Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

^{Chapter 20}

KRENNIC TRIED TO FOCUS ON Galen Erso’s communications archive. He scrolled through endless memoranda and dispatches while General Ramda’s men shouted updates and orders across the command center. There was nothing Krennic could do for the stormtroopers on the beach or for Admiral Gorin’s fleet; nothing but dig for the truth of Galen’s treachery among engineering personnel transfer requests and complaints about thermal exhaust ports.

Galen had set this in motion. If he had reached out to allies in the Rebellion, sent the traitorous pilot to contact those allies on Jedha, summoned those allies to Eadu, arranged for them to hound Krennic even after Galen was rotting in a mudhole of a mass grave…

Krennic stopped short. He remembered now, on the Eadu platform—a flash of dark hair and a face covered in ashes. He recalled the voice saying: You’ll never win. But it was Lyra who spoke, not Galen.

“—unauthorized access at the data vault.”

His attention left his console, snapped into crisp focus on one of Ramda’s lieutenants. “What?”

“It’s just come in, sir.” The lieutenant’s head twitched to one side, as if he were seeking support. No one came to his aid. “There’s a security team already in place, but no details about the intruders. We’re waiting for more now—”

Krennic shut out the man’s nattering. The rebels were inside the Citadel. They were inside the vault. They were determined to steal the schematics, to find an imaginary weakness, no matter how many lives they lost. They were determined to haunt him on Galen’s behalf.

And Ramda wasn’t up to the task. The shield gate was shut and escape was surely impossible; yet too many impossibilities had already occurred for one day.

He hurled his words behind him as he marched toward the stairs. “Send my guard squadron to the battle! Two men with me!” There was someone in his way; he roughly shoved the body to one side, not bothering to identify the man’s face. “And get that beach under control!”

He didn’t wait for acknowledgment. As he emerged from the command center, two death troopers fell into step behind him and he thought of another day long before: another planetfall; another squad of troopers; and another danger to his life spawned by Galen. That day on Lah’mu had ended in victory, too.

Orson Krennic was going to war.

Tonc was dead. Bodhi hadn’t seen it happen; he’d crouched low to shuffle half a pace forward along his sheltering wall of cargo crates, and when he’d looked up and across the landing pad he’d spied the soldier motionless on the ground. He fought down the urge to rush to Tonc’s side, to yell for aid from the rebels who still survived; there was nothing he could do. People were dying all around. And the stormtroopers kept coming.

A blaster bolt crackled over Bodhi’s head, close enough for him to feel the heat and smell the ozone of vaporized atmosphere. He smoothed the cable on the ground with one hand and looked helplessly toward the shuttle.

“Bodhi? Are you there?” Bodhi snatched the comlink from his pocket. Cassian’s voice sounded hoarse. “Talk to me!”

“I’m here!” Bodhi said. “I’m here. I’m pinned down. I can’t get to the ship, I can’t plug in!” He didn’t mean to sound desperate, but what was the point of lying? The situation was bad. It wasn’t his fault, but it was bad.

“You have to!” Bodhi had heard Cassian angry, heard him determined, but this was something new—almost pained. “We need the fleet, Bodhi. You have to get a message out!”

“Are you okay?” A thought too awful to dwell on crossed Bodhi’s mind. “Is Jyn okay?”

“We’re fine,” Cassian snapped. For a moment Bodhi heard only long, ragged breaths. Then Cassian seemed to steady. “We’re changing tactics. We’re not sure—we may not make it back for extraction, but we can try to transmit the schematics from the comm tower.”

Bodhi wanted to argue—what exactly did we may not make it back mean? But Cassian kept talking. “That’s a lot of information,” Cassian said, “and even the tower won’t be able to push it through the shield without data loss. Tell me I’m right about this, Bodhi!”

Bodhi forced himself to concentrate. Audio was one thing, but sending a data cartridge through the shield would be like trying to broadcast it across the galaxy. Too much data, too much interference. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right.”

