Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

^{Chapter 3}

BODHI BELIEVED HIS SUFFERING WOULD end soon. That Saw Gerrera would hear him out and set him free. That the weeping sores on his feet would be treated and his wrists would be unbound and the coarse cloth hood torn from his face so that he could see and hear and breathe again.

If he didn’t believe these things, he knew he would go mad.

He had marched with the rebels for most of the day, only sure of the passage of time by virtue of the sunlight that passed through the fabric of his hood. From the desert they’d entered a shelter of some kind—a building or a cave where the feeble warmth of the sun vanished. Now he knelt on a rough stone floor and waited. He heard bodies shuffle nearby, distant footsteps, voices in adjacent rooms. He didn’t try to speak. His mouth was parched.

These were not the rebels Galen Erso had described: gallant men and women whose righteous hearts led them to oppose the horrors Bodhi had seen, the deeds in which he’d been complicit. Instead, these were the rebels the Empire had always warned of: the murderers, the criminals and terrorists who concealed their viciousness in a patriotic wrapping. The ones who saw the deaths involved in spaceport bombings as a small cost for smaller victories.

Saw Gerrera would be different, though. He had to be different.

“Lies!”

The hoarse, ghostly bellow echoed in the chamber. Along with the voice came a rhythmic metallic clanking, like the firing of a piston.

“Deceptions!”

There was nothing but fury in the voice.

“Let’s see it.”

A demand, hissed from terrible depths.

Bodhi listened to more shuffling and scraping, craned his neck and strained to see something other than silhouettes and stitching.

“Bodhi Rook. Cargo pilot.” Hands suddenly grasped Bodhi and yanked him to his feet. He would have fallen if the hands hadn’t clamped his shoulders. “Local boy,” the ghost scoffed. “Anything else?”

“There was this.” A second voice in another language. Bodhi recognized the speaker as the Tognath with the respirator. “A holochip. Unencrypted. It was found in his boot when he was captured.”

Bodhi jerked forward in the hands that held him—not to escape, but to demand attention. “I can hear you! You made your point! I’m scared, you made me scared, but he didn’t capture me—I came here myself.” He couldn’t tell if they understood him through the cloth. “I defected,” he called around a mouthful of fabric. “I defected!”

“Lies,” the ghost repeated. “Every day, more lies.”

“Lies?” Bodhi was almost screaming now, violently sucking in breath through the sack to give his fury strength. “Would I risk everything for a lie? We don’t have time for this!

“I have to speak to Saw Gerrera before it’s too—”

Someone grabbed the sack and tugged, yanking the hood free and scraping the work goggles back on Bodhi’s scalp.

Bodhi could see again. He almost wished he was still blind.

He was in a room—not a cave, but a chamber hewn from ancient stone and sparsely appointed as a living space. Three of his captors stood nearby, while a fourth man, a stranger, stood before him. This man—the ghost, Bodhi assumed, the hoarse and chilling voice—had wild, graying hair and a face knotted with scars. He leaned on a thick, metal-shod cane to support the weight his artificial leg could not.

“Saw Gerrera?” Bodhi asked.

This time no one snickered.

Saw pinched a holochip between two fingers. Bodhi nodded toward it. “That’s for you,” he said. He heard himself babbling, protesting, couldn’t stop the flood of words: “And I gave it to them, they did not find it. I gave it to them.

“Galen Erso. He told me to find you.”

Saw Gerrera laid his cane aside and grasped an oxygen mask attached to his armored chest plate. Without looking from Bodhi, he brought the mask to his face, inhaled, and returned the mask to its place.

Please believe me, Bodhi thought. Or maybe he said it aloud; he wasn’t entirely sure.

I did this for you. I did this to do something right.

Saw turned his head to signal the Tognath. “Bor Gullet,” Saw said.

“Bor Gullet?” Bodhi asked.

