “The Force is with me, and I am with the Force,” he told her.

  “And I fear nothing, for all is as the Force wills it,” she concluded. He felt her hand on his sleeve, an affectionate squeeze of his arm, before she slipped her hand free. “Though of late, the will of the Force has been harder to discern.”

  “Understanding the will of the Force was always far more your place than ours, I think.” Chirrut turned on the stool, orienting more fully to her. “Disciples always seemed the better listeners.”

  “And Guardians the better observers, and thus we had a proper balance.”

  He could hear her smile in the words, and for a moment, Chirrut thought he could discern the Force moving around them, around her. Yet somehow it seemed more tenuous surrounding Killi Gimm. He knew Baze was looking from her to him and back, could feel the weight of his concern, the gentle pressure of his sorrow.

  “So concerned you both are!” Killi said. “It is all the dust, nothing more.”

  “Drink,” Baze said, and Chirrut smelled the tea, the touch of the steam as one cup was placed in front of him, the other in her hands. “Slowly.”

  Chirrut waited until he had heard Killi take a drink, then said, “There was medicine with the food and the water we took from the Imperials. Baze said several doses of the Respitic. It could help.”

  “It will help,” Killi said. “Kaya is already giving it to the children.”

  “Save some for yourself,” Baze said.

  “The children are more important.”

  “There is enough,” Baze said.

  “No,” Killi said. “There is enough at this moment, Baze Malbus. But in a week? And each week there are more children, and they cough through the night, some of them. Every week there is less food to feed them, less water to drink. So at this moment, I will go without, because soon enough another’s need will be greater.”

  “She sounds like you,” Baze told Chirrut.

  “No, he sounds like me,” Killi Gimm said. “Where do you think Chirrut learned it?”

  Before the Empire had arrived, there had been no real orphanage in the Holy City. Before the Empire had arrived, there had not been a true need for one. Children left orphaned through accident and tragedy had almost universally been cared for by other families in the community or, in some cases, by members of one sect or another, brought to live in the Dome of Deliverance or at the Temple of the Kyber or the Waiting of Night or any of the other places of worship. Between the community of faith and the community of the Holy City itself, there had always been someone willing and able to help.

  Now the temples were barred and the communities of faith scattered, and where there had been homes and families there were refugees and orphans. Every day there were more of each. Refugees displaced by the Imperial occupation. Children orphaned by the slave labor of the kyber mines, their parents crushed or buried or worked to death under the Imperial boot. Children orphaned by stormtrooper blasters or insurgent bombs. Children orphaned by parents who had managed to steal aboard a freighter or a transport, desperate to flee Jedha, leaving with every intention of returning for their families once they had made it to safety, to security, to freedom.

  Chirrut had yet to hear of any who had actually come back.

  Killi Gimm had been one of the eldest of the Disciples of the Whills when the Empire came. Her sister, Kaya, ten years younger, had run a small droid repair bay out of her home near the Midwalls, mostly catering her services to pilgrims and tourists alike. Chirrut suspected it had been Killi who had come up with the idea of turning her sister’s home into an orphanage. He also suspected Kaya had needed very little convincing. He was certain that neither had understood the magnitude of what they were undertaking when they began.

  There were almost a dozen children in their care, now, the youngest just six, the eldest not yet eleven. Many had sustained injuries or suffered illness. All of them needed to be fed, clothed, kept safe, kept warm. All of them needed attention, needed love. Most of them were human, but by no means all, and this in turn meant that Killi and Kaya had to become familiar with the dietary needs of Rodians, or the sleeping habits of Twi’leks, or the atmospheric requirements of Morseerians.

  The things that they could provide, Killi and Kaya provided in abundance. Their attention, their affection, their care. It was in the more material things that they suffered, as all of Jedha was suffering—there was not enough water, and never enough food. They were short of blankets, of credits, of power, of medicine.

  It had been Baze who’d said aloud what Chirrut had begun to co
nsider.

  “The Imperials,” he’d said one evening as he and Chirrut sat over an evening meal of exceptionally bland vesti noodles, “have everything the orphanage needs and more.”

  Chirrut had just smiled.