“So you need to let the fleet know,” Cassian said. “They need to get in position to receive, because I doubt we’ll get two shots. And they need to hit that gate! If the shield’s open, we can send the plans!”

“What about—” What about you? What about Jyn? But Cassian sounded ready to crack under the strain, and Bodhi couldn’t bring himself to keep the man on the line. “All right,” he wheezed. “I’ll find a way.”

He roughly pocketed his link and looked toward the shuttle again. The barrage of blasterfire wasn’t stopping, wasn’t even slowing. Tonc’s soldiers weren’t winning. Maybe, Bodhi thought, if Baze and Chirrut returned to the landing pad—but no. He’d already sent them to the master switch.

How long did he have before the pad was overrun?

Don’t talk yourself out of it.

Just go!

His first stride almost sent him sprawling as he went from a crouch to a barreling run. He caught himself and kept going, listened to the cable hiss and writhe behind him as it trailed from the spool on his back, saw flash after flash of crimson scorch the air between him and the shuttle. A bolt struck the undercarriage of the vessel as he approached, dropped a burning spark between his forehead and his work goggles; he ignored the distraction and the pain and climbed the ramp, dashed across the cabin to a terminal. He fumbled at the spool with sweat-slick hands, wrested the cable free, and plugged it into the socket.

The terminal registered the connection. Bodhi screamed in triumph, ignoring the warning light that indicated the ship’s computer couldn’t find the comm tower. Baze and Chirrut and Melshi’s team would get to the master switch soon. Bodhi would tell the fleet about their new strategy.

And when Cassian and Jyn were atop the tower, transmitting the tape? He’d swoop in and find them like he had on Eadu, and they’d all make for the open shield gate together.

That was the plan. That was his plan. He hoped Tonc would approve.

He hoped his comrades could work fast.

How long now, before the pad was overrun?

Cassian’s hands were trembling, but his eyes were steady as he lowered his comlink. “Bodhi’s working on the fleet. He’ll get it done.”

The vault control room remained dark save for the red glow of the shaft. The refrigerated air was heating rapidly and filling with a sharp, metallic stench; Jyn could hear the muffled hiss of plasma torches on the far side of the sealed vault door.

We may not make it back. She’d heard Cassian say the words to Bodhi, but not to her.

She craned her neck and looked up the shaft, up the center of the Citadel Tower. Her father’s data tape was there. Somewhere, beyond the red glow, there was also a way out.

“Step back,” she said, and gestured Cassian away from the viewport.

She drew her pistol, took steady aim with both hands, and fired into the glass. Jagged shards, melting and blackened, exploded onto the console and down into the vault shaft. They rang like wind chimes. Jyn stepped forward to study the broken pane, then began stripping off the helmet, bulky chestpiece, and heavy overclothes of her security uniform. She was long past the point of disguises, and she didn’t need extra weight during a climb. Cassian followed her lead, pulling off his officer’s jacket.

When she had stripped down to vest and pants, Jyn scanned the shaft for grips. Data cartridge extraction handles protruded at regular intervals, and the stacked data banks jutted with slender metal flanges. It wouldn’t be an easy climb, but she decided against shedding her boots for extra traction—she remembered one very long night after leaving Saw that had ended in bloody soles, broken toenails, and a valuable lesson about proper footwear.

“Come on,” she said. Before it all closes in, she nearly added. But Cassian didn’t see the cave walls.

She mounted the console, bent her knees, and leapt across the gap to the nearest data tower. She caught a set of cartridge handles and scrambled to find footholds. After an instant, she felt the cartridges shaking under her hands and feared she might pull them loose; but it was only the vibration of the data banks themselves, rattling with the mechanisms that cooled and cataloged the tapes.

She climbed a meter, testing the force she could apply to the tapes and feeling out the distance between them. She looked down into the yawning darkness in time to see Cassian leap tentatively out of the control room. He, too, caught hold.

