Merry Christmas and happy holidays, dear readers!
.
"K?" Cassian calls out once they are in hyperspace.
"Cassian?"
"How long a jump are we looking at?"
"Approximately four hours and forty seven minutes, assuming re-entry at the programmed location. The calculation on a Lambda shuttle navicomputer tends to have a downward bias by an average of one-point-five percent, so the actual time may be between four forty three and four fifty one. Or the way you would put it, about five hours."
"Thank you." Cassian sends a look of long-suffering patience in the general direction of the control panel. "You could have started with that. How much residual power will it give us?"
"Six point eight percent."
Cassian nods slowly instead of a reply, and Jyn does not need to hear his opinion to know what he is thinking. This jump is an all-out bet; once they land – assuming they land, as K put it, on Dorwalla, they won't be able to take off without fresh cells. Even if they just stay in orbit, they will not have enough power for another jump to a habitable world.
"K?" It is her turn to query, and hopefully to be met with a less downbeat answer.
"Jyn?"
"How do I access the news query function on this thing?"
"Secondary screen, top menu, select ancillary information, then sources where you pick external, then subjects where you key in your query."
"Thank you, K."
"What are you looking for?" Cassian asks as she goes through the steps.
"I want to see if Nawara's company pops up in any recent news, and hopefully figure if he's still running it from his old HQ." Of course she should have checked all this before they jumped, but Cassian kind of took over the initiative when it came to the final decision.
"Any luck?" he asks a minute later.
"Well, the company's still around." Her query brought up enough mentions of Starfire Electronics, Dorwalla's prime climate control specialists to provide assurance that it is still in business. A few more seconds later, she flashes him a grin as she sees an image from a recent publicity release. "Aaand he's still there." Whatever that means, she adds mentally, trying to keep her smile from fading too fast.
Then again, the upside of dealing with a covert operative is that he does not tend to get overly optimistic about things. "Whatever trouble we may run into, this means we at least have a chance. How long ago did you say you worked for him?"
"I came across him, or should I say we came across each other, soon after Saw and I parted ways, four and a half standard years ago. I needed money, happened upon someone who needed a code slicer, made my hundred credits writing a patch for him and the next thing I knew, the guy was telling me I should talk to his boss. Back then it was a real stroke of luck."
"And how long did you stick with him?"
"Just under a year. It was good work but he wanted me as a formal part of his outfit and I'm not very good at fitting in." Except maybe now with the Alliance, but they aren't called rebels for nothing. The part she leaves out is how she was scared of the prospect of belonging to a group too soon after Saw's abandonment, fearful of getting burned a second time.
Luckily, Cassian does not call her bluff on this line of reasoning. "What'd you do?"
"Code slicing, mostly. Forged IDs and fake company credentials for his cargo pilots, ship manifests that hid the sensitive stopover points, that sort of thing. On some occasions I even hacked into Imperial customs records to give his ship fake diplomatic clearance. It worked." She flashes another grin back at him.
"I presume you were using your own forged ID and records when you met him."
"Of course." She is not sure why he is suddenly asking the obvious.
"Which name did you use?" Belatedly, the all-too-obvious question makes sense.
"The usual, Liana Hallik. It had the best backup trail and was good for the long haul, so long as I was careful not to get it openly connected to any of my illegal stints." Which worked just fine until it blew up spectacularly four weeks ago.
"I take it you plan to use it with Nawara now, as well?"
"Yep… seeing how I ended up in prison under it, I'll have to explain to him how I'm now in trouble, but that's the name he's known me by so changing it now won't do much good," she adds with a shrug. "What about you?"
"I'll have to think of a last name," he ponders out loud. "Cassian's a common enough name in the Expansion Region and shouldn't trip any alarms, but I need a last name that won't stand out."
"Is that where you're from, the Expansion Region?" That explains the slightly accented Basic.
He closes his eyes for an answer. "M'haeli, right in the middle of it. Haven't been there since I was a six-year-old kid."
I've been fighting since I was six, she recalls his words on the way from Eadu. Her own life has not been an easy ride by any measure, but the pain in his voice when he said it had cut through her own bitterness back then like a lightsaber blade going through durasteel.
Cassian must have seen the shadow of that recollection in her face, as he speaks up to bring her back to the present; more uncertain but less fraught. "Something short and not limited to a single world would work best."
Something that will be easy to remember, above all. She is usually good with sticking to cover stories and identities, but with all that happened in the past day or two, she is worried about getting distracted, or too plain tired, so as to undermine their plan with an inadvertent mention of Captain Andor.
