Rogue One Junior Novel Page 5

  The walls of the monastery/hideout shook like a monster was trying to rattle them down. The place wouldn’t hold together for much longer, Cassian knew.

  He followed his instincts, rushing deeper into the place while it seemed everyone else was fleeing out. No one paid much attention to him, too busy trying to save their own lives to worry about who he might be and what he was doing there. He eventually found a large, long chamber lit by a bright light streaming through a wide window.

  Jyn had fallen to her knees in front of a holographic projector that had gone dead. An older man stood next to her, trying to comfort her.

  “Jyn!” Cassian said as he raced toward her. “Jyn…”

  The man turned, and Cassian recognized him: Saw Gerrera. Under other circumstances, Cassian might have gone for his blaster, or maybe just turned and fled. Now, though, they had no time for such things.

  Cassian approached Jyn from her other side. “We’ve got to go,” he said. “I know where your father is.” The pilot—Bodhi Rook, he’d said his name was—had filled him in.

  “Go, Jyn!” Saw said to her. “You must go.”

  Jyn stood up but hesitated. She took Saw’s arm as if she planned to haul the man along with them. He shook her off, though, and Cassian could see why.

  He was slow, beaten, sick. No longer the legendary warrior—the terror of the Empire—he’d once been. He wasn’t able to run any longer, but he wanted to make sure Jyn did.

  “Save yourself. Please!”

  “Come on,” Cassian said as he took her by the hand. She resisted him, not willing to abandon the old man who Cassian knew had once treated her like his daughter.

  “Go!” Saw shouted, insisting even harder. This was his final wish, and he wanted nothing more than for her to grant it.

  Cassian could see she wanted to argue with Saw, but the entire place was about to come down around their ears. It wasn’t like they could throw a grown man in armor over their shoulders and still escape. “There’s no time!”

  Finally, Jyn relented and followed Cassian. As they left the chamber, Saw roared after them one final request.

  “Save the Rebellion! Save the dream!”

  JYN KNEW what was happening, even if she didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be any coincidence that she’d learned about her father’s work on the Death Star just before all of Jedha felt like it was about to come apart.

  She hated leaving Saw behind like that, knowing she would never see him again. She’d noticed how weak and sick he was already. He hadn’t had many days before him anyhow. But it saddened her to know the Empire was about to kill him.

  Worse yet, if she didn’t move faster, it was about to kill her, too.

  Jyn didn’t know the layout of Saw’s hideout well enough to decide which way to run. Fortunately, Cassian seemed to have a better sense of things.

  She chased him through the place’s empty corridors. Everyone else—all the other prisoners and even the rest of Saw’s rebels—seemed to have left already. They’d been able to see what was about to happen to Jedha, and they hadn’t been worried about leaving a father figure to die.

  They emerged from the monastery on a wide ledge that fronted the place, from which they should have had a spectacular view of Jedha City. Instead of the Star Destroyer that had been hovering over the Holy City, Jyn saw a massive battle station that resembled a large moon with a dish-shaped crater cut out of it.

  Jedha City itself had disappeared. A cloud of ash and debris rose where the ancient city had once stood.

  Cassian pushed through the people standing on the ledge, and Jyn followed him. They came up behind a man in an Imperial pilot’s uniform, who had to be the prisoner they’d gone to Jedha to find.

  Cassian didn’t even stop as he charged past the man. All he did was shout, “Move!”

  The monk and the soldier fell in behind the pilot, and all five of them ran as fast as they could. They followed Cassian to an open spot far along the ledge, away from the rest of the rebels. Those poor souls could do nothing but gape at the wave of destruction billowing out from where Jedha City had once stood and wait for their doom.

  Jyn wasn’t sure if Cassian had a better plan. They couldn’t outrun utter destruction like that.

  When they reached the end of the ledge, though, the U-wing they’d flown to Jedha came banking in hard for a pinpoint landing. Jyn spotted K-2SO at the controls. She’d never been so happy to see an Imperial security droid.

