Rogue One Junior Novel Page 13

  Once free of the Imperial outfit, Jyn went through the broken window and leaped for the data tower. It wasn’t so far away, but the drop below it was long—probably fatal.

  She made it and began climbing to where she knew the Stardust tape sat, roughly two or three stories above her. She could see the retrieval arm stuck there, right where it had reached out to grab the tape.

  Cassian followed right behind, only not as fast. Jyn was lighter and more nimble, and she moved faster than he did. Perhaps life on the run had better prepared her for such challenges.

  The inside of the data tower roared with noise. Far above, some kind of ventilation system pumped air in and out of the tower at a nearly deafening volume, keeping the tapes cool.

  Jyn raced for the Stardust tape, determined to grab it as soon as she could—and not to let it fall. She reached out and plucked it right from the frozen retrieval arm’s grip.

  “I’ve got it!” she shouted.

  She glanced back down at Cassian and nearly lost her grip.

  “Careful!” he said, still far below her. “You okay?”

  She didn’t stop to respond. She just tucked the tape into a pocket in her vest and kept climbing. Getting her hands on the Death Star’s plans was one thing. Now they needed to get them into the hands of the Rebel Alliance.

  There was no way to get out of the vault the way they’d come. They’d have to find another exit.

  As Jyn climbed higher, Cassian shouted out a warning. Three men had appeared in a doorway—an access to the columns inside the data tower. Two of them were death troopers.

  Jyn recognized the third from her childhood—from her nightmares.

  It was Director Orson Krennic.

  BAZE MALBUS had seen enough violence in his time, and he had come to hate it. That was one of the reasons he’d stuck with his friend Chirrut for so long. The monk helped keep him centered, even after he’d lost his own faith in the Force so long before.

  Now, though—with Jedha City gone, along with everyone in it he had ever known—Baze had decided to embrace violence once again. He gloried in every stormtrooper he shot dead. Firing a rocket at an AT-ACT thrilled him, even if it hadn’t brought the beast down.

  Still, the battle rang hollow to him. They weren’t trying to destroy the entire facility. They weren’t even trying to kill stormtroopers. Their only job was to distract the Imperial forces long enough for Jyn, Cassian, and that turncoat droid of his to get their job done.

  Baze wanted to make the Empire hurt. The only chance of doing that was in Jyn’s crazy plan, but this battle felt more like a sideshow to him—right up until Bodhi called them for help.

  Baze heard the ex-Imperial pilot yelling over Sergeant Melshi’s comm. “They’ve got the plans!” he said. “I’m tied in at my end.”

  That news lit Baze up. They weren’t trying to buy time for a doomed operation any longer. Jyn and Cassian had actually succeeded! Now they just needed to help them get the plans out.

  “Rogue One!” Bodhi called. “Can anybody hear me out there? I’ve got my end tied in! I need an open line!”

  Melshi grabbed his comm and shouted into it. “Hang on!” The rebel sergeant turned to Baze. “The master switch! It’s out there at that console!”

  He pointed to the console station right in front of them. They’d been trying to reach it, but the stormtroopers hadn’t given them a centimeter. The air around the thing sang with blaster fire, and venturing into that would be inviting death.

  The highest ranking of the rebel soldiers—Lieutenant Sefla, a man who had impressed Baze with his humility and big heart—charged toward it anyway, in a desperate attempt to do his duty. After only a few steps, incoming blaster fire cut him down.

  “Come on!” Bodhi’s voice grew more desperate through Melshi’s comm. “Come on!”

  Melshi wasn’t the kind of commander to order someone to do something he wasn’t willing to try himself. After Sefla had fallen, no one else stepped forward to take the man’s place. It was up to him.

  Melshi steeled himself and then dashed out into the open. The other rebel soldiers tried to offer him covering fire. Baze joined in, and Chirrut—who was hunkered nearby—assisted with his lightbow.

  Melshi got farther than Sefla, but he still fell short of reaching the master switch.

  Baze didn’t know what to do. He expected one of the other rebel commandos to give it a try next. Or maybe they should all run at the switch together and hope that one of them managed to get through?

  Before he could suggest anything, though, the choice was taken from him.

  Chirrut rose to his feet and began chanting. “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

  Then he stepped forward and began walking toward the master switch. “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

  “Chirrut!” Baze shouted after him. The blind fool was sure to get himself killed!

  Chirrut strode forward as if he were crossing the street. As he went, he juked this way and that, dodging incoming fire he couldn’t even see. The entire time, he kept chanting his mantra. “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

  “Chirrut!” Baze pleaded. “Come back!”

  Baze was sure that Chirrut’s luck would run out sooner rather than later—well before he reached the master switch—but he kept going. “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.”

  Chirrut reached the console and fumbled around its surface, feeling for that elusive master switch. When he found it, he pressed down hard.

  BACK IN his stolen shuttle, a light popped on to tell Bodhi that the comm line to the rebel fleet had been opened. He turned on the radio and tried to speak into it calmly and clearly.

  “Okay, okay…This is Rogue One calling the rebel fleet.”

  No one responded, and for a moment Bodhi feared something had gone wrong, perhaps behind his control. Had he forgotten something? Was there a connection he’d failed to make?

