Catalyst

by James Luceno

  Free of his harness, Krennic stood, ripped the Zerpen logo from his tunic, and tossed it out of sight. “We have to put some meat back on those bones of yours,” he said as he crossed the cabin to Galen, “but I think I could get used to the beard.” Finally, he turned to Lyra. “Obviously they kept you in more civilized confinement. And the child—”

  “Jyn.”

  Krennic rolled it over on his tongue and shrugged lightly. “She’s healthy?”

  “Very.”

  “Well then, there’s something to be said for the Valltii.”

  “A lot can be said for them, Orson,” Galen told him.

  “You’ll have to fill me in at some point. But I promised you an explanation.” He sank into a chair from which he could address both of them. “Because of the espionage charges leveled against you, Zerpen was reluctant to enter into negotiations with Vallt’s new regime—the late Marshal Phara, one can hope. For all Zerpen knew, you actually were a Republic agent all along. I realize how that must sound, but you know how these faceless profit-driven corporations can be. So naturally the Republic stepped in to intervene. Zerpen agreed that we could portray ourselves as emissaries if we agreed to expedite the return of their facility.”

  “This was a Republic operation?” Galen said in patent disbelief.

  “It was. I’m genuinely surprised that Count Dooku didn’t commit more forces to oversee the exchange, but I’m not going to complain about a bit of unexpected good fortune.”

  Galen’s face looked bloodless. “Orson, I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Krennic smiled lightly. “Well, we couldn’t let you molder in prison on some desolate world. I could imagine what you had to be going through—the position you were in—and I decided to do the thinking for you. I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

  Galen was shaking his head back and forth. “But all these resources—just to free us. I don’t feel right about it.”

  “Now who’s being ridiculous? Besides, this operation was sanctioned at the highest levels.”

  Galen looked up, blinking in disbelief. “I’m surprised to hear that anyone in power is even aware of me.”

  “Once I explained fully who you are and what happened, I was instructed to take whatever steps were necessary to bring you home.”

  Galen’s expression became quizzical. “But you’re still with the Corps of Engineers, aren’t you?”

  “Of course. But my role has expanded—considerably—what with the need for space stations, armaments, ships of the fleet.”

  “Was firing on the Keep part of the arrangement?” Lyra asked in no uncertain terms.

  Krennic eyed her for a moment before responding. “Let’s just say that the Supreme Chancellor was very troubled by Vallt’s turn to the Separatist side.”

  She held his gaze until he looked away.

  Galen blew out his breath. “We tried to avoid being caught up in all this, and look at the end result.”

  “You didn’t pull the trigger on Vallt, Galen.”

  “I might as well have.”

  Krennic’s eyes narrowed perceptibly. “If you’re determined to beat yourself up about it, I can’t stop you. But the sooner you get used to being back in the real world, the better.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Lyra said in the same harsh tone.

  He looked at her askance. “Meaning that this war only ends when we win it, in whatever way we can.”

  “And the losers?” Galen said.

  Krennic sighed. “Up to a point that will be for them to decide.”

  The three of them fell silent, until Galen asked: “Are we headed to Coruscant?”

  Krennic rose from the chair and nodded slowly. “Ultimately. But there’s something you need to see first.”

  —

  Has brought the Good Tidings out of hyperspace a safe distance from Grange and unclipped from the chair’s restraints. “Can you handle this?” he asked Matese, who occupied the copilot’s seat.

  “Trust me, Obitt, I got it.”

  Krennic had mentioned that Grange was the scientist’s homeworld, and Has was curious to gauge Dr. Erso’s reaction to what he was about to confront. When Has entered the freighter’s main cabin, Krennic, Erso, and his wife—their child in her arms—were standing at the starboard viewport staring aghast at the battle raging on all sides of the planet. Republic and Separatist warships were going at it high above Grange’s dun, leafy-green, and seafoam surface, explosions blossoming in space and along the starlit curve of the agrarian world.

