A lot of action in this one - buckle up! Rogue One with the addition of a few friends (and enemies).

Chapter 42: Stardust

Korkie won every argument they ever had, but Ahsoka wasn't sure he'd been right about this one. She felt the heavy drag of hyperspace and was uneasy. Certainly, it was safer to go to Anakin before getting embroiled in the battle for the plans upon Scarif, but it didn't feel right. They'd need her. They'd surely need her. She couldn't help but feel she was flying in the wrong direction.

And there was something else, too, nagging in the corner of her mind. Bail Organa's gifted ship was too damn big for a mission like this. There was an eeriness about the Tantive IV without its Alderaanian crew.

If she told Korkie all this, of course, he'd laugh at her. She wondered what he was doing now. Checked her chrono. The first ship would be departing for Scarif. It was the sort of mad-man's plan that Anakin would have come up with in the Clone Wars, entirely reliant upon catching the Empire by surprise. A single ship headed by Jyn and Cassian and packed with as many Mando'ade as it would fit. But Admiral Raddus had, Ahsoka consoled herself, promised naval and fighter cover from the Alliance fleet. The half of the fleet who believed in the cause, at least.

Ahsoka drummed her fingers by the controls and resisted the urge to turn around.

It was far too early in the day for anything to have gone wrong and yet here they were, departure delayed, and the whole rebel base in a complete flap because the Crown Princess of Alderaan was missing. Bail Organa had been about the embark on his own journey home to Alderaan and raised the alert and the whole Scarif crew had been forced into another check over of the ships to ensure no one inadvertently brought the runaway princess to Scarif with them.

The problem was, of course, that Ariarne was not stowing away amongst any of the ships bound for Scarif. Nor was she anywhere, Korkie quickly surmised, in the rebel base at all. He reviewed the couple of flights that had departed Yavin overnight and in the early morning, in the hours since Ariarne had last been sighted, shot out a message, and tried to pull his mind back on track. Ariarne was a teenage idiot, to have caused this sort of trouble on this day of all days. But she was the smart sort of teenage idiot, Korkie knew. She'd be okay, wherever she was.

"I don't understand how you couldn't have sensed this earlier," Bail hissed, in completely uncharacteristic frustration. "If you can tell me now that she's nowhere on the bloody moon then how come-"

"I wasn't looking for her before, Bail," Korkie countered, heaving a pack of detonators on board Jyn's chosen ship. "I was kind of busy."

Bail accepted the excuse with a curt nod. Korkie didn't take it personally. He was angry, Korkie knew, with himself.

"I used the Force to go missing all the time as a kid," Korkie consoled him. "It's a bad combination of Force ability beyond frontal lobe maturity. I'm sure she'll be very apologetic."

"As long as she's alive," Bail muttered.

"Of course she's alive," Korkie insisted.

On the cusp of their re-scheduled departure time, Korkie was proven right.

"I've got your daughter, Bail," a projection of Ahsoka announced. "And have given her a good talking to already."

There was a scowling Ariarne, arm held by Ahsoka, pulled into the corner of the frame.

"Tell your dad sorry for giving him a heart attack."

Ariarne sighed.

"Sorry, Dad."

And after all he had been through in this short morning, Bail Organa could barely speak. He nodded, frowned, opened his mouth to deliver some sort of reprimand, then shut it again, rubbed at his eyes, and spoke.

"You gave me a terrible fright, Ariarne."

At this, the petulant teenager softened, her shoulders drooping with shame.

"I'm sorry, Dad," she repeated earnestly. "I don't know why- I mean, the Force-"

She shook her head, unable to say it right.

"I'm sorry."

Bail gave a weary smile.

"No matter."

"I know we've all got lots to do this morning," Ahsoka said. "Bail, you carry onto Alderaan as planned. I'm on a low risk flight. I'll drop her around to you."

She turned her gaze to the teenager at her side, gave her shoulders a squeeze.

"We've got a lot of Force-stuff to talk about in the meantime, I think."

"Thank you, Ahsoka," Bail acquiesced.

"Does this mean we're going now?" Jyn asked, perking up.

"We're definitely going now," Cassian agreed, collecting Korkie by his collar and dragging him from the projection of Ahsoka and Ariarne. "We've wasted enough mission time on family drama, don't you think?"

