Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

^{Chapter 8}

“WHAT WAS THE MESSAGE?” CASSIAN asked. “You can tell me the message.”

Baze grunted behind him. The pilot refused to look directly at Cassian. They’d gone around twice already, Cassian asking questions and the broken man answering in jumbled words and mumbles. There were hints of insight to be found—Cassian had heard the words planet killer more than once—but little else. He wanted to tear the answers bodily from the man he’d come so far to find.

This had to be worth it. The message, the mission, it had to be worth the cost.

“Brought the message,” the pilot finally said. “Brought it from Galen. Brought it from Eadu.”

Eadu.

He dimly recalled the name from some Alliance Intelligence file—a planet somewhere in the Outer Rim. It was a thread Cassian could follow.

Then the catacombs began to rumble.

Outside the cell, skulls skittered out of their niches on the walls and shattered on the stone floor. The lights flickered, and guards rushed to exit the outer chamber. An absurd, obsessive instinct in Cassian urged him to ignore the quake, to keep the pilot talking, but he tamped down the compulsion enough to recognize the opportunity he’d been provided.

“Proton bombs,” Baze said, turning his eyes to the ceiling.

Chirrut shook his head. “No.” But he ventured no alternatives.

Cassian freed his security kit from his boot and began work on the cell’s lock, clipping wires and shifting tumblers. The quake’s force steadily increased, causing his hands to jerk and slip. Finally the lock made a satisfying click and the door slid open; he had barely enough time to pull his arms out from the bars. He dashed for the table where the group’s gear had been stashed as Baze tugged Chirrut along after.

“Let’s go!” Baze snapped.

Cassian snatched up his blaster in one hand, fumbled for his comlink with the other, and signaled. “Kay-Tu? Kay-Tu, where are you?”

Please be at the ship. Please don’t say you followed me. We’re so close here…

The comlink crackled with static and an almost incomprehensible voice replied, “There you are! I’m standing by as you ordered. Though there is a problem on the horizon.”

“What problem?” Cassian spat.

“There is no horizon. On a positive note, I may have found our planet killer.”

The catacombs shuddered and bucked, nearly tossing Cassian to his knees. It wasn’t until he regained his balance that he understood what the droid was talking about.

What was happening on the surface?

And did it matter? The planet killer was real.

It’s here.

He felt a thrill, realizing what they’d found; realizing he would return to the Rebellion not just successful, but wildly so, with an eyewitness account of the monster they faced. Realizing that he was imperiled by a menace unheard of in galactic history, and that he would survive or not according to his own skill. The thrill was arrested by the chill that worked its way down his back and the sweat on his brow.

“Locate our position,” he said. “Bring that ship in here now!”

“Five minutes to extraction,” the droid replied. “If I make it at all.”

Cassian glanced sidelong at Baze, who was either inspecting or caressing his blaster cannon. Five minutes. It wasn’t nearly fast enough, and far too fast for what he wanted.

Jyn was still missing, in the hands of Saw or whatever torturers Saw had sicced on Bodhi Rook. She was extraneous now: Cassian no longer needed Saw, and Bodhi could lead the rebels to Galen Erso on his own.

Worse than extraneous, he told himself. She’ll try to stop what comes next.

All Cassian had to do was forget the need in her eyes. Leave her behind, as he’d left behind Tivik on the Ring of Kafrene. As he’d left behind men on Eiloroseint and Chemvau…

“Where are you going?” Chirrut shouted.

Cassian was already halfway to the cavern exit.

“I’ve got to find Jyn,” he called. “You get the pilot. We need him. Then if you want a ride out of here, meet me up top.”

It was as much a threat as an offer.

There was barely enough light to navigate the catacombs. Cassian followed the flashes of swinging overheads and, as he caught up, the handhelds carried by Saw’s fleeing soldiers. The rebels all traveled the same path, and Cassian raced up stairs and around corners in their wake. No one seemed to notice a lone prisoner in pursuit.

