Howdy, everyone.
I have never written for Star Wars before. I've written for most other fandoms I am a member of, but never this one.
I think it's because I've always seen Star Wars in a class of its own, and it wasn't to be touched, because I could never do it justice.
After the abomination of fanboyish disrespect known as Force Awakens, I was both paranoid that I couldn't do it justice, and disgusted with material that was so un-Star Wars that it needed no help from me to make it worse.
With the arrival of Rogue One, I have discovered a newfound confidence that I can indeed tell a story from my own pen, and still do justice to that saga from far, far away.
His name was Orson Krennic, and he would be remembered for all history.
That's what he had been told. That's what he had told himself. His name would go down as the orchestrator of a piece of history. His was a name that would go down in history and would become synonymous with his greatest achievement.
It was the Death Star, and it was his mark on history.
His grand masterpiece of sheer military and strategic might fed off of the Force itself in the form of Kaiburr Crystals. Though he had served among Jedi during the Clone Wars, he was unfamiliar with their practices of strange and unnatural wizardry. Nor did he care.
Orson Krennic's concern with the Force was only as much as was needed for him to understand the technology in his grand war machine. His was the hard rationality that came with death, and destruction, and numbers. Lots of numbers. Statistics. Everything was statistics.
He dealt in hard evidence- facts, not stories, and certainly not witchery. He checked his facts thrice over. He required it.
Precision. Order. Logic. Rationality. Strength. It was his code of conduct. It was his fall-back (as if he ever needed a fall-back. He protected against needing those.) It was his mantra, that he followed religiously. But then, Religion wasn't rational, was it?
Technically, Pride wasn't rational, either, but he found it within his means. His was the correct system, and he would make sure that it was spread throughout the galaxy.
He didn't make mistakes.
He dedicated his life to the destruction of chaos, and the restoration of order. Order was vital to society... It was society. Society could not exist without order. Chaos threatened everything. That's why he insisted on the correctness of his system- his system was Order. Precision... After all, Precision meant Correctness. Correctness led to Strength. Strength was Might. Might restored Order. Order led to Precision. A vicious cycle, it was indeed, but a beautiful one.
That vicious, beautiful cycle was embodied in the Empire. That was what he loved about the Empire. That was why he dedicated his life to serving the Empire. It was simply a means to his ends- the proliferation of his system. The proliferation of the Empire. (Of course, it later became extremely muddled which was which; he simply killed two birds with one stone and decided that they were synonymous.)
That was why he volunteered to oversee the creation of the Death Star. It was the very representation of the Empire. It was sheer military might that would crush chaos. And restore order in the galaxy. It was the Empire. It was Order... Honestly, it was him. A veritable self-portrait.
It was the Death Star, and it was his mark on history.
Its completion marked the beginning of an age. It would be an age where the Empire would reign unchallenged, and everyone would see that he was right all along. It would be the culmination of his mission to spread Order... Spread the Empire.
That was why he was so protective of it. It was his vision. His destiny. Perhaps destiny wasn't rational, but it sure felt good.
Still, because Orson Krennic saw the Death Star as a self-portrait, himself, the Empire, and Order itself, any and every attack against it he felt very, very personally.
Galen Erso and his daughter Jyn were opponents of the Death Star. By extension, they were opponents of Order. Spreaders of chaos. Orson Krennic would not have chaos.
They would simply have to die. Opposition to Order had to be crushed. Precision was correctness. Correctness was Strength. Strength was Might. Might had to restore order.
Order had to be restored.
Each time, his immediate ends were met, but the ultimate goal slipped further out of his grasp.
Though Galen Erso died, it was not orderly; it was not even close to orderly. In fact, the attack on the research station simply signaled the growth of the Rebellion- the growth of opposition to the Empire... Against Order... The growth of Chaos.
He would not have it.
The attack on the Scarif station... It was true chaos. And Orson Krennic veritably lost his mind. He was fully aware of that, at least.
The realization came to him as he lay dying on the deck of the communication terminal, so naturally he pondered the reality of his own insanity... Insanity was the exact opposite of an orderly mind- how had he missed something like that? But then, he didn't know exactly when it became insanity, either.
Somewhere between an odd quirk for precision, and a penchant for orderliness, he had gone mad.
It was a sane man, however, who gazed upon the battle station as it rose above Scarif's horizon. Orson Krennic was proud to say that he was truly sane in his last moments. How did he know? For once, he was not proud of his creation. He was utterly terrified of the monstrosity that he would forever have linked to his name.
He saw the faint glow of the Superlaser charging. How poetic- a man killed by his own creation. A Frankenstein of sorts, to be sure.
A brilliant flash of light illuminated the sky.
Perhaps it was for the best. After all, the station was his creation. His pride and joy for upwards of nineteen years. His mistake. How fitting that it would be his death. After all...
It was the Death Star, and it was his mark on history.