Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

^{Chapter 22}

“ADMIRAL! RECEIVING A TRANSMISSION FROM Scarif!”

The Profundity trembled under the onslaught of TIE fighters. Its shields burst, re-formed, and burst again as emerald volleys struck. Three decks had already been forced to evacuate due to radiation leakage. But the Profundity endured where other vessels had been torn apart; in geostationary orbit above the Scarif Citadel, it was the center of a storm of molten metal and rent ships.

The Death Star had not turned its weapons against the rebel fleet, but it carried enough fighter squadrons to swiftly achieve battlefield supremacy. Admiral Raddus was not prone to awe or terror, yet he had not imagined the scale of the horror he faced.

Thus, he knew wonder at the words of his comm officer.

“Confirm!” Raddus snapped, and hid his need as best he could.

“Checking the data,” came the reply. “We have the plans!”

“She did it,” Raddus hissed. The deck lurched and he caught his balance, barely noticed. He watched his displays and began issuing orders to reconfigure the fleet.

“The battle station, sir,” his lieutenant called. “Massive energy buildup—”

Raddus cut his man off with a gesture. Jyn Erso had made the station’s power clear on Yavin 4. Stopping it over Scarif was a task for nobler fools than he.

“Rogue One—may the Force be with you,” he said. Then he straightened and inhaled a mouthful of humid air. “All ships,” he cried, “prepare for jump to hyperspace!”

He made a show of confidence for his people. But he saw the tactical display flicker and register a new vessel entering the system.

A third Star Destroyer had finally arrived.

In a haze of smoke like thunderheads, Orson Krennic searched his memories for a time before he had met Galen Erso.

He thought back to Eadu, to the squeal of wet boots on metal and his attempts to commiserate with the scientist in the early days after Lyra’s death; his efforts to soothe Galen regarding the fate of his daughter and to remind him of the magnificence of the work.

He thought back further, to Coruscant, where he’d been inspired to pluck Galen out of obscurity for “Project Celestial Power.” He thought to the games he’d been forced to play, knowing Lyra’s provincial interests would distract Galen from his focus.

Back still further, to the Futures Program, when he’d drawn Galen into his circle and recognized with wonder—not jealousy, but unadulterated wonder—the galaxy-changing potential of the man’s genius.

And before then?

He could follow Galen Erso’s thread through his life. He could see the full extent of the tragedy, the waste of effort on a wasted man. But what about before? He sought refuge in his childhood, tried to recall an Orson whose hopes had not yet been cast in shadow…

Instead he heard a peal of thunder, and he raised his chin and left his memories and saw that the thunder was the roar of fire atop the Scarif comm tower. His body was full of pain.

He found he could move his limbs if he ignored their weight. He dragged himself forward—for what purpose, he wasn’t entirely sure. Survival? The work?

The child!

He gasped thin, whistling gasps as he tried to rise, failed, crawled forward a few more meters. He looked for the child—for Jyn Erso—but she was gone. He raised himself higher, rolled back his eyes until his skull hurt, and recognized the penumbra of the Death Star in the sky.

It was Wilhuff Tarkin who had commandeered his battle station. Tarkin alone would have the arrogance. Tarkin alone would have the spite to loom over Scarif and threaten the wellspring of all his own triumphs.

The Death Star’s focusing dish glittered with emerald light. Krennic’s fury built in key with the station’s energies and sought purpose, an outlet, a target. But Krennic’s body was ruined. His enemies were far from him. He had no one to command and no one to master, no one to sway into sharing his vision for the future or the Empire or his personal aggrandizement.

My father’s revenge.

Krennic was doomed, then, though it galled him to admit it. Yet while he might die at Tarkin’s hands, he would die in the fires of his creation. The Death Star would endure. He licked blood and spittle from his lips and imagined world after world consumed by his station’s power. Even the Emperor would not leave such a mark on the galaxy. The Death Star, his Death Star, would alter star systems and civilizations, be remembered a thousand generations after Tarkin had been erased from history.

And while Tarkin did live? He would know that every victory he eked out would be due to Krennic’s work. He would fumble his way through battle after battle, not truly understanding the weapon he wielded, until his arrogance destroyed him.

He built a flaw in the Death Star.

The focusing dish glowed brighter.

Krennic squeezed his eyes shut and used the last glimmerings of his mind to see the station as it was meant to be seen: to stand on the overbridge of his behemoth creation; listen to the reactor’s muffled roar turn to a shriek; feel the tremors in the deck plating turn violent as the kyber core exerted its strength. Jyn Erso had given her life to steal the Death Star schematics, but those schematics were etched in his heart.

You’ll never win.

He would die not on Scarif, but inside the Death Star.

And as he envisioned the cataclysmic energies building within the vast station, he saw it—a detail he had overlooked and forgotten, some trivial adjustment of Galen’s: a single exhaust port leading from a narrow trench down and down, down kilometers of blackness, past conduits and hatches and radiation plating, down and down—

—and into the main reactor.

The primary weapon of the Death Star battle station fired.

Orson Krennic, advanced weapons research director and father of the Death Star, died alone on Scarif, screaming in fury at Galen Erso, at Jyn Erso, at Wilhuff Tarkin, and at all the galaxy.

The last time Cassian had hurt so bad, K-2SO had carried him to a safe house and along the way enumerated his every injury, thoroughly assessed the likelihoods of infection and permanent nerve damage. It had been the droid’s way of showing he cared—or at least the droid’s way of showing he was invested in his master’s fate.

