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

by Greg Rucka

  The Empire had arrived with arrogance and contempt.

  What Gerrera’s war had done was to add anger to the mixture.

  Innocents suffer when a bully turns angry, Chirrut thought.

  One.

  The last step, the sound of the AT-ST’s heavy, metallic foot hitting the ground, barely audible above the noise of the street around him. Almost a kilometer away, and now the walker was at the intersection of the Blessing Way and the Square of Stars, and Chirrut could almost feel the squads of stormtroopers accompanying it, could almost feel the presence of the laden haulers moving their cargo from the mines. And he could, without doubt, feel the presence of the kyber crystals, even from that distance, and he knew that there had to be many of them in this delivery, and that the crystals that had been mined were large ones, vibrant in the Force.

  He keyed his comlink and said, “Now.”

  There was a click, then the staccato cluck and gurgle of one of Gerrera’s men, the Tognath named Benthic.

  Chirrut closed his eyes, felt the vibrations of the world around him rising up through the walking stick, pressing against his forehead.

  He felt, then heard, the explosion.

  He felt, then heard, the walker falling to the ground.

  And now, he knew, the ambush was being sprung, an ambush that the Empire had no way to know was coming, because there had been no way to anticipate it. None of Saw Gerrera’s partisans, nor Baze with them, would have been even remotely visible as they waited in the alleys and on the balconies all around the Square of Stars. None of them had been exposed, not even for a moment, not even to catch a glimpse of the approaching convoy. The stormtroopers would have been looking, and they would have seen nothing, because there had been nobody looking back at them.

  Because the partisans didn’t need to see. Because they had Chirrut, a kilometer away, feeling the ground shaking, waiting, counting, sensing for the right moment.

  The ambush would be merciless, Chirrut knew. Gerrera’s partisans took prisoners for one reason only, and none of the stormtroopers transporting this shipment had any intelligence value, so none would be taken alive. Right now, at this moment, stormtroopers were being cut down. Right now, at this moment, stormtroopers were dying. Chirrut had done this, had made this happen. It had been a choice, the way allying with Gerrera had been a choice. And as with allying with Gerrera, it had been a choice made out of necessity.

  There was no mercy to be found in this conflict, Chirrut knew. Not on either side.

  The Empire would, once more, make the Holy City pay.

  The first time, things went remarkably well.

  Gerrera’s only desire at that time, or so it had seemed, was much the same as Baze and Chirrut’s—to strike at the Imperial occupation, to hurt the Empire. To this end, they had looked for the points of vulnerability in the occupation, and it had been Fortuna who had directed their attention to the mining operations at Gerrera’s request.

  “This is why they are here,” Fortuna said. In the absence of Gerrera himself, it was Fortuna who appeared to handle operational planning. “Everything else is incidental. The closing of the temples, the restrictions on worship, all of that is ideological. Their material want is the kyber, and denying them the crystals will hurt them the most.”

  They had met in one of the tapcafes near the Old Shadows after hours, and it was crowded and noisy, and that made talking plans—somewhat paradoxically—easier than trying to find a secluded spot to whisper in the dark. Here, the noise and the bustle made them ordinary, unremarkable, and unworthy of notice. Instead of Tenza, this time Fortuna brought someone new, a male Meftian named Kullbee Sperado. Chirrut could sense Sperado even before he and Fortuna arrived, could feel the churning cold left in his wake, the way it clung to him.

  “You are weighed by your past,” Chirrut told Sperado when they were introduced. “You cannot outrun it.”

  The Meftian was silent long enough that Chirrut wondered if his insight had been mistaken, or if it had been too precise.

  “He does that,” Baze said.

  “Do not apologize for me,” Chirrut told him.

  The Meftian reached out for Chirrut’s hand, took it in one of his heavily furred paws. Chirrut could feel the rough texture of the man’s flesh in the gaps of his fur.