  Has noticed that the frail scientist’s right hand was twitching, almost as if he were writing in the air. He was clearly in poor health after several standard months of confinement, and the sight of Grange being taken apart wasn’t doing him any good.

  Just the way Krennic wanted it, Has was certain.

  “Your homeworld has been under siege for the past two standard months,” the commander was explaining. “Unfortunately, we can’t risk getting any closer without becoming involved. The Republic dispatched what forces could be spared, but the Separatists had a good lead on us, and now we’re getting our heads handed to us.”

  “Why Grange?” Erso said. “Grange has nothing.”

  Has had heard the question asked more times than he could count, and the answer was always the same.

  “Grange has resources,” Krennic said. “It’s well situated for jump points to remote sectors. And for Count Dooku the war has become a numbers game. The more worlds he brings into the Confederacy, the more he weakens the Republic. No world is immune—not even yours.”

  Erso looked even more distressed. “Is it this bad everywhere?”

  “Worse,” Krennic said.

  Erso’s wife, Lyra, glowered at him. “You seemed to have no problem contributing to it at Vallt.”

  Krennic’s shoulders hunched, but he didn’t respond.

  Has smiled to himself, taken by Lyra’s spunk. In a physical match between her and Krennic, he might have put his credits on Lyra.

  “The Separatists will never prevail,” Erso was saying. “Surely it’s only a matter of time.”

  Krennic answered without turning from the horrid view. “The Republic is doing what it can with what it has, but the designers of the Grand Army failed to prepare for every eventuality, and in many cases we’ve found ourselves outgunned or outnumbered. Right now we have a finite number of clone soldiers up against what sometimes seems an infinite number of droids.”

  “And the Jedi?” Lyra asked.

  “Also doing what they can. But remember, Dooku is one of their own, and he’s a crafty opponent. At times he seems to be able to read our minds, if not simply outguess us. Despite that, many of the Core and Mid Rim worlds are fully committed to preserving the Republic. Several shipbuilding corporations have devoted themselves to providing the Grand Army with advanced weapons and ships. Unfortunately, the research and development isn’t progressing as quickly as we would like, and the longer this needless destruction drags on, the worse for everyone. Without a quick victory, the galaxy could die a slow death.”

  “What will happen to Grange?” Erso asked.

  Krennic looked at him over his shoulder. “My best assessment? The Republic will withdraw before we suffer any more losses, and Grange will belong to the Separatists.”

  Erso paced away from the viewport. “I can’t witness this.”

  Has watched Lyra track and regard her husband, stopping herself from following him. She seemed about to say something when the child began to squirm and fuss in her arms, and Erso swung around to face her.

  “She needs to be fed,” Lyra told him. “I’ll take her aft.”

  Has pretended to busy himself at the comm station while continuing to eavesdrop on the conversation.

  Krennic deliberately waited until Lyra was out of earshot to say: “I’m sorry I had to bring you here, Galen, but I felt that you needed to see this for yourself. And turning your back to the view won’t alter anything. Your homeworld
is caught in the middle of this thing, and people are dying by the tens of thousands.”

  Krennic the tactician, Has thought. His sly way of getting Erso to get with the program; to, what, lend his genius to the war effort? If that was the case, Krennic had misjudged him.

  “And people wonder why I want no part of this,” Erso said without moving.

  The commander frowned. “I don’t think you’ve thought this all the way through, Galen. You may think you’re removed from the war, but you’re not. Do you know that Zerpen Industries is one of the corporations that has been serving both sides?” Krennic motioned to Has. “Ask our captain. He knows.”

  When the scientist looked at him, Has nodded, knowing it would be useless to lie in front of Krennic. “I’ve made a few deliveries on Zerpen’s behalf to both Republic and Separatist worlds.”