Jyn looked back up, fixed the retrieval arm in her sights, and began ascending in earnest.

She heard Cassian struggling behind her over the noise of recirculating air. She knew she should have said something more to him: I’m sorry about Kay-Tu, or We might still get off Scarif, or We’re going to finish this. But she’d never been much good at commiseration or encouragement, and she’d spent so many words—on the Alliance councilors, on the rebel soldiers—in the past days. She didn’t have the strength to spare for him; just the drive to haul herself up one row of cartridges at a time, drag herself away from the darkness and toward the hope of light.

She counted fifteen rows to the retrieval arm, then ten. She glimpsed a doorway in the shaft wall—secure maintenance access, she imagined—but she wrote it off as a means of escape. The Empire had to be watching. Five rows more. Her shoulders began to ache, and her wrists felt stiff from trying to grip the cartridges without yanking them free. The sounds of Cassian’s climb were receding below, but she couldn’t wait for him.

One row. Then she was perched beside the retrieval arm. It grasped the Stardust cartridge like a dead miser.

The cartridge was unlabeled, no different from any other. No different from the thousands surrounding her, except that her father had given his life to reveal it.

She wedged a boot against the stack for leverage, set a free hand on the handle of Mark Omega or Pax Aurora or Heartchopper or whatever ghastly thing the Empire’s scientists had thought up, and tugged at Stardust in the hand of the machine. The frozen arm clung tight; then she jerked the tape away and the arm bobbed loosely in the air.

“I’ve got it!” she cried, and she did—she had it, she had it, and she squeezed it and brought it close enough to smell the metal over the cold, dry air. However else she’d failed, however many deaths (Saw, her father, the girl on Jedha, the droid who’d sacrificed himself) were her fault, she’d come this far. She was ready to shout obscenities at the universe, defiant imprecations against fate and the Force and the Empire.

Then her boot slipped and she scrambled, one-handed, to regain her holds. “Careful!” Cassian shouted from below, and she was grinning fiercely as she panted. “You okay?” he called.

She didn’t answer. She was already climbing again, the cartridge safely hooked on her belt. The surge of triumphant, exultant energy faded as swiftly as it had come, leaving Jyn with only an urgent need to escape the dark. Her arms began to tremble with the strain of the ascent, her muscles recalling the agonizing climb up the landing platform on Eadu. Through the gloom she made out a warm, blinking light high above—an aperture at the top of the tower, pulsing open and closed, barely wide enough to cast shadows.

Close. So close.

Then she heard another shout beneath her. Fury mixed with alarm in Cassian’s voice as he cried her name.

Jyn dropped a hand and twisted just in time for a flash of crimson to obscure her vision—to spark against the stack of data banks and leave a mass of melted polymer where her cartridge-handhold had been. Standing in the maintenance entrance were three figures out of a familiar nightmare: the man in white and his stormtroopers in black.

They had seemed impossible on Eadu, so much so she’d nearly forgotten them in the aftermath—written them off as an exaggeration, a trick of an exhausted mind wrapping a figment from her past around a sliver of reality. Now they’d returned to send her plummeting into madness.

The man in white looked up. She wanted to scream; instead she swallowed the sound, like she had when her mother died. She wanted to freeze, to hide inside herself and drop away from the data banks.

And if she did?

Stardust, the cartridge against her hip, would be buried in her cave along with her own remains.

She tore her gaze from the man in white and looked back up the shaft. Captivated by dream logic, knowing it was untrue, she thought: If I make it to the light, I can escape forever.

Climb!

Crimson burst around Jyn as she swung on the cartridges, trying to rotate herself to the far side of the data stack and find cover from her attackers. She caught a glimpse of Cassian attempting to do the same; but he was slower, and he’d drawn his own pistol, firing wildly at the doorway. One shot landed miraculously, sending a black-clad figure over the edge and into the depths. The fall dragged her further into reality—whatever they were, whoever the men in black and white were, they were people and not dreams. They could die, and so could she.

