Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

PROLOGUE

GALEN ERSO WAS NOT A good farmer. That was only one of his many flaws, but it was the reason he was still alive.

A man of more diverse talents—a different Galen, a Galen who could intuit what colonial crops would thrive in an alien world’s soil, or who could check a withered tree for rot without peeling away its bark—would have grown bored. His mind, left idle in the fields, would have returned to subjects he had forsworn. That Galen, consciously or by habit, would have sought out the very work that had driven him to exile. He would have stared into the hearts of stars and formulated theorems of cosmic significance.

In time, he would have drawn attention. His obsessions would surely have killed him.

Yet an unskilled farmer was anything but idle; so the true Galen, the one who inhabited the realm of reality instead of idle fantasy, had no trouble filling his days on Lah’mu without succumbing to temptation. He took bacterial samples off boulders left by prehistoric volcanoes and looked in awe at the evergreen moss and grass and weeds that seemed to sprout from every surface. He surveyed the endless crooked hills of his domain, and he was grateful that he had yet to master his new profession.

He constructed these thoughts like an equation as he looked out the window, past his orderly rows of budding skycorn and toward the black soil of the beach. A tiny girl played near the rows, sending her toy soldier on adventures in the dirt.

“Is she digging again? I swear she didn’t learn the words strip-mining from me, but we’re going hungry next year if she keeps this up.”

The words breached Galen’s concentration slowly. When he heard them, understood them, he smiled and shook his head. “The agricultural droids will repair the damage. Leave her be.”

“Oh, I never planned to do anything. That girl is all yours.”

Galen turned. Lyra’s lips curled until she smiled. She’d started smiling again the day they’d left Coruscant.

He began to reply when the sky rumbled with a boom unlike thunder. One portion of Galen’s mind narrowed its focus and was aware of only his wife before him, his daughter on the beach. The other portion processed the situation with mechanical precision. He was walking without conscious intent, striding past Lyra and the cluttered kitchen table and the worn couch that reeked of clove aftershave. He passed through a doorway and reached a device that might have evolved in the junkyard of a machine civilization—all cracked screens and loose wires, apt to shatter at a touch. He adjusted a dial and studied the video image on the screen.

A shuttlecraft was landing on his farm.

Specifically, a Delta-class T-3c, all sharp angles and bare metal. It busily broadcast active scans of the landscape as its broad wings folded in for landing and its sublight engines tapered their thrust. Galen studied the associated readouts and let the specifications settle into his memory—not because they might be useful, but because he wanted to procrastinate for just a moment. To shut away the implications of what he was seeing.

He squeezed his eyes shut and gave himself three seconds, two, one.

Then it was time to accept that his family’s life on Lah’mu was over.

“Lyra,” he said. He assumed she was near, but didn’t turn to look.

“Is it him?” she asked. She sounded unafraid, which frightened Galen more than anything.

“I don’t know. But we have to—”

“I’ll get started,” she said.

Galen nodded without looking from the console.

Galen was not prone to panic. He knew what needed doing, had rehearsed it on those rare days when the farm tended to itself or on those less rare nights when sleep eluded him. Such preparations were the only obsessions he permitted himself. He turned to another machine, tapped in a code, and tore a series of cords from the wall with swift jerks. He began another countdown in his head; if the data purge did not complete in five minutes, he would begin physically destroying components.

He heard footsteps at the front door, quick and light. He turned to see Jyn dash inside, brown hair matted and face touched with dirt. She’d left her toy in the fields. Galen felt an unexpected pang and feared—absurdly, he knew—that the loss of Stormy would distress her once she was far from the farm.

“Mama—”

Lyra stepped away from the bundle of clothes and datapads and portable meals she’d piled on one chair and knelt before the girl whose pale, slender features mirrored hers. “We know. It’s all right.”

Galen approached the pair, waited until his daughter had seen him. He spoke softly but somberly. “Gather your things, Jyn. It’s time.”

She understood, of course. She always did, when it mattered. But Galen had no time to be proud.