  “Will you pray for me?” Sperado asked.

  “No,” Chirrut told him. “But I will show you how to pray for yourself.”

  Sperado’s grip tightened, and Chirrut felt the cold surrounding the Meftian dissipate for a moment. In that moment there was an instant’s warmth, and he felt the man’s hope.

  “The mines,” Fortuna said.

  “The mines themselves?” Baze asked. “Or what comes out of them?”

  “We do not have an actionable plan to assault the mines. Even explosives closing the mouth of the mines would only delay the operation for a few days, a week at the most.”

  “It would also claim the lives of more miners than stormtroopers,” Chirrut said.

  Fortuna continued on as if he hadn’t heard either the criticism or the concern. “And while that would delay their mining operation, it would be a minor delay. What I propose is a quick hit on one of the speeder runs from the mines into the city, before they offload the crystals for transport off the moon.”

  “That could work,” Baze said. “There are at least a dozen places along the route where it could be done easily.”

  “Would he come with us?”

  Chirrut grinned. “Yes,” he told Fortuna. “He, meaning me, would.”

  “I don’t mean to offend, but you’re blind.”

  Chirrut put a hand up in front of his face, waved it back and forth, gasped.

  “Baze Malbus,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Baze laughed. Fortuna didn’t.

  “Don’t mistake his lack of eyesight for a lack of vision,” Baze said.

  The meeting ended shortly thereafter, and Chirrut walked with Sperado to the Old Shadows, as promised.

  “I was on Serralonis,” Sperado said. “When I was recruited.”

  “I do not know the world.”

  “Just a place.”

  “We all have a place.”

  Sperado thought about that, then asked, “If you lose that place?”

  “You cannot lose what is inside you,” Chirrut said. “You can only misplace it. The task, then, is to find it again.”

  Angber Trel was attending to pilgrims in the Old Shadows when they arrived, and Chirrut made introductions, then departed. When he encountered Sperado again the next day as they prepared to attack the shipment from the mines, he asked if the visit had been of any help.

  “Still looking for my place,” Sperado told him.

  Chirrut wished him luck.

  They traveled outside of the city, using a speeder that Fortuna brought. There were another two of Gerrera’s partisans with them, a Talpini and a human male. No one spoke. Fortuna held back as they took position, and once again questioned whether or not Chirrut’s presence was required. Baze was annoyed.

  “Wait and see,” he said.

  The route from the mine was through a narrow ravine, and Chirrut took position with Baze along one side of the cliff while Sperado, the Talpini, and the human took up a position on the other side. Chirrut had brought his lightbow, the one he had built himself as part of his training as a Guardian, and settled down amid the rocks before he snapped it open and ran his hands along the polished wood and the inlaid circuitry. It was at once as familiar in his hands as ever it had been, even though it had been years since he’d had cause to use it. He activated the impeller on the vambrace he wore on his left forearm, then relaxed as best he could into the moment. Baze powered up his cannon.

  “How is that working for you so far?” Chirrut asked.

  “I am trying something new,” Baze said. “I can overcharge single shots. It will be enough to take down the speeder.”

  “Effective.”

  “It may n
ot work. Which could be a problem.”

  “Because the speeder will get away?”

  “Because the cannon may explode in my hands.”

  “I think I am going to find another place to wait,” Chirrut said, half-heartedly starting to rise. Baze put a hand on his elbow and sat him back down.

  Fortuna’s voice came over their comlink. “Incoming.”

  Baze shifted forward, and Chirrut heard a clack from his cannon, the sound of his friend preparing to take his shot. Chirrut pulled a deep breath through his nose, released it past his lips, bringing the lightbow up in his hands. He felt the terrain spreading around them, a sensation of vertigo as he perceived the rise and fall of the desert as it narrowed to the ravine, and into the ravine the thrum of the speeder, riding low on its repulsor field, laden down with kyber crystals that seemed to glow in Chirrut’s mind.