  Had they done all that for nothing?

  He tried again. “This is Rogue One calling any Alliance ships that can hear me! Is there anybody up there? This is Rogue One! Come in, over.”

  The radio crackled back at him, and he heard a gravelly voice. “This is Admiral Raddus! Rogue One, we hear you!”

  Bodhi wanted to cry and cheer at the same time. He settled for laughing in relief.

  “We have the plans!” he said. “They found the Death Star plans. They have to transmit them from the communications tower. You have to take down the shield gate. It’s the only way to get it through!”

  “Copy you, Rogue One!”

  Bodhi heard the admiral turn and address someone in the background. “Call in a Hammerhead corvette. I have an idea.”

  Bodhi scanned the sky for some hint of what was happening. He focused on the shield gate, hoping he would see some results from his request.

  Moments later, he spotted a bright flash of light near where he knew the shield gate sat in the sky. He recognized it as an explosion. Something that size would tear a hole in the shield for sure, so the signal could finally get through.

  Bodhi grinned up at the sky. “This is for you, Galen!”

  Just then, Bodhi heard something come rattling into the cargo shuttle’s cabin. Someone must have gotten into the bay and thrown it in there behind him. He spun around to see what it was, already horrified by what he knew he would find.

  Sure enough, he spied a grenade on the floor nearby. He didn’t even have time to shout before it went off.

  BAZE STARED at his friend Chirrut in horror. The monk may have completed his mission, but he was far from out of trouble. The console where he had pushed the master switch was still in the middle of the fire zone.

  “Chirrut!” Baze called. “Come here!”

  The monk’s luck ran out. He made it only two steps toward
Baze before the blast from a grenade blew him off his feet.

  “Chirrut!”

  Heedless of the incoming fire that strafed the open ground, Baze charged forward across the sand. He dropped down next to his fallen friend and found he was not quite dead yet. He took his hand.

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

  Chirrut wheezed at his old friend. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” He tried to comfort Baze, even with his final breath. “Look for the Force, and you will always find me….”

  With that, Chirrut slumped over and the last of his life left his body behind.

  Baze glanced over and saw Rogue One’s stolen Imperial cargo shuttle explode in flames.

  Had Bodhi gotten his message to the rebel fleet? Had they managed to open a hole in the shield?

  Baze decided it didn’t matter. The stormtroopers had killed Chirrut, the last person in the galaxy he had ever truly cared about. For that, they were going to pay.

  He stood up and began firing at anything wearing Imperial armor. As he did, he chanted a mantra, one that hadn’t crossed his lips for a long time.

  “The Force is with me, and I am with the Force.”

  Rather than running back for cover, Baze marched toward the stormtroopers. With every step he took, he fired at them again and again, unleashing a flurry of furious energy bolts from his souped-up blaster. He didn’t intend to go down until he’d run through every bit of ammunition piled in his specialized backpack.

  Stormtroopers fell to the left, right, and center. One by one, he brought them to their doom. But there were too many of them, even for a man on a righteous mission. He caught an enemy bolt, and it spun him to the ground.

  Baze refused to give in. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself back to his feet, still firing every step of the way. The Force was with him.

  As he went, he missed a half-downed death trooper who was hefting a grenade. The man pitched it into the sky, and it came down right next to Baze.

  He was too hurt to grab it and throw it back. He couldn’t even run from it. There was nothing for him to do but glance back at Chirrut and know the two of them would soon be reunited in the Force.

  The last thing he heard was the grenade’s boom.

  THE MOMENT Jyn saw Krennic, she started climbing away from him and his death troopers, trying to put one of the data columns between them and her. The top of the tower wasn’t that far away. She just needed to get there and try to escape.

  Cassian, on the other hand, drew his blaster and began firing at their attackers. He managed to shoot down one of the death troopers, but Krennic and the other one fired back at him.

  Cassian clung closer to the column, but that didn’t give him much cover. He couldn’t shoot and climb at the same time, so he kept firing, trying to take out their attackers.

  “Keep going!” Cassian shouted after Jyn. “Keep going!”

  Jyn climbed faster, reaching for freedom. As she did, she glanced down and saw Cassian take a shot from a blaster rifle that knocked him from the data column. He toppled over, out of sight.

  She had no time to mourn him then. She just kept climbing, even after she heard a body smash into the distant floor.

  At least she’d put enough of the data column between her and the Imperials. Now she just needed to reach the top.

  Soon she could see Scarif’s sky through the vents at the top of the tower. They pulsed open and closed like something alive, pulling the hot air from the tower and helping preserve the tapes.

  The valves, of course, were not designed as doors. To get past them, Jyn would have to leap through at just the right moment. Tired as she was, she worried that she might time her jump badly and be caught inside a valve. She concentrated on the one in front of her and watched it go through a few cycles until she got the rhythm of it down.

  Then she made her move.

  Once through, Jyn found her way to the top of the tower. She emerged countless stories in the air, with TIE fighters and strikers and rebel X-wings dogfighting in the sky around her. She had walked into the middle of a war.