He turned back to his machines as Jyn sprinted to her room. The data purge had not completed. There were other files he had to handle as well, files he should have erased on Coruscant but which he’d brought to Lah’mu instead. (Why had he done that? Was it nostalgia? Misplaced pride?) He opened a drawer stuffed with spare droid parts and removed the arm of an agricultural unit. He flipped open a small panel, dug his fingertips between wires, and extracted a datachip.

“The scrambler, please?” he said.

Lyra passed him a metal orb the size of his palm. He inserted the datachip and—before he could doubt himself—pressed the toggle. The orb heated and produced a smell like burning hair. He tossed it in the junk drawer and felt a tightness in his stomach.

“If there’s anything else, make it quick.” Lyra’s tone was clipped. A light blinked faster on the sensor console.

“Set the rendezvous and take Jyn,” he said. “I’ll finish here.”

Lyra abruptly stopped double-checking her bundle of provisions. “That wasn’t the plan, Galen.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“You have to come with us.”

Her eyes were hard. Please smile, he thought.

“I have to buy you time,” he said.

The sensor light went dark. A fault seemed unlikely.

Lyra just watched him.

“Only I can,” he said.

It was an argument impossible to refute. Lyra didn’t try. She stalked into the kitchen and tapped at the comm unit as Galen made for Jyn’s room. He caught just a snippet of Lyra’s words: “Saw—it’s happened. He’s come for us.”

Jyn stood with her bulging satchel at her feet. Galen surveyed the tiny chamber’s remaining contents: a few toys, the cot. Easy enough to hide. Enough to buy a few more minutes. He pushed a doll out of sight before returning to the doorway.

“Jyn. Come here.”

He considered what he might say; considered what impression he wanted to leave Jyn if everything ended in disaster.

“Remember—” He spoke with deliberate care, hoping to etch the words in her bones. “Whatever I do, I do it to protect you. Say you understand.”

“I understand,” Jyn said.

And this time, of course, she didn’t understand. What eight-year-old could? Galen heard his own foolishness, his ego echoed by her voice. He wrapped her in his arms, felt her slender, warm body against him, and knew a better memory to leave her with.

“I love you, Stardust.”

“I love you, too, Papa.”

That would be enough.

He looked to his wife, who stood waiting. “Galen,” she began, all the harshness gone.

“Go,” he said.

She did, coaxing Jyn with her. Galen allowed himself the luxury of watching, heard his daughter offer a last confused, “Papa?” Then they were gone from the house, and he resumed his work.

He collected objects out of place—more toys, Lyra’s clothes, unwashed dishes from the kitchen—and stashed them in niches he and Lyra had prepared long ago. He checked the unfinished data purge, returned his mind’s eye to his mental countdown. A few seconds past the five-minute deadline. That meant he could keep busy while he awaited his visitors.

By the time Galen heard muffled voices approaching the farmhouse, two of his homemade data processing units billowed acrid smoke as their circuits melted. He stepped out the front door to greet the new arrivals under the cloudy sky.

A company in bleached white and gleaming black advanced toward the doorstep. The leader was a narrow man of Galen’s own age in a spotless ivory officer’s uniform, head high and movements stiff. The breeze failed to disturb the sandy hair beneath his cap. His cohorts wore armor like a scarab’s shell, bore pistols and rifles as if ready for war. The troopers stepped when their leader stepped, matched his pace; to Galen, they seemed to exist only as extensions of their superior.

The man in white halted less than three meters away. “You’re a hard man to find, Galen,” he said, not quite smiling.

“That was the idea.” Galen did not quite smile, either, though he could have. He could have let the farm and sky fade, let the troopers become shadows, and conjured an office on Coruscant around him; allowed himself to believe he was sparring again with his friend and colleague Orson Krennic.

There was no point in nostalgia, however. Orson surely knew that as well as he.

Orson was tugging at his gloves as he studied the fields with an exaggerated crane of his neck. “But farming? A man of your talents?”

“It’s a peaceful life,” Galen returned.

“Lonely, I’d imagine.”

With those words, Orson had declared his game and his stakes. It did not surprise Galen.

“Since Lyra died, yes,” Galen said.

The corner of Orson’s mouth twitched, as if he were taken aback. “My sincerest condolences,” he said, then gestured to the troopers and spoke more sternly. “Search the house. Shut down any machines—we’ll want them examined by the technicians.”