The Imperials targeted only Cassian now. He swung desperately toward cover as sparks spilled off metal all around him. Jyn started to call to him, but he cried out louder, “Keep going! Keep going!”

She reached a trembling hand toward her pistol. She could die. So could they.

She knew she had to climb.

The decision was taken from her. The second stormtrooper took a hit as a bolt flashed toward Cassian. Trooper and spy fell together; Jyn couldn’t tell whether Cassian had been struck or if he’d simply lost his grip, but he plunged out of view without a scream or a word. She nearly loosed her clutching fingers, nearly followed him into the abyss, but a swell of vertigo shocked her out of her horror and impelled her to cling more tightly to the stack.

Cassian was dead, like so many others. So many taken by the man in white.

She had to escape.

Climb!

Scarif was burning. Dueling starfighters sent cannon fire and torn metal raining onto the beaches. The mountainous corpses of Imperial walkers bled smoke that shrouded whole swaths of jungle. Reinforcements delivered by rebel U-wings had replaced the fallen with new soldiers; and these were cut down in turn by newly arrived stormtroopers in black, men and women who moved with the sober calm of executioners, picking off their foes one by one.

Baze Malbus waded through the inferno in silence, untouched by fear or grief or particle bolts. He followed Melshi and Chirrut, trusting them to see to the mission, and guarded lives where he could. He snapped off swift, precise shots, downing too many stormtroopers to count.

He felt no responsibility for the allies he could not save. He had made no oaths, promised safety to no one. He failed to stop a stormtrooper from ambushing a dark-haired woman and leaving her dying in the shallow tide; he failed to drag a sniper his own age out of view of a strafing TIE fighter. He had spilled more blood in a day than he had thought possible, and though his generator hummed warningly and his muscles felt stiff as dried leather, he was ready to fight on. He would endure through the night if need be, if that was what Jyn Erso required.

And if the mission failed? If there was redemption to be found through killing, he had surely already found it. But he would fight on nonetheless.

Melshi’s tattered platoon was running toward the Citadel on its quest for Bodhi’s “master switch.” Just within the outer perimeter, Melshi promised, was a bunker complex containing what they sought. Baze did not know why the switch was important—something about the rebel fleet—but as he hurried beside his comrades on the beach, he grimly marveled that the fate of planets might be altered by such a trivial thing.

A U-wing was toppling from the sky. It hit sand a stone’s throw ahead of the rebels, sending a shock wave along the ground and plowing a deep trench. Mud and fire splashed as metal ruptured and wailed. As the rebels approached, a salvo of blaster bolts tore through the wreckage and the flames; through gaps in the burning metal, Baze spotted more of the black-clad stormtroopers closing in. He loosed a barrage of cannon fire that did little good—the stormtroopers crept low to the ground, eliminating their targets slowly and certainly as Melshi waved his people frantically toward the bunker complex.

The soldiers sprinted away from the water and the wreckage, exposed and vulnerable. One rebel fell, then another. Chirrut leapt between the troopers’ bolts as if their passing pushed him aside, but his fortune was not others’ fortune. Baze vaulted over more than one corpse, turned back to spray cannon blasts at the troopers, then raced into the shadow of the Citadel Tower. He saw Melshi attempt to haul an ally to safety and take a bolt to the side for his troubles; stinking badly of melted fabric and burnt flesh, Melshi hobbled with Baze into the relative shelter of the squat bunker.

Only four warriors remained. Chirrut stood near the front of the spartan bunker with Baze, panting and leaning lightly on his staff. A broad sniper—someone had called him Sefla—took potshots at the troopers through the bunker’s narrow embrasures as the enemy formed a perimeter. Melshi struggled to stay upright in the far corner.

There might have been other survivors scattered across the battlefield. Or Baze, Chirrut, Sefla, and Melshi might have been the last.

An urgent voice issued from Melshi’s comlink: “Melshi, come in, please! Anybody out there! Rogue One! Rogue One! Anybody!”

