Star Wars: Guardians of the Whills (Star Wars: Rogue One) Page 8
“No,” said Baze. “I am going to talk to Gerrera himself.”
Those who set a course and cannot adjust their heading
will break upon the rocks as surely
as those who sail heedless of direction.
We cannot change the direction of the wind.
Nor can we afford to be blown whichever way it so chooses.
We act; we decide; and we are acted upon.
So it is in all things that I wish to honor those
who have come before.
So it is in all things that I wish to prepare the way
for those who shall come after.
And I remind myself:
in the Force, there is no end, but only beginnings.
—Oz Ladnod, Poet to the Royal Court of Onderon
From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,
Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills
THEY MET IN THE SHADOW of the Three Faces, as they had every time before. Baze heard him coming before he saw him, the heavy stride. Baze had been sitting on a boulder, staring at the sky and the glowing dot that was the Star Destroyer, still parked high in orbit. He stood when he heard Gerrera coming.
“Good work today,” Gerrera said. “The Empire will feel it.”
Baze thought of what Chirrut had said earlier that night. “All of Jedha will feel it.”
“The Empire will do what they always do when they feel their control is slipping.” Gerrera motioned to the boulder Baze had been using as a seat, moved to another nearby, and settled himself carefully, wincing slightly as he sat. “They will take more freedom, and they will punish more people. The result is the same. More and more people will rise to fight alongside us.”
Baze had been waiting for long enough that his eyes had adjusted, and he was able to see Gerrera clearly despite the dark. They watched one another for several seconds without speaking, and Baze wondered how much of a reflection he was seeing. A vision of his future self, perhaps.
“I brought something,” Saw Gerrera said. “Share a drink with me, Baze Malbus?”
“I will drink anything you offer,” Baze said. “Except for Tarine tea.”
“It’s filthy stuff, isn’t it?”
“You can still get chav tea at some of the tapcafes, but for some reason every time I’m offered tea, it’s Tarine.”
“I was offering something stronger.” Gerrera reached back around his hip, unhooked a flask from his belt. He uncapped it, then offered it to Baze, who took it, sniffed, and sipped. Whatever it was stung his tongue and his throat, then opened into a blossom of warmth that sent the chill of the desert night fleeing. Baze returned the flask.
“Not Tarine.” Gerrera smiled.
“No. What is it?”
Gerrera took a drink himself, made a slight face. “Bahkahta . It’s an Onderon drink. I’ve had to learn how to brew it myself. This is not the best I’ve ever had, I admit. But my recipe is getting better.”
“Hard to get?”
“Harder for me. Onderon was my home.” He looked at the flask in his hand thoughtfully, then passed it back to Baze. “My home is gone.”
“Onderon remains.” Baze took another sip. The sting was softer this time, but the warmth more intense.
“The planet, yes. But our way of life is gone, our culture is gone, our beliefs are gone. That’s what the Empire does. We were a republic that celebrated our differences, thousands and thousands of worlds, peoples, lifestyles. Not anymore. There is one Empire. Either you are part of it, or you are destroyed.”
He took another drink from the flask.
“Think about it,” Gerrera continued. “Think about stormtroopers.”
“I try not to.”
“They’re meant to look the same, yes? Identical. Forget the variations in their duties or assignments. One looks like another. There’s a genius to it. I take your son, your daughter, I put them in the armor, do you dare rise up? Would you shoot your brother? Your mother? You cannot know who is beneath the armor. Faceless. Or, rather, the face of the Empire. Expressionless. Almost featureless. Yet ominous. Join, and you are just another anonymous citizen, but you belong. And if you do not, you must be eliminated.”
Gerrera offered the flask once more, and Baze took it. A piece of him wished that he had brought Chirrut to the meeting after all. He would have enjoyed the conversation, Baze thought. More, it would have allowed Chirrut an opportunity to learn more about Gerrera.
Baze took a swig, gestured with the flask at the desert around them. “This is hardly worth fighting over.”
“They want the kyber.”
“We didn’t know that when they first arrived. Many thought their occupation would not last, or would be token. Most believed they had come because of the temples. We thought, they have come to crush belief, because belief leads to hope, and hope can topple monsters. They will stay long enough to crush hope, but they do not understand that hope can be a very small thing. It doesn’t need much to survive. An occasional breath of air. A flicker of warmth. Hope can live in a vacuum.”
“You sound like your friend.”
“Only when he is not around.” Baze grinned.
Gerrera leaned forward, taking the offered flask back. He was looking at Baze with a new curiosity. “So you have hope, still?”
Baze shrugged, spread his hands on his thighs. They were big hands, and he had done a lot of harm with them, and sometimes he wondered if his hands would not have been better used for gentler work—what it would have been like to have been a painter or sculptor or baker.
“I do not know what I have anymore,” Baze said. “I have a home, and will fight for it. I have those I love, and I will fight for them. I see injustice, and will fight against it. I suppose these are the best reasons to fight.”