Then the cloth scraped over his forehead and nose and lips again, and arms dragged him backward, spun him away from Saw—away from the man he’d been sent to find, away from salvation and vindication and redemption. “Galen Erso sent me!” he cried through the sack. “He told me to find you!” He said it, and things like it, over and over, and it did him no good at all.

Orson Krennic, advanced weapons research director of the first Galactic Empire, had never received the respect he was due.

This was not an accident of fate, nor a symptom of some personal weakness. While Krennic could acknowledge that he lacked the scientific prowess of a man like Galen Erso, even the most arrogant researchers under his command largely accepted that genius, when bound to Krennic’s vision, accomplished more than genius could alone. It was Krennic who, across two decades, had directed a thousand brilliant minds like a maestro with his symphony; Krennic who had focused the energies of a million scientists and engineers and strategists and laborers into a singular creation; and this, all while playing the games of the Emperor’s Ruling Council, all while assuaging the petty jealousies of admirals and Joint Chiefs.

Orson Krennic had built the Death Star—the greatest technological achievement in galactic history, a feat of engineering that rivaled the transformation of the city-world of Coruscant or the invention of the hyperdrive; his achievement as much as anyone’s. If that extraordinary and all-consuming venture had left him vulnerable, it was no failing on his part.

Instead, responsibility for his circumstances rested squarely on one man—the very man who had summoned him to meet aboard the Star Destroyer Executrix.

Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin was Krennic’s true bane. While Krennic created, Tarkin fought to keep Krennic from rising above his station. From earning the attention of the Emperor himself.

The old governor’s back was to Krennic as Krennic strode onto the Executrix’s bridge. Behind Krennic came an escort of his personal troops; an intimidation tactic lost on Tarkin as he stared out a viewport toward the massive Death Star battle station.

Today the firing array of the station’s primary weapon was scheduled to dock. Six thousand detachable thrusters were maneuvering the colossal dish above the spherical superstructure of the station, where droids, technicians, and mechanical arrays awaited; once the dish descended, they would lock it permanently into place. The operation had taken months of planning, and required the shutdown of many of the Death Star’s power systems to eliminate any risk of an energy surge. Krennic should have been there, sealed in a full environment suit in the temporarily airless corridors of the battle station, to supervise and observe the final stages.

“Most unfortunate about the security breach on Jedha, Director Krennic,” Tarkin said, and turned his frail body around at last. He gave Krennic’s death trooper escort not a glance, and reserved his most withering look for the hem of Krennic’s white cloak.

“I’m afraid I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” Krennic lied, with a quizzical expression.

You think I’m a fool, Tarkin? he wanted to say. You believe I don’t have my own people within your ranks, telling me everything they tell you?

But if Tarkin thought him a fool, best to play the part.

The governor kept speaking. “After so many setbacks and delays—and now this. We’ve heard word of rumors circulating through the city. Apparently you’ve lost a rather talkative cargo pilot.”

“And what does a cargo pilot know that’s of consequence to us?” Krennic asked, as lightly as he could. “You acknowledged yourself that secrecy was becoming an impediment to progress some time ago. Rumors were bound to spread—”

“The rumors are not the concern. The concern is proof. If the Senate gets wind of our project”—Tarkin spoke with distilled contempt—“countless systems will flock to the Rebellion.”

Krennic countered instinctively. “When the battle station is finished, Governor Tarkin, the Senate will be of little concern.”

Tarkin’s lips looked as chiseled as a crevice in a cliff, and just as good-humored. “When has become now, Director Krennic. The Emperor will tolerate no further delay—you have made time an ally of the Rebellion.”

As if you speak with the Emperor’s voice.

“I suggest,” Tarkin said, “we solve both problems simultaneously with an immediate test of the weapon. Failure will find you explaining why to a far less patient audience.”

Krennic was taken aback. It was not the way the conversation should have gone.

An immediate test?

Look for the trap. Tarkin demands nothing that doesn’t serve him.