Chirrut raised his ornate lightbow, firing at the stormtroopers as they forced Sefla down and into cover. The stormtroopers adjusted and targeted Chirrut; Baze replaced Chirrut, as Chirrut had replaced Sefla, who now prepared to replace Baze. Together, Baze thought, they could hold off the Imperials for several minutes. Likely no longer.

“They’ve got the plans.” The comm spoke with Bodhi’s voice, mixing triumph and terror. “I’m tied in at my end, but I can’t hold out forever. We lost Tonc…”

The troopers had established a broad circle around the bunker and the adjoining equipment—consoles and charging stations and signal relays. Baze snarled in satisfaction—she has the plans!—as he fired a shot that took a man off his feet, then jerked back his head as his foes returned a volley.

“Rogue One! Can anyone hear me out there? I’ve got my end tied in, I need an open line—”

“Hang on!” Melshi gasped, and tossed his comlink to the ground before beckoning to Baze. He stank of death. Baze crossed to his side and let Chirrut and Sefla take up the slaying work.

“Be quick,” Baze said.

Melshi nodded, his eyes wide and glittering. “The master switch,” he said. “It’s out there, at that console.” He raised a trembling finger and pointed into the kill zone.

The workstation was ten meters away. Far beyond reach.

Before anyone could react, Sefla was out of the bunker, dashing toward the console, pumping arms and legs as sweat dripped down his back. He moved with brisk, brave certainty. He died in an instant, cut down by a dozen particle bolts, accomplishing nothing.

Baze looked back to Melshi. He had slumped to the ground beside his comlink.

Maybe it would have been better, Baze thought, to be killed by the walkers. To die cowering in sight of an unachievable victory was a humiliation.

Maybe death always was.

Baze raised his cannon. Perhaps there were other survivors. Perhaps if he downed enough troopers, reinforcements might reach Bodhi’s master switch. A final slaughter was all he could offer Jyn Erso and the dead of Jedha; all he could offer to torment the Empire one last time.

But before Baze could fire, Chirrut rose from the bunker and stepped into sunlight.

Chirrut Îmwe felt the warmth of an alien star on his skin and a sea breeze pawing at his robes. The heel of his staff dug into hard-packed sand. Beneath the odors of conflagration and death was the perfume of jungle flowers and the sweet stink of dirt beetles. Beyond the electric snap of blaster bolts he heard a high-pitched chittering—the noise of a beast he had never encountered. To this cacophony, he added his voice:

“I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.”

Whatever Chirrut had become in his life—and without the temple he could not truly be a Guardian of the Whills; without joy and frivolity he could not be a clown and jokester among sober peers; without the Holy City he could not be a protector of his beloved world—whatever he was, he was not a warrior at heart, and the events of the day had eroded his spirit. While Baze, his brother and ward, had embraced his role with vicious resolve, Chirrut had fought and run and killed because fighting and running and killing were necessary.

Now they were necessary no longer, and he was glad.

“I am one with the Force,” he said again, “and the Force is with me.” The words echoed inside him. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

Baze yelled his name from the bunker. Chirrut did not stop.

He felt hot bolts whip past him, heard leather gloves squeeze metal triggers, and turned his body as if shouldering his way through a crowd. He tapped the heel of his staff, feeling his way toward the console by the traces of buried cables. He listened for telltale echoes, where the noise of the battle resounded off terminals and equipment.

He did all this without thinking. The art of zama-shiwo, the inward eye of the outward hand, attuned his breathing and heartbeat to his chant. It was his chant that guided his motions, controlled his pace as he strode forward. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

“Chirrut!” Baze called. “Come back!”

Baze was terrified. Chirrut was not. In the instant before he’d risen from the bunker, he’d questioned his own wisdom: How might he separate the will of the Force from his will, his ego, demanding action where action was unneeded? But there was no doubt in his heart now. The Force expressed itself through simplicity, and all it asked of him was to walk.

