They Rebelled
Part I
Summary: 19/20 ABY - A few months after the signing of the Pellaeon-Gavrisom Treaty, Admiral Pellaeon pays Mon Mothma a visit to present her with a gift that will honor a group of rebels on a secret mission on Scarif twenty years ago.
Silence.
She cherished it now.
There was a length of time several decades ago when silence was a hot commodity for her. Forming a rebellion and maintaining it over the course of those decades was internally and externally deafening. The price for becoming a figure of peace was the lack of peace.
Now was different. Her illness would eventually give her the ultimate reward of endless silence.
Mon Mothma sat in a chair of her living room in her apartment on Chandrila. She weakly reached for the glass of water on the nearby table, hoping it wouldn't slip out of her hands this time. It didn't. She silently celebrated as she took a sip and returned it to the table. She was waiting for her guest who had just announced his visit on the night before. Earlier that morning, she had her handmaiden help her out of her everyday gown and into something more elegant. It wasn't until she looked into the reflector that the tunic recalled a fashion from the Old Republic. A rather fitting nod to the past for her guest.
The front door eventually chimed and her protocol droid, BT-3O, answered it. She could hear it's high-pitched female voice being joined by a deeper human male voice in greeting. The silver droid entered the living room followed by their guest, Admiral Gilad Pellaeon.
It was strange to see the white-haired Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet out of uniform and in a drab brown civilian tunic. She had not had many meetings with him over the years, even after the Bastion Accords signing. She was still only used to seeing him in his immaculate white Grand Admiral attire. Mon Mothma addressed him. "Admiral."
"Please," he boomed in his gruff voice, "I am not here on official business. Plus, I'm not in uniform. Nothing for show today. Call me Gilad. A pleasure, Mon Mothma." He gave her a nod of greeting.
She smiled in admiration, "Of course. Gilad. Though, I believe in each of our positions, any fashion we wear could be considered uniforms."
"You may have a point."
BeeTee injected, "Sir, would you like any refreshments?"
"No, thank you."
The droid turned to Mon Mothma. "Miss, I must remind you of your pills to take in 1.45 hours."
"Thanks, BeeTee. I have them right here by my water. You're dismissed."
"Very well, Mistress Mothma." The droid left the room.
She addressed Gilad again. "Please, sit down." As he sat in the chair opposite of her own, she said, "Pardon me if I don't rise to greet you. I'm afraid that may take too much of your time."
"Understood."
"Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of your sudden company in this secret meeting?"
Pellaeon smiled in admiration of her. Straight and to the point. Much like himself. He then began with "First, I wanted to see how you were feeling these days."
"I feel sick at hearing that question repeated to me everyday."
He chuckled. "Of course. I apologize. When we last spoke at the Bastion Accords signing, you seemed especially weak. Weaker than usual, if I may say."
"You may. And the weakness is a byproduct of the disease. Space travel for me isn't as easy as it once was."
"I can imagine. I understand you sustained additional stress at Luke and Mara Jade's wedding earlier this year. A skirmish, I heard."
"Yes. Imperial zealots. You remember those. No offense."
"None taken. I will be the first to admit there are those in the galaxy who disagree with the Imperial's peaceful alignment with the New Republic. As unpredictable as your Senate can be, the Imperial Remnant became more erratic every year since Endor. Unfortunately, the common public cannot see firsthand the deterioration of their own government while it's happening. Though, I suspect that is more true within the Rebellion than the Empire. In the Empire's history, we have only employed soldiers and officers from within. Almost never did we recruit from outside the Empire's circle. Even the Academy on Carida was highly selective."
Gilad took a pause before he continued. "On the contrary, your Rebellion admitted more of the common folk of any system you were in. Of course, that included thieves, smugglers, and even defectors from the Empire."
Mon Mothma used his pause to say, "I don't mean to be rude, Gilad, but will you be getting to a point anytime soon?"
