Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

^{Chapter 10}

CASSIAN ANDOR HAD MADE AN error. Like a hairline fracture in a blaster barrel, it was nearly invisible on cursory inspection. When its repercussions manifested, however, they would do so with devastating effect—Cassian would very likely die, though that wasn’t what bothered him most.

He knew now that he should have left Jyn Erso on Jedha. Better yet, he should never have taken her off Yavin 4.

“You’re showing indications of stress,” K-2 declared. He sat beside Cassian in the cockpit, monitoring the instruments. “You should be careful—you’re a much worse pilot when you’re stressed.”

Cassian offered a wan smile. “How can you tell?”

“You overcorrect with the throttle control.”

Not what I meant, he thought, but he didn’t clarify his question. For all K-2’s social dysfunction (or perhaps his disinterest in organic socialization—who could fathom the mind of a droid?), he knew Cassian better than anyone. He’d seen Cassian commit acts even Draven wasn’t aware of.

On Jenoport, he’d found Cassian staring at his blaster with tears on his face. K-2 had volunteered for a memory wipe in case Cassian’s “continued dignity and service demanded it.”

K-2, Cassian knew, would gladly subdue Jyn Erso and lock her somewhere safe. If the Guardians of the Whills hadn’t been aboard, Cassian might have been tempted to try.

“We’re approaching Eadu,” the droid said. “Exiting hyperspace in four minutes.”

“Set our approach vector and get Bodhi in here. I want his eyes on the landing zone.”

As K-2 obeyed, Cassian returned to his thoughts. Jyn’s fervor in the cabin had been almost inspiring. Maybe it had inspired Chirrut and Baze and Bodhi—none of whom he really knew, none of whom he could trust—just as her fire had spread to him, made him view her with a sort of awe in the Jedha Holy Quarter. But the stakes were different now: The planet killer, the Death Star, was real. General Draven had determined that eliminating its creator was the best way of ensuring the survival of the Rebel Alliance. If Cassian could stop one more incident like Jedha City, his duty was obvious.

Jyn would have argued that her father had already provided another way; that his sabotage gave the Rebellion a chance to stop the Death Star now, albeit at a terrible risk. Jyn’s judgment, however, was compromised.

Her fire would burn them all.

When Cassian had found her in Saw Gerrera’s chambers, she’d been lost in oblivion, awaiting her own death. He couldn’t imagine the forces that had shaped her in life. He didn’t doubt she was a woman of extraordinary strength, yet whatever message Saw had shown her had broken her completely.

She was feigning strength now. She clung to her father’s instructions for reasons entirely unrelated to the galaxy or the Alliance. If those instructions led her and everyone around her to their doom, would she even notice? Would she care?

Her terrible need had returned. It couldn’t end in anything but disaster, no matter how prettily she dressed it in the clothes of the Rebellion.

And if Cassian denied her what she wanted? If he assassinated Galen Erso?

She would surely be twice as dangerous.

Eadu was a night world even during the day, shrouded in storm clouds so thick that Cassian was forced to rely on scanners as they descended through the troposphere. From above, there was nothing to see but slate-gray thunderheads and flashes of light; the panorama was nearly peaceful. But the moment the U-wing broke through the cloud cover, gales battered the ship as water drummed on the hull and streamed down the viewport.

“Low,” Bodhi hissed, gripping the back of Cassian’s seat. He was freshly scrubbed and bandaged, and smelled distractingly of cheap cleaning products and disinfectant. His formerly distant, terrified voice sounded almost human again. “Lower!”

Cassian angled downward as much as he dared. He imagined the rainwater wriggling into a hundred metal seams wedged open during the Jedha sandstorm; droplets creeping among exposed electronics and shorting critical systems.

“This ship was not meant to be flown this way,” K-2 observed.

The U-wing emerged from a fogbank to reveal the landscape below: a hundred jagged rock formations, broad mesas, and narrow spires, rising from an uneven ground. A narrow canyon wove between the deadly ridges, its boundaries barely discernible in the storm.

“They have landing trackers,” Bodhi said. “They have patrol squadrons. You’ve got to stay in the canyon, keep it low.”

Cassian nodded, adjusted his altitude, and checked his scanners for TIE fighters. He found nothing, though he wondered whether ships so small would even show up in the maelstrom. K-2 increased thrust as the wind momentarily dropped off; the U-wing lurched and Cassian’s teeth smacked together.

“If we proceed,” K-2 said, “there’s a twenty-six percent chance of failure.”

“How much farther?” Cassian shot at Bodhi.

“I don’t know,” Bodhi said. “I’m not sure, I never really come this way—”

I figured that, Cassian thought. They were skimming over a spire, no more than ten meters above the summit.

“—but we’re close. I know that.”

“Now there’s a thirty-five percent chance of failure,” K-2 interjected.

Cassian toggled the landing lights. They’d be easily spotted by any patrol squadron overhead, but his visibility was nil. “I don’t want to know,” he said, not glancing at the droid. “Thank you.”

