JYN BURST out of the conference room, and Bodhi followed in her wake. They made their way from there into the hangar, where they discovered Chirrut and Baze waiting for them.

“You don’t look happy,” said Baze.

He had no idea. She’d actually cooled down a bit since she’d left the council chambers.

“They prefer to surrender,” Jyn said, glancing back the way they’d come.

“And you?”

“She wants to fight,” Chirrut said.

“So do I,” Bodhi said. “We all do.”

Chirrut pondered this. “The Force is strong.”

Jyn looked at the others and actually considered taking them seriously. It would be madness, right? “I’m not sure the four of us is quite enough.”

Baze nodded to Bodhi. “How many do we need?”

“What are you talking about?” She’d already counted Bodhi, and the Imperial pilot didn’t have any friends in the rebel base, defector or not.

Baze pointed behind her, though, and she turned to see what he meant. More than a dozen soldiers appeared from the hangar’s deepest shadows.

They were as rough-looking a group as Jyn had ever seen, and she’d spent time in some of the worst dens of scum and villainy in the galaxy. One was the sergeant who’d led the team that broke her out of prison. He wore the uniform of a special operations soldier, as did most of the rest.

And Cassian stood there in front of them, with K-2SO just behind.

“They were never going to believe you,” he said to Jyn.

She fixed him with a cold stare. “I appreciate the support.”

“But I do.”

She narrowed her eyes at him as she let that sink in.

“I believe you,” he said. “We’d like to volunteer. Some of us”—he glanced at the others—“most of us, we’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion. Spies. Saboteurs. Assassins.”

Jyn scanned the faces lined up to help her. Almost all of them were human, except for K-2SO and a single alien named Pao, a Drabatan from Pipada. Built like a human, he had the face and skin of a dried-out lizard.

No matter where they hailed from, though, they all seemed ready to fight.

“Everything I did, I did for the Rebellion,” Cassian explained. “And every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget, I told myself it was for a cause I believed in. A cause that was worth it.”

The soldiers behind Cassian nodded in agreement.

“Without that, we’re lost. Everything we’ve done would have been for nothing. I couldn’t face myself if I gave up now. None of us could.”

Jyn didn’t know what to say. She was flattered that Cassian, of all people, would be willing to put his faith in her, much less all the other soldiers. She’d never had so many people willing to put their lives on the line simply because they believed her. Believed in her.

But the Alliance high command had considered her demand for action, and they’d already said no. How could they do anything without the Alliance’s support? Without its weapons? Its ships?

“It won’t be comfortable,” Bodhi said to her.

She furrowed her brow at him, confused about what he meant.

“It’ll be a bit cramped, but we’ll all fit. We could go.”

He meant the Imperial cargo shuttle. The one he’d stolen. The one he could just as easily steal again.

Cassian wasn’t one to hesitate at any opportunity, even one as slim as this. “Okay,” he said to the others, the ones who’d lined up to follow him. “Gear up. Grab anything that’s not nailed down.”

They hesitated for a moment before they started to move. He waved at them. “Go, go, go!”

Jyn smiled, something she’d doubted she’d get to do that day. She marveled at the soldiers and how quickly they’d decided to stand up and keep fighting, no matter what the odds. Then she realized they’d all been doing that for so long already. It came naturally to them.

K-2SO, who already had everything he needed, spoke to her as the soldiers scattered. “Jyn, I’ll be there for you,” he said. “Cassian said I had to.”

She shook her head at that. Not because the robot had been so brutally honest—she was getting used to that—but at the way Cassian had marshaled support for her.

“I’m not used to people sticking around when things go bad,” she told Cassian.

He gave her a casual shrug and a warm smile, as if it was all no big deal. “Welcome home.”

Jyn thought that seemed like an odd thing to say, but when she realized she was smiling again, she understood just how perfect Cassian’s words were. It had been a long time since she’d felt like she belonged anywhere—or with anyone. Her father’s death had hammered that home.

This crew, these people, they were now more her home than any place she’d known since Saw had abandoned her. Despite how insane the mission that had brought them together might be, she discovered she liked it.