  Somewhere atop the tower, she knew, sat a dish control unit the Empire used to transmit data to ships hovering overhead. If she could find it and slap the tape into it, she could use it to transmit the plans to the rebel fleet.

  She spotted the control unit at one end of the tower’s roof and headed toward it. Once she got there, she shoved the tape home.

  The screen on the control unit started to flash, and a computerized voice began chanting an error message: “Reset antennae alignment. Reset antennae alignment. Reset antennae alignment.”

  She hadn’t gone this far to stop now. She peered down at the screen. The diagram showed that she had to go to the end of a long, thin gantry that stabbed out from the side of the tower’s roof.

  On a good day, she wouldn’t have wanted to be forced to navigate such a rickety structure. With the battle raging around her, she just wanted to find an elevator to take her straight back down to the ground level, where—if she was lucky—the Empire might toss her in a cozy cell.

  She didn’t hesitate for an instant, though, charging straight ahead.

  Her father had died trying to stop the Death Star. The way the battle was going, the others were probably gone, too. Baze, Chirrut, Bodhi, K-2SO—even Cassian. She was the only one left, and she couldn’t let their sacrifices be for nothing.

  When Jyn reached the end of the gantry, she found a set of controls and turned the knob that would adjust the dish. The computer responded to her again. This time it said, “Dish aligning. Dish aligning.”

  Jyn craned her neck to look up and see the gigantic satellite dish atop the tower moving. It cranked itself back until it was pointing straight up, right toward the shield gate.

  “Dish aligned,” the computer reported. “Ready to transmit.”

  Jyn wanted to pump her fist in triumph, but her work wasn’t done. The channel to the rebel fleet might finally be open, but she still needed to get back to the transmitter and push the button to send the plans.

  At that moment, a TIE fighter pilot spotted her standing there, vulnerable and alone, and it screamed straight for her, firing its weapons the entire way. She spun about and charged back down the gantry toward the tower’s roof.

  She managed to evade the TIE fighter’s strike, but the blasts tore the gantry apart. She felt herself falling and reached out to find something—anything—to keep her from toppling off the tower to the ground far below.

  GRAND MOFF TARKIN frowned as the Death Star appeared in the sky over Scarif. The rebel fleet had done far more harm to the Star Destroyers than he would have thought possible. Just another example of the incompetence of the managers there, including—especially—Director Krennic.

  This would not do.

  General Romodi looked at Tarkin from his spot on the bridge. “Sir, shall I begin targeting their fleet?”

  It was a fair question, but it showed the same problem in thinking that had allowed the rebels to do so much damage already that day. Tarkin gave the general a shake of his head.

  “Lord Vader will handle the fleet. The plans must not be allowed to leave Scarif—at any cost.”

  It was then that the general understood exactly what Tarkin meant. While the Death Star certainly could take out the entire rebel fleet, doing so would require time. Every moment that slipped past was another moment something could go wrong—something in the rebels’ favor.

  Vader would be there shortly, and he and his personal Star Destroyer should be more than enough to sweep up the remains of the rebel fleet. That would put an end to the sharp end of the Alliance for good.

  Meanwhile, Tarkin would put the Death Star to better use by employing it for its stated purpose. He gazed down at Scarif. Such a beautiful place, and he would be among the last to see it.

  “You may fi
re when ready,” he informed Romodi.

  The general immediately set to carrying out his world-ending orders.

  SMOKE ROSE from the top of the tower where the TIE fighter’s blasts had landed. Satisfied with a job well done, the TIE fighter pilot veered away from the tower and went hunting for fresh targets.

  A moment later, Jyn emerged from the smoke, still holding on to the damaged gantry, lucky to be alive. She struggled up the remainder of the gantry until she reached the tower’s roof again. As she did, she saw the Death Star appear in the sky.

  It loomed over the planet, larger than any moon, and Jyn was under no illusion about what its arrival meant. She’d seen what it and the people in charge of it had done to Jedha City.

  Scarif and everyone on it were doomed.

  Jyn pulled herself onto the roof. As she did, Director Krennic emerged from a column of smoke in front of her.

  She recoiled for an instant as she wondered what to do. When the man came at her with his blaster, though, she knew she couldn’t show him an instant of hesitation.

  Krennic peered at her, trying to understand the role the young woman before him played in the disaster unfolding around him. “Who are you?” he asked.

  It had been a long time, and Jyn had only been a little girl the last time the two had met. She remembered him well, despite that.

  “You know who I am,” she told him. “I’m Jyn Erso. Daughter of Galen and Lyra.”

  Krennic blinked as he struggled to process that revelation. The girl he’d failed to find on Lah’mu all those years before.

  Jyn couldn’t let the man believe he’d won. She might not have been able to send the Death Star’s plans to the rebel fleet yet, but he didn’t know that.

  “You’ve lost,” she said with as much confidence as she could manage.

  “Oh, I have, have I?” It would take more than her word to convince a man as arrogant as Krennic.

  “My father’s revenge.” Jyn let that land, and she savored the look on Krennic’s face. “He built a flaw in the Death Star. He put a fuse in the middle of your machine, and I’ve just told the entire galaxy how to light it.”