I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

His staff rapped metal. The side of a console. The chant guided him to its front and he glided his fingers across buttons and readouts. He touched a broad, hinged handle recessed in the console: a master switch, if ever there’d been one. A particle bolt reverberated centimeters from Chirrut’s left ear as he urged the switch forward and felt it lock into place.

I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

He smiled softly and thought of Bodhi, the strange pilot who smelled of Jedha beneath his Imperial suit.

Chirrut’s chant was faltering now. With the switch activated, his path had become obscured. He listened to the storm of blasterfire and heard Baze’s voice again: “Chirrut! Come here!” So he turned toward Baze and the bunker and began retracing his steps. The rhythm of his breath was off, and the thousand noises and odors and sensations all about him failed to coalesce; each tugged at him, insisted on his exclusive attention.

Then there was only one noise: a terrible thunder like the world splitting open. He was driven forward as pain flashed through his old bones and every injury he’d ever suffered ignited. Somehow, as Chirrut impacted the dirt and rolled to one side, he was aware of Baze shouting his name again.

He couldn’t feel his staff. He couldn’t feel his hand, except for a terrible throbbing and its numb weight at the end of his arm. But the art of zama-shiwo had much to say about controlling pain, and Chirrut permitted his blood to spill without experiencing suffering. The violence inflicted upon his body troubled him less than the violence he had inflicted upon others.

He was dying, of course.

He felt Baze’s heavy, familiar tread pound the ground, smelled his brother’s sweat as he leaned close. He wanted to say, Baze! My eyes—I can’t see! but Baze Malbus had always needed comfort more than humor.

“Chirrut,” Baze murmured. “Don’t go. Don’t go. I’m here…”

He wondered for a moment how Baze had crossed the battlefield to reach him. But of course the Force had reunited them before the end.

Baze’s callused fingers rubbed life into the back of Chirrut’s hand. “It’s okay,” Chirrut said. “It’s okay. Look for the Force and you will always find me.”

He tried to smile, but he was no longer sure he could.

The words of the chant echoed in Chirrut Îmwe’s heart once more before he died:

I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

The stormtroopers were closing around the cargo shuttle. Bodhi could tell because, not infrequently, a particle bolt would blaze up the boarding ramp and impact the interior bulkhead, raining sparks onto the floor. Bodhi didn’t know how many of Tonc’s people were still alive, fighting desperately to hold their foes back; nor did he know whether, at any moment, someone might sever the cable snaking up the ramp to the communications console.

He was almost out of time, and all he could think was: I’m sorry, everyone. Sorry for promising what I couldn’t deliver. Sorry for not coming up with a better plan.

He’d tried. That counted for something, didn’t it?

When the console readouts updated to indicate a connection between the ship and the Scarif communications tower, he wanted to weep with joy.

Instead, he hunched over the unit, adjusted his frequencies, and prayed someone would hear him. “Okay, okay,” he began. “This is Rogue One calling the rebel fleet!”

He heard only the soft hiss of static in reply.

They didn’t even know he was trying to reach them. They were fighting for their lives, and he was broadcasting aimlessly—as if some bridge officer was going to notice and pick up mid-battle.

“This is Rogue One, calling any Alliance ships that can hear me!” He fought back the tremor in his voice. “Is there anybody up there? This is Rogue One!”

I did my part, he told himself. I got a signal out. I’m sorry if no one was listening…

He thought of Jyn, of Cassian, of Baze and Chirrut and Tonc. He wondered if any of them would be capable of forgiving his failures.

Galen had forgiven him, at least. Galen had understood the need for forgiveness better than anyone.

“This is Rogue One!” Specks of spittle dotted the console. He wiped them away with a sleeve. “Come in! Over!”

“This is Admiral Raddus aboard the Profundity!” The comm came to life with a roar. “Rogue One, we hear you!”

Bodhi uttered a laugh that might have been mistaken for a sob. “We have the plans!” he said—and maybe that was a lie, he couldn’t know for sure, but he was too desperate to care. “They found the Death Star plans. They have to transmit them from the communications tower!”