  Dust flew everywhere as the ship’s ramp lowered for them, and the five desperate people clambered aboard. Cassian dove for the cockpit as the U-wing’s door slammed shut behind them.

  “Get us out of here,” he ordered the droid. “Punch it!”

  K-2SO didn’t need the encouragement. He’d already begun taking the U-wing back into the sky, and he swung it around to face away from the oncoming shockwave of doom.

  The ledge the ship had been on gave way beneath it, crumbling into rubble. The starship struggled to compensate for the sudden change, as well as the hail of debris raining sideways.

  Somewhere down there, Saw Gerrera stared up at the apocalypse that had come to Jedha and breathed his last. Jyn didn’t have time to mourn him at that moment. She was too busy worrying about her own survival.

  The U-wing climbed higher into the air, but not as fast as it needed to. K-2SO had reached them too late.

  “Look!” the Imperial pilot shouted.

  Jyn wondered why he felt the need to say something like that. They all saw what was coming at them. How could anyone look away?

  The blast wave had finally peaked, and now it was crashing down on top of them. From the speed at which it moved and the angle at which it raced toward them, Jyn could see they had no chance to avoid it. In a matter of seconds, it would crush them into the rocks far below.

  Cassian wasn’t ready to give up. Instead, he did the unimaginable. He grabbed the lever that would thrust the U-wing into hyperspace, and he hauled back on it.

  As an occasional pilot herself, Jyn knew one of the basic rules of interstellar travel was never to enter hyperspace without letting the computer make the incredibly intricate and important calculations for your route first. It was too easy to find yourself inside a planet or to pass through a star, and that was bound to put a quick end to your trip.

  Since the only alternative at the moment, though, was being smashed to pieces by the fallout from the Death Star’s destruction of Jedha City, she didn’t see any reason not to try. She did the only thing she could think of as the scene outside the U-wing’s front viewport went from dust and rocks to distorted star trails fanning out around the ship.

  She held her breath and hoped.

  KRENNIC GRANTED himself permission to enjoy a wide, hungry smile as the destruction of Jedha City blossomed beneath him. The view from the overbridge of the Death Star was breathtaking. A part of him reveled in the destruction and wondered if that was how he would have felt witnessing the dawn of the universe.

  The weapon he had created would alter the course of the galaxy. It would crush the Rebel Alliance and put an end to its uprising in an instant. It would bring peace to the galaxy by eliminating any question of who wielded the ultimate power.

  To top it all off, Krennic got to bask in the look of astonishment that had washed over Grand Moff Tarkin’s face. This would establish which of them was most deserving of the Emperor’s favor, once and for all.

  Tarkin turned to Krennic, his head bowed for a moment. “I believe I owe you an apology, Director Krennic. Your work exceeds all expectations.”

  Krennic resisted the impulse to rub Tarkin’s nose in that statement. Instead, he savored it for as long as he could. Finally, all his hard work—all the horrible things he’d had to do along the way—had paid off. No one could refuse to acknowledge what he had accomplished.

  “And you’ll tell the Em
peror as much?” Krennic almost laughed at his own comment. Of course Tarkin would. How could he possibly deny the Death Star’s power?

  Tarkin gave him a grave nod. “I will tell him his patience with your misadventures has been rewarded with a weapon that will bring a swift end to the Rebellion.”

  Krennic couldn’t help gloating a bit at that. If there was a note of reservation in Tarkin’s voice, Krennic was too aglow with his success to hear it. “And that was only an inkling of the destructive potential.”

  They’d only used a single reactor for the test shot, and it had instantly wiped out Jedha City. Just imagine what the Death Star could do when operating at its full capacity.

  Then Tarkin dropped the bombshell that Krennic knew he should have seen coming. “I will tell him that I will be taking over control of the weapon I first spoke of years ago. Effective immediately.”