“I understand,” K-2 said. “I’d prefer ignorance myself.”

The spire fell away beneath them and Cassian descended farther into the canyon. The broken walls curved one way and then another, following the course of a dozen writhing streambeds. The rocks were too close, came up too fast, but if Cassian reduced speed any more they’d be at the total mercy of the storm.

“Now!” Bodhi shouted, and slammed a hand on Cassian’s seatback. “Put it down now!”

“The wind—” K-2 started, but Bodhi was squeezing between the seats, gesturing at something through the rain.

“If you keep going, you’ll be right over the shuttle depot. Put it down now!”

Cassian swore. Bodhi was right—what he’d mistaken for refracting raindrops on the viewport was a series of distant floodlights. A landing pad for Imperial spacecraft.

He cut the ship’s speed. Almost immediately the wind caught beneath the starboard wing, sent the U-wing veering toward the side of the canyon. K-2 tried to bank, but a ridge of black stone came up too fast for even a machine’s reflexes; a ledge clipped the U-wing and Cassian slammed forward in his restraints, crying out as the ship trailed sparks and went into a steep decline. The dashboard was red with warning lights.

“Hold on tight,” Cassian shouted. “We’re coming in hard!”

Whether anyone in the cabin heard him in the tumult, he couldn’t guess.

K-2 extended the landing gear and activated the retro-rockets in a futile attempt to break their speed. When they struck the planet surface, the U-wing’s underbelly screamed violently against mud and stone while momentum carried them forward. For almost half a minute, they plowed on as the ship’s hull threatened to shred.

When the U-wing finally stopped, cockpit cracked and half buried in gravel and mire, Cassian was certain the ship wouldn’t fly again.

The rain had tapered to a cold, cruel drizzle by the time Cassian finished a cursory inspection of the damage. His initial assessment had been correct: The U-wing was largely intact, but the port engine had been dashed into the rocks and was beyond repair. Most of the other components—long- and short-range comms included—were salvageable but nonfunctional.

He could still complete his mission. He could still kill Galen Erso. But he hadn’t planned to end the day stranded on Eadu. He pictured himself picking his way through the canyons, hunted by both stormtroopers and Jyn.

He was in a sour mood when he marched back into the cabin. He looked at the faces before him—the zealots, the defector, the madwoman, and K-2—and felt a new rush of ire. They’d had opinions on the mission until it had gone south; now they expected a solution from him.

The only one he even trusted was the Imperial droid.

“Bodhi,” he snapped. Rainwater streamed down his forehead onto the cabin floor. “Where’s the lab?”

Bodhi straightened and took an awkward step forward, like a soldier being called to attention. “The research facility?”

“The place you made deliveries and met Galen Erso. Where is it?”

Bodhi trembled for a moment. Cassian debated whether to push harder or coddle the man; but then the pilot stilled and said crisply, “It’s just over the ridge.”

“And that’s a shuttle depot straight ahead of us? You are sure of that?”

“Yes,” Bodhi said.

A satellite image would have been preferable, but Cassian had worked with worse than the word of a scared traitor. “We’ll have to hope there’s still an Imperial ship left to steal. The U-wing is scrap.”

No one looked surprised. Baze smiled sardonically.

“Grab anything that might be useful,” he went on. “K-2 will burn anything sensitive.” Alliance ships were programmed not to keep navi records, and all identification had been scrubbed long ago. Cleanup wouldn’t be hard. “After that, here’s what we’re doing.”

He waited for an argument that didn’t come. Bodhi still stood at attention. Baze regarded Cassian like he was judging him at trial. Chirrut looked distracted, cocking his head as if listening to the rain.

And Jyn? Jyn seemed pale and gaunt compared to the woman he’d met on Yavin. Even her momentary zeal after leaving Jedha was gone, revealed as a pretense to drag them into her madness. She watched him somberly, sadly, like she was sure he would disappoint her.

She was probably right about that.

“Hopefully,” he said, “the storm keeps up and keeps us hidden down here. Bodhi, you’re coming with me. We’ll go up the ridge and check out the research facility.”

“I’m coming with you,” Jyn said.

That didn’t take long. But he’d planned for it.

“No,” he said. “Your father’s message—we can’t risk it. You’re the messenger.”

Jyn scowled. “That’s ridiculous. We all got the message. Everyone here knows it.”

K-2 spoke for the first time. “One blast to the reactor module and the whole system goes down. That’s how you said it. The whole system goes down.”

“You”—Cassian shot toward K-2—“get to work fixing our comms.” He forced himself to moderate his voice, to sound reasonable, before returning to Jyn. “All I want to do right now is get a handle on what we’re up against. And even if I were ready to extract your father, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to try on my own. I need you for firepower; and at this moment, I need you protecting the ship.”

She returned to that intense, somber stare. Good enough.

“So,” he said, and nodded at Bodhi, “we’re going to go very small and very carefully up the rise and see what’s what. Let’s get out of here.”