Four of the troopers obediently, rapidly, made for the doorway. Galen stepped aside to allow them past.

“I don’t imagine,” Orson said, “you’ve laid any traps? Nothing that would harm a patriot doing his duty?”

“No.”

“No,” Orson agreed. “I’ve always found your constancy refreshing. Galen Erso is an honest man, unaltered by stress or circumstance.”

Troopers called to one another in the house behind Galen, and he stifled the impulse to turn. “Honest, perhaps. Still just a man.”

Orson spread his hands, conceding the point. He moved as if to join the troopers in the house, then stopped. “When did she die?” he asked.

“Two, three years, I think. It’s a bit of a blur.”

“She was a wonderful woman. Strong. I know you loved her very much.”

“What is it you want?”

The words were a mistake. Galen barely hid his wince as he heard himself, recognized the edge to his voice. The longer he played, the longer Lyra and Jyn had to escape. Instead he’d grown impatient.

Orson was replying carelessly, feigning the blunt honesty of a man too worn to lie. “The work has stalled, Galen. I need you to come back.”

“I have the utmost confidence in you. In your people.”

“You don’t,” Orson snapped. “You were never that humble.”

“And you have too little faith in your own skills,” Galen said easily. “I told you that when we were practically children. You could have done everything I did, but you preferred to dabble; to shepherd people instead of nurture theory. I always respected your decision, but don’t let it narrow your world.”

All of it was true. All of it was also designed to hurt Orson, to pry at his insecurities. Galen kept his tone measured, casual. Infuriatingly so, perhaps, but Orson’s fury did not frighten him. He feared focus, efficiency, speed; not wild rage.

Orson only grimaced—a forced smile that didn’t take. “You will come back.”

So much for that sidetrack. Galen straightened his back. They were coming to the end. “I won’t do it. This is where I belong now.”

“Scratching the dirt with a shovel? We were on the verge of greatness, Galen. We were this close to providing peace, security for the galaxy.”

Behind Galen came the sound of ceramics shattering as the troopers continued their search. He mentally cataloged dishes and ornamental vases, then dismissed the list. Nothing in the house mattered.

“You’re confusing peace with terror. You lied about what we were building.”

“Only because you were willing to believe.”

“You wanted to kill people.”

Orson shrugged, unmoved by the argument. “We have to start somewhere.”

Galen almost laughed. He remembered when he could laugh with Orson, instead of feeling nothing but hollow defiance.

Snapping sounds from the house. Furniture being broken apart, hiding places revealed. Orson would have his proof momentarily.

“I’d be of no help, Krennic.” Needle him. Deny all familiarity. “My mind just isn’t what it was.” And now he could only talk, not try to persuade or to enrage or do anything more than buy a few more seconds, a few precious moments for Lyra and Jyn. “I thought at first it was only the work—I would sit some nights and remember equations and theorems, but I couldn’t hold them in my head anymore. I chalked it up to exhaustion, to forgoing the habits of a focused intellect…” He shook his head. “But it’s more than that. Now I have trouble remembering the simplest things.”

Orson wove gloved fingers together, eyes glittering with cruel amusement. “Your child, for example? Galen, you’re an inspired scientist, but you’re a terrible liar.”

Orson didn’t need his troopers to report an extra bed or a toy left out in the fields. There would be no more delays for Galen, no hope of hiding his family’s presence on Lah’mu.

He prayed that Lyra would fare better. She had never failed him before.

Galen put aside even that thought to picture his daughter in her arms.

Lyra ran, her fingers wrapped around the fragile wrist of her daughter. She pulled without tenderness. She heard Jyn whimper in pain, felt the girl stumble beside her, and longed to hoist her in both arms, carry her across the rocks and clutch her to her breast.

She longed to, but she couldn’t carry her daughter and crouch low enough to take advantage of the concealing hills. She couldn’t add another twenty-five kilograms onto the supplies she carted on her back and still maintain her speed. Lyra loved her daughter, but love wouldn’t save them today.

Lyra had always been the practical one in the family.

Damn you, Galen, she thought, for sending us away.