  Krennic’s face flushed. He couldn’t believe the man’s naked grab for power—and only moments after Krennic’s amazing triumph!

  “We are standing here amidst my achievement—not yours!”

  Tarkin gave Krennic the kind of rueful look a teacher might reserve for a promising but misguided student. “I’m afraid these recent security breaches have laid bare your inadequacies as a military director.”

  Krennic bristled at the accusation. He had thousands of people under his purview. How could he possibly ensure that none of them would betray the Empire? He’d done everything within his power to keep as tight a lid on the security around the Death Star as possible—up to and including permanently silencing many of the outside contractors who had worked on it.

  “The breaches have been filled!” Krennic protested. He stabbed a finger toward the destruction on the moon below. “Jedha has been silenced.”

  What more could anyone do than that?

  But Krennic had underestimated Tarkin. It had never been about Krennic or his so-called inadequacies. It had been about Tarkin’s carefully amassing as much power for himself as possible. He didn’t care what an amazing job Krennic had done. He’d only been waiting for him to prove the Death Star was a success.

  He was going to take it from him either way.

  “You think this pilot acted alone?” Tarkin chuckled, making sure to rub it in. “He was dispatched from the installation on Eadu. Galen Erso’s facility.”

  It wasn’t enough for Tarkin to strip Krennic of his triumph. He wanted to make sure it hurt, too.

  Krennic wasn’t about to let Tarkin get away with this. If Eadu was the source of his troubles, then he would go there and pull them out by the roots. Nothing would escape his scrutiny or his wrath.

  Nothing would keep him from triumph. Not Tarkin, and certainly not any traitors.

  “We’ll see about this,” he said as he stormed off the overbridge of what he still thought of—and would always think of—as his Death Star.

  THE MOMENT they were clear into hyperspace and he knew they were no longer in immediate danger, Cassian sent a coded message to General Draven in the Rebellion’s command center on Yavin 4. The Alliance needed to know immediately what had happened, and Cassian needed guidance on what his next step should be.

  He wrote: Weapon confirmed. Jedha destroyed. Mission target located on Eadu. Please advise.

  Cassian took great care to make sure no one else saw him sending the message. They wouldn’t have been able to read the code anyway, but the fact he was using a code of any kind might send the wrong signals to the others on the U-wing.

  Especially Jyn.

  Cassian didn’t want to have to assassinate Jyn’s father. In an ideal galaxy, they’d do exactly what the council had explained to Jyn when they’d proposed the mission: find Galen Erso and bring him back alive.

  With the fate of the galaxy at stake, though, Cassian understood why General Draven didn’t feel like he had the luxury of taking any chances with Galen. The destruction of Jedha City had put a fine point on that.

  He turned in his seat to glance at the others. The destruction of Jedha City had traumatized each of them in their own way. Bodhi was fighting the shakes and failing badly. Jyn sat there like a rock.

  Baze just scowled like he’d always expected this sort of horror to be visited on his homeworld. Chirrut kept shaking his head back and forth like he couldn’t believe it.

  “Baze, tell me,” Chirrut said. “All of it? The whole city?”

  Unlike the rest of them, the blind monk hadn’t watched the Death Star blast Jedha City to pieces. No one who had seen that could doubt there was nothing of the Holy City left, but the man needed his friend to confirm it for him.

  “Tell me,” he said again.

  Baze didn’t say anything to soften the blow. He simply replied, “All of it.”

  The response from General Draven came soon enough. Once Cassian decoded it, it read: Orders still stand. Proceed with haste, and keep to the plan.

  Cassian understood what that meant. He was to kill Galen Erso while he still had the chance.

  He wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment any longer. After all, if the Death Star was already up and running, what good would killing Galen do? He would probably be more valuable to them alive.

  But Cassian had his orders. He turned to K-2SO and said, “Set course for Eadu.”

  That got Jyn’s attention. “Is that where my father is?”

  Cassian nodded. “I think so.”