Just then, she gets an idea. "How about Rook? Bodhi's last name, you…"
"I know," he jumps in before she has finished. "Not bad. Quite good, really. I've met a few humans named Rook on the Rim worlds so it can't be that rare, and none of them, including Bodhi, had open ties to the Alliance, so we should be good. And I'll be sure to remember it," he finishes darkly.
"Me too," she echoes with a sigh. She'll be sure to remember that name, along with Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus and Melshi, and two dozen others who remained nameless to her but will not be forgotten.
If Cassian's grim look is any indication, he is thinking along the same lines.
"What do you suggest for our cover story to tell Nawara?" she asks after a while.
He looks up at her; at least it is good to see the sadness give way to reflection. "What I've learned early on in intel is that it's usually best to stick to the facts as much as possible, and only lie where it's crucially important and carries a low risk of being exposed by cross-checking. If you have to lie, it's usually better to leave things out than invent stuff to avoid tripping yourself up."
She nods; her own experience has taught her pretty much the same. "The shuttle's going to be the tough sell. We could say we had a job to steal something and are on the run after botching up the robbery, which would explain the need to stay off the radar without bringing up any Imperial entanglement, but piloting this thing–"
"It still holds up," Cassian argues. "We ran and our getaway ship got heavily damaged in a shootout so we hijacked this one."
"Sure." It does sound plausible. "And we could say we picked it because we needed its data storage capacity to hold K's memory files– "
"Better keep K out of this," Cassian cuts in.
"I can see how it may be an option," K pipes up, "but I would like to know, Cassian, why you think so."
This is the closest she sees Cassian to laughing over the past two days. Or ever, for that matter.
"The way you shoot off your mouth, K, we won't last five minutes if you get a chance to talk."
"I can be diligent about keeping sensitive data to myself, Cassian." It may be her imagination, or else K's currently-flat voice sounds more pissed off than it did moments before.
"I know, K." He actually tries to sound soothing. "It's just that right now it's hard to think of any data that are not sensitive."
This does the trick, apparently. "On second thoughts, I agree."
x x x
She sits up in the co-pilot's chair with a start, fighting a disorienting dizziness as her field of vision is flooded by the swirling light patterns of hyperspace. She did not even notice when she dozed off. On the plus side, she did not take any major falls or hit her head, so at least she is pretty sure it is not the side effect of a concussion, unlike–
"Cassian!"
She gasps his name before she has had a look at him; when she turns toward him it is instantly reassuring to see him looking right back at her, awake.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," she says belatedly. "Didn't realise I'd fallen asleep."
"It's OK, I was keeping an eye on the panel." On second thought, he sounds considerably less alert than he did before she had nodded off.
"But I'm supposed to keep you awake– "
"Supposed to keep me awake?" He sounds somewhere between baffled and intrigued.
"For the concussion. K said I couldn't give you another stim patch until six hours after the first one, and I had to keep you conscious to avoid a brain swelling– "
"K worries too much," he argues unconvincingly.
Sure enough, K won't let it slip. "I worry as much as is needed to keep you alive, Cassian. If I didn't, you'd be long dead."
Considering that they would surely be dead yesterday had it not been for K's quick thinking about the shuttle, she is not inclined to argue.
Nor, apparently, is Cassian. "I know."
"So what exactly does keeping me awake involve?" The way he is eyeing her sideways makes her think he finds it amusing, and she bites down on a spot of K-style chiding of her own.
"K suggested that I try slapping you," she cannot help quipping, and is pleased to see the answering eye-roll; Cassian may not be fully alert but is not beyond appreciating a snarky comeback. "But the less radical solution is to keep talking."
"With the kind of voice K has at the moment, it would be a sure way to send me to sleep."
"Not him," she corrects. "And not me either. You have to talk to make certain you stay awake."
He raises his eyebrows. "What, you want me to give you a speech?"
"You can if you want," she shoots back. "Doesn't have to be a speech, you know, just anything that comes to mind."
He ponders it for a moment. "What comes to mind, for the most part, is I hope we find this Nawara, he doesn't kick us out, and our shuttle doesn't get impounded. That's about it, really," he concludes with an apologetic smirk.
"Doesn't have to be a full tactical briefing, either," she points out.
She can tell he wants to shake his head before thinking better of it. "I don't know… I guess you'll have to ask me things, and I'll do my best to answer."