She caught a flash of motion out of the corner of her eye, turned to confirm that it wasn’t the wind, and tugged Jyn down as she dived onto moist soil. Her stomach already hurt from the run. The cool dirt felt good on her body, but her forehead prickled with sweat and fear. She peeked around the rocks to watch a half dozen figures—black-clad Imperial troopers led by a uniformed officer in white—stride rapidly toward the farmhouse.

No, not just an officer in white. Orson Krennic was leading a death squad to the farmhouse. Toward Galen.

“Mama—” Jyn was whispering, tugging at her hand. “I know that man.”

That caught Lyra by surprise. But Jyn had her father’s mind, if not his obsessions. Her memory was better than Lyra’s had ever been.

That’s your father’s special friend Orson, she wanted to say. He’s a lying bastard who thinks he’s a visionary. Instead she whispered, “Shh,” and pressed two fingers to Jyn’s lips before kissing her on the forehead. “We need to keep going. Don’t let them see you, okay?”

Jyn nodded. But she looked terrified.

They moved together, as swiftly as Lyra could manage while squatting out of sight. Her hips were cramping as she led Jyn around the base of a comm spire and stopped again to peer toward the farmhouse. She couldn’t make out Krennic past the troopers, couldn’t see if Galen had emerged, but the group had halted near the front door. Lyra suddenly pictured the armored figures raising flamers, reducing the house to ash and charred metal while her husband screamed inside…

She knew better. So long as Krennic was in control, Galen would stay alive long after the rest of them were dead. He would have no choice but to work for that man until he was old and feeble, until his intellect began to fail him and the Empire determined he was no longer useful.

Lyra realized she’d made a decision.

She unslung her bag, rooted through the contents until she found what she needed. She set a bundle of clothes in the grass and placed her hands on Jyn’s shoulders. The girl was trembling. She met her mother’s gaze.

“You know where to go, don’t you?” Lyra asked. “Wait for me there. Don’t come out for anyone but me.”

Jyn didn’t answer. Lyra saw the moisture in her eyes. A voice told Lyra, If you leave her now, she’s done. You’ve taken all her strength away.

But Lyra had committed herself to a path. Her husband needed her more than her daughter.

She hurriedly reached to her own throat, pushing away coarse cloth until her fingers caught a fraying string. She pulled off her necklace, watched the pendant swing in the breeze. The jagged, cloudy crystal was etched with writing on one side. Gently, she put the necklace over Jyn’s head. The girl didn’t move.

“Trust the Force,” Lyra said, and made herself smile.

“Mama—”

“I’ll be there,” Lyra whispered. “Now go.”

She wrapped Jyn in her arms—Don’t hold her too long, don’t give her time to think—and turned the girl around, pushed her away. Lyra watched her daughter stumble amid the rocks, disappearing out of sight.

It was time to refocus. Jyn would be safe. Safer if Lyra did this, safer still if she succeeded, but safe either way. She looked back to the farmhouse and the group gathered around the doorstep, lifted the bundle of clothes, and walked back the way she came. She kept her body low, picked up her pace as she saw four troopers enter the house and reveal Galen and Krennic standing together. She heard their voices, faintly. Krennic unctuously declaring We have to start somewhere.

She hadn’t expected to see an opening so quickly. She’d wanted more time to plan. But there was no guarantee she’d catch Krennic with fewer bodyguards anytime soon. She straightened and hurried, kept the bundle clutched close.

Krennic saw her first, though he spoke only to Galen. “Oh, look! Here’s Lyra. Back from the dead. It’s a miracle.”

Galen turned in her direction. She’d rarely seen such pain on his face. “Lyra…” But he was looking past her, searching the fields for Jyn.

Lyra almost wanted to smile.

The black-clad troopers raised their weapons. “Stop!” Krennic snapped.

Lyra let the clothes fall from her arms and raised the blaster she’d concealed beneath the pile. She aimed the barrel at Krennic, felt the chill metal of the trigger under her finger. She didn’t look at the troopers. If they killed her, all she needed to do was twitch.

The troopers kept their weapons low. Krennic smirked at Lyra. “Troublesome as ever.”

“You’re not taking him,” Lyra said.

“No, of course I’m not. I’m taking you all. You, your child. You’ll all live in comfort.”

“As hostages.”

She’d lived that life before, or close enough. She had no desire to do it again.

