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t=0
The sky turns green. The ocean explodes.
"Into the ship, now!" Cassian shouts. Melshi is already moving, and Cassian half pushes, half gets pulled by Jyn until they're all inside. He collapses into the pilot's seat, ribs screaming in pain, and is off the ground before the door closes.
It's Jedha all over again. Except on Jedha, it was his ship. On Jedha, he had K2.
So maybe it's more like Aldhani. Flying blind in a ship he barely knows, dodging debris as friends die behind him.
t=-2 minutes
They arrive to bay nine to a destroyed ship and a sphere of metal in the sky.
"Bodhi—" Jyn lunges forward, trying to get to the burned bodies on the ground.
"There's no time," Cassian says, holding her back as his side screams with pain. "Bay seven, let's go." His eye is on the sky. It's going to fire, he knows, and they need to be in a ship when it does. "Bay seven," he says again, mostly to himself. There's a goal. A way out. The mission's not over yet.
By some miracle, Melshi's waiting at bay seven. He's bleeding from a blaster wound to his leg, and leaning heavily on a wooden staff, but the ship is open.
t=+1 minute
The ship jerks as it's pummeled on all sides by falling water, trees, rocks.
"We're not going to make it," Jyn says from behind him. Cassian can't reply. Equations fly through his head and into the navigation system, hyperspace calculations to Yavin IV that he could do in his sleep on a normal flight. "Cassian—"
"Let him concentrate," Melshi says from the seat beside him. His voice