Star Wars: Guardians of the Whills (Star Wars: Rogue One) Read online

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  ISBN 978-1-4847-8684-0

  Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com .

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  To Eric,

  Who is more Baze than he knows.

  That which surrounds us, binds us.

  In our connection to one, all is connected.

  This is the truth of the Force, no more, no less:

  Life binds the living.

  That which rises must fall, and that which falls must rise.

  From the first breath of the infant

  To the last breath of the aged,

  We are one, together.

  —Kiru Hali, Sage of Uhnuhakka

  From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,

  Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills

  “CHIRRUT ÎMWE,” Silvanie Phest said. “We require the assistance of a Guardian.”

  Chirrut Îmwe dropped his chin against his chest and smiled, but said nothing. Silvanie Phest’s voice was a comfort to him, a reminder of better days, and hearing her always gave him pleasure. She was an Anomid, one of a handful she had led from their homeworld of Yablari to Jedha. Anomids had no vocal chords, communicating with one another through a sophisticated and terribly subtle combination of hand and body language that, even were Chirrut not blind, he would never have been able to follow. Outside of the confines of her colony, Silvanie therefore employed a vocoder to communicate, and either through accident or intent the programming on the device had given her voice a delicate and subtle harmonic singsong. Even among the din of NiJedha, Chirrut found her voice soothing. There had been a time when that modulated voice had risen so beautifully in her devotions that every Guardian at the Temple of the Kyber would pause to hear it whenever she sang her prayers.

  Then the Empire came to Jedha. The Imperials stripped the Temple of its artifacts, of its history. They barred the doors and posted stormtroopers around the perimeter, forbidding entrance if not forbidding devotion. The Disciples of the Whills who had worshipped so diligently for so long had been cast out, and the Guardians who had watched over them with the same vigilance alongside them. Now, as far as Chirrut knew, all that remained of those who had tended the Temple of the Kyber in NiJedha—in the Holy City—were a paltry handful of Disciples of whom Silvanie Phest was one, and two Guardians of the Whills with nothing left to guard and who were too stubborn to abandon their home.

  Or, if you were to listen to Baze Malbus tell it, one blind Guardian and his long-suffering friend.

  Silvanie Phest no longer sang, and Chirrut Îmwe missed that.

  Chirrut tilted his head slightly, as much to hear her better as to let Silvanie know he was listening. He turned the smooth alms bowl in his hands, felt the shift of money sliding along its bottom, heard the music of different currencies colliding: Imperial credits and Old Jedha knots and who knew what else. He rarely collected much, but this didn’t bother him. Collecting charity was the by-product, not the intent. It was the excuse, and it placed him below the stormtroopers’ notice. He sat, most days, to listen, and to learn, and to try—as he had for so long, now—to feel the living Force moving around him.

  “At the Temple of the Kyber,” Silvanie said. “Along the Old Shadows. There is a man. He will not leave. He is frightening the devoted.”

  “The Force is all,” Chirrut said. “The Force accepts all.”

  “This man does not come to worship, Guardian Chirrut Îmwe.” Silvanie’s voice shifted, a melodic half-tone descent that filled her words with unspoken concern, unspoken sorrow. “He brings danger. We fear he will bring violence. We fear he will bring stormtroopers. There are still many who make the pilgrimage, and those of us who are left wish to aid them as best we can. We fear this man will bring death.”

  “Who is this man?” Chirrut asked.

  “He says he is a Jedi,” Silvanie said.

  Chirrut lifted his chin. Past his left shoulder, he felt Baze Malbus rouse himself from where the big man had been dozing in a precious pocket of warm sunlight.

  “No,” Baze said.

  The word was, in so many ways, the perfect embodiment of who Baze Malbus had become, as blunt and as hard as the man himself. No was the word that seemed to define Baze Malbus these days, all the more so since the Imperial occupation had begun. No , and in that word Baze Malbus was saying many things; no, he would not accept this, whatever this might be, from Imperial rule to the existence of a Jedi in the Holy City to the suffering the Empire had inflicted upon all those around them. No , ultimately—and to Chirrut’s profound sadness—to a faith in the Force.

  “He says the Force is with him,” Silvanie said. Chirrut heard her voice shifting slightly, could almost see her turning her head from him to Baze and back as she spoke. “Please, Guardians—”

  “Guardian,” Baze said. “One. Him.”

  Chirrut’s smile turned to a grin as he felt Baze jerk a thumb in his direction.

  Silvanie continued. “We can offer so little to those who come, and this man would threaten even that. And if the stormtroopers hear what he is saying, if they come, it will be the excuse they seek, they will accuse us—”

  Chirrut rose all at once, tilting the contents of the alms bowl into one palm, then tucking the bowl itself away within his robes with the other. He reached out, found Silvanie’s six-fingered hand with a touch, turned his palm to empty what money he had gathered into hers.

  “For food and water,” he said. He reached back for his walking stick. “We will come.”

  “I won’t,” Baze lied.