  “Now,” Fortuna said over the comlink.

  There was a snap of explosives, the Talpini detonating the device he had planted, and rock tumbled from the edges of the ravine, and beneath them Chirrut felt the speeder swerve and he heard Baze fire the cannon. The thrum of the repulsor stopped, and the sound of metal shearing climbed up the walls of the ravine. Chirrut could feel the shape of the world in front of him, below him, where the natural terrain was broken by the presence of the machine, where the stone was disrupted by the living. Shots echoed from opposite their position, and Chirrut knew Sperado had fired, and so had the human, and that Sperado had hit and the human had not, and that there was a stormtrooper in the back of the vehicle raising a weapon onto his shoulder, and Chirrut knew what the stormtrooper wished to do. He adjusted his aim and fired, and the lightbow hummed a note to him, and he felt the bolt flying true, and he felt the stormtrooper drop.

  Fortuna brought their speeder in, and they unloaded from the disabled one onto theirs, and they raced back to the edges of the mesa. Chirrut and Baze got out.

  Before Fortuna raced away to take himself and the other partisans and their cargo to safety, he said, “Chirrut.”

  “Hmm?”

  “My apologies for doubting you.”

  “It’s all right,” Chirrut said. “I am blind, after all.”

  Almost two months later, now, and more operations to vex and wound and enrage the Empire than Chirrut could count.

  “It went well today,” Baze said. “They barely had time to react, let alone return fire. It was over in less than two minutes. We took nearly thirty kilos of crystals back from them.”

  “Back to where?”

  “Gerrera’s people took them.”

  “So he is collecting them?”

  “Only to keep them out of the hands of the Empire.”

  “And what does he do with them?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Chirrut settled his walking stick across his lap, smoothed out his sleeves. They were back in their room, and he could feel where Baze was working at the tiny stove, feel it when Baze paused in cooking their dinner to glare at him.

  “Were there any injuries?” Chirrut asked.

  “On our side? None.”

  “I meant the civilians.”

  “I know that’s what you meant. ‘Our side,’ I said. Which means Jedha’s side. No, no one was hurt.”

  “Save for the Imperials.”

  “If the Imperials do not wish to lose their lives,” Baze said. “They are free to leave our home at any time.”

  “Yet they remain.”

  “Then we need to be more persuasive in our encouragement.”

  Chirrut laughed, unamused. A pot clattered on the stove, and he could hear the whine of one of the heating coils protesting as Baze coaxed it to life.

  “What?” Baze asked.

  “Do you not think that some hundred stormtrooper lives and some hundreds of kilos of kyber crystals denied them would send the message already?” Chirrut answered. “Do you not think that the message has been sent dozens of times with greater and greater clarity since Gerrera arrived, and that perhaps it is not being received as we wish?”

  “If you have another way to get them to leave our home, I would love for you to share it.”

  “I do not know how to get them to leave our home, Baze. I only know that this method does not seem to be working. And that the wrong people are suffering for our actions.”

  There was another clatter from the stove—Baze setting something down or, more likely, slamming something down.

  “Killi and Kaya, the orphanage, they are fine, they are safe. We saw it when we visited this morning. They gave us some more of that cursed Tarine tea. Gerrera has done as we’ve asked.”

  Chirrut just shook his head. Baze went quiet, finished preparing their meal, then set the bowl down in front of Chirrut before sitting heavily opposite him to dig into his own. Chirrut ate, chewing slowly. It was a noodle stew, with cut-up chunks of one of the many species of worms that lived in the sands, for added protein. It tasted bland, and the vendor, Sesquifian, hadn’t done a particularly good job of cleaning the worms out before offering them to Baze. As a result, every fifth bite or so Chirrut would hear the crunch of a grain of sand between his teeth.

  “How is it?” Baze asked.

  “Perfectly wretched.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Ah, yes, I meant, ‘Thank you for making this meal for us, Baze.’”