The lines in Gerrera’s face deepened, and his eyes drifted from Baze to a point past his shoulder, looking for something that perhaps wasn’t there, or perhaps looking into memory. Then he tilted his head back, and Baze thought he had grown short of breath, would reach for the respirator mask he wore on the heavy body armor that encased his torso, but Gerrera did not. Instead, he was gazing up at the stars overhead.
“I have lost so much, so much,” Saw Gerrera said softly. “I have given so much, so much, to this fight. My hope is not all it once was.”
He lowered his eyes back to Baze, rapped the knuckles of one fist against his chest.
“The Empire has hounded me across the galaxy. Planted spies within my cadre. They tried to assassinate me on Errimin, poisoned me with teccitin. I was sick for months. On Ghita there was a sniper who missed by centimeters. They sent an astromech droid laced with nanoexplosives, and it went off and killed four of my best people, and again I was wounded, but I survived. That time, Fortuna said to me, ‘You are lucky. The Force is with you.’”
Baze grunted.
“I admire your friend Chirrut greatly, you know that?” Gerrera said, and he saw Baze’s surprise and nodded, adding, “I do, I truly do.”
“Why?”
“Because faith requires hope. The one thing your friend does not lack is faith.”
“His faith has been tried.”
“So has yours.”
Baze said nothing.
Gerrera sighed, offered the flask a last time to Baze, who raised a hand to indicate he’d had enough. Gerrera took a last sip, then replaced it on his belt.
“You did not wish to meet to share a drink and talk of our struggles,” Gerrera said.
“No.”
“So?”
“The orphanage.”
“Is there a problem?”
“There are twenty-four children, now,” Baze said. “There will be more.”
“The result of the Empire’s cruelty.”
“Who made them orphans doesn’t matter to me right now. What matters is how we can help them.”
“I can try to arrange for more basic supplies, food and water, but we are already—”
“What, then?”
Baze told him what he was thinking, and Gerrera listened, frowning in concentration. When Baze had finished, Gerrera stared at him for the better part of a minute, considering, and then, finally, barked a sharp, short laugh.
“We can do that,” Saw Gerrera told him.
Those who would see all the galaxy burn,
But themselves,
And who would see all the tears shed,
But their own,
Diminish and diminish and diminish,
Unto nothing,
And from nothing,
To nothing,
Is no thing.
—Mete Janvaren of Mirial
From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,
Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills
THE NEXT DAY was a hard one for the Holy City.
It started as the sun was rising, a thunder that echoed from the desert floor and dropped from above all at once, and those who made it to their windows or were already outside looked up and froze in place, and stared. The Star Destroyer had broken orbit, had entered the atmosphere, and as they watched it came closer, and grew larger, and its shadow grew until it spread across the Holy City. The Star Destroyer descended, lower and lower, until some of those watching wondered if the massive vessel meant to simply crush them all.
Then it stopped, parking overhead, engines thrumming, and there was only that sound and nothing else, the Holy City holding its breath.
Then the skies began to scream with TIE fighters.
Now almost all of the Holy City was awake, and watching, staring at the display. It filled them with dread, and it filled them with fear, and that was, of course, precisely the point. As they watched, transport after transport dropped from the Star Destroyer’s hangar bay, banked sharply, and then dived straight for the city. It was a combat deployment maneuver, executed rapidly, a display of skill and discipline that served as a reminder of what, exactly, the Empire could do should it put its mind to it.
Some of the transports made for the established LZs or the spaceport. Several ignored them altogether, diving for the city itself, pulling up sharply mere meters above the ground, barely avoiding crashing into buildings and people. Their rear doors lowered and before they had locked into position, the stormtroopers were on their way out, their E-11s at their shoulders, shouting orders. They secured their landing sites with speed and efficiency. Citizens of Jedha were given one warning to keep their distance. After that, they were shot.
The initial deployment took seventeen and a half minutes, from the time the screaming of the TIEs announced the start of the operation until the last of the troop transports returned to the safety of the Star Destroyer overhead. When it was done, the stormtrooper presence in the Holy City had quadrupled, and with them had come another eight AT-STs, ten AT-DPs, and six newly modified TX-225 assault tanks. Rumors began flying almost immediately that similar deployments had been made at the head of each kyber mine. Someone claimed that another Star Destroyer was on its way to join the one parked overhead, that it was entering the system even now. Several people reported seeing, with their own eyes, two ships shot from the skies as they tried to lift off from the Holy City’s spaceport, even though each had previously secured the appropriate clearances.
This was only the first phase.
The stormtroopers moved through the city in their customary fire teams, four troopers to each team, but now with two teams working in tandem. The teams worked block to block, relentlessly, methodically. They stopped individuals at random, demanded documentation, conducted random searches and aggressive interrogations. Some of those detained were shown images from handheld holoprojectors, pictures of known or suspected insurgents or criminals. By noon, three of the more notorious criminal hotspots had been raided, resulting in firefights at two of them, with seven fatalities and three times as many injuries. Many of those suspected of being part of the insurgency were stunned outright, then placed in binders and loaded onto heavily armored Imperial Troop Transports, and the ITTs were then driven to the spaceport or the nearest landing zone, and the prisoners removed directly to the Star Destroyer overhead.