Korkie conceded the point.

"Sorry for the delay. Let's go."

He couldn't quite figure out why the usually sensible Ariarne had chosen to be a teenage idiot today. There was a vague sense of unease gnawing at him. It wasn't like her. But Ahsoka, presumably, could get to the bottom of it for them.

"All aboard… what are we calling our ship?"

"Alliance's Best?" a lounging Bo-Katan suggested, rising finally to her feet. "Short for Alliance's best troops?"

"How about: Uncowardly?" Ruma posed, shouldering her blaster cannon. "As opposed to the rest of the Alliance."

Korkie snorted.

"Be kind, Ruma."

"Schism," proposed Cassian, adopting the accent for which he still teased Korkie as though the joke hadn't been overdone for two decades. "Short for, 'If there must be a schism in the Alliance, then so be it.'"

"Stars, Cassian, I don't sound like that."

"You do!"

"Rogue. Rogue One," Jyn declared, with finality. "Which represents all of the above, but is actually a plausible name for a ship."

"Rogue One," Korkie agreed. "All aboard, then. Scarif awaits."

He inclined his head at the Alderaanian Senator making his way to his own ship, face vaguely pale still.

"Safe travels, Bail."

"I'm going to lock her in the palace until the snow thaws," Bail grumbled half-heartedly, but returned Korkie's smile with a weak attempt of his own. "Good luck on Scarif."

"Thank you, Bail."

There is no luck, he answered silently, in his father's voice. There is no try.

There would only be success or failure on Scarif. Plans or no plans. Korkie followed his Ba'vodu onto the ship and did not know what he might find.

"When I said I was going to talk to you about Force-stuff, I didn't mean a lecture," Ahsoka advised gently, sitting beside the princess at the ship's controls. "I wanted to talk about what's going on for you. Why you came. What you feel."

Ariarne arched a regal brow.

"No one cares what I feel. No one ever taught me how to feel, in the Force."

"I'm sorry."

Ariarne shrugged, gaze deflected at her feet.

"Korkie just taught me to breathe and shield and be hidden."

"So we should actually be blaming him for all of this trouble," Ahsoka suggested.

Her smile was tentatively reflected in the teenager.

"Your shielding was pretty good," Ahsoka went on. "For someone trained by Korkie."

At this, Ariarne finally snickered.

"Not that good. You found me."

"Only after the message went out that you were missing."

Ariarne nodded, gave an enormous sigh. She mightn't have been trained but she knew what Ahsoka was silently asking her.

"I just didn't want to go back to Alderaan," she professed. "It didn't feel right. I don't know why. I don't know how to make sense of-"

She wrung her hands.

"I thought an ambassadorial mission was a good compromise. It's not like I want to go get myself killed on Scarif, or anything. I know I couldn't do that. But I thought maybe I could help you and then I wouldn't have to go home."

Ahsoka grimaced with apology.

"I have to take you home, Ariarne. You saw how worried your dad was. And I'm sure your mum is the same. Besides, it's not really the sort of ambassadorial mission you can help me on."

"Then why aren't you taking me now?"

Ahsoka sat back, vaguely startled by the teenager's challenge. But she was right. They had come out of hyperspace when the news of Ariarne's disappearance had come through and been drifting at negligible pace ever since. Ahsoka should have set the coordinates for Alderaan before she'd sat down. But setting the coordinates for Alderaan meant…

"I'm worried about our assault on Scarif," Ahsoka confessed. "I wanted to be in striking range in case something went wrong."

She sighed, rubbed at her forehead.

"But now I have the Princess of Alderaan on board."

"I don't mind if we wait a bit," Ariarne assured her hurriedly.

Ahsoka groaned. Ariarne had already proved herself reckless and foolish and she shouldn't entertain her for a second.

"I'll feel better if we just wait to hear that they're going okay," Ahsoka found herself saying.

What sort of hells-damned idiot-

"I'm sure everything will be okay. It'll just help me to hear it, before we go to Alderaan."

Ariarne sat back in the co-pilot's chair, pleased with the compromise.

"Doesn't bother me."

