THE MOMENT they were clear into hyperspace and he knew they were no longer in immediate danger, Cassian sent a coded message to General Draven in the Rebellion’s command center on Yavin 4. The Alliance needed to know immediately what had happened, and Cassian needed guidance on what his next step should be.

He wrote: Weapon confirmed. Jedha destroyed. Mission target located on Eadu. Please advise.

Cassian took great care to make sure no one else saw him sending the message. They wouldn’t have been able to read the code anyway, but the fact he was using a code of any kind might send the wrong signals to the others on the U-wing.

Especially Jyn.

Cassian didn’t want to have to assassinate Jyn’s father. In an ideal galaxy, they’d do exactly what the council had explained to Jyn when they’d proposed the mission: find Galen Erso and bring him back alive.

With the fate of the galaxy at stake, though, Cassian understood why General Draven didn’t feel like he had the luxury of taking any chances with Galen. The destruction of Jedha City had put a fine point on that.

He turned in his seat to glance at the others. The destruction of Jedha City had traumatized each of them in their own way. Bodhi was fighting the shakes and failing badly. Jyn sat there like a rock.

Baze just scowled like he’d always expected this sort of horror to be visited on his homeworld. Chirrut kept shaking his head back and forth like he couldn’t believe it.

“Baze, tell me,” Chirrut said. “All of it? The whole city?”

Unlike the rest of them, the blind monk hadn’t watched the Death Star blast Jedha City to pieces. No one who had seen that could doubt there was nothing of the Holy City left, but the man needed his friend to confirm it for him.

“Tell me,” he said again.

Baze didn’t say anything to soften the blow. He simply replied, “All of it.”

The response from General Draven came soon enough. Once Cassian decoded it, it read: Orders still stand. Proceed with haste, and keep to the plan.

Cassian understood what that meant. He was to kill Galen Erso while he still had the chance.

He wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment any longer. After all, if the Death Star was already up and running, what good would killing Galen do? He would probably be more valuable to them alive.

But Cassian had his orders. He turned to K-2SO and said, “Set course for Eadu.”

That got Jyn’s attention. “Is that where my father is?”

Cassian nodded. “I think so.”

He braced himself for a slew of uncomfortable questions. He’d spent much of his adult life as a spy. He was used to lying to people he didn’t care about at all. He found it a challenge to keep quiet with Jyn about something so big as his orders to murder her father.

Before she could open her mouth again, the Imperial cargo pilot perked up and spoke to her. “You’re Galen’s daughter?”

She turned in her seat to peer at him. “You know him?”

Bodhi gave her a nervous nod and spoke too fast, like he couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. “He said I could get right by myself. He said I could make it right if I was brave enough. And listened to what was in my heart. Do something about it.”

He frowned deeply at the memory of what had just happened to Jedha City. “Guess it was too late.”

Jyn shook her head. “It wasn’t too late.”

Baze snorted at that. He and Chirrut had lost just about everyone they knew. “Seems pretty late to me.”

Jyn gave the soldier an emphatic shake of her head. “No,” she said. “We can beat the people who did this. We can stop them.”

That was the most hopeful thing Cassian had ever heard from her mouth. Actually, the most hopeful thing he’d heard in a long time. He and everyone else in the starship gave her their full attention.

“My father’s message. I’ve seen it. They call it the Death Star, but they have no idea…There’s a way to defeat it.”

She focused on Cassian now, and he had to fight the urge to squirm beneath her glare.

“You’re wrong about my father.”

Did she suspect what his true orders were? He’d been careful not to let anything slip, but she clearly had suspicions. Would that change how he handled it?

“He did build it,” Cassian pointed out.

“Because he knew they’d do it without him.” The message had affected her, Cassian saw. Until now, she’d been ambivalent about the Empire and the Rebellion, only along for the ride because she had no choice. Whatever her father had said to her had sparked a fire in her eyes.

“My father made a choice,” she said. “He sacrificed himself for the Rebellion. He’s rigged a trap inside the weapon.”

She turned to Bodhi. “That’s why he sent you. To bring that message.”

“Where is it?” Cassian said. “Where’s the message?”

Jyn hesitated, and Cassian knew she didn’t have the right answer for him. Not the one he needed.

“It was a hologram.”

That was beside the point. He wanted to see the message himself. To look the man in the eye and evaluate his character.

On top of that, he needed to analyze it. Who knew what kinds of secrets Galen might have slipped into his recording? Things that Jyn couldn’t possibly have known about?

“You have that message, right?”

Jyn’s face fell. “Everything happened so fast. But I’ve just seen it!”

Cassian sympathized with her. He was the one who’d dragged her out of Saw’s headquarters. From the projector where she’d been watching the hologram, he now realized.

He turned to Bodhi. “Did you see it?”

The Imperial defector shook his head like he was terrified of disappointing anyone. At least Cassian knew he was telling the truth.

“You don’t believe me,” Jyn said, the fact dawning on her.

Cassian frowned hard. “I’m not the one you’ve got to convince.”

“I believe her,” Chirrut said.

“That’s good to know,” Cassian said, not caring if the monk heard the sarcasm in his voice.

“What kind of trap?” Baze asked Jyn. “You said your father made a trap.”

“The reactor.” Jyn seemed relieved to be able to talk about the message with anyone besides Cassian. “He’s placed a weakness there. He’s been hiding it for years. He said if you can blow the reactor—the module—the whole system goes down.”

Having spilled all that, she turned back to Cassian. “You need to send word to the Alliance.”

“I’ve done that.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. She knew he couldn’t have relayed the latest information that fast.

“They have to know there’s a way to destroy this thing! They have to go to Scarif and get the plans.”

Cassian shook his head. “I can’t risk sending that. We’re in the heart of Imperial territory.”

It may have sounded like a lie to her, but he was telling the truth. He didn’t trust the Rebellion’s coding system. It was fine for sending oblique messages like he and Draven had traded, but when it came to something that had to be specific, he wouldn’t dare use it.

Jyn considered him for a long moment as she set her jaw in determination. She’d gotten this close to her father, and Cassian could see she wasn’t about to give up now.

“Then we’ll find him—and bring him back. And he can tell them himself!”

Cassian gave her an all right nod. Those were her orders, after all.

Unfortunately, they weren’t his orders.