And make it sound like an interrogation. Great. Not to mention that, between the nature of his role within the Alliance and the tragedy that his early life must have been, she will be navigating a minefield of sensitive subjects. But if it is a choice between pissing him off and letting him die, then there really is no choice.
"How old are you?"
If anything, she is more surprised than he is when this is the first thing she blurts out; but he takes it in stride.
"Twenty-six. What about you?"
That, too, catches her unawares. There is nothing strange about the question per se; it was just that she was getting ready for an awkward round of one-sided questioning, and it is encouraging, and maybe just a bit gratifying, that he shows some interest.
"Twenty-one as of three weeks ago." She gives him a sly sideways look. "Says so on file, doesn't it?"
"It does," he concedes. "I wasn't sure it was true, though. Looking at the things you'd done, it seemed you were too young to have racked up such a record, and then again when I saw you I figured you couldn't be much older than eighteen."
Had their circumstances been less dire, and had Cassian been less distracted by the injuries and the effect of the meds, she would have dismissed his words as bald-faced flattery; but things being as they are, it ends up being more flattering by virtue of likely being true.
OK, there's no time to bask in flattery, accidental or otherwise. Her job is to keep Cassian talking, so talk he will. "How did you find me? I mean how did you get onto my trail in the first place?"
"I wasn't looking for you as Jyn Erso."
Her eyes go wide; rather than explaining anything, this makes the whole thing really confusing.
Seeing her surprise, he goes on. "Part of my duties has always been to recruit undercover agents within the Empire, as well as Rebel field operatives. I joined Alliance Intel at fourteen, but they didn't send me on full-scale missions until about four years later, after I'd been to Carida. My first assignments were to hang around military bases and get talking to the cadets, get them thinking about how there are better choices in life than Imperial service, and help put those who seemed genuinely swayed in touch with Alliance contacts. I don't do as much recruitment now…" he sounds wistful saying it, "but occasionally, when we get an… accidental vacancy, I look through Imperial criminal records for good candidates. So when I saw they were on the trail of this code slicer with superior hand-to-hand combat skills, I thought I should look you up– "
Before he can go on, she jumps in with a sort of indignant cry. "Wait a minute… did you people put me in prison so you could get me at General Draven's mercy?!"
Cassian looks more incredulous than offended. "You've got to be kidding. It would have been much easier to find a chance to talk to you before you got locked up than have to break you out."
She has to concede the point.
"But by the time you were in prison, Draven and I had put two and two together between what was known of your association with Saw Guerrera and Galen Erso's long-lost daughter, so leaving you in Imperial hands wasn't an option."
"And then you met me and changed your mind about wanting me around." She recalls K's sulky quip when she first boarded Cassian's U-wing: I think you going with us is a bad idea, and so does Cassian.
To her surprise, he neither argues nor confirms the point, just looks at her with oddly earnest eyes for a couple of seconds before answering. "No. I didn't change my mind. I thought going to Jedha was too high risk to bring you along, but it doesn't mean I– " He makes as if to put up his left hand to cover his eyes, before the arm wound makes him think better of it. "It was obvious from the start that you were every bit as smart and resourceful as your history suggested, and a natural leader no matter how standoffish you tried to appear."
A natural leader? Really? Is that all he sees in her? And is that opinion of her something he should seemingly be getting embarrassed about?
Keep him talking. The rest can wait.
"You said you joined Alliance Intelligence at fourteen."
If he is surprised by her abrupt change of tack, his second apparent reaction is more akin to relief than irritation. "Yes."
"Then how come your first intel mission was at eighteen? And how did you join the Rebellion in the first place?" These may be dangerous currents, but probably safer than questioning him about his opinion of her.
Then again, when she sees his soft eyes darken with old pain, she wishes she had not asked.
But he does answer; not at once but steadily, in the quiet, serious voice he seems to reserve for rare unguarded moments.
"I told you I grew up on M'haeli. It's a quiet world for the most part, the hinterland is very quiet and rural, but it has a big and very busy spaceport as it sits at the crossroads between Expansion Region traffic and the main route to the Core Worlds. My parents moved there before I was born, when my brother was about four. He had severe allergies that made his life miserable back on Corellia, and they thought bringing him up away from big cities would help. It did, and my mother even found work at the local hospital. Back in Coronet City she was a well-known surgeon, and she took up residency in N'croth, the capital, but we could live on the plains outside the city. My father restored an old lodging house at the spaceport and rented rooms to pilots on layover stops. When the Republic fell and the Rebellion started, there were suddenly a lot of resistance fighters from nearby systems who had to hide out in the Expansion Region, so my parents closed off one wing of the lodging house with a permacrete partition and converted it into a secret medical facility to treat the wounded. I was almost six at the time and I'd take turns with my brother helping them around this makeshift hospital, handing out the meds to the patients mostly. They all needed someone to talk to while they were there so I made friends with a lot of them."