"And are you sure you don't want some of us coming inside with you?" Korkie offered, for perhaps the tenth time.

"Not unless you can fit one of those Imperial uniforms over your armour," Cassian pointed out. "Leave it to Jyn and me."

"And me!" K-2SO reminded the team indignantly, rising to his full height.

"And you," Jyn agreed, giving the droid a vague pat. "I trust they'll keep you busy on the outside, Korkie."

"I trust the same," Korkie conceded.

It was a completely sensible plan. Korkie had grown so much since the fall of the Republic, but he'd not grown out of this. How he'd failed Isval, Mace, Cody… He preferred to be directly in the firing line, to put his body out there first and keep everyone else safe. How old was Jyn? Korkie was getting to a concerning period of adulthood – never mind that he was still in his early thirties – where all the young rebels around him seemed like children he ought to protect.

"Come on, ad'ik," Bo-Katan beckoned him, in a sobering reminder that he was really not so very old after all. "We've got a distraction to make and detonators to set off."

Back at war. After so many frozen years on Krownest. Had it always been this beautiful and horrible? Ursa shot down the streaming soldiers and felt the heat of the counter-shots at the joints in her armour. The sand beneath her feet was not the soil of her homeland. She was not yet fighting the battle that would heal her. But the cause felt real. Interspersed among the well-trained Mandalorian soldiers were barely-armoured rebels from all over the galaxy, who had never been at war, but who had found the courage to become soldiers. The cause meant something. The cause was for an end to the Empire that would destroy a thousand planets in the way they had destroyed Mandalore. The cause was for a chance to level the battlefield, to fight again.

There was the screaming of fighter engines overhead. The rebellion's X-wings had arrived, with troop carriers aboard. Fewer than Ursa had hoped for. She lifted her chin and saw the glint of an atmospheric shield.

Trapped on foreign soil.

But there was no time to think any further upon it. There was a homeless orphan in that communications tower to protect. These plans would change the shape of the galaxy. Ursa would find her way home. Bo-Katan would work something out. Bo-Katan always worked something out. And in this moment, there were stormtroopers to knock back and maybe, if Ursa squinted her weary eyes, the shadows of Imperial walkers in the distance.

What a hell-damned kriffing oversight. They had been prepared for the stormtroopers engaging the Mandalorians on the beaches, prepared for TIE fighters doing battle with their X-wings and even the karking AT-ACTs causing deafening havoc outside the communications tower. But how could they have missed that on this week of all weeks, Director Krennic would be joined on Scarif by none other than-

"Keep your mind on the job," Jyn hissed. "We're not exposed yet. It doesn't matter that he's here."

Cassian tried with great effort to keep a straight face, edging out a retaliation of his own.

"Doesn't matter? If he finds us out, we have no chance against him."

"Then let's not be found out. Pretend you never saw him."

"But I did see him. We should call the Mandalorians into the tower."

"No! That gives us away."

"We're going to be found out sooner or later-"

"Later," Jyn asserted. "Much, much later when the plans are ours."

Cassian didn't know whether she was a genius or completely crazy. There was no doubt at all that she had been raised by Saw Gerrera.

"If we die, I'm blaming you."

"That's fine."

They stepped into the elevator, K-2SO close behind them, and began their ascent. Closer, closer. Perhaps Jyn wasn't crazy. Perhaps they would make it undetected.

Cassian sighed. He knew he was kidding himself. But they didn't have much choice. It was a mission worth their lives.

Stardust.

Jyn felt her heart spasm in her chest.

Stardust.

Her father's voice, still alive, speaking to her.

"It's this one," Jyn breathed. "Project Stardust."

Cassian frowned, hands on the graspers.

"How do you know?"

Her father's arms around her. The feeling of being very small, in the warmth of a bed that was her bed and not some soldier's pallet. Love. Home. She smiled up at her companion.

"Because it's me."

Orson Krennic watched the chaos unfolding on the beaches of Scarif and wondered why it was that those dastardly rebels seemed to insist not only on unbalancing the Empire as a whole, but specifically undermining his own karking career. It felt targeted, at this point. Completely unfair. Why didn't anyone ever venture to show up Tarkin in this way?