  “There you have it,” Krennic said, as if proud of himself. “If you really cared about where your funding is coming from, Galen, you’d be out with a pickax looking for kyber crystals instead of proclaiming your neutrality from inside a multibillion-credit synthesizer facility provided by traitors to the cause.” Again, Krennic gestured in Has’s direction. “Take Captain Obitt, here. He thought he could remain aloof, and now he finds himself forced to take sides.”

  “Forced being the choice word,” Has said, showing Krennic a scowl before looking at Erso. “The commander is leaving out a few very important details, but yes, what he says is true. One moment you’re going about your business, and the next you’re doing someone else’s bidding.”

  The message was lost on Erso, and Krennic merely snorted a laugh; then he moved to stand alongside the scientist. “That’s essentially the position the Valltii put you in, wasn’t it?”

  “They tried. I chose prison.”

  “For all the good it did, Galen.”

  Erso made it clear that he didn’t like the implication. “At least I could live with myself.” He motioned in an offhand way to the view of his smoldering homeworld. “Even this, as tragic as it is, doesn’t change my stance on the war.”

  Has waited for Krennic’s counteroffensive.

  “My aim in bringing you here has nothing to do with altering your stance,” the commander said in a serious tone. “I only want to open your eyes to the truth, Galen. You’ve been on an enemy world for more than a standard year, and Coruscant has changed in the interim.” He paused, then added: “Don’t expect to be welcomed back with open arms.”

  JYN HAD NURSED HERSELF TO sleep, and Lyra could hear Galen and the others talking in the main cabin, glad not to be a part of the conversation. For her, governments of any stripe would have their constituents believe that they were attempting to remove chaos from the galaxy, that they were trying to make things perfect, when only the Force was perfect. For ordinary beings, life was a constant interplay between order and chaos, day and night, light and dark.

  Her reverence for the Force had evolved from an enduring love of nature. Yes, she thought of herself as agile and strong and intuitive, but she understood that her skills were a far cry from those attributed to the Jedi. She did, however, embrace the Order’s philosophy of generosity, compassion, and peaceful resolution, and on many a far-flung world she had experienced moments in nature that could only be described as transcendent. It was certainly possible that those peak moments had their basis in belief and emotion, but that hardly mattered; even if she wasn’t able to use the Force, she could at least feel it, and she was content with that. Now what remained to be seen was whether the Force was indeed strong enough to overcome the powers of evil that had swept the Republic into a galaxy-spanning conflict. Could the Jedi triumph, or would evil cast its pall over even the brightest of worlds?

  Perhaps Orson was right to have brought Galen to beleaguered Grange. During their early time on Vallt she and Galen had been able to ignore the war, to concentrate on the research and the child growing in Lyra’s womb like one of the teams’ glittering crystals. But they couldn’t keep their heads buried in the snow forever. Now that they were returning to the Core, it was essential that they come to grips with everything that was going on—the truth, as Krennic put it.

  Grange had never been a prosperous world, but just forty standard years earlier it had been little more than an outback. Galen had grown up an only child in a poor neighborhood in one of the larger cities. His father had been a merchant, peddling homegrown supplies; his mother, a preschool teacher. Humble roots, it was said. But his mother, the first to recognize Galen’s genius, had scraped together enough credits to surround her son with what he needed to keep his mind occupied, especially after he had started school and she understood that he was bored. First, a music synthesizer he was quick to master, then a chemistry set, and finally whatever datacrons she could afford. When credits weren’t tight, she would subscribe to a HoloNet service so that he could get a sense of the larger galaxy; that life didn’t begin and end on Grange.

  Her contributions had the intended effect. By the time he entered secondary school Galen was already excelling in mathematics and the sciences, and his teachers were using the term prodigy to describe him. He was learning languages and magic tricks “just because,” and he wound up building his own primitive HoloNet transceiver. More important, he was formulating theories and formulas before they were taught, in some cases solving mathematical problems in eccentric ways that surpassed his academic understanding. On several occasions his solutions mystified his instructors, and it was one of those solutions—submitted offworld by a mentor—that drew the attention of scouts of the Futures Program in Grange’s sector of space, and then on Coruscant.