K-2SO hadn’t been there for Cassian at the top of the Citadel communications tower. But Jyn had turned to him from the control panel looking like the last survivor of a war, and she’d smiled in a way he’d never seen before. It hadn’t been a smile predicated on anticipation or courage, or one touched by sadness or doubt; just a smile so ordinary it seemed to change Jyn from a hero out of myth into a woman he might have known and understood.

He hadn’t known her, didn’t know her, of course. There wasn’t the time.

She’d half stumbled to his side and gingerly wrapped an arm around him, led him toward the maintenance turbolift. He’d tried not to show the extent of his pain (standing still was bad; moving was worse) but had given up after a moment or two, leaning heavily on her. Somehow she’d carried his weight.

“Do you think,” he’d asked, “anybody’s listening?”

He hadn’t been able to raise an arm, to point skyward after her transmission, but she’d seemed to understand.

“I do,” she’d said, soft and—to his ears—earnest. “Someone’s out there.”

And she’d brought him into the turbolift and supported him as he leaned against the metal wall. He was there now, one arm draped around Jyn, feeling her impossibly frail and human form.

He didn’t know whether she was right. Didn’t know whether, in fact, someone really was out there or if the Empire had seized victory. As he turned the question over in his mind, he was surprised to realize he wasn’t worried about the answer.

Maybe it was his injuries. Hurt and exhaustion narrowed his reality, made it difficult to envision anything outside his sight line. When he thought about the people he cared about, the people who would have to carry on the fight against the Empire and the Death Star (the ones who hadn’t volunteered to come to Scarif), he could picture no one; and that couldn’t be right. Could it?

The more he thought about it, though, the less he believed the fog in his brain explained his lack of worry.

He’d told Jyn: We’ve done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion. Some he remembered now—Tivik, who’d made all this possible and been rewarded with death—but most, to Cassian’s shame, he couldn’t bring to mind. He’d bartered his ideals and the lives of others away, one by one, to find a victory that would make it all worthwhile. Yet as he watched the pulsing lights of the turbolift he felt keenly that neither victory nor defeat would change the terrible things in his past. Jyn couldn’t give him what he’d come for.

That was the crux of it, really.

Because he’d given her what she needed, and he’d done the mission right, and he found that was enough.

She believed someone was out there. Maybe it was even true.

He did want it to be true. With all his heart, he did.

Her faith carried him with her.

He didn’t say any of it. He didn’t want to disturb the silence as they rested against each other, hurting and relaxed, listening to the hum of machinery and the distant billowing of fires. He stowed thoughts of old missions and thoughts of the future away; decided to focus on what he could see and hear and smell for the last moments of his life on Scarif.

When Cassian Andor died, he would be ready, and he would be content.

The Citadel had evacuated. Its officers and troops had panicked once they’d realized the Death Star’s purpose. Jyn didn’t know that for sure, but it would explain why she and Cassian encountered no one on their departure from the tower, heard only distant shouts and the rumble of shuttles. If the shield gate was open, a few Imperials might possibly make it offworld before the end.

She tried her comlink, just to see if anyone answered. No one did, which was as she’d expected.

Even if there were shuttles left, she knew she wouldn’t make it to a landing pad in time. Every step was an effort, and Cassian’s grip was growing weaker. His strides faltered. She kept propping him up. But he was warm, and his breathing was regular, and it felt good to have life close to her. It wasn’t at all like cradling Galen, who’d seemed apt to wash away in the rain as he died.

Without anywhere better to go, she led them toward the beach.

There had been beaches on Lah’mu, protected by jagged boulders that had—to a child, at least—seemed like mighty cliffs. She’d sent Stormy on harrowing adventures there, recounted them at night to her mother. Scarif’s placid waters and white sands seemed a pale imitation of Lah’mu’s grandeur, but they would have to do.

They passed the body of a rebel soldier along the tree line. Jyn positioned herself in Cassian’s way so he wouldn’t have to see.

When they reached the beach itself, Cassian struggled with his footing in the sand. He dropped to both knees and Jyn crouched beside him. They’d gone far enough, she decided; a breeze was clearing the air of ash and smoke, and they could no longer hear shouting.

For an instant, Jyn looked up, expecting against reason to see the glimmering of the rebel fleet among the stars. But of course she couldn’t see anything—the sky was blue and bright, and the only artificial construct in sight was the battle station. In all likelihood, the rebels had already fled, setting course away from Scarif the moment they’d received her transmission.

Instead she looked to Cassian.

“I’m glad you came,” she said.

When the words finally touched him, he gently smiled and took her hand. She entwined her fingers with his so that they didn’t drop away.

The Death Star was pulsing with emerald light. Jyn tried not to tense. She wasn’t afraid of what would happen, but she didn’t want to suffer. Somehow she found herself closer to Cassian than before. Her breathing matched his, or his matched hers, deep and steady.

The Death Star flared too bright to watch and a tremor went through the beach. The placid waves rolled higher, spraying flecks of warm seawater over Jyn’s cheeks like tears. An unfathomable rumble echoed ten or a thousand kilometers away.

“Your father would be proud of you,” Cassian said, so soft Jyn barely heard. She thought it was true, even though it wasn’t why she’d come to Scarif—not entirely, not really.

It was good to hear aloud, from the lips of someone close.

The rumbling overwhelmed all other sound. Jyn tightened her grip on Cassian, and he found the strength to hold her. The world grew brighter, emerald at first and then a clean, purifying white. In Jyn’s mind, the cave below the broken hatch was illuminated with the strength of a sun, and then the walls turned to dust and there was no longer a cave but only her spirit and heart and everything she had ever been: the daughter of Galen and Lyra and Saw, the angry fighter and the shattered prisoner and the champion and the friend.

Soon all those things, too, burned away, and Jyn Erso—finally at peace—became one with the Force.