He heard voices in the background—bridge officers, maybe, debating how to respond. Bodhi powered through. “You have to get in position, get ready to receive. And you have to take down the shield gate. It’s the only way to get through!”

For an achingly long time, there was no answer.

“Copy you, Rogue One,” the voice finally said. “We’ll get it done.” Then, directed not to Bodhi but to someone else on the bridge: “Call in a Hammerhead corvette. I have an idea.”

The signal went dead. It didn’t matter to Bodhi; he’d said what he needed to say.

The blasterfire outside had stopped. The silence was almost peaceful. Hands trembling, Bodhi straightened behind the console and glanced from the boarding ramp to the cockpit ladder. He thought of his plan to take off, to fly through the gauntlet of TIEs to rescue Jyn and Cassian from the communications tower. He thought of the strain he’d heard in Cassian’s voice, and of his last signal to Melshi—the one that had gone unanswered.

If he didn’t have the chance… he’d done enough. It was okay.

“This is for you, Galen,” he said, and started for the ladder.

Bodhi Rook heard the ring of metal once, twice, in the cabin, and then the soft clatter of something rolling across the deck. He turned in time to glimpse the detonator. He heard nothing as the cabin flared impossibly bright.

Like a pilot should, he died with his ship.

Baze Malbus cradled the last true Guardian of the Whills in his arms and answered Chirrut’s dying words. “The Force is with me,” Baze said. “And I am one with the Force.”

A flare rose in the distance. Something was burning on landing pad nine. In all likelihood, Bodhi Rook, too, was gone.

Gone before he had ever sent his message? Gone, and rendering Chirrut’s sacrifice pointless?

Once again, the Empire had stolen meaning from Baze. He might have screamed if not for the man he held.

“The Force is with me,” he repeated. “And I am with the Force.”

Did he believe the words? Did it matter? Had it ever mattered?

The stormtroopers’ perimeter was intact. They’d momentarily drawn back after murdering Chirrut, away from the smoke of the explosion; now they were closing again, sweeping their rifle scopes toward Baze. Their actions seemed interminably slow—as if time had become Baze’s tormentor, so that he might suffer the anguish of a lifetime in a second.

He spoke the words, and in them he found not comfort but conviction—or the memory of conviction, as if the words were a key to the forgotten faith of his youth. The unlocked memory strangled him, wracking and intense. He knew again the significance of the Force in every breath and action, knew all he had forsaken in years past; saw the vast gulf between the Guardian he had been and the man he was now, and wept in his heart for both. He gently laid the body down and raised his cannon, identified a trooper who was tensing to fire; he sent an energy blast through the trooper’s chest and sent him reeling into sand and dirt. As the rest of the squad returned a fusillade, Baze squeezed his trigger, held it and let his generator scream and his weapon writhe and buck. He alternated swift bursts and raging, aimless streams with precision killings. He advanced on the men and women who had taken his past, his home, his friend, his hope, his faith; but he did not stray far from Chirrut.

He had nowhere to go. He would not leave Chirrut now.

He recognized a pain he had felt before—the hot, half-numb agony of a blaster bolt, his nerves obliterated at the epicenter of the wound and screaming around the corona. He fell to his knees and forced himself to rise again. His body was caked in ash and sweat and he stank of burning hair, and he embraced the nightmare, raged with shot after shot until he had surely slain a hundred or a thousand stormtroopers.

It was not enough. It could never be enough to restore Chirrut or the years he’d lost.

Baze saw a dying trooper fumble for a grenade and lob it in his direction. The grenade would land short of its target; but Baze could barely stumble forward, let alone run for cover. He wrenched himself about, craned his neck to see Chirrut one last time.

When death had come for him in the shadow of the walker, he had faced it with defiance. Now there was grief.

There was no fear.

Baze Malbus died in pain, but it did not last long.