But the matter would be resolved. The rebels on the ground were badly outnumbered – skilled though their armoured soldiers were – and outnumbered more badly still in the air. It would be a costly victory, granted, but an Imperial victory nonetheless. They would not breach the shield. They would not cause any damage that could not be rebuilt. Which begged the question, of course, as to why the rebels were here to begin with. There was nothing to be won on those beaches.

"Unauthorised access to the data vault," a soldier informed him, voice low.

Oh.

Krennic could have thrown himself out of the hells-damned window. He had been foolish. He'd been a karking idiot. There was nothing to be won on Scarif except for that data vault.

The Director took a steadying breath. It had been a brief lapse in his judgement. But no matter. He was well-equipped to deal with the matter.

"Two men, with me, now!" he barked, turning with a billow of his cape. "And you, General."

His esteemed visitor could at least make himself useful on this phenomenally migrainous day. They proceeded, boots clacking and feet clanking, to the data vault.

"Korkie!"

Cassian's voice crackled through his comms, as desperate as he'd ever heard it.

"Korkie, where the hells are you? We need you in here right now."

Cassian never said anything he didn't mean. Korkie thanked the stars his Ba'vodu had insisted he bring the seldom-used jetpack she had fixed up for him – he could admit, grudgingly, that he did not much like flying – and took off.

"I thought you didn't want me to come inside," he reminded Cassian, for no situation was ever too dire to win an argument.

"We're a little past the point of disguises," Jyn's voice admitted.

"And badly in need of someone with a lightsaber or ten!" Cassian yelped.

"Oh. I see."

Korkie hoped that didn't mean exactly what he suspected it might. There was a strange echoing quality about the blaster bolts transmitted through the comms.

"Where are you exactly?"

"Data vault. Inside it. Climbing."

"On it. Five seconds away."

He heard Jyn scream Cassian's name and the comms cut out. Korkie landed on the outside of the tower and held his position by jamming lightsaber and Darksaber into the sleek wall. He took a steadying breath. This probably wasn't going to be much fun.

Krennic had shot down one rebel, but the other had climbed to the opposite side of the data column, out of range.

"Well?" the director demanded. "Climb after her!"

There should have been some clause in his contract – not that the Empire had ever written him a blasted contract – that prohibited Grievous from being asked to perform such a demeaning task at the command of a lowly director. His body was regularly maintained but his heart was old and his mind weary.

"Go!"

But the rebel was, admittedly, at risk of escaping and ruining Grievous's chances of ever turning the Death Star upon the planet Huk and destroying the Yam'rii. He snarled his displeasure, and jumped.

Jyn was going to die and it was going to be all her fault. Just as Cassian – Cassian, wounded on the platform, wounded because of her – had said. That insectoid cyborg was scuttling beneath her and there was no chance in any kriffing galaxy that she could outclimb him. She shot down desperate blaster bolts that slowed but would not stop him. She reached higher, higher still, but the roof was still so distant.

And then there was a slow groan in the shaft's metal exterior as a molten circle of damage became apparent and the wall caved slowly in. An armoured soldier, jetpack ignited, blue and black blades in hand, flew into the shaft through the hole he had made and landed on the data column squarely between Jyn and her pursuer.

"Hello there, General!" he chirped. "It's been such a long time!"

He turned his face upwards – helmetless, no doubt much to his aunt's chagrin – and spoke to Jyn.

"Keep climbing, Jyn, dearest."

Jyn felt for the Stardust file at her belt – her father's hand, right there, at her side – and climbed.

With a roar of displeasure, Grievous leapt from the data column and back onto level ground. He could not pursue the rebel while fighting a soldier with a blasted jetpack. Korkie Kryze followed him, landing with the heavy clunk of beskar boots and wielding the two blades, sapphire and obsidian, that had once seemed far too big for his scrawny arms. The insolent child and reckless teenager had grown into a man.

Krennic was gone, and whether he was pursuing the rebel himself or fleeing like a coward Grievous did not care. Krennic could not help him.

"Prince Kenobi," Grievous snarled.

"Kryze, General," the man corrected him, with long-suffering patience. "My surname is Kryze."