  Last night had been the fourth such resupply they had intercepted over the last several months, and the necessity of such behavior weighed on Chirrut. Not with regret or guilt, but rather the same sadness he found himself so often confronting. What they had done, they had done for the best of reasons. What they had done, they had done with efficiency, and in that, mercy. That stormtrooper was not the first sentient Chirrut had separated from his life, and he knew without question he would not be the last. He was at peace with the necessity of their actions, but that did not mean he took pleasure from them.

  It was of no small comfort to him that Baze, for all their disagreements, felt the same way.

  The common room of the orphanage served triple duty as play area, infirmary, and classroom, and it was in the last of these that they found it currently employed. Killi led them to wait just outside the door as Kaya finished the day’s lesson. Killi’s sister taught with the assistance of an old CZ-model tutor droid, and Chirrut could hear its servos whining as it moved about the room. He could hear the children, too, and it troubled him. There was no fidgeting, no murmuring, no whispering. They answered with soft voices when called upon, and some would not answer until encouraged several times. A couple, not even then.

  Chirrut could also hear the sounds of labored breathing, the high-pitched whisper-whistle of air being drawn into and released from tormented lungs.

  They waited until Kaya had finished and the CZ droid took over, leading the children out into the canopy-covered courtyard at the heart of the building for a recess. It was, Chirrut knew, too small a space for so many children, but allowing them out into the street would be too dangerous. He tilted his head, lifted his chin slightly, straining to hear anything that sounded like laughter or joy from outside. He had to wait for it, but when it finally came it gave him such a simple and pure pleasure that he wanted to laugh, as well.

  Amid everything, children could still play. Surrounded by suffering, in the shadow—literally—of the Empire, breathing air that hurt their lungs, yet they could still play.

  “You didn’t have any trouble?” Kaya asked once she was assured the four of them were alone. “With the Imperials?”

  Baze grunted.

  “I’m sure Killi already thanked you,” Kaya said. “But I’m going to thank you both, too.”

  “How long will the supplies last?” Chirrut asked.

  “If we’re careful, two, perhaps two and a half weeks.”

  “We will get more before then,” Baze said.

  “I’m worried about how the Imperials will respond if you do.”

  “They will respond the way they always respond. They’ll look for someone to punish.”

  “Doesn’t that worry you?”

  Chirrut shook his head. “They see it as theft, not charity, Kaya. So they look to thieves as the guilty.”

  “And with the Empire’s arrival, there are plenty of thieves about,” Baze added. “They create the problem, they can solve it.”

  “Eventually they will realize what’s really going on.”

  Chirrut thought Kaya sounded resigned, then reconsidered. What he took for resignation, he realized, was actually regret.

  “Do you wish us to stop?” he asked.

  There was a silence, broken only by the sound of the children outside. Chirrut understood that Kaya and Killi were passing some manner of unspoken communication—looks, perhaps.

  “It is not that we wish you to stop,” Killi said. “It is that we are concerned where this will end.”

  “We will continue for as long as we can,” Baze said.

  “And after that?” This was Kaya. “Should the worst happen? Should you or Chirrut be captured or killed?”

  “What would you rather we do?” Baze asked.

  Another pause. Then Killi’s voice. “That is the problem. For as long as the Empire remains here, we are trapped in this cycle.”

  “Then we must find a way to break the cycle,” Chirrut said.

  “Yes,” Killi said. “Before the cycle breaks us.”

  In darkness I follow

  the light and find my way

  to the beginning

  again,

  and again,

  and again

  —Sajar Ohmo, Clan of the Toribota

  From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,

  Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills

  “I NEED A NEW BLASTER,” Baze said.

  “Use your old one,” Chirrut said.

  “No.”

  “You still have your old one.”

  “Yes.”

  “So use your old one.”

  “No.”

  Baze and Chirrut split without breaking stride as a clump of urchins, each of them so filthy and caked with dirt they left puffs of dust in their wake, barreled past them. Baze kept a hand on the pouch tucked beneath his tunic where he kept his credits, and an eye on Chirrut at the same time, knowing full well it was unnecessary and yet doing it all the same. The fact was, of the two of them, Baze was the more likely to have his purse lifted and not even notice.

