Rogue One Junior Novel Page 8

  Jyn shook her head again and again, but it didn’t seem to want to start working. She could barely tell which way was up or down.

  She spotted Krennic staggering up the ramp into his shuttle. He paused there for a moment, as if he wanted to go back and take on the rebel squadron himself. One of his officers grabbed him again and insisted he get on the ship.

  “Director! We have to evacuate!”

  Krennic glanced back toward Jyn’s father and saw that he lay there unmoving. Nodding at the officer’s suggestion, he turned and hustled onto the shuttle. The ramp closed behind him.

  Jyn wanted to call out to her father again, but she could see he wouldn’t answer her. Somehow, she hoped that he was still alive.

  She struggled to her feet and steadied herself to make her way toward her father. Just as she started moving, though, the wash from Krennic’s rising shuttle hit her hard.

  It nearly swept her from the platform. She managed to stop herself at the last instant, and as the pressure faded, she clawed back toward where Galen lay sprawled across what was left of the platform.

  He was barely alive and fading fast. She couldn’t believe she’d come all this way, fought through so many years on her own, only to find him like this, in his dying moments.

  She cradled him in her arms the best she could, but he showed no recognition. The light in his eyes would soon go out.

  “Papa,” she said. “It’s Jyn.”

  “Jyn?” He looked up at her, trying to recognize her.

  It had been so long. She’d been through so much.

  She nodded down at him, tears welling in her eyes. A softness washed over his face then, and he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Stardust…” he said. “It must be destroyed….”

  “I know,” she said, trying to comfort him. “I’ve seen your message.”

  He tried to say something else—anything else—but he couldn’t manage it. Instead, he reached up to brush the hair from her face and caress her cheek. Then his strength left him entirely, and he was gone.

  Jyn stared at him, tears streaming down her face. Even though they hadn’t seen each other in years, he’d loomed so large in her life, every day. She couldn’t believe he was actually dead.

  “Papa?” she said. “No, no! Papa…Papa! Come on!”

  A stormtrooper emerged from the smoke then and trained his rifle on Jyn. She saw him, but she knew there was nothing she could do to stop him. She couldn’t reach her blaster—not in time.

  She would die there right next to her father. The fact that it was the last thing he would have wanted made the whole situation that much worse.

  A shot lanced out from another direction, though, and the blast caught the stormtrooper in the chest. As the stormtrooper fell, Jyn glanced around to see who could have possibly saved her.

  Cassian charged down the platform then, straight toward her, his blaster still in his hand. “Jyn,” he said as he tried to guide her away from Galen’s body. “We gotta go. Come on.”

  She looked down at her father, and it hurt so much. “I can’t leave him.”

  Cassian leaned in and spoke to her in short but caring words. “Listen to me. He’s gone. There’s nothing you can do. Come on.”

  Much as she hated it, she knew he was right. She extended her hand toward him. “Help me.”

  He hauled her to her feet and took off running back the way he’d come. She was still hurting, but she knew she had to keep up with him. Otherwise, the stormtroopers would kill them both.

  “Come on!” he shouted as he dragged her along. “Move!”

  JUST BECAUSE Jyn and Cassian had made it off the landing platform didn’t mean they were safe. As they raced away, a squad of stormtroopers spotted them and gave chase.

  More blaster fire hailed down from above, taking down one stormtrooper after another. Jyn glanced up and spotted Baze standing on a ridge above them, grim and furious as he blasted away.

  “Come on!” Cassian shouted as Jyn stole one last glance at her father. “Come on!”

  Cassian led the way, shooting at more stormtroopers as they went, and Jyn followed him up a twisting path that led through a narrow canyon. Blaster fire chased them, knocking rubble from the canyon walls, which at least kept the stormtroopers from getting a clear shot.

  As they rounded a turn and came into a wider area, Baze and Chirrut charged up to meet them. For a moment, Jyn was thrilled that all four of them had managed to meet up, but she realized that their U-wing was still out of commission. The best they could hope for was to find Bodhi and K-2SO holed up there and make a last stand until the stormtroopers and TIE fighters overwhelmed them.

  Jyn flinched as she heard the roar of a ship approaching from the other side of the ridge. Was it a Y-wing come to blast them to pieces, thinking they were Imperials on the run? Or would it be a TIE fighter taking them down as rebel intruders?

  Jyn thought she had her answer when the ship crested the ridge and she saw it was an Imperial cargo shuttle. Her breath caught in her chest as she waited for it to open fire on her and the others.

  It blasted away, but the shots all went over her head, taking out the stormtroopers chasing them instead.

  Peering through the viewport, Jyn spotted Bodhi at the cargo shuttle’s controls, with K-2SO beside him as his copilot. She felt tempted to cheer with relief, but she stopped herself for fear of drawing any other stormtroopers in their direction.

  The cargo shuttle hauled up close and came to a hover right next to them. A ramp lowered, and Jyn heard Bodhi shouting at them. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

  Jyn and Cassian raced aboard the ship, and Bodhi was there to greet them and help them inside. Eager to leave, K-2SO started to take off, but Cassian ordered him to stop long enough for Chirrut and Baze to get on board, too.