And years ago Grievous might have reminded him of the great many failures of the name he had chosen to bear. They might have taunted each other further, danced around with glancing blows. But Grievous was old and Korkie was grown too. The galaxy was on the cusp of some monumental change.

They stepped forward and clashed 'sabers and Grievous knew that it would be nothing but to the death, this time.

As a child, when the Clone Wars had been almost some bizarre holo-drama in which his father was a famous actor, Korkie had dreamed of a victory like this. A famous villain, a battle of flashing blades and hissing sparks and monumental acrobatics. But when the Darksaber was knocked from his hand, when Korkie drew his blaster from his belt, when the lunge of Siri Tachi's lightsaber cut down the breastplate and the blaster finished the job, Grievous's mortal heart bursting to flame, Korkie felt no joy. No victory.

The cyborg crashed, with an echoing clang, to his knees. He gave a long, low moan and slumped to his side. His cybernetic hands fell from the wound they had clutched at his chest. Korkie felt Grievous's relief in the Force as his soul slipped from his broken body and he felt the strangest sadness. He knelt, head bowed, at his enemy's side.

The General Grievous had long, long been waiting to die.

Ahsoka had tuned into the master radio frequency for rebel comms and they sat there, adrift in space, halfway to wherever it was that Ahsoka had been supposed to go, and listened to the battle of Scarif as though it were some kriffing sports match. Although a sports match, Ariarne figured, could never make the ever-composed Jedi General Ahsoka Tano look this anxious.

"We need to take out the shield generator to transmit the plans."

"Our bombers aren't touching it!"

"How much more can this thing take?"

Ariarne looked to Ahsoka with alarm.

"Why are they transmitting the plans? Are they stuck there? Aren't they going to fly out?"

Ahsoka took a very deep, very slow breath and said nothing. Ariarne did not have the benefit of four decades of breathwork behind her.

"Korkie's there!" she stressed.

Ahsoka nodded, rose to her feet, made for the controls, and then sat back down again.

"I can't take you there, Ariarne."

She looked desperately around the ship.

"If I get you into an escape pod, send you to…"

"No kriffing way!" Ariarne asserted, as Ahsoka scrolled through the map. "No way. We're not splitting up. I'm not going anywhere alone in an escape pod."

Ahsoka kept scrolling.

"My parents would kill you!" Ariarne added, for emphasis.

Ahsoka sighed.

"If we're going to do the right thing by you and your parents, Ariarne, we're going to turn this off and go straight to Alderaan."

They both looked at each other in silence: Ariarne's defiant, Ahsoka's miserable. There was no way to win.

"Let's go help Korkie," Ariarne urged. "I'll stay on the ship. I'll be completely out of everyone's way. I'll hide in that kriffing compartment again, if I have to."

"It's a naval battle, Ariarne."

"Lightmaker, we're going full thruster into the Persecutor on the port side."

"I think we might be winning the naval battle," Ariarne ventured.

"People are dying!" Ahsoka snapped.

"Shields are down! Shields are down!"

And a flood of voices over the radio frequency that had previously been blocked.

"We're transmitting now. It's done. We've done it."

"It's time to get out of here. Anyone got a ship?"

"Rogue One's in a thousand pieces on that beach."

"I'm looking for something, ad'ik."

"Don't send anyone down. We'll be alright. Get those plans somewhere safe."

Korkie's voice. Bo-Katan's. Ariarne's stomach twisted and she knew that Ahsoka's did too. The Jedi rose to her feet and returned to the controls again. This time, she did not turn away.

"There's a massive object emerging from hyperspace."

"Get in the kriffing compartment, stowaway," Ahsoka commanded. "We're making a very quick, very safe trip to Scarif."

Jyn saw the Death Star emerge on the horizon and she knew. Knew she'd outrun it once and it had taken a lifetime of luck to do so. Knew that she was done now.

She sank slowly to the sand, Cassian's limbs entangled in her own. Together. Everything would be alright. They were together. They would turn to stardust. And above them, the plans were gone. Her father's lifework, and her own, living on. She kissed him and needed nothing else.

A stream of Mando'a, and then Basic.

"Kriff's sake ad'ike, get up!"

Korkie hauled Cassian to his feet. Jyn scrambled up herself.

"The Death Star-" she panted.