  Chirrut grinned.

  Life in the Holy City had never been easy for any of its inhabitants, but it had not always been cruel. There had always been those who suffered deprivation and hardship, there had always been those who sought to abuse their strength over others and to exploit weakness. There had always been illness, and those who were hungry, and those who went without.

  But there, too, had been peace, and generosity, and comfort, and warmth. There had been families bound by love, and honest beings who did honest work. There had been the respect of sentients for one another, all bound by the understanding that they lived their days in a rare and precious place in the galaxy, a place that meant so much to so many. There had been the devoted attendants of countless faiths, all dedicated to the veneration of the Force in their own ways. From the Brotherhood of the Beatific Countenance to the Phirmists to the Weldsingers of Grace to the followers of the Central Isopter and more, and of which the Disciples of the Whills were but one, though perhaps one of the most prominent due to their place in the Temple of the Kyber.

  There had been, as Chirrut perceived it, a balance.

  The Empire had ruptured that. It took, and claimed to
bring in exchange “order.” In truth, Chirrut and Baze both understood this was a lie; the Empire returned nothing. The imbalance rippled in every conceivable way. Where once there had been a steady stream of pilgrims and tourists, now there was barely a trickle. Where once the kyber crystal mines had made modest profit for those who worked them, now the Empire tore open gashes in the surface of Jedha, greedy for more and more. This, in turn, brought more pollution and filth into the atmosphere. Food and clean water, never abundant but always adequate, became scarce, and in some cases toxic. Illness and injuries became commonplace. Medicine and healers diminished.

  People grew desperate, and the stormtroopers answered that desperation with violence. Violence was returned in kind. Scattered insurgencies sprang to life, unaffiliated and loosely guided, striking back at the Empire out of anger. The constant sound of the cargo transports overhead was joined by the grind and hum of armored personnel carriers, of the clatter of armor, of the sound of weapons being readied, being aimed, being fired. Homes were destroyed, and the refugees left in their wake did their best to flee, and if they could not flee, simply to survive.

  The suffering was everywhere; less for some, greater for others, but touching in some way, in some fashion, all who lived on Jedha.

  It made Baze, who had nursed an anger all his own for so long, even angrier.

  It just made Chirrut sad, and all the more determined to keep his faith in the Force and to find a way to ease the suffering of those around him.

  So he followed Silvanie Phest, and Baze Malbus followed him, as Chirrut had known he would.

  The echo-box at his waist clicked away softly, occasionally vibrating, warning him of potential obstructions or hazards in his path. He had worn some manner of the device for so many years now that its constant feedback was almost entirely internalized, to the point that Chirrut was frequently unconscious of what information it was feeding him as opposed to what sensory information he was collecting himself. He could hear Silvanie’s long-legged stride, the rustle of her robes, amid the noise around them. He could find her scent, discern it even among the mixed odors floating around them. Another change the Imperials had brought—sanitation suffered as bathing went from a necessity to a luxury. Few people in the Holy City could manage to stay clean, and those who did were almost certainly Imperials. Sweat and dirt and smoke and filth permeated everything, and among them came another odor that Chirrut had not known since he was very young, and had almost forgotten.

  The scent of fear.

  It was pervasive. It mixed with the odor of frying food and nearly rotten vegetables sold in market-vendor stalls. It threaded into the smoke of the endless mining, and it rose from the refugees desperate for a way off the moon, and from the stormtroopers encased in their armor who brandished their authority with a coward’s bravado. It was everywhere, from everyone.

  Despite his best intentions, it even, sometimes, was a scent that Chirrut caught from himself.

  But never from Baze.

  Silvanie led them along the long-ago-memorized path from the southern-mesa edge of the city, through the Old Market and into the New Market, past the Khubai Shanty and around the Dome of Deliverance, then into the maze of narrow streets called the Blade. Closer and closer with every step to the Temple of the Kyber, where Chirrut had spent so many days and weeks and months and years, and now did no longer. He could hear stormtroopers more frequently as they approached, hear the soft hiss-click of their comms, feel the subsonic rumble of their vehicles on patrol, their numbers growing the closer they came to the ancient center of worship.

  Once, Chirrut had heard a pilgrim asking a Disciple just how old the temple truly was.

  “How old is the Force?” the Disciple, Kozem Pel, had answered.

  Chirrut Îmwe thought that was a very appropriate answer.

  It was a cold day, but it was almost always a cold day on Jedha, and Chirrut felt the chill grow as they walked. His sense of place, of direction, of movement, told him that they had turned along the Old Shadows, the long outer wall of the Temple of the Kyber that was forever condemned to remain shielded from sunlight. This, too, had meaning. For the light to exist, there must be the dark. For the Force, there must be balance.

  Now he could hear several things at once. A murmur of voices, a mixture of languages, and amid them Basic, the common galactic tongue. He heard Silvanie’s pace falter, then come to a stop. He heard the voice of Angber Trel, another of the Disciples who like Silvanie had remained. He heard Baze behind him, a grunt of annoyance.