  Once everyone was safely on the ship, Bodhi threw the switch to raise the ramp and charged back toward the cockpit. “Kay-Tu! All aboard. Let’s go!”

  “Copy you,” the droid said. “Launching and away.”

  Bodhi and K-2SO kept the cargo shuttle low to avoid Imperial attention. They weaved their way through the canyons, moving away from the secret base in which Jyn’s father had worked. Where his dead body now lay.

  An explosion rocked the base behind them, sending a fireball up into the stormy night. The rebel squadron’s attack had done its job.

  Bodhi flipped a series of switches on the ship’s dashboard, giving instructions to K-2SO as he went. “Ion thrusters low until we’ve cleared the storm.”

  Jyn’s head was still spinning from the torpedo blast that had killed her father. As she sat there in the bay and managed to catch her breath, she began to realize what had just happened, and she was not happy about it. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more furious she got.

  “You lied to me.”

  All eyes in the ship turned toward her, and they could all see the righteous anger welling up in her, about to explode. Most of them were confused. One person was not.

  Cassian met Jyn’s gaze straight on. He’d been waiting for her to figure it out, and now he thought he could weather her storm.

  “You’re in shock,” he said, dismissing her outrage.

  “You went up there to kill my father.”

  It had to be true. The way he’d gone off to scout the area, refusing to let her go along. The way the rebel squadron had come in and bombed the base while her father stood there on the landing platform. They thought he’d failed at his job, and they were determined to take care of it for him.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He wouldn’t look her directly in the eye.

  “Deny it,” she dared him. He wasn’t answering her accusations, just deflecting them. She wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

  “You’re in shock and looking for someplace to pu
t it. I’ve seen it before.”

  Jyn worked her jaw. “I bet you have.” How many people had he killed? All in the name of his beloved Rebel Alliance? The so-called greater good?

  She looked to the others. K-2SO kept focused on flying the ship, but Bodhi had turned around. She could see in his eyes that he knew she was right.

  Baze saw it, too. Even blind Chirrut knew.

  “They know. You lied to me about why we came here, and you lied about why you went up alone.”

  Cassian scowled. At that moment, he gave up pretending he hadn’t been there to kill Galen. He switched to defending himself instead.

  “I had every chance to pull the trigger,” he said. “But did I?” He turned to the others, hoping they would rally to his side. “Did I?”

  They remained unmoved. Jyn lit into him again.

  “You might as well have. My father was living proof, and you put him at risk! Those were Alliance bombs that killed him!”

  “I had orders!” Cassian said, as if that explained everything. “Orders that I disobeyed! But you wouldn’t understand that.”

  Jyn scoffed at him. “Orders? When you know they’re wrong? You might as well be a stormtrooper.”

  “What do you know?”

  If Cassian had been unrepentant before, he was furious now. He rounded on her, ready to have this fight out once and for all.

  “We don’t all have the luxury of deciding where and when we want to care about something. Suddenly the Rebellion is real for you? Some of us live it!

  “I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old! You’re not the only one who lost everything. Some of us just decided to do something about it!”

  There it was: the real bone of contention between them. He’d lost everything as a child, too, but he’d dedicated his life to the Rebellion because of it.

  She’d been a part of that at one point, back when she was with Saw, but after the man had abandoned her, she’d cut the Rebellion out of her life. And where had that gotten her?

  Right back there, fighting against the Empire anyway.

  “You can’t talk your way around this,” she said to him in a hard, cool voice. She hated that he had a point.

  He wasn’t done with her yet. “I don’t have to!” he shouted.

  In the face of that indignation, Jyn saw that there was at least some part of him that was right. He hadn’t killed her father. And he’d come back to save her rather than let her die there next to him.

  She wasn’t sure she could handle losing her father and being wrong about Cassian, too. She turned away from him, still reeling from the emotions swirling through her.

  Cassian steamed at her for a moment and then turned to K-2SO and began barking orders. “Yavin 4! Make sure they know we’re coming in with a stolen ship.”

  Then he rounded on the rest of them, daring them to take him on. “Anybody else?”

  No one replied. Not Bodhi, not Chirrut, not Baze.

  Not even Jyn.

  IN A WAY, Krennic thought, the rebels had done him a favor. He’d already planned to shut down the facility on Eadu, and they’d done an admirable job of that. In fact, they’d gone and killed everyone who could have revealed any of the Death Star’s secrets to them.

  Of course, the fact that the rebels knew about Eadu in the first place didn’t reflect well on Krennic, he knew. Tarkin surely wouldn’t see it favorably, and Krennic’s worst fears had been confirmed as he was headed back to the Death Star.

  That’s when he’d received a summons from the Emperor’s right hand, Darth Vader himself.

  That was never a good thing.

  Krennic had met Vader before, and the Sith Lord had rankled him. Krennic considered himself a man of science, and because of that he instantly dismissed Vader’s entire religion, based as it was on the so-called Force and other superstitions.

  That didn’t please Vader, of course, and since Vader had the Emperor’s ear, it didn’t help Krennic much, either. So at the very least, Krennic always tried to show Vader respect. That wasn’t hard, because—ridiculous religion or not—Lord Vader was clearly a dangerous man.