Krennic seemed unperturbed. “As ‘heroes of the Empire.’ ”

Lyra heard Galen’s voice to one side. “Lyra. Put it down.” The concern in his tone felt like a weight on her arm, a hand on her wrist. She kept the blaster up anyway, ignoring her husband.

Krennic wasn’t smiling anymore. Lyra let the words, the threats, roll out. She’d imagined this before, made speeches in her mind to the man who’d ruined her life again and again, and the actuality felt, in turn, dreamlike. “You’re going to let us go,” she said. “You’re going to do it because you’re an egomaniacal coward. And I’m sure if your superiors let you live you’ll come after us again, and that’s fine. But right now we go free. Do you understand?”

Krennic merely nodded and said, “Think very carefully.”

She sensed the troopers tensing. She knew, somehow, that Galen was staring at her in horror. And she suddenly realized that she’d misjudged Orson Krennic’s cowardice—that he’d changed in the years since she’d known him, or she’d never understood him even in the old days.

Jyn would still be safe.

Maybe she could still save her husband.

“You’ll never win,” she said.

Krennic cocked his head. A patronizing gesture to an outmatched opponent.

“Do it,” he said.

Lyra pulled the trigger, felt the blaster jump even as light flashed nearby and hot pulses ravaged her chest. She heard the troopers’ shots only after she felt the pain—dull, almost numb pinpricks up and down her body, each surrounded by a halo of excruciation. Her muscles seemed to vibrate like plucked strings. Galen was shouting her name, rushing toward her as she fell, but she couldn’t see him. All she saw was Krennic, clutching a black and smoking shoulder as he snarled through pain.

If Lyra could have screamed, she would have screamed not in agony, but in rage. She could not scream, however, and she went into darkness bitterly.

Her last thought was: I wish Galen weren’t here to see.

The last things she heard were Galen shouting her name and a furious voice calling, “They have a child. Find it!” But she was too far gone to understand the words.

Jyn wasn’t a bad girl. Jyn didn’t like to misbehave. When her parents told her to do something, she almost always did it. Not fast, but eventually (almost always eventually). She didn’t deserve to be punished.

She knew she shouldn’t have stayed to watch her mother talk to Papa and the man in white. But she couldn’t have known what would happen. She couldn’t have known what the troopers would do…

Had they been talking about her? Was it her fault?

Mama wasn’t moving. Papa held her in his arms. Jyn couldn’t stop herself from crying, but she held back a scream because she had to be brave. She had to be.

She’d seen how scared Mama had been. Whoever the strangers were, Jyn knew they would hurt her, too.

And she knew what she was supposed to do. She needed to behave now. She needed to make things better.

She had trouble breathing as she ran. Her nose and eyes streamed, and her throat felt swollen and clogged. She heard voices in the distance, electronic voices like droids or garbled comms. The troopers were coming after her.

She was wheezing with a high-pitched sound that would give her away. Her face felt like it burned hot enough to see for kilometers. She knew where she was going, though. Papa had tried to pretend it was a game, all those times he asked her to race and find the hiding spot, but she’d known better. She’d asked Mama about it once; she’d held Jyn’s hand and smiled and said, “Just pretend it’s a game anyway. It’ll make your father feel better.”

She wanted to pretend now, but it was hard.

She found the spot Papa had showed her among the piled rocks. She dragged open the hatch cover embedded in the hillside, almost shaking too hard to tug it free. Inside, a ladder led to the lower compartment, but Jyn stayed by the cover and pulled it shut. A sliver of light escaped through the hatch, illuminating the dusty gloom.

She pulled her knees to her chest and sang one of her mother’s songs, rocking back and forth, ignoring her tear-streaked face and filthy hands. This was part of pretending, too. All she had to do was wait. That was all she’d ever been told to do in the hiding spot.

Mama or Papa would come for her.

She smelled smoke, and the smoke stung her eyes worse than her tears. She could see the shapes of troopers moving among the rocks, but even though they went back and forth and back and forth they never noticed the hatch. Never saw her shelter. When the daylight began to fade, they left and Jyn climbed down the ladder.