  He braced himself for a slew of uncomfortable questions. He’d spent much of his adult life as a spy. He was used to lying to people he didn’t care about at all. He found it a challenge to keep quiet with Jyn about something so big as his orders to murder her father.

  Before she could open her mouth again, the Imperial cargo pilot perked up and spoke to her. “You’re Galen’s daughter?”

  She turned in her seat to peer at him. “You know him?”

  Bodhi gave her a nervous nod and spoke too fast, like he couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. “He said I could get right by myself. He said I could make it right if I was brave enough. And listened to what was in my heart. Do something about it.”

  He frowned deeply at the memory of what had just happened to Jedha City. “Guess it was too late.”

  Jyn shook her head. “It wasn’t too late.”

  Baze snorted at that. He and Chirrut had lost just about everyone they knew. “Seems pretty late to me.”

  Jyn gave the soldier an emphatic shake of her head. “No,” she said. “We can beat the people who did this. We can stop them.”

  That was the most hopeful thing Cassian had ever heard from her mouth. Actually, the most hopeful thing he’d heard in a long time. He and everyone else in the starship gave her their full attention.

  “My father’s message. I’ve seen it. They call it the Death Star, but they have no idea…There’s a way to defeat it.”

  She focused on Cassian now, and he had to fight the urge to squirm beneath her glare.

  “You’re wrong about my father.”

  Did she suspect what his true orders were? He’d been careful not to let anything slip, but she clearly had suspicions. Would that change how he handled it?

  “He did build it,” Cassian pointed out.

  “Because he knew they’d do it without him.” The message had affected her, Cassian saw. Until now, she’d been ambivalent about the Empire and the Rebellion, only along for the ride because she had no choice. Whatever her father had said to her had sparked a fire in her eyes.

  “My father made a choice,” she said. “He sacrificed himself for the Rebellion. He’s rigged a trap inside the weapon.”

  She turned to Bodhi. “That’s why he sent you. To bring that message.”

  “Where is it?” Cassian said. “Where’s the message?”

  Jyn hesitated, and Cassian knew she didn’t have the right answer for him. Not the one he
needed.

  “It was a hologram.”

  That was beside the point. He wanted to see the message himself. To look the man in the eye and evaluate his character.

  On top of that, he needed to analyze it. Who knew what kinds of secrets Galen might have slipped into his recording? Things that Jyn couldn’t possibly have known about?

  “You have that message, right?”

  Jyn’s face fell. “Everything happened so fast. But I’ve just seen it!”

  Cassian sympathized with her. He was the one who’d dragged her out of Saw’s headquarters. From the projector where she’d been watching the hologram, he now realized.

  He turned to Bodhi. “Did you see it?”

  The Imperial defector shook his head like he was terrified of disappointing anyone. At least Cassian knew he was telling the truth.

  “You don’t believe me,” Jyn said, the fact dawning on her.

  Cassian frowned hard. “I’m not the one you’ve got to convince.”

  “I believe her,” Chirrut said.

  “That’s good to know,” Cassian said, not caring if the monk heard the sarcasm in his voice.

  “What kind of trap?” Baze asked Jyn. “You said your father made a trap.”

  “The reactor.” Jyn seemed relieved to be able to talk about the message with anyone besides Cassian. “He’s placed a weakness there. He’s been hiding it for years. He said if you can blow the reactor—the module—the whole system goes down.”

  Having spilled all that, she turned back to Cassian. “You need to send word to the Alliance.”

  “I’ve done that.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. She knew he couldn’t have relayed the latest information that fast.

  “They have to know there’s a way to destroy this thing! They have to go to Scarif and get the plans.”

  Cassian shook his head. “I can’t risk sending that. We’re in the heart of Imperial territory.”

  It may have sounded like a lie to her, but he was telling the truth. He didn’t trust the Rebellion’s coding system. It was fine for sending oblique messages like he and Draven had traded, but when it came to something that had to be specific, he wouldn’t dare use it.