  “The old one works perfectly well,” Chirrut said when they’d fallen back in, side by side.

  “The old one is a Guardian’s weapon. And I am no longer a Guardian.”

  “Then you are making a choice.”

  “Yes,” Baze said. “My choice is to find a new blaster.”

  “No, your choice is to be stubborn.”

  “My choice is to use a reliable blaster rather than an archaic lightbow.”

  “Your reliable blaster has proven to be unreliable.”

  “Which is why I need a new gun.”

  “Use your old one.”

  Baze came to a halt in the middle of the street and Chirrut, too, stopped almost instantly, as if he’d been expecting this.

  “Like so many conversations with you,” Baze said, “we are now back where we started.”

  “You noticed that, did you?”

  “You’re very lucky I’m your friend, you know that?”

  “I do know that,” Chirrut said. “Though I wonder why you are saying this right now.”

  “I’m saying it right now because I’m wondering why anyone would bother to put up with you.”

  “Ah,” said Chirrut. “I often wonder the same thing about you.”

  Baze roared with laughter, loud enough that the crowded street took notice of them, including two helmeted and robed worshippers of the Central Isopter, who stepped curiously closer. Baze grinned big at them, showing his teeth, and they stopped, then stepped back, then turned away to melt back into the crowd. Baze took the opportunity to check around them before starting forward again. Chirrut immediately kept pace, his staff extended at an angle to the ground in front of them, swaying slightly from side to side.

  “Do you want to go shopping?” Chirrut asked. “Is that what you’re saying? Though I doubt we can afford anything that will suit your purposes.”

  “No.” The thought was vaguely absurd to Baze. “That’s not how you find the right weapon, you know better than that.”

  “As we have established, apparently I do not.”

  “We’re being followed.”

  This seemed to amuse Chirrut. “Really?”

  “Since we left the orphanage. I wasn’t sure until just now. Two of them.”

  “Imperials?”

  “I don’t think so. One is a Twi’lek.”

  “One?”

  “There are two, I think. The other is a Sabat.”

  “That does not sound Imperial.”

  “I want to know why they’re following us.”

  “You should ask them.”

  “I’m going to.”

  “Now?”

  “Soon,” Baze s
aid.

  They rounded a corner out of the Old Market and continued another couple of blocks, heading roughly in the direction of the Eastern Wall, neither of them speaking. They continued to be followed, and Baze concluded a couple of things from this, not the least of which was that the Twi’lek and the Sabat knew what they were doing. They gave each other space, as well as leaving room between themselves and Baze and Chirrut. This meant that they had to be in communication with one another, either via comlink or hand signals or similar. That meant some degree of training, some degree of experience. If they were criminals, they were of a better class than Jedha normally had to offer.

  Why criminals would be targeting him and Chirrut was its own question. The best a robber would get was disappointment. The worst was broken bones, if not from Baze’s fists, then from the frightening accuracy and speed with which Chirrut could use his staff.

  So not criminals, and well trained, and careful, and that meant they had to be members of one of the insurgent groups working in the city. But this was puzzling on its own, as most of the Holy City’s insurgent groups were composed of locals, and locals were predominantly human. Twi’leks weren’t a terribly uncommon sight, to be sure, but the Sabat was another matter. The last time Baze had seen a Sabat he had still called himself a Guardian of the Whills, and that had been a long time ago.

  They entered a mixed residential and business neighborhood known to the locals as Hopper Town, the reason for the name long since lost to the ages. The squat buildings here stood shoulder to shoulder, with alleys between them so narrow Baze could only make his way through them moving sideways. They turned north, and Chirrut stopped abruptly, holding out a hand to block Baze’s progress. Before Baze could ask why, he saw what his friend had somehow already sensed.

  Ahead of them, rounding onto the far end of the street, came a patrol of stormtroopers. A half dozen of them leading on foot, their blaster rifles carried at the ready, and behind them a GAV in support, one of the armored personnel carriers, a heavy repeating blaster mounted atop and the gunner visible in his position. Baze glanced around to the narrow alleyways on either side and then up to the balconies and rooftops of the buildings surrounding them. Shutters were slamming into place, and people were hurrying to clear the street.