The lower compartment was too small for comfort, made cramped by stockpiles of food and machines and containers, but she could sit. She found a lantern and watched its feeble light wax and wane through the night as she listened to the rumble of a storm outside and the splashing of rainwater down the hill above her. She tried to sleep, but she never slept for long—raindrops crept into the cave and tapped at her forehead and sleeves no matter how she arranged herself.

Even her dreams were about that insistent tapping. Those wet, random strikes. In her dreams, sometimes Mama fell down when the raindrops hit Jyn.

When morning came, she woke to the sound of metal scraping above her. For an instant she confused dreams with reality and thought Mama or Papa had arrived at last—she believed what she’d seen the day before was a nightmare, and that this was another of Papa’s games.

But only for an instant.

She looked up. The hatch opened, and silhouetted above her was an armored figure with a dark face graven with scars. The man looked down at Jyn with eyes that gleamed in the lantern’s light and spoke in a voice of command:

“Come, my child. We have a long ride ahead of us.”

Orson Krennic observed Galen aboard the shuttlecraft and wondered when the man would finally pry himself from the gurney where his wife’s corpse sprawled. “We’ll bring her home,” Krennic said. “I promise.”

Galen said nothing and stroked his wife’s hand.

What more did I expect? Krennic wondered.

Lyra would have survived if not for her own foolishness. Krennic had risked his life for Galen and his family, given Lyra every opportunity to stand down rather than immediately signaling his troops to fire. That would have been the safest bet—his death trooper elites were unkind men who, given their druthers, would have ended the standoff far less mercifully.

She’d shot him!

He’d tried to spare Lyra for Galen’s own comfort, out of an understanding that genius worked best without distractions—and yes, out of a desire to honor the cordiality, if not friendship, he and Galen had once shared. Yet self-imposed exile had changed Galen: He was no longer a man of dispassionate contemplation, able to interpret facts without prejudice. Whatever Krennic said, every action he took, was to be interpreted by Galen as the ruthless ploy of a scheming powermonger.

This irked Krennic—of course it irked him, to have the rapport of years so neatly dismissed—but he could use it. If Galen refused to readjust (perhaps a man who changed so swiftly once could swiftly change again?), then Krennic could play the monster to ensure his cooperation.

The bandage around his shoulder rendered his arm immobile. He’d need weeks, if not months to fully recover, with who-knew-how-many hours spent immersed in medicinal bacta tanks. The pain would be considerable once the analgesics wore off, yet he could forgive that; not so the loss of time.

Any debt he owed Galen was now repaid.

“We will find the child,” he said, more insistent.

Galen did not look away from Lyra’s body (another gift from Krennic—who else would have brought her home for a proper funeral?). “I think if you haven’t found her already,” Galen murmured, “you are very unlikely to succeed.”

Krennic bristled, but there was truth to the words. Jyn had clearly received outside aid—the signal sent from the farmhouse suggested as much—and Krennic was not prepared to underestimate her rescuer’s competence. He hoped investigation of the comm stations, no matter how badly Galen had damaged them, would reveal the particulars; the results would determine how he turned the situation to his advantage.

If Galen was unsure of his daughter’s fate—if he’d sent out a general distress call or offered a reward for retrieval to every smuggler or bounty hunter in receiving range—then Krennic’s dogged pursuit of the girl would incentivize Galen to cooperate. Galen would never admit to it, of course, but he would be soothed by the certainty of knowing his daughter was in Imperial hands.

Conversely, if Galen knew exactly who had rescued Jyn, then perhaps it was best to leave well enough alone and use the threat of Imperial interference as impetus for cooperation.

All of which, Krennic realized with a start, was a worry for another day. He’d been so consumed by his mission that he had failed to appreciate his own victory.

After a long search, Galen was back in his hands. The scientific setbacks, the engineering problems plaguing Krennic’s teams would soon vanish. The constant needling from men like Wilhuff Tarkin—bureaucrats without any true sense for the scope of Krennic’s accomplishments—would soon be over. These were truths worth celebrating.

Krennic smiled at Galen and shook his head fondly. “Your wife will be honored. We’ll have the service as soon as we reach Coruscant. But meanwhile… shall we discuss the work?”

Galen finally turned and looked at Krennic with loathing.

Then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.