  “That,” Baze said in Chirrut’s ear, “is no Jedi.”

  Chirrut stood still, moved his walking stick from his right hand to his left, passed it back, then took hold firmly at the top, feeling the gentle hum of the containment lamp. He wrapped his fingers around the smooth uneti wood of the shaft.

  “Please, good sir.” This was Trel. “Not here, I implore you. You must stop.”

  “I will not,” a man said. “I cannot! Silence will condemn us!”

  “If the stormtroopers hear you, they will—”

  “Let them come! I will protect you all! The Force is with me!”

  Baze grunted again, unamused.

  Staff in his hands, Chirrut lifted his chin, inhaling through his nose, letting his body relax. He felt the street beneath his boots and the staff resting upon it, and he felt the weight of his robes and the touch of the cold air on his skin, on his face, on the backs of his hands. He exhaled, letting himself settle, feeling himself connected to the world around him.

  “I am one with the Force,” he said, to himself and to the universe at once.

  Then he stretched out with his feelings.

  Chirrut Îmwe was not a Jedi. He was not, by any definition, a Force user . But what he could do, what he had spent years upon years striving for the enlightenment to do, was—sometimes—feel the Force around him. Truly, genuinely feel it, if only for a moment, if only tenuously, like holding his palm up to catch the desert sand that blew into the city at dawn and at dusk. Be, however fleetingly, one with the Force.

  Sometimes it was as effortless as breathing. Sometimes it was as hard as living. And sometimes he could feel the Force, truly feel it, moving around him, connecting him to the world and the world to him, the warmth of the light and the chill of the dark, and stretching out further and further, and he could almost see —

  Then it would slip away, that sand between his fingers again, and he would be left as he had been before. But not entirely. As if a memory lingered. As if the echo-box he wore had been somehow tuned, had opened his senses that much further.

  This was, in no small part, why Baze’s lack of faith caused Chirrut such pain, though Chirrut did his best to conceal this from his friend. Because Baze had lost his faith in something that was beyond Chirrut’s ability to even begin to describe, but which Chirrut knew to be manifestly true.

  Chirrut stretched out with his feelings, and for a moment it was there again, the elegant interconnectedness, the ineffable bonds among everyone and everything. Their places in space and in time, their lives, their energy. The vibrant cluster of pilgrims and the presence of Silvanie and Angber Trel and the reassurance of Baze, and amid it all, one other, no stronger or weaker than the rest, but occluded, as if moving through shadow or cloud.

  He exhaled, lowered his head and his voice with it.

  “No,” he told Baze. “He is no Jedi.”

  “That’s what I said. I don’t need to be one with the Force to know that.”

  Chirrut heard—or felt, he couldn’t quite be certain—the man turn to them, lifting his voice.

  “Guardian! Stand with me! We will make the Imperials pay!”

  “He means you,” Baze said.

  “He could mean you,” Chirrut said.

  “No,” Baze said. “He really couldn’t.”

  The man was coming closer. Chirrut tried to locate him more precisely, to focus upon him, and for an instant again it was as if he could feel this stranger, and a
gain there was the sensation that his form was somehow disrupted. Not so much concealed as poorly defined.

  “Help me,” the man said, and he was close enough now that he could lower his voice, urgency in his words. “Stand with me, Guardian.”

  Baze started to move, but Chirrut shook his head slightly, and that was enough, and he felt Baze relax again. Chirrut held out one hand, and the man took it, and Chirrut could feel the warmth of his skin, the texture of tiny scales on his palm, between his fingers. He couldn’t determine his species, but that was a matter of idle curiosity only. It didn’t matter to the Force, and it therefore didn’t matter to Chirrut.

  “What is your name, brother?” Chirrut asked.

  There was a hesitation. Chirrut felt the man’s grip tighten ever so slightly, just for an instant.

  “Wernad,” the man said.

  Chirrut raised his other hand, let his staff rest against his hip, opened his fingers. He felt the man’s grip in his hand tremble again, and then felt the warmth of the man’s face as he moved into Chirrut’s open palm. He felt the man’s muzzle, the scales again, smooth and warm; a crease along one jaw, harder, ragged. A scar. He drew a breath through his nose, smelled the man’s scent, the city’s dust, all the scents of Jedha around him, even the smell of the mines.

  “You are angry,” Chirrut said. “They hurt you.”

  The man, Wernad, turned his face against Chirrut’s palm, then lifted it free.

  “They…they have hurt all of us.”

  “And you would hurt them in return.”

  “We must fight them.”

  Chirrut felt Baze shift his stance slightly.

  “You claim to be what you are not,” Chirrut said. “And you would bring harm by doing so.”

  Wernad’s hand in his tightened again, then pulled free. Chirrut straightened, one hand returning to his staff.

  “There can be no peace with them,” Wernad said, his voice dropping to a hiss. “There can be no tolerance.”

  “You put the innocent in danger. Your pain blinds you to this.”