  Vader’s summons had instructed Krennic to go to his residence on Mustafar, a planet nearly consumed by volcanic activity. Krennic could never understand why Vader would choose to live in such a horrible place—especially given a fact Krennic had discovered while snooping through Imperial Intelligence files for information about the Sith Lord. Mustafar was the planet on which Vader had been so horribly injured decades before.

  Those injuries required him to wear that horrible respirator just so he could breathe. It made terrible noises every time what was left of the man inhaled and exhaled. Hoooo-perrrr. Hoooo-perrrr.

  It sounded like he was just this side of the grave and meant to suck everyone else down with him. When Krennic was in Vader’s presence, it took everything he had to ignore it.

  When Krennic arrived on Mustafar, he’d ordered his pilot to land next to Vader’s monolith, the tall black tower the Sith Lord called home. He’d left his death troopers inside the shuttle and entered the forbidding place alone.

  Vader’s aide had met him at the door and led him inside to a dim and stifling waiting room that felt something like the inside of an oven. Then Krennic had been forced to wait for Lord Vader like some junior official who had nothing better to do with his time.

  This always irritated Krennic, but he didn’t see what he could do. Given his precarious position with the Emperor at the moment—mostly due to Tarkin’s interference—he couldn’t afford to ignore a summons from Vader. It would be seen as a rebuke to the Emperor himself, and that was the absolute last thing Krennic wanted.

  So he waited.

  Eventually, a door opened on the far end of the meeting chamber, lighting up the darkened room. Krennic heard the man before he saw him. Hoooo-perrrr. Hoooo-perrrr.

  Then Darth Vader came through that open door, casting his long shadow across the room. Krennic fought what he felt was the natural urge to turn and run.

  “Director Krennic,” Vader said in a deep and resonant voice, through the ebony mask that concealed all his features. He did not sound pleased.

  Krennic reminded himself not to stutter. “Lord Vader.”

  “You seem unsettled.”

  Krennic grimaced at that. Of course he was “unsettled.” He was practically beside himself with panic. But he couldn’t reveal that to Vader.

  “No,” he said. “Just pressed for time. There’s a great many things to attend to.”

  “My apologies.” Vader’s tone betrayed no sense of actual regret. “You do have a great many things to explain.”

  Krennic stiffened his spine. “I’ve delivered the weapon the Emperor requested. I deserve an audience to make sure he understands its remarkable potential.”

  He only wanted to make the Emperor see how valuable the Death Star could be—and by extension, how valuable he could be. With its power, and the will to use it, they could eliminate war forever and bring eternal peace to the galaxy. The Empire would be made eternal.

  But Vader wasn’t convinced.

  “Its power to create problems has certainly been confirmed. A city destroyed. An Imperial facility openly attacked.”

  That wasn’t Krennic’s fault. Everything had been going so well.

  “It was Governor Tarkin that suggested the test.”

  Krennic’s attempt to deflect the blame didn’t work on Vader. “You were not summoned here to grovel, Director Krennic.”

  He was glad to hear that, but if not that, then what? To be executed?

  “No, I—”

  “There is no Death Star,” Vader pronounced. “We’re informing the Senate that Jedha was destroyed in a mining disaster.”

  Krennic knew that claim wouldn’t hold up to a close inspection, but the Empire could probably ensur
e no one ever managed such an investigation. What choice did he have but to agree?

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Vader turned to leave. “I expect you to not rest until you can assure the Emperor that Erso has not compromised this weapon.”

  It was all Krennic could do not to breathe a loud sigh of relief. “So I’m…I’m—I’m still in command.”

  Vader didn’t correct him on that point, and that emboldened Krennic to push further.

  “You’ll speak to the Emperor about—”

  Krennic’s voice failed him as an invisible hand seemed to wrap around his throat and begin to cut off his air. He struggled against it, unsure of what to do, since there were no fingers to pry from his neck.

  He looked at Vader and saw the man holding a hand toward him, pinching the air, and he knew what was happening. The Sith Lord’s faith in his ancient religion suddenly didn’t seem so ridiculous anymore.

  Krennic wondered if this was it for him. Had Vader only been playing with him before his execution?

  “Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Director.”

  Then Darth Vader lowered his hand, and as suddenly as it had begun, the pressure on Krennic’s throat disappeared. He collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, thankful to still be breathing at all.

  AFTER HAVING survived being bombed by rebel forces on Eadu, Jyn couldn’t believe she had to put up with listening to the Alliance high council debate whether or not they should give up and let the Empire rule over the galaxy forever.

  “We have no recourse but to surrender,” said Senator Pamlo of Taris. That set a lot of people talking at once, both for and against the proposal.

  Jyn didn’t blame people for being scared. She’d seen Jedha be destroyed, after all. She knew exactly how much of a threat the Death Star was.

  But to give in immediately, without even a fight? She’d be happy to hold them all responsible for that. Unfortunately, no one was about to give Jyn a vote in the matter.

  Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan stood up to protest. “Are we really talking about disbanding something that we’ve worked so hard to create?”