He scaled the steps to the main floor of the monastery and heard new noises over the rumbling of the mountain and the shouts of evacuating rebels: the engines of starships and, beyond, a terrible howling wind like the hurricanes of Squarr. The soldiers scattered from a central chamber, gear slung over their shoulders or abandoned on the ground. Cassian wondered if any of them would survive to see the stars.

As a Twi’lek rebel bolted past, Cassian caught the man by his cyan head-tails and tossed him against a wall. “Where’s Jyn Erso?” he asked. “Where was she taken?”

The Twi’lek pushed back instinctively. He was young and slim—slim enough that Cassian had underestimated him—but he was still a fighter, still one of Saw’s. He slammed a fist into Cassian’s ribs. Cassian caught the next blow and forced his opponent to the wall again. “I’m not here to fight. What’s your name?” he growled. The boy stared, uncomprehending. “What’s your name?”

“Rai’sodan,” the boy said.

“Rai’sodan.” Making him angry won’t help you. Keep him calm. “We can beat each other up while this place falls apart, or you can tell me where you took Jyn Erso. The prisoner from before. The one separate from the rest.”

The boy took barely a moment to decide. “Saw’s chambers. The upper level. But I haven’t seen him since—”

Cassian turned and sprinted away. Saw had left the pilot behind. Maybe—if Cassian was lucky—he was cruel enough to leave Jyn, too.

He ascended another stairway two steps at a time. The monastery made a noise like thunder as some part of the structure collapsed altogether. Cassian was forced to put his sleeve over his mouth and nostrils to keep himself from choking on the dust. Power cables led him to a doorway filled by a tattered curtain, where he tripped on something soft: the heap of a rebel body, a youth with a rifle longer than her arm.

No blaster marks, Cassian thought. Poor kid must have come for Saw and cracked her head during one of the tremors.

She might have been alive, but she wasn’t his concern.

He called Jyn’s name, pushed forward through the curtains, and found what he was looking for.

Jyn was squatting on the floor of the chamber within, her shoulders slumped and her arms limp. With each shudder of the monastery she shifted her weight, straightened to avoid toppling over, but those were the only motions she made. She was staring sightlessly across the room. She didn’t seem to notice the armored figure crouched before her.

Saw Gerrera. Older, much older than the images Cassian had seen in the dossier at Base One, but unmistakably Saw.

What had he done?

Saw lifted his head. Bloodshot eyes met Cassian’s own. The man squinted in thought, then rasped, as if reading the rage and the question on Cassian’s face, “This was not my doing. She wasn’t ready for what she saw.”

Cassian wanted to yell, What does that mean? But Saw spoke again in a voice that defied interruption. “If you can save her,” he said bitterly, “take her.”

The monastery was falling apart. If K-2 was coming, he’d arrive momentarily. There was no time; Saw’s answer would have to be good enough.

Cassian knelt by Jyn. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused. “We’ve got to go,” he said, soft and stern.

She flinched at the sound. Nothing more. Cassian swore to himself.

Leave her behind.

It would be easier than he’d expected. The need had burned out of her eyes. The feral instinct to survive had been buried kilometers deep. He’d be leaving behind an empty shell…

“I know where your father is,” he said.

Jyn blinked. Her eyes flickered toward Cassian.

“Go, Jyn!” Saw’s voice, commanding even in its frailty. “You must go.”

Jyn rose to her feet on trembling legs. Her breath hissed between barely parted lips. She turned a blank face to look over the room, over Cassian and Saw, and reached out to grasp her mentor’s arm.

Something passed between Jyn and Saw that Cassian couldn’t begin to read. Saw spoke simply, softly: “Save yourself. Please.”

Jyn’s face seemed to flash with anger. But her fingers unclenched from Saw, and Cassian grabbed her other arm, tugging her toward the doorway. “Come on,” he said, and she stumbled one step, then two.

“Go!” Saw urged, somehow stronger now, his voice competing against the tumbling rocks that clattered beyond the chamber window. Jyn took another step, but her gaze remained on the old rebel.

“There’s no time,” Cassian snapped. He pulled at her again and now she was moving, unsteady yet swift, making for the corridor at Cassian’s side.