But the old governor was waiting for an answer. If Krennic appeared less than confident in the Death Star’s capabilities then that, too, would be turned against him.

“I will not fail,” he said. “A test of the weapon to wipe Jedha clean.”

In a better world, he would have been able to say such a thing with triumph and anticipation. To see the battle station fully functional would be a glorious thing; and Tarkin had found a way to poison it.

Tarkin turned away in dismissal and disinterest.

Later, back aboard the Death Star, Krennic stalked through the voluminous corridors that honeycombed the massive station, inspecting the results of the day’s work. The black floors were polished to a mirror sheen, and the reflection of Krennic’s white uniform shone like a guiding beacon. Though he made a show of interrogating engineers and droids, of personally scanning conduits for microfractures, he knew there was nothing meaningful he might discover that wouldn’t appear in the daily activity reports. He walked because it helped him focus; because vigorous exercise gave him an outlet for his frustrations. His meeting aboard the Executrix raised too many questions, and he analyzed and clarified circumstances and stakes with every harried step.

Lay it out as you would for a new development team. Solve the problem.

Did Tarkin believe the Death Star was not ready to be tested? That the primary weapon would fail?

Revealing the Death Star as impotent above Jedha carried substantial risk—it would be humiliating, as much for Tarkin as for Krennic. Yet Krennic had heard rumors that the Emperor’s right hand—Darth Vader himself—kept Tarkin as a close ally.

Was it conceivable Tarkin sought to use Vader as a shield?

A bold man, Tarkin. Bold and arrogant enough to orchestrate a public failure and deflect responsibility.

Which raised another question: Why did Tarkin believe the test would fail at all? He had long belittled Krennic’s own ability, mocked Krennic’s every recitation of the engineering challenges before them, so perhaps his disdain had blinded him to success, but to build a risky plan on an ungrounded assumption seemed unwise even for Tarkin.

Was it mere coincidence that Tarkin had summoned Krennic while the firing array was being placed?

Would Tarkin go so far as to sabotage the installation?

Krennic halted in his walk, spun about, and made for the outer decks where the firing array had been locked into place. His pulse quickened and his blood burned with ire. He commandeered a maintenance turbolift and dismissed its occupants with a gesture; only when he had arrived at the force field blocking a still-airless corridor did he begin to calm. Behind the shimmering field stood two stormtroopers equipped with oxygen tanks, as vigilant as ever.

There were a hundred other entry points to the construction areas that a saboteur might take, of course. Even the stormtroopers might have been in Tarkin’s employ. But the scene was tranquil enough to drain Krennic’s rage.

Sabotage. The possibility galled him, yet he could adjust. He would reach out to his contacts within Tarkin’s inner circle, learn what—if anything—they knew.

Meanwhile, he had a day, perhaps two, until the evacuation of Imperial assets from Jedha was complete. In that time, he could order every diagnostic imaginable for every focusing lens and kyber crystal and conduit in the firing array. If there was sabotage, his people would find it.

Nothing aboard the Death Star could be hidden from Krennic. He alone—or at most he and one other—could comprehend its magnificence as a work of mortal invention.

With those thoughts to comfort him, Orson Krennic finished his walk-through and returned to his sparely elegant quarters—his home, more than any planet or moon. He sat at his desk and drank wine and distributed orders and read his reports. His confidence was renewed. The Death Star would soon be complete—every last toggle operational and every hull plate ground smooth. The test on Jedha would be a triumph rather than a failure, and he would see the galaxy respond in awe and terror.

No one—certainly not Wilhuff Tarkin—would deny Krennic that pleasure.

In her dream, Jyn was five years old—or maybe four, or maybe six; it was long ago—and she lay in the most comfortable bed she would ever know in her life. She clutched Beeny (her favorite toy, her best friend) against her face, so close that Beeny’s fur was damp with Jyn’s breath. She held Beeny tight and she listened.

“Whatever atrocities they seek to commit, they have no movement, no organization. That’s the upside of having anarchists as an enemy.”