He nodded. "Yes, of course. As I told you at the signing, your presence there was an honor. I wanted to add to that here. The fact that you were there at the signing of the peace treaty between the Empire and the New Republic was necessary. Symbolic. I was so glad you were able to attend, knowing what you are going through right now. I wanted to express my gratitude in the form of some type gift as a token of my respect to you over the years. I had not wanted to choose any trinket or jewel that had no meaning. So I was hard pressed into finding one."
"Gilad, you don't need to. You have already shown your worth to me and the New Republic with your willingness to compromise the Treaty. We know how hard that must have been within the Remnant."
"Thank you. Nevertheless, I felt the need to anyway." He paused longer as if he were struggling for words. He finally stated, "A few days ago, one of our archive historians on Bastion found something interesting. He was innocently searching for events twenty years past the Battle Of Yavin. He made quite a discovery. Rare footage and images from another battle that occurred merely days before Yavin." He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out an old datapad and set it on the table beside her water.
She stared at it with confusion. "I'm afraid I don't recall a major battle before Yavin, Gilad."
"Not a major battle by any means. And one that you did not authorize, apparently. The..members of the Rebellion acted on their own. You could say they went...rogue."
A sudden gasp of air was taken into her chest. The word that instigated a memory she thought was long lost. Rogue One. How long had she not spoken the phrase in context. She then uttered, "The Battle on Scarif." She quickly reached for her water again and it almost slipped out of her had as she feared. Gilad leapt to catch the glass and then handed it to her.
"I trust you haven't thought of them in quite a while."
She drank a quick gulp and set the glass back down. "I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't."
"Well, to your credit it was a secret mission. One that you hid well off the books. Clever plan."
"It wasn't mine. It was theirs altogether." She looked down at the old fashioned datapad. Now that she knew its origin, she noticed it was one from that era twenty years ago. She then asked Gilad, "How much information is on there?"
"Not much, really. Mostly footage from AS-ATs and base cams. There are damage assessments, security breech reports, and basic data. But there are small profiles of those Rebels involved. Nothing extensive, mind you, but enough to see. And remember. There was an Imperial pilot, Bodhi Rook, who defected to the Rebellion. Also an Imperial K-2 security droid that had been reprogrammed somehow. One of the best Rebellion spies, Cassian Andor, was involved. And I found it ironic that their leader was the daughter of one of the main designers of the Death Star itself."
Mon Mothma smiled as she recalled another long lost memory. An image of a young girl. Dark of hair with hard determination in her eyes. Once a name popped into her head, she uttered it. "Jyn Erso."
"Your memory serves you well."
"Hardly, I'm afraid. It took your mention of them to remind me. Over the years, the means of how we obtained the Death Star plans were reduced to rumors. They were only known as rebels on a secret mission."
"Sometimes a secret mission becomes too secret."
"Perhaps. I'm almost ashamed that I had forgotten them. The events that occurred over the past few decades went by in rapid succession. We were never given the chance to set the record straight."
"Perhaps you can now," he said looking down at the datapad. "As a gesture of good faith and hope, I present to you this gift of a missing piece of Rebellion history."
She leaned over to reach and pick up the datapad. As if by magic, or perhaps the Force itself, more memories flowed through her head. She suddenly remembered her first meeting with Jyn Erso. Her mixture of arrogance and grace was uncommon for a woman of that era. She suspected it was how Mara Jade had acted in her youth. She remembered the endless loyalty of Captain Andor. He had been fighting for the Rebellion at such a young age that he grew a sense of altered morality. Unfortunately, she hadn't known the rest of the crew of Rogue One well. Many of them were added after the destruction of Jedha. There wasn't time to know them. Now she had nothing but time. The galaxy should know and remember their sacrifice. Methods of honoring them came rushing at her in a flood of ideas. She continued to hold the datapad as an ancient relic. She then said to the Admiral, "Thank you, Gilad. I know just what to do.
End of Part I