Saw’s bellow seemed to shatter stone behind them and dwarf even the roar of the cataclysm: “Save the Rebellion!” he cried. “Save the dream!”

Bodhi Rook understood the distinction between past and present, between recollection and reality; he just wasn’t sure which was which anymore.

Bor Gullet had taken everything Bodhi was—every intimate thought and dream, every cherished or forsaken memory—and torn through it with tendrils like scalpels. A scrap of first kiss drifted, ripped and sodden, into a pile on the right; a ribbon of kyber crystals floated to the pile on the left, pressed and preserved for further examination.

When Bor Gullet and Saw had completed their investigation, Bodhi had tried to stuff every memory back into his mind. He was certain they hadn’t all fit quite right.

“I’m the pilot!”

Who had he said that to? Someone had listened to him at last. Or was that a memory from long ago?

Was he still in the cage with Bor Gullet?

No. But he was in another cage. It smelled of his own putrid scent. His flight suit chafed his icy flesh, irritated his sores, and ground dirt into his wounds.

The whole world was rumbling like a ship taking flight. Surely that, Bodhi thought, was a memory?

“The pilot,” a voice said, low and full of scorn.

He focused on the source and saw through the bars of his cage a hulk of a man with dark, wild hair. Behind him stood a slimmer man who carried a staff.

The first man—the name Baze surfaced in Bodhi’s brain, though Bodhi couldn’t have guessed where he’d heard it—raised a blaster cannon and pointed it at Bodhi’s chest.

Panic helped Bodhi find words. “Wait!” he cried. “No…”

He stumbled to his feet, readied himself for the pain of death. He heard the blaster shot and felt nothing.

The door to his cell slid open. Baze was scowling at him, pointing his weapon at the burnt and sparking control panel.

“Come on!” the second man called. His name is Chirrut. “Let’s go!”

Was this reality?

Was this a rescue?

Bodhi nearly twisted an ankle on his first step. The ground bucked on his second. Then he was running, chasing after Baze and Chirrut and praying that he had found his salvation at last—found the welcome Galen Erso had promised him when he had said to seek out the Rebellion, to make amends.

Maybe, Bodhi thought, just maybe his torment was over.

He recognized some of the faces running with him. There were whole crowds beyond Baze and Chirrut, clattering through the stone hallways with rifles and duffels slung over their shoulders. Among them were Bodhi’s captors, the men and women who’d bound him, blinded him, marched him at gunpoint across the desert when he’d begged simply to help them. They didn’t look at him now, didn’t seem to see him. He pushed his aching legs and cold lungs harder to keep pace.

“They’ll kill us,” he whispered to Baze. “You don’t know these people.”

Baze laughed so loud that Bodhi was terrified the rebels would look back. They kept running.

“Forgive my friend,” Chirrut said. “You would think it’s funny, too, if you knew he wanted you dead most of all.”

Bodhi didn’t find that funny in the slightest. But a rescue was a rescue.

They ran out of the catacombs, up ancient steps worn smooth over centuries, and burst into the frigid dawn. Sunlight slashed Bodhi’s eyes with cuts of blue and green and silver. He couldn’t recall when he’d last seen sunlight, though Bor Gullet would have known.

He staggered to a stop behind Baze and Chirrut, standing on a broad mountain ledge overlooking a valley. The rebels were gone, scattered—somewhere. In the valley there was nothing but dust: a billowing, blooming storm of sand, expanding outward in all directions and rolling across the valley floor.

Baze’s lips parted without words. He watched like a man in shock.

“What do you see?” Chirrut asked Baze.

Bodhi blinked away the scars of light. When his eyes had adjusted, he realized that the valley was now too dim. He raised his stiff neck, looked to the sky, and saw a shadow like a moon eclipsing the sun.

“What do you see?” Chirrut asked again.

Realizations crashed together. Bodhi was on Jedha, had never left Jedha, and he was looking onto the valley where the Holy City had been. And above him, in the sky…

“No,” he whispered. “No.”

This was not a rescue. This was a trick of Bor Gullet. This was the reason he had left the Empire, abandoned his friends, trusted the words of Galen Erso, suffered torment and humiliation—to stop the battle station, stop the planet killer from coming to life. What he saw was not real. It could not be.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen yet,” he whispered, though no one listened.

He was too late. This was his fault.

Scalding wind cut through the cold, nearly blasted him from his feet. The dust storm was getting closer.

Then he heard another noise, a screaming boom separate from the thunderous rumble of the storm. Descending toward the mountain was a ship: a UT-60D U-wing transport. It dipped awkwardly in the buffeting wind, trying to match the level of the ledge.

Baze wrapped an arm around Chirrut, started toward the ship. “Okay, let’s go!”

What was the point? Bodhi wondered. They’d already lost.

An open palm smacked Bodhi between the shoulders. “Move!” a man called. He rushed past, pulling a woman by the hand. Bodhi had seen the man before, he thought; he remembered a gentle, almost pitying voice.

What was the point?

He didn’t want to die.

He followed the man, followed Baze and Chirrut, through the air that was growing ever-thicker with dust. Sand beat his flesh and raked his hair. He couldn’t hear the U-wing’s boarding ramp descend, but he saw the aperture, a window in the storm. The others were ahead of him, sprinting inside, making the final jump with apparent ease. Bodhi leapt, but his quaking legs failed him. He was falling onto the ramp when a hand caught him, yanked him violently forward an instant before the cabin door shut.

He didn’t see who it was who’d saved his life.

“Get us out of here!” a voice yelled. “Punch it!”

The cabin lurched and swayed. Baze, Chirrut, and the woman clutched at the seats, at support struts, to keep from being dashed against the walls. But even with the floor unsteady beneath him, even with the metallic wail of the wind against the bulkhead, Bodhi felt comforted. He was on a ship now. He knew ships.

The hull shrieked as something heavy bounced off the top of the U-wing. The deck dropped, sent Bodhi onto his hands and knees and drove spikes of pain into his wrists. He went sliding as the ship banked. He recognized the sound of the engine (an Incom Corporation rebuild of their 9XR standby…) as it strained against the storm.

Bodhi dragged himself forward and clambered into the cockpit. He’d never seen a U-wing cockpit before.

Seated at the controls were a droid and the man who’d passed by him before. (Cassian? Was that his name?) They were adjusting thrust madly, trying to ride the waves of the dust storm, trying to turn the ship away from the epicenter and maneuver through the mountains as they cracked and shattered.

Bodhi didn’t interrupt. He watched their hands play over the controls. He read the instruments and the scanners (nearly useless, never meant for these conditions). He felt the U-wing rise on a crest of the storm, shuddering all the way as it tried to match speed, and saw a shadow creep over the cockpit as a heavier, hotter cloud raced overhead and began to fall.

He was going to die after all. His rescue was over. And it was his own fault. If he’d been faster, the rebels might have stopped the planet killer.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Cassian and the droid didn’t hear him.

He understood that Bor Gullet was gone from his mind. Yet the memory that seized him was every bit as vivid as those the creature had evinced. Bodhi looked out the viewport and saw, instead of the dust storm, the emerald and turquoise hues of titanic gas clouds. Lightning volleys like alien dancers leapt from one cloud to the next, causing each to ignite and burst. Bodhi was laughing as his shuttle, a Nu-class transport barely viable for training runs, bounced and twirled, and his classmates cheered him on…

It was a memory of utter serenity. Then his flight through the gas giant of Bamayar IX was over and he was gazing into the dust storm again as darkness closed around the U-wing.

“Look!” he cried, and reached toward the viewport—toward a speck of light, a gateway through the dust, collapsing as the wave above them crashed down.

Cassian didn’t turn toward Bodhi. Maybe he hadn’t heard. But the rebel snarled “Come on!” as he diverted power again, urged the ship through that speck of light as oblivion raged around them. And the sky turned blue, then black, and the viewport filled with stars.

The U-wing leapt into hyperspace, and Bodhi laughed on the floor of the cockpit in giddy joy.