Jyn didn’t understand the words. She didn’t like that. Sometimes it was nice, lying in the dark (she wasn’t afraid of the dark at all) listening to the grown-ups talk, but tonight wasn’t nice. They were talking about fighting.

“Even the Separatists wanted more than just destruction.” Mama’s voice. “And if they’re so far gone, how is building a shining new Empire going to win them over? We’re talking about—”

“We’re talking about a very delicate time in our history.” The first voice again. Jyn rolled over, peering through the door at the gathering in the living room: Mama in her pretty cloak, Papa in his gray uniform, and Papa’s friend in white. They were gathered around the dessert table, and the man in white was pouring a drink, offering to refill glasses as he spoke. “If people believe in the Empire, military victory over Separatist holdouts and malcontents is inevitable. If people lose faith—” Mama was trying to interrupt him; the man waved her off. “—well, you know about Malpaz. Coruscant will be fine, of course, but we’ll all feel guilty enjoying these meals while terrorism flourishes in the Outer Rim…”

Mama laughed. Not a real laugh, but the quiet sort of laugh she used when she was supposed to laugh but didn’t really want to.

Papa looked over at Jyn’s bedroom, at Jyn, and she saw that he knew she was watching.

Mama was talking again as Papa stood and walked toward Jyn. Jyn drew her knees up, shrank back into her bed, as if she could hide. She didn’t want Papa to shut the door. Not because she was afraid of the dark (she wasn’t afraid of the dark!), but because she wanted to keep listening, she deserved to keep listening…

Papa didn’t close the door. Instead, he stepped inside and sat beside Jyn on her bed. She felt the mattress sink under her. “What’s the matter, Jyn? You look frightened,” he said, and pushed back a strand of her hair. He smelled like his uniform, sour and scrubbed clean.

“I’ll always protect you,” he murmured.

Then the dream changed.

Papa’s body looming over Jyn was no more than a shadow. Jyn was alone in a cave, slamming a hatch shut, trapping herself in the dark. Mama was a corpse in the dirt by the farmhouse, and Jyn had nothing. Even her song wouldn’t emerge from her lips—she couldn’t speak, and her lungs were full of smoke and ash and soil.

“Why do people fight?” she asked, and she was back in her bedroom again, the horrors of her future forgotten.

Papa took a long time to answer. When he finally spoke, he spoke as if he were thinking about it for the first time. “That’s a good question,” he said. “My friend Orson says some people just fight because they’re angry. But I think—” He stopped talking and half closed his eyes. The voices in the other room continued. “I think, usually, people are unhappy, and they don’t agree how to make things better.”

Jyn watched her father, tried to tell what he thought of that idea. “Maybe they’d agree if they stopped fighting first?”

Papa looked at her kindly. Jyn thought she’d surprised him, in a good way. “Stardust. Don’t ever change.”

He leaned in to kiss her on the forehead. She wrapped her arms around him, felt his smooth and sour-smelling uniform press against her. “I won’t,” she promised. Then, softer: “I love you, Papa. You’re a good man.”

Papa returned the hug, in her bedroom in the city and in her bedroom on Lah’mu, both at once. With her chin on his shoulder, Jyn looked past her father to her bedroom door. Mama stood in the living room, watching them. She smiled very gently. Behind her stood the man in white.

The arms around Jyn’s shoulders became thin and rough like string. Now Mama was right in front of her, putting her crystal necklace around Jyn’s neck.

The hatch opened, and Saw Gerrera looked down.

When Jyn woke up, she was no longer a child and she was no longer in a comfortable bed in an apartment on Coruscant. Her mother and father and Beeny were long gone. (Beeny had been the first casualty of her private war, never even making it as far as Lah’mu.)

The hatch, she knew, was irreparably broken.

The U-wing trembled as Jyn, in the dark of the ship’s cabin, fumbled to find her mother’s crystal necklace against her breast.