He takes time before continuing, and she cannot bring herself to prompt him.
"When the Empire decided to occupy M'haeli, someone found out about the hidden hospital at the spaceport and two weeks after the occupation they came looking. I was at school when it happened, and then came back home and it was empty, and their comlinks didn't answer. I found a spare key to my father's landspeeder and went to the spaceport, and saw the building burning. There were two survivors who got out and died later from the burns, one of them told me how they'd tried to barricade themselves inside and shoot at the troopers to let the patients escape, but the Imperials brought a grenade mortar unit and targeted the building point blank. My brother was there too, it was his turn to – help distribute the meds – "
Whatever she may say would be shallow and inadequate. Instead she reaches out a hand for his right arm, fingers tightening around his wrist. You're not the one who has lost everything. No, not by a long shot.
"One of the two survivors managed to hail a Rebel guerrilla unit at Aquaris a short distance away before he died, and they flew in and picked me up. I stayed with them for about six or seven years, once I'd learned the basics I became their explosives courier, sort of. I was able to sneak around unnoticed and plant bombs at Imperial facilities. Then I went with them to Dantooine, the Rebel headquarters at the time, and ended up staying there. I lied about being fifteen and they let me join the infantry as a private, but one of my former fellow saboteurs from Aquaris let slip that I was really thirteen and they kicked me out as they technically only accept sixteen-year-olds. But then Intel decided they could use me for the recruitment missions instead."
She recalls something else he said when he first talked of those. "You've been to Carida?"
"I was there for two standard years." Seeing her wide eyes, he explains, not without a touch of smugness. "I was sixteen by then and it was decided I would enlist as cadet, an officer trainee. I'd spent a few months studying for their entrance exam and Draven's people had put together an airtight record for what was supposed to have been my childhood and early life, and no one ever suspected me. What I did while I was there, apart from inciting rebellious ideas in my fellow cadets, was copying and relaying anything I could get my hands on. Training materials, tactical readouts, Imperial protocol, you name it, I stole it and sent it on to Dantooine. And on top of that I came back with two years of training, and tons of sharpshooting practice, behind me."
No wonder Intel has been holding on to him ever since, and no wonder he can blend in so well as an Imperial. "So you've never, ever been caught, before or since?"
"That depends on what you mean by caught," he counters. "If you mean captured and put in detention, then no; the first man to put me behind bars was Saw Guerrera," he goes on with a wry smile. "I was apprehended a few times by patrols and the like as a saboteur and later as a recruiter, but I always managed to get away before they could lock me up. The closest I ever came to a detention cell before Jedha was on Ord Mantell when a trooper caught me stealing his datapad, and the only reason it took me a few minutes to escape was because he broke my nose and the bleeding kept me distracted."
Not to mention the pain. So that's how he got that particular injury; she'd wondered about that. "Must have hurt for quite a while."
Cassian dismisses it, as she knew he would. "Not really. On the plus side, when I got back to Dantooine it made a big impression on my girlfriend at the time."
"Girlfriend? How old were you again?" she teases.
"Fourteen. That girl wasn't… serious."
Is she imagining things, or is he embarrassed again? Well, since this time she is not the subject of the narrative, she can afford to taunt him to her heart's content. "And how exactly would you define serious?"
There is no mistaking the embarrassment this time; it almost looks like he is blushing. "Well, you know… you know, when you stay with someone for years, or plan to get married, that kind of serious."
His predicament makes her bolder. With any luck, once the concussion after-effects have passed and the meds have worn off, he won't remember this. "And how many… serious girlfriends have you had?"
"Just two. One was a fellow Intel lieutenant, and got shot on a mission at Bilbringi. The other was a Y-wing pilot, and half their squadron, including her, died in an ambush."
"I'm sorry," she mutters. No, there is no safe line of questioning with him, when virtually all his life has been lived in wartime.
"As Cassian says, those two were the serious ones, anyway," K puts in, apparently looking to fill in missing facts. "Then there were…"
"K!" Cassian snaps at him so vehemently that she almost jumps in her seat.