  Baze grunted, slurped at his broth. There was a pause, and then he said, “You’re right.”

  “Hmm?”

  “It is perfectly wretched. Sesquifian must’ve bought the worms from Dobias. What do you mean the wrong people?”

  Chirrut set the bowl aside. “The Empire is compelled to respond.”

  “They are not compelled to do anything, Chirrut. No one made them invade our home, or close the temples, or occupy our world.”

  “But they have all the same. They are here, and now they take the kyber. And when we act to keep them from acquiring it, what do they do? They punish Jedha. Not Gerrera, not his partisans, not you or me, but Jedha .”

  Baze grunted.

  “When we were at the orphanage this morning, did you count the children?” Chirrut asked.

  “Twenty-two.”

  “So you did.”

  “I just said. Twenty-two.”

  “I heard twenty-four. Double the number of children in their care before Gerrera’s campaign began. Twelve more children who have lost their parents either to the Empire or to the partisans perhaps not being as careful as they could be in their attacks.”

  “So you would blame Gerrera?”

  “No,” Chirrut said. “No more than I would blame you or me for the violence the Empire brings. But it is as Killi said all those months ago. We have entered a cycle, do you not feel it? At first we struck at the patrols. Then we struck at the convoys. Now we strike at the shipments. First the stormtroopers established checkpoints. Then they want scandocs and have patrols on the streets. Now? Now they will stop and search anyone they do not like the looks of, and if you dare resist, they beat you, and if you try to flee, they shoot you. Where does this escalation end, Baze?”

  Baze didn’t answer. Chirrut heard him rise, heard him gathering the bowls, moving to clean up after the meal. Perhaps there was nothing to say, or more accurately, nothing Baze could say. Chirrut himself had been wrestling with this very question for weeks now. The fact was simple, and one didn’t need working eyesight to recognize it: Gerrera’s arrival on Jedha had made a bad situation worse.

  Before, there had been scattered insurgents, any affiliation between them loose at best. There was no coordination, and to be honest, very little in the way of tactics or even skill. But one of the things Chirrut had understood after their initial meeting with Tenza and Fortuna two months prior was that he and Baze were not the only people to whom Gerrera had made overtures. The man had done his homework; he had sent agents to Jedha before his arrival, had done so far enough in advance that when he arrived, those agents had been able to present him with fair
ly accurate intelligence as to who might be worth recruiting and who might not.

  The result was that there were few independent insurgents left in the Holy City. One way or another, if a sentient wielded a weapon against the Empire, they were doing it on behalf of Saw Gerrera. Suddenly, attacks that the Empire had clearly deemed merely a nuisance, the cost of doing business, had become more expensive. Instead of the occasional resupply cache being hijacked, now whole cargo shipments were vanishing. Instead of an occasional potshot taken at a stormtrooper or officer, now attacks were coordinated, and the targets were growing ever more significant. LZ-Besh and LZ-Dorn had each been attacked in force; LZ-Besh had been abandoned as a result. Word was that over fifteen stormtroopers had died in the assault.

  Chirrut thought of what Killi had said, that each does as they must. For the Empire, its must was to deploy walkers and combat assault tanks. To build checkpoints and crew them with heavy blaster emplacements. To search each and every starship that made landing at the port, and to increase the taxes on just about every import and export out of Jedha. To fly TIE fighters in patrols over the city, using them to coordinate the deployment of assault teams who would eliminate any pocket of resistance or base used by the insurgency they could find.

  The refugee situation, already bad, was becoming intolerable. More and more people were going hungry. More and more people were becoming sick. More and more people were dying.

  “I’ll be back in a while,” Baze said.

  Chirrut reached for his walking stick. “Wherever you are going, I will come with you.”

  “No.”

  Chirrut hesitated, prepared to pull himself to his feet with the stick. He frowned. “You are going to meet with more of Gerrera’s people.”