Once a pilot had the hang of a tricky route, they were stuck on it. Most routes were tricky because of the hyperspace lanes, but the route between Eadu and Jedha wasn't really interesting. It was managing the thin, uncooperative atmosphere above a cold desert moon on one end and the gravity well of a storm wracked nightmare of karst and scabland on the other that gave the vacuum jockeys fits. But if you were already used to Jedha, if the vagaries of its winds didn't give you any trouble, if the cold and dry and the rapid leaps from dark to light felt like the natural order, that halved the trouble.
It wasn't so bad. Sure, the route was so busy and understaffed that his days off kept being cut, but it wasn't like he'd stop in a cantina at home with an Imperial insignia on his shoulder, and he was barely suffered in the research facility's mess hall. He hadn't seen much of his friends, but sometimes a little time alone was soothing. If he had to talk to people, he wanted it to be about the taste of pilot rations and the latest engine modifications and tricks for keeping steady on the dark side of a moon, where the heat from the light side kept the wind whipping and swirling every moment. But even that was so tiring sometimes. Yes, this was a fine assignment. Didn't bother him at all.
Except the kyber crystals.
He wasn't so focused on the slow, relentless looting of his home and the heart of the galaxy itself. That went in the same little box as the buzz of an occupied city, memories of his conscription day, whispers of civilian round-ups and raids on "rebels" whose crimes seemed to be sitting on mineral resources the Imperials wanted. Things no one could change, especially not a cargo hauler whose job could be done just as well by a droid, who hadn't even been able to pass into fighter training. No point.
No, it was the way they... demanded attention. Some of the hauls were mostly documents, artifacts, equipment for the scientists on Eadu, but there were always at least a few fragments of kyber. He knew where they were despite himself, even if he hadn't personally overseen loading, even if the shipping manifest denied their presence. They made him feel like his teeth were vibrating at a frequency that came from ninety degrees left of reality. Or that was the way he'd tipsily described it to a friend who had later done him the very great favor of not remembering.
Some of the old people back home would talk with the fierce pride of deliberate defiance if you caught them at the right time. They'd tell you that the Jedi could wander through any given street any day and find a new baby with potential, that force sensitivity sprang from the ground, the crystals, the temple, it depended on who you asked in a city with so many faiths and factions.
Or they had ten years ago. They wouldn't talk to him now, if they were still there, even if they recognized one of the kids swept up in service to one of those recruitment quotas that always seemed to land in NiJedha's territory.
Another thought for that little box.
Eadu wasn't bad today, he thought brightly, because loud, bright ideas kept the box neatly shut, made it easier to ignore the crystals. The weather was just weather, not a death sentence clawing its way through the fragile little shell that kept him alive. As an incidental bonus, of course. It kept the kyber and reference materials intact first and foremost, and his training was all directed quietly toward maintaining the hold's integrity, then the pilot's.
The box was busy today. He caught himself humming and decided, on reflection, that he could hum if he wanted to. No one to pester, no one to question the flow of Imperial melodies into cantina classics into the droning chants of dying faiths. No one to point out that he was just about tone deaf, either. He tapped his fingertips together around the controls in repeating rhythms that echoed the music and forced himself to be content and vacant in time to touch down. Whereupon he immediately stopped himself twitching and rose to hand over his manifest.
Galen Erso had gone for a walk. His entire staff thought he was insane, but that was fairly ordinary, and an important part of the facade he maintained at that. Eccentric, wound up in the work for its own sake, detached after so much loss and unwilling to have much to do with ordinary life. Besides, the rain was only a downpour, not a dangerous torrent, and the base was built according to standard design, which did always include a number of intertwining walkways. He was fairly certain it was so everyone whose uniform entitled them to a cape got to enjoy it sweeping behind them as they purposefully strode about. He'd considered wearing his own on occasion for just that reason. In the better moments, the ones where he could hear Lyra's voice or Jyn's laugh and not want to let himself shatter. They'd all have laughed.
He pushed the thought away gently. He might come back to it if the day went on so gently. There was an issue with scaling the targeting systems without sacrificing fine focus that he could so easily fall into, explore as a pure engineering puzzle, find an elegant solution. And with his trap so carefully laid, he could do it. Could give himself the gift of an afternoon of contemplation and memories, and come back to the problem of how to relay his message tomorrow.
He had almost resolved on it when a commotion at the landing platform caught his attention. An argument between the logistics officer and his own deputy head of research. Their head of supply, while technically military, was a lifelong bureaucrat, and she'd not only bite the head off a challenger but spend days burying everything in red tape if she felt herself slighted. But he could only assume there was a reason to pick such a fight, and he would save himself unnecessary headaches and dangerous complications if he headed it off. He took a moment to mourn his quiet walk in the rain and made his way over, splashing deliberately to warn them rank was bearing down.
"Director, can you please inform your subordinate that this shipment includes extremely necessary power sources and long awaited parts that allow us to continue to not be dead while we enjoy our time on this miserable rock?"