"Yes, Cassian?" K sounds completely unruffled.
"You shut your rusty mouth right now or I swear, I'll find a 3PO body to put you in. A golden one, mind you."
She doubts whether snickering at this exchange is going to endear her to either of its participants, but she cannot help it anyway. Cassian shoots her a rather pointed look, but all this is apparently wasted on K, who just happily goes on.
"Sorry, I thought you told me you completely trusted Jyn," and Cassian takes it as his cue to put a hand over his eyes.
"Yes; but I didn't tell you to destroy my reputation in front of her," he says after a second or two, and this time she is quite certain that his delayed response has little to do with the effects of the concussion.
Little does he know, she figures, that none of the short liaisons she has got into could be honestly considered romantic, let alone serious, relationships.
As it turns out, her faraway look is not lost on him. "What?" he prompts, raising an eyebrow.
Think of something, damn it. When she gives up hope of concocting a plausible excuse, she goes with the classic best defence; in this case, a particularly trick question.
"I was just wondering… Ever had to – seduce anyone – in the line of duty?" Inwardly she wonders, and hopes it does not show, how she would have behaved if he'd had to seduce her.
When he does not speak at once, she figures she has the answer; but while his words an instant later are not unexpected, she is curiously buoyed up by the message.
"Once," he says, fidgeting with his shirt cuff. "But I'd never do it again. It's just… wrong".
"I'm glad to know I'm travelling with a real gentleman," she half teases, though there is probably more conviction to her words than she cares to acknowledge.
Once more, K jumps in before Cassian can come up with a reply, but this time his words arguably do more to dispel the prospect of inhabiting a 3PO body than hasten it. "He really is, you know. He just does not always admit it."
x x x
"So what's Abregado-rae like?" She does her best to sound, and stay, awake, and can tell that Cassian is likewise struggling. They have trod safer ground for the past hour or so, talking about planets each of them has been to, comparing personal favourites and those they would each prefer to avoid. But the fatigue is getting better of them both, and she can tell that Cassian can no longer feel any effect from the stim patch. He is slumped in the pilot's seat, his head lolling to one side and his eyes closed; at least she is glad he's still talking.
"Ever been to Tatooine?" he asks, after a couple of second's pause.
"Passed through Mos Eisley once… picking up high-encryption blank datacards… for a forgery job."
"The Abregado spaceport looks just like that. The rest… is better… more hilly… you get some… grassy slopes, instead of sand dunes." She distantly hears him finish the sentence in a low mutter.
When she sits bolt upright, not more than five minutes later, his face is worryingly blank.
"Cassian?"
She climbs out of the chair, steps over to him and takes his hand. At least she can still feel a pulse. Just about. Sort of.
"Cassian?" she tries, more insistently.
"I think he may have gone unconscious, Jyn," K tells her presently. "I am sorry. I wish I could access the ship's sound alert circuits to try wake him. All I can do is speak, and as Cassian said, this voice is not really…"
"Can I give him another stim patch?" she asks over K's unhappy ruminations.
"Not yet. You'd have to wait for another half hour. But by then we should be landing so maybe it's better if you leave it until he can have proper medical treatment."
Assuming he makes it that far. She cannot bring herself to say it out loud, cannot really contemplate the prospect of losing him. Not after all they have been through, not after she has lost so much – so many – in the space of three days. Saw. Her father. Bodhi. Chirrut. Baze. She cannot lose Cassian, too. Especially not him.
Her miserable reverie is interrupted by the realspace re-entry alert.
x x x
"I'm trying to reach Nawara Olan, or anyone at Starfire Electronics who can put me through to him."
Apparently, her statement has been wasted on the spaceport controller droid among the powerful static bursts.
"State your name, business, and destination on Dorvalla," the controller repeats.
"My name is Liana Hallik, independent trader, of the shuttle Rook," she improvises off Cassian's agreed-upon new name, hoping that the controller is too busy to question why an Imperial Lambda-class shuttle should be piloted by an independent trader. I am trying to reach Nawara Olan of Starfire Electronics. I have an urgent appointment with him." Hopefully that last minor lie won't come back to bite her in the proverbial.
"Stay on the channel, Liana Hallik. I will advise you once I have your landing pad location."
An interminable minute later, she exhales with silent relief as she is directed to Landing Pad 16. She thanks the controller, shuts off the channel and turns her attention back to the urgent business of flying – a skill she admittedly has very limited experience of. Driving a speeder bike above ground is one thing; landing a shuttle in a spaceport, however…
"K?"