  Where losing a son to the Core might have been traumatic for some women, Galen’s mother could not have been happier for him, for she thought of it as her destiny as much as Galen’s that he be surrounded by the galaxy’s best and brightest. Hadn’t he been born under a rainbow? Grange would have offered nothing more for him than to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a merchant. The elder Erso was not as accepting of Coruscant’s invitation; nor in the beginning was Galen himself, for he felt as if he already held the entire galaxy in his thoughts. He felt no need to demonstrate his gifts or to be groomed as an academic or scientist. He would have been content to be a merchant, content to explore life and the material world in his own fashion, his mind free to wander where it would, without being beholden to anyone.

  He talked a good game, but it was his innate shyness talking. He had a greater fear of attention than he did failure, refusing even to celebrate his birthday much less receive gifts or acclamation. With romance he was hopeless, pretending disinterest when in fact he was confused by his changing body and how it sometimes took him out of his mind, out of his deep thinking.

  He was already enrolled in the Futures Program on Brentaal when he received word that his mother had died after a short illness. Her death and that of his father in a vehicular accident, only a few years later, were brutal blows to his sense of continuity, of permanence.

  Shortly after those events he met Orson Krennic.

  Orson’s name had come up in conversation several times before Lyra actually met him when he began to frequent the Institute of Applied Science in the months preceding the outbreak of the war, and he seemed to be on good terms with many of Galen’s former professors and peers.

  Though Lyra never saw it, Galen insisted at every turn that Orson was as bright and talented as anyone in the Futures Program, and she still found it difficult to picture them as friends: one who had to be dragged to parties and events, the other whose nocturnal carousing had become legendary in the program.

  Orson had gone into government service—Lyra was never clear on whether he had graduated or been dropped from the program—but he had risen quickly to the fore in the Republic Corps of Engineers, supervising the construction of enormous projects, onworld and in deep space. For Galen graduation had been followed by advanced studies, research internships, and teaching positions. By twenty-five he had
published prolifically and had earned a reputation as someone destined for greatness. Years earlier it was Orson who had helped Galen land a visiting professorship at the Institute of Applied Science, which came not only with a good stipend, but also with an apartment he didn’t need to pay for.

  By then Galen had been narrowing his fields of interest and had settled on crystallography and energy enhancement—or, as Galen saw it, crystals had chosen him. As a result, he had begun to travel widely in search of rare crystals, and it was during one of his expeditions that he and Lyra met. She was on Espinar, leading a survey team that had discovered and mapped an extensive cave system, in the depths of which the team had discovered caches of unique crystals formed from rainwater seeping through layers and layers of soil and rock, and sometimes sprouting like radiant teardrops on the tips of stalactites. The crystals turned out not to be kybers or even a class of kyber, but they bore enough similarity to the living crystal to interest the small community of scientists who had devoted themselves to their study. As either luck or fate had had it, Lyra was chosen to guide and provide logistics for the field team Galen assembled. She couldn’t to this day say that it was love at first sight or anything close to that—though she did find him attractive and vital from the start.

  On Espinar he would sleep until awakened or stay up until told to retire; he would allow himself to go hungry until provided with food or eat until someone advised him to stop. Sometimes Lyra couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and at other times Galen wouldn’t speak for days on end, preferring instead to seclude himself and write or sketch. He was continually organizing and reorganizing his equipment, and yet he struggled to keep his footing on steep grades. Sometimes when they spoke she would feel as if she were conversing with a droid, though she came to appreciate the breadth of his knowledge and his facility for sustained attention. She began to recognize, too, that what she interpreted as hostility was actually a ploy that allowed him to maintain a safe distance from her while he sorted out what she wanted from him and solved the calculus of their relationship.