"My team has been waiting weeks for a kyber shipment that meets our specifications. I need one crate out of the whole blasted lot, or she can explain to Krennic why we're projecting the third shot in any twelve hour period will suffuse a target planet with a pleasantly sunny glow instead of punching through the crust!"
While they worked out their frustration ("I'm not having my crew climb past you while you root though an entire month's supply drop-off!"), Galen's attention fell on the pilot. He'd seen the man before, even exchanged a few words in passing in the mess, but not really looked at him. The movement that caught his eye was a bit of a start at the words punching through the crust. Foolish to blurt out, but it was so easy not to see minor functionaries like the cargo haulers. Lucky Orson wasn't here. The kid would be as good as disappeared, even if he were as practiced as most of his compatriots at forgetting things.
He made a rather pathetic little figure. The officer had a trooper holding an umbrella over her head and his deputy was staying under the tarp, but the pilot (Rook, come to think) seemed to have come out without so much as a poncho. The father in Galen wanted to wrap him up in something warm. The scheming traitor wanted to see if he could be assigned another route without garnering attention; if a life could be saved by a little caution, he wasn't so far gone as to let it be. But only if it didn't imperil anything important.
Galen looked back to his bickering subordinates (they often forgot that the distant, quiet Erso was in charge of the whole base, in theory) and was about to suggest some mild compromise when the pilot caught his attention yet again. He seemed to be trying to say something, opening his mouth and making small, polite gestures that were aborted again and again as the two shouted past him. He kept trying, like he'd seen this work once and he was sure there was a trick to it. Hiding something approaching amusement, Galen turned to him and raised an eyebrow.
The pilot smiled with an openness that didn't seem to belong in a secret weapon facility on the Outer Rim, puppyishly grateful to be acknowledged. "The crate he wants is right here," he said quickly, spinning and not quite falling when he immediately slipped in a grimy puddle. He recovered so quickly and seemed so completely unperturbed that that sort of thing probably happened a lot. He took two long strides into the back of the cargo hold, pulled a long, featureless box from the middle of a stack, and had it in Galen's hands a few seconds later.
Galen stared for a moment. The fact was, no kyber crystals were sent from an unstable, occupied world to a sensitive facility without the most paranoid security the Empire could dream of. One standard procedure was decoys. There would be six or eight boxes onboard that all answered this description, and only an innocuous and distinctly blurry serial number on the corner of a label indicated which was a real piece. No one but top researchers knew the code existed. Whoever loaded the ship didn't, certainly.
And Rook had gone right to them. Yes, he'd have to get this one far away from the project, and Jedha, too. The Imperials weren't kind to the force sensitive, even those who probably didn't know it themselves. Especially, maybe.
He recovered himself quickly. Long practice. He'd become a good liar. With the slightest look of irritation, he set the box firmly in his deputy's hands, cutting off the argument at the knees before it boiled over into every frustration two strong and incompatible personalities had acquired over long years in close quarters. Feeling it was more or less in character to ignore them now, he did allow himself to turn to the pilot. "Thank you."
Jyn would be about his age, if she were any age at all anymore. He shouldn't have thought about her earlier. He didn't think she'd look so deliriously pleased at the mere prospect of being helpful, though, not his Stardust. "It was no problem. I mean, they—they never ask the pilot. With all due respect." The last words came out clearer but a little confused, like he wasn't sure they belonged there.
"I think that was all the respect that was due." Rook snorted and immediately tried to look serious. He should cut this short now. Later, try and find an inconspicuous way to banish the pilot to a run that just handled bantha jerky. The warmth that wanted to sneak into his voice was dangerous. This deep, this close, he couldn't go getting attached to people, to potential sacrifices. Not that he remembered how attachment worked, not really. "Find somewhere to get dry before you drip all over the mess hall."
"Why, everyone else will be." He looked a bit shocked at his own daring. Joking with the director. Blast it, it was nice to feel this human for a moment. "Eadu's always wet, Jedha's always cold," he added.
"Surely you're not on the ground long on Jedha." He was, he told himself, honestly curious. Grounding a pilot for a moment longer than necessary in a strategically important war zone would be foolish even with an infantry detail, and he didn't think they had troopers to spare.
"I was born on Jedha. I'm... I'm always cold. It wouldn't feel right, otherwise."
Bit of a babbler. Didn't matter. Galen missed the next few sentences as his mind tipped from cautious and quiet to the kind of overdrive that had given the galaxy an unfathomable force of death and destruction and plotted its downfall. A local pilot. A young one (young enough to have been a playmate for Stardust in a gentler world) with a real smile who responded to horror with horror, however quickly stifled.
Not an inconvenience, not a loose end to tie off before anyone went ahead and cut it. A tool.
Using that tool would make him every bit as cruel as Krennic, would take that last piece of himself that felt uncorrupted and dash it on the sodden ground. Not using it might well seal the Empire's final victory. "Well, if you're resigned to life as a drowned keon, I wouldn't mind a cup of caff myself." He turned toward the door, watching the pilot scramble up beside him.