"Jyn?"
"Call up the layout map for Dorwalla Spaceport. I need to locate Landing Pad 16."
"Ready."
She scans the schematic map on the secondary display. "How do I activate the landing sequence? Is there an automated protocol I can– "
It is K's turn to interrupt her with an answer, apparently eager to impart the good news.
"Yes, Jyn, you can engage the auto landing protocol using the landing pad coordinates. Copy the binary coordinate readout from the top line of the layout map on the secondary display, then go to primary, select main, then navigation protocols, then planetfall and landing, then autocue sequence, then input the planet name and code and the coordinates into the query boxes. The planet code for Dorvalla is IR118374DRV. Then select activate. You will need to manually engage the repulsorlift thrusters and the landing gear. Watch out for the control panel keys, each of these two will flash when it needs to be pressed."
"Thank you, K, you're a lifesaver." For the second time in less than a standard day, they would be in huge trouble without him. Not dead, perhaps, this time – not immediately, anyway – but with Cassian unconscious, every minute counts.
"You're welcome," K comes back. "Cassian is right, Jyn, he has been through worse injuries, and he has always made it through and managed to avoid Imperial capture."
And then, just as she is about to thank him again for the reassurance, K delivers the characteristic conclusion.
"So if this goes wrong, it will really be a first."
x x x
In retrospect, the landing went as smoothly as she might have hoped for, she reflects as she listens to the engines powering down, the words landing protocol successfully completed glowing in the centre of the main display. All she had to do was press two keys as K had warned her, and watch the shifting reflection of the local sun on Dorvalla's purple-grey ocean as their shuttle circled the planet, homing in on the spaceport. Three-quarters of Dorvalla's surface are covered by water, she recalled, with dry land stretching as a single continent seemingly wrapped like a thick creeper vine around the shiny ocean surface, its meandering shape now accented by the irregular long plumes of thick white clouds tracing the tops of the jagged mountain ridges that separate the windswept uninhabitable oceanside plains from the milder, lush valleys on the interior. It was Dorvalla's crazy fast rotation, she mused, its day length just over half a standard Coruscant day, that caused devastating hurricanes to form on the ocean surface, making nearby planes barren of life save for the most resilient lichens; but the inland valleys reaped the full benefit of the protection offered by the steep mountain barriers and were teeming with plant life and uniformly short-statured but fairly diverse animal species. It reminded her somewhat of Lah'mu, her second and last childhood home: perhaps that was the reason she accepted the offer to work for Nawara five years ago, despite the remote location and the crazy 12-hour circadian rhythm.
And now, she figures as she looks at the landing bay blast doors staying firmly shut, all she can do is wait for her welcome party, if welcome is a word she dares to use. It is common practice at urban spaceports to keep these doors locked to avoid accidental damage during take-off, but they normally open within a minute of landing to allow passengers and cargo to exit into the city.
"Jyn?" K prompts her.
"Yes?"
"You need to set the timer to power me down so I can avoid detection."
She almost forgot. "Thank you, K." She follows the memory bank menu to the power saving settings. "One-minute countdown OK with you?"
"Yes, Jyn."
"You got it," she mutters as she selects and confirms the setting. "Talk to you soon, K." I hope.
K does not reply. She retrieves and re-checks Cassian's blaster, takes another look at its unconscious owner, and sits there, wondering how long it may take for whoever may be coming to retrieve her.
With a muffled clang, the doors open a crack and start sliding apart; and silhouetted in the washed-out light beyond she sees four tall armoured humanoids with blaster rifles surrounding a slightly shorter but equally imposing cloaked being.
She wishes for a second that K were still around to provide a modicum of a morale boost. Then again, any lines he would have likely given her were bound to include having a bad feeling about this.
And he certainly would be right.
.
TBC
.
The way I took a guess at their respective ages is for the most part based on canon and the Rogue One plot. If I remember right, the time between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope is supposed to be 20 years; so for Cassian to have fought in the Rebellion since he was six, seeing how his character looks to be close to his thirties, he would have to have been there right from the outset; hence 26 as the "oldest" estimate. Jyn, again if I remember right, mentions last seeing her father 15 years ago (when she looked to me to be about five), and mentions Saw leaving her "a long time ago" when she was sixteen; hence she would be 20-21 at the time of Rogue One.
See you next chapter :)