Rogue One was alive. Jyn Erso had the Death Star’s schematics, and in those schematics was the chance to save the Alliance. A chance to save Mon Cala. There was no price Admiral Raddus would refuse to pay to see that chance realized.

With the disabling of one Star Destroyer, the tide of battle above Scarif had turned. Yet while the advantage belonged to the Alliance fleet, bombardment of the orbital gate station uncovered no weakness in either the field or the station itself. A prolonged siege might result in victory, but Raddus didn’t doubt enemy reinforcements were en route; massive firepower might break the gate open, but the Alliance’s fiercest warships lacked the catastrophic might of the Empire’s.

In silently articulating the dilemma, the solution had become apparent to Raddus. He had laid out his plan to his officers and they had not questioned him. But even to Raddus’s tastes, the price was high.

He had chosen the Hammerhead Lightmaker and its captain, Kado Oquoné, to implement his vision. Oquoné’s ship had been badly damaged after being flanked by the twin Destroyers, and had since withdrawn from the field of fire to guard the line of retreat. For these reasons it would serve Raddus’s purpose.

“Are you prepared, Captain?” He spoke to Oquoné from the bridge of the Profundity, his eyes fixed on his tactical display.

“Nonessential personnel have evacuated,” Oquoné replied. “It’s just me, a skeleton crew, and a handful of droids. Course is locked.” His voice did not tremble. Raddus gave him credit for that; when he’d explained his intent, Oquoné had reacted angrily—yet only for an instant. Since that moment, the captain had been nothing but resolved.

“Then begin,” Raddus said. The comm went silent. The Lightmaker’s engines pulsed as the great vessel turned—first away from the battle, then back in a wide arc, adjusting its trajectory by fractions of a meter as it went. Raddus had not demanded that Oquoné and his chosen few remain aboard, but such precise work was best left with organics instead of droids alone. Oquoné knew it as well as Raddus.

The swarm of Alliance starfighters around the second, surviving Star Destroyer formed a loose cordon, locking the vessel in place as larger rebel ships disengaged. These actions would leave both fighters and command ships vulnerable to TIE counterattacks, but Raddus had deemed that price acceptable as well.

The Lightmaker picked up speed as it approached the fray, pulled by Scarif’s gravity as it pushed with its engines toward the disabled Destroyer. The second Star Destroyer seemed to realize what was happening, but much too late; caged by Red and Gold Squadron fighters, it could go nowhere in time to escape its fate.

Raddus watched the Lightmaker descend like a spear into the mass of the disabled behemoth. Metal sheared and crumpled, and Raddus feared for a moment that Oquoné’s velocity had been too great—that the Lightmaker would be dashed to nothingness and the most delicate part of the plan, still to come, had failed. Yet the Destroyer absorbed the impact and began to tumble away, its frame marred but intact.

He spotted the motes of escape pods against the stars. He did not dare hope that they had come from the Lightmaker.

The disabled Star Destroyer drifted toward its caged twin. Oquoné’s course had been set with precision. As the Alliance starfighters broke away, the two Destroyers collided. Both ships flared with destructive power, and both tumbled more swiftly as Scarif’s gravity gripped them. Locked together by cataclysmic devastation, their entwined wreckage plummeted toward the inner ring of the orbital gate station.

Where the Star Destroyers struck the energy field, the shield shimmered and radiated and finally broke, dissipating like foam on the crest of a wave.

“Get us into geostationary orbit above the Citadel, now!” Raddus cried. “All fighters move to defend the Profundity. We must be in position to receive that transmission!”

The TIE fighters would concentrate on his flagship once the Empire recognized his intent. But in truth, he didn’t need to hold out long. The shield gate would regenerate swiftly enough; Rogue One’s window of opportunity to transmit would be narrow, and if it closed there would be no other.

Silently, Raddus pledged to name his great-grandchildren after Oquoné and the crew of the Lightmaker. Then he clasped his hands together to await word from Jyn Erso.