Then the partisans began to strike back.
The first firefights were minor, more skirmishes than protracted engagements, but they established the pattern. One or two of Gerrera’s fighters would open fire from concealed positions, exposing themselves for the least amount of time possible, then quickly retreat. Stormtroopers would respond, call for reinforcements—a tank, or an AT-ST or AT-DP. As they did, another pocket of partisans would attack in another part of the city, and while the Empire responded, yet another attack would follow.
Sometimes, the stormtroopers would respond to find the partisans had already withdrawn. Sometimes, the stormtroopers would respond to find the partisans lying in wait, attacking from all sides. Sometimes, the stormtroopers would respond to find the street had been booby-trapped, their support vehicles targeted.
Four blocks south of LZ-Dorn, early in the afternoon, there was an explosion that could be heard all across the city. An acrid plume of black smoke rose from the site, and within minutes came the sounds of blaster fire, and of smaller detonations. The TIEs screamed in from above once again, flew so low they seemed to skim over the buildings, narrowly avoiding smashing themselves to pieces against the domed rooftops of several of the older temples. Moments later, three X-wing fighters were spotted coming in from the east, white with black markings. Nobody had ever seen them before; nobody had the first idea where they’d come from. As they engaged the TIEs overhead, new rumors began to fly that these were Saw Gerrera’s pilots, that he had been holding them in reserve, that he had sent them in the Holy City’s hour of need.
The X-wings took the TIEs by surprise, shot two down within seconds. People cheered. Then the cheers died as quickly as they had risen as one person after another on the ground looked to the Star Destroyer to see TIE after TIE dropping from the hangar bay. One TIE, then another, and another, and another, and another, until the numerical superiority was so overwhelming the streets went silent. One of the X-wings was turned to a ball of flame and debris, careening away to disintegrate over the desert. A second was hit beneath its fuselage, port side. It went into an uncontrolled corkscrew that sheared its lower port S-foil clear off the fighter. The broken wing came crashing down near the Path of Judgments, smashing through the roofs of two of the homes there and killing one of the occupants. The fighter fought to right itself, its pilot somehow managing to crash just north of the Division Wall that separated part of the Old City from the New City, which was itself well over five thousand years old. Stormtroopers descended on the crash site immediately, but the pilot seemed to have escaped the landing. They began an immediate search.
The remaining X-wing, realizing what everyone on the ground already knew—that the situation had turned from heroic to suicidal—went full evasive and fled toward the western horizon. The last anyone saw of it, there were six TIE fighters in pursuit. Some people claimed the pilot escaped. Others claimed that the pilot had been captured, along with the one who’d crashed outside the Division Wall. Even now, they said, both pilots were being interrogated aboard the Star Destroyer, and it was a certainty that one or the other would give up Saw Gerrera’s hiding place, and that the partisan leader would soon be in custody, or dead, or both.
The battle on the ground continued for another hour or more. A new battery of rumors began to spread: Gerrera himself was in the city, and the Empire had him cornered. He and his partisans were fighting for their lives. Some, hearing this, returned to their homes, locked their doors, held close to their loved ones if they had loved ones to hold. A few others took their weapons and ran through the emptying streets in the hope of helping the partisans only to find stormtroopers ready for them. Most of those who went to fight ended up shot dead.
It was over before suns
et. A fire had started during the battle, and the Empire made no attempt to put it out. Most of the Holy City’s civil services had long ago ceased to exist in any useful or recognizable form, and there was no fire brigade to speak of, and the citizens who responded to try to fight the blaze quickly realized it was an exercise in futility. They had no running water and none of the specialized firefighting equipment the brigade once used, and the stormtroopers refused to help. In the end, people did the best they could to save one another and their few precious belongings, and then withdrew to let the fire burn itself out.
The glow of the flames lasted until well after nightfall.
Where you see darkness,
I see stars.
—Laech Min-Glsain
From Collected Poems, Prayers, and Meditations on the Force,
Edited by Kozem Pel, Disciple of the Whills
CHIRRUT CARRIED the boy through the streets in his arms, trying to assure him that everything would be all right.
“Say this with me,” Chirrut said. “‘The Force is with me, and I am one with the Force.’”
The boy said nothing. His name was Althin. He was a Rodian, and Chirrut could feel his long and slender fingers on his arm through the sleeve of his robe, his grip tight. The boy’s other arm had been broken, was now bound to his chest with the sash from Chirrut’s robe in a makeshift sling. If Chirrut was forced to move quickly to avoid the stormtroopers or a vehicle or even suspected partisans, and if he was not careful when he did it, the motion would jostle Althin. Then the boy would whimper, pain radiating through his broken limb, penetrating his shock and his numbness.
Althin was a week from his eighth year, and he was a good boy who loved to read and loved to draw, and once Chirrut had been in the market and heard a group of pilgrims arguing about how to find the Emitter of Constant Hope, and he had heard Althin introduce himself and give them directions, and when the pilgrims had offered to pay him in thanks, he had instead asked they give the money to someone who might need it more.