I watched the movie and LOVED it. Then, later, when I found myself in a bookstore, I bought Rogue One: a Star Wars Story by Alexander Freed. I was disappointed with the characters' portrayal, so I started rewriting it. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. :-)
Prologue
The Ring of Kafrene is a colossal span of durasteel and plastoid anchored by a pair of malformed planetoids within the Kafrene astroid belt. It had been founded as a mining colony by Old Republic nobility, built for the purpose of striping every rock within ten million kilometers of whatever mineral resources the galaxy might covet; its founders disappointment upon realizing that such valuable minerals were scarce at best in the Kafrene belt had earned it the unofficial slogan that arced over its aft docking bay in lurid, phosphorescent graffiti: WHERE GOOD DREAMS GO BAD.
Now the Ring of Kafrene is a deep-space trading post and stopover for the sector's most lawless characters. I am counted among that number, though I prefer to think of myself as above that common term.
I am already behind schedule, and I know that if I hadn't drawn attention during disembarkation I am certainly doing so now. I move too quickly, too obviously in a hurry, down the throughway, shouldering aside men and women and nonhumans who had the proper plodding gait of people sentenced to live in such a place as Kafrene. I try to moderate my pace, to ride the crowd's momentum rather than apply force. But I fail, and my urgency increases.
For all I know, my informant, might decide to leave and my trip will have been for nothing.
I cut across the street and down an alley, and follow the corridors till I reach a dead-end alleyway barely as wide as my arm span.
"I was about to leave," a voice said, full of nervous irritation. The speaker emerges from the shadows: a human with a soft round face and hard eyes, dressed in stained and faded garb. His right arm hangs limply in a sling. My gaze locks on the man even as I sort through the distant sounds of the street: voices, clattering merchandise, someone screaming. But no commotion caused by stormtroopers. No squeaking com-links.
That was good enough. If there were troopers hunting us, they weren't ready to open fire.
"I came as fast as fast as I could," I inform him. I am here for information.
The man starts toward me and the alley mouth. "I have to get back on board. Walk with me."
"Back to Jedha?"
He doesn't stop walking. In another moment, he'll have to squeeze past me to continue. "They'll leave without me!" he insists.
I shift my weight, and broaden my stance, blocking the man's path. I know how to fein presence, and I am not going to let vital information slip through my fingers. I had learned that lesson years ago. My contact flinches and steps back.
As informants went, this man is one of the more maddening I had dealt with: He was for all his faults, a true believer; he is also an abject coward, forever seeking to escape the moral responsibilities he had assigned himself. He responded well to pressure. And after the last few days, after dropping the mission I had been on and after rushing to the Kafrene Belt based only on his inexplicit message, I am in the mood to press.
"Easy. You have news from Jedha?" I growl. "Come on…"
The man meets my hard gaze and relents. "An Imperial pilot—one of the cargo drivers. He defected yesterday."
Low-level defectors from the Empire aren't uncommon. They make up about half the Rebellion's foot soldiers, give or take. He knows that as well as I do.
"He's telling people that they're making a weapon." He spits the words as though a biter taste accompanies them. "The Kybur crystals, thats what they're for."
I sort through the information: Heightened Imperial activity on Jedha, cargo ships constantly flying to and fro between the Holy City and a Star Destroyer, rumors. This was why I had come.
"What kind of weapon?" I ask wondering what weapon the Empire could create that they had not already invented.
But the man shrinks back into himself, somehow making his already small body smaller. "Look, I have to go."
I hoist the man up under both arms, digging my nails into the skin and coarse cloth and soft flesh. "What kind of weapon?" I repeat louder than I intend. I need to know.
"A planet killer," he gasps. "That's what he called it."
Cold fear creeps up my spine, its long fingers groping for a hold on my mind. I shake it off for the time being. I set the trembling man down gently. "A planet killer?"
"Someone named Erso sent him, some old friend of Saw's."
Galen. The Imperial scientist who disappeared seventeen years ago. "Galen Erso?" I ask, trying to calm myself. "Was it?"
"I don't know…."
When he said that I zone out, my mind racing in a million different directions. A planet killer. Kybur crystals. Galen Erso. Jedha. Defected pilot. Possibly proof. Maybe information that would maim the Empire.
No. Saw has it. And that means that there is only a slight chance we will get it. "Who else knows this?" I ask urgently. I could not risk the possibility of the Empire knowing.
"I have know idea!" The man leaned in, his sickly sweet breath coming in short bursts. "It's all falling apart. Saw's right, there're spies everywhere—"
I tuned and saw what I had been dreading, the white armored bodies of Imperial stormtroopers. Two of them, with their rifles lifted casually, pointed in our general direction.
From that moment till I board my U-wing, everything is a blur as instinct and training kick in. And I do what I had done since I had first entered this Fight.
I kill.
As I sit in the pilot's seat back on my transport with K-2SO, the only thing that I can remember clearly is my last conversation with my contact. It repeats itself over and over.
"We'll be all right," I had lied. I had pulled the trigger a second later. He had slumped dead on the ground as I escaped.
"Hey, calm down. Calm down.
"We'll be all right,"
Over and over.
I had done it out of necessity and mercy. The Imps would have caught you. You would have broken. I put it out of my mind. It would come back. But it was gone for now. Draven will be interested in this news.
A planet killer.
Exaggeration.
Only a large battle station. Probably.
Galen Erso. The Imperial scientist who is known best for his obsession with Kybur crystals. That same man once again connected to the Emperor's mega-project.
Jedha. Kybur is the wasteland's only natural source of value.
A scientists obsessed with Kybur. A pilgrim moon where Kybur crystal was mined. A battle station. Possibly a planet killer.
I sigh. The facts are linked, but what Kybur crystals had to do with a battle station I don't know.
Unless they are being used to power it….