"Yes, I can kriffing see that, Jyn."

"We've no chance, Korkie!"

"Ruma's got a ship. There's always a chance. You did it once on Jedha, right?"

An Imperial freighter was swooping in. Korkie all but threw Cassian on board and grabbed Jyn firmly by the elbow.

"Come on, ad'ik. We're not dying today."

"Aren't we going down to the planet to get Korkie?"

Ahsoka snapped a reply without looking at her.

"Get in the compartment, Ariarne!"

"I thought we were coming to get Korkie!"

"It's too late."

Ahsoka's voice was ragged, like nothing Ariarne had ever heard from her.

"It's too late," she repeated. "The Death Star is here. The Devastator is here. We need to get those plans out or it's all for nothing."

Ariarne figured Ahsoka was too busy to enforce the whole getting in the compartment command and hurried to the window. Most the rebel fleet were gone – had leapt safely to hyperspace, Ariarne told herself – but the Profundity floated static, wounded, like some enormous beast, a boarding craft from the Devastator advancing fast.

"Profundity, this is General Tano on Tantive IV. Coming in to dock at hangar nine. Get those plans with a runner and bring them to us."

"Copy that, General Tano. Plans on their way to hangar nine."

Ahsoka reached for the lightsaber hilts at her belt, paused a moment, turned back to Ariarne.

"You stay right here. You stay safe."

"I'll keep the ship idling," Ariarne promised.

There were ships exploding into lifeless debris all around them. In this horrible battle, it was all she knew how to do.

"Good," Ahsoka decided, with a curt nod. "See you soon."

After years of hunting Jedi, this was easy.

Trilla carved her way through the rebels aboard the Profundity with careless ease. Unarmoured. Nothing but pathetic blasters in hand. And Force-blind, all of them. It was unfair, if one believed in concepts of fairness, or justice, or right and wrong.

They fled desperately in scattered directions. Trilla pulled them in the Force easily back, impaled upon her blade without undue effort. In battle with Jedi, Trilla's old wound in her gut ached with the tension on her once-severed muscles. But this was easy. She barely had to swing.

The fear was intoxicating. But where, amongst it all, were the plans? Perhaps she did not need to find them. Perhaps she would simply kill them all. But it was hardly efficient.

And then, the snagging of her attention. Rapid footfalls slapping not with blind fear but with purpose. Running not to escape but to deliver. A helmeted soldier, running not only for his life but for many.

Trilla surged forward. Every life she extinguished between them was meaningless, unconscious. She saw only him.

She drove her lightsaber into him just as his arm reached through the closing gap in the port door.

"Okay, Ariarne, time to go!"

Ahsoka skidded into the main hold, data chip in hand. The teenager was already steering them up and out of the shuddering Profundity.

"Did anyone make it on board with us?"

"No."

Ahsoka joined her at the controls, voice tight. She could not have left the hangar doors open a moment longer. She had felt the cold darkness of Cere Junda's former Padawan right upon her skin, had looked into those eyes that were so familiar and so irretrievably changed. She had, nearly, been close enough to feel the heat of her lightsaber.

She had saved no one.

"But we've got the plans and we're going to keep them safe," Ahsoka resolved, guiding Ariarne's hands on the steering as Anakin had once been unable to keep from doing for her.

Despite her efforts, Tantive IV was rocked by a cannon bolt.

"Kriff. Alright. We've got to jump, Ariarne."

"The calculations haven't finished running."

"Then we'll go back to where we came from."

"But…"

Ariarne pointed with dismay at the red flashing of the display panel.

ALERT! Hyperdrive damage. ALERT! Hyperdrive damage. ALERT!

"No harm in seeing if she jumps," Ahsoka sighed, and slid the handle forward.

There was, of course, plenty of harm in jumping on a damaged hyperdrive. Anakin had taught her to trace ships on a damaged hyperdrive's emitted radiation, like some guilty sentient bleed in the ocean. She could only hope no one aboard the Devastator knew the trick.

Sorry about all the jumping around. Battle scenes are not my strong suit.

RIP Grievous. My favourite villain.

Next chapter, the Alliance's day goes from bad to worse. The Millennium Falcon emerges from hyperspace.

xx - S.