There were no questions, and Cassian kept his eyes on his gear as he checked his equipment and reconfigured his blaster, slapping scope and extended barrel into place with rapid, familiar motions. At least, he thought, the weaponry survived the crash. He heard Bodhi’s footsteps behind him as he trudged back out into the rain and the mud, his soles sucking noisily at the drenched soil.

“Do I need one, too?” Bodhi called. Cassian cast a look backward at the man as he crept down the slick boarding ramp. “A weapon?”

“You sound like my droid,” Cassian said. Then he grunted, and shook his head. “We won’t be long. You’ll be fine.”

It was probably true. And there was a fringe benefit: If Bodhi sided with Jyn over Cassian, it meant one fewer person who might shoot him in the back.

Jyn hadn’t spoken to the others during the journey from Jedha. When Bodhi had approached her, tried to ask about Galen, she’d managed a gentle smile before waving him off. Chirrut and Baze had known better than to try talking; or perhaps they, like Jyn, wrestled with truths too difficult to express in words.

So she had listened to the hologram of her father in her mind and watched the dark of the cave become the darkness of Eadu.

The fact that she had no way to leave the planet lay discarded in her consciousness, untouched and irrelevent.

“Does he look like a killer?”

She was watching Cassian and Bodhi descend into the mud when she heard Chirrut’s voice. She turned to look and saw he was speaking to Baze.

“No,” Baze said, after a moment of thought. “He has the face of a friend.”

“Who are you talking about?” she asked.

Baze eyed her appraisingly. “Captain Andor,” he said, flat.

She should have been irritated by the curt explanation. Instead she could muster only vague confusion. “Why do you ask that?” she said, looking to Chirrut now. “What do you mean, Does he look like a killer?”

“The Force moves darkly near a creature that’s about to kill,” Chirrut answered. He might have added, As simple as that.

“Fascinating,” K-2SO called, heading for the cockpit. “His weapon was in the sniper configuration.”

Jyn pictured Cassian assembling his weapon and exiting the ship. She remembered the first time she’d held a sniper rifle, staring down the scope under Saw Gerrera’s direction, measuring her breath so she could confidently, quietly, kill a man from a kilometer away.

It might have meant nothing.

Her heartbeat quickened. She spun toward the boarding ramp and started down into the mud. The chill crept through her boots, up her legs and her spine. She couldn’t see the path Cassian and Bodhi had taken, couldn’t hear them over the steady rain, but she could see the dim, distant light of the Imperial compound.

There, she would find her father.

Baze Malbus watched a gust of wind spatter raindrops across the cabin floor, discoloring the metal in a thousand pinpoints like bleak stars in a gray sky. The rain smelled like fecund soil with an undertone of acrid stink.

Baze was not a young man. He had seen rain before. But Jedha’s rains—rare, powerful torrents that were cause for celebration, that he had taken such joy in as a child—had never smelled like this.

Soon, Baze thought, he would forget the smell of Jedha’s rain altogether.

Chirrut rose abruptly, swept his staff before him, and marched toward the boarding ramp.

“Where are you going?” Baze growled.

Chirrut paused but kept his back to Baze. “I’m going to follow Jyn. Her path is clear.”

“Alone?” Baze asked. The word was volatile with meaning. “Good luck.”

He was certain Chirrut understood his warning. But the blind man, once brother to Baze among the Guardians of the Whills and now the fool Baze was cursed to entertain, started forward again. “I don’t need luck,” Chirrut said. “I have you.”

Baze watched Chirrut descend the ramp. He listened to the foot of the staff rap on metal. When the rapping ended and Chirrut stepped onto soft ground, Baze heaved himself to his feet. Without a glance at the cabin, he followed his brother into the storm of an alien world.

The tragedy of K-2SO’s existence was this: The skills he most cherished were skills his rebel masters disdained; and the skills he considered crude and trivial were skills his masters were helpless to learn.

Thus, his present circumstances: Instead of traveling to the research lab to manhandle, capture, restrain, and extract the scientist Galen Erso—a mission virtually requiring the talents of an Imperial security droid, and which might (if handled delicately) permit the exercise of multiple underutilized procedures hardcoded into K-2SO—he was rewiring a communications array and locating faults in each of eighty-four connectors by touch.

Such a task required a bare minimum of computational power. K-2SO had more than enough to spare to listen to the goings-on in the cabin and observe the landscape from the half-buried cockpit viewport.

He watched Jyn depart with disinterest. The woman had always verged on disrespectful toward him.

He watched Baze and Chirrut depart with more robust disapproval. He posited an array of scenarios involving their separation from the U-wing, few of which ended in their continued well-being.

“What are they doing?” he asked sharply.

K-2SO was not a protocol droid, but he was designed for biological interaction. He found that verbal discussion, even with himself, spurred his creativity.

He soon came to a solution he was satisfied with.

“If Cassian comes back,” he said, “we’re leaving without them.”