THE MOMENT Jyn saw Krennic, she started climbing away from him and his death troopers, trying to put one of the data columns between them and her. The top of the tower wasn’t that far away. She just needed to get there and try to escape.

Cassian, on the other hand, drew his blaster and began firing at their attackers. He managed to shoot down one of the death troopers, but Krennic and the other one fired back at him.

Cassian clung closer to the column, but that didn’t give him much cover. He couldn’t shoot and climb at the same time, so he kept firing, trying to take out their attackers.

“Keep going!” Cassian shouted after Jyn. “Keep going!”

Jyn climbed faster, reaching for freedom. As she did, she glanced down and saw Cassian take a shot from a blaster rifle that knocked him from the data column. He toppled over, out of sight.

She had no time to mourn him then. She just kept climbing, even after she heard a body smash into the distant floor.

At least she’d put enough of the data column between her and the Imperials. Now she just needed to reach the top.

Soon she could see Scarif’s sky through the vents at the top of the tower. They pulsed open and closed like something alive, pulling the hot air from the tower and helping preserve the tapes.

The valves, of course, were not designed as doors. To get past them, Jyn would have to leap through at just the right moment. Tired as she was, she worried that she might time her jump badly and be caught inside a valve. She concentrated on the one in front of her and watched it go through a few cycles until she got the rhythm of it down.

Then she made her move.

Once through, Jyn found her way to the top of the tower. She emerged countless stories in the air, with TIE fighters and strikers and rebel X-wings dogfighting in the sky around her. She had walked into the middle of a war.

Somewhere atop the tower, she knew, sat a dish control unit the Empire used to transmit data to ships hovering overhead. If she could find it and slap the tape into it, she could use it to transmit the plans to the rebel fleet.

She spotted the control unit at one end of the tower’s roof and headed toward it. Once she got there, she shoved the tape home.

The screen on the control unit started to flash, and a computerized voice began chanting an error message: “Reset antennae alignment. Reset antennae alignment. Reset antennae alignment.”

She hadn’t gone this far to stop now. She peered down at the screen. The diagram showed that she had to go to the end of a long, thin gantry that stabbed out from the side of the tower’s roof.

On a good day, she wouldn’t have wanted to be forced to navigate such a rickety structure. With the battle raging around her, she just wanted to find an elevator to take her straight back down to the ground level, where—if she was lucky—the Empire might toss her in a cozy cell.

She didn’t hesitate for an instant, though, charging straight ahead.

Her father had died trying to stop the Death Star. The way the battle was going, the others were probably gone, too. Baze, Chirrut, Bodhi, K-2SO—even Cassian. She was the only one left, and she couldn’t let their sacrifices be for nothing.

When Jyn reached the end of the gantry, she found a set of controls and turned the knob that would adjust the dish. The computer responded to her again. This time it said, “Dish aligning. Dish aligning.”

Jyn craned her neck to look up and see the gigantic satellite dish atop the tower moving. It cranked itself back until it was pointing straight up, right toward the shield gate.

“Dish aligned,” the computer reported. “Ready to transmit.”

Jyn wanted to pump her fist in triumph, but her work wasn’t done. The channel to the rebel fleet might finally be open, but she still needed to get back to the transmitter and push the button to send the plans.

At that moment, a TIE fighter pilot spotted her standing there, vulnerable and alone, and it screamed straight for her, firing its weapons the entire way. She spun about and charged back down the gantry toward the tower’s roof.

She managed to evade the TIE fighter’s strike, but the blasts tore the gantry apart. She felt herself falling and reached out to find something—anything—to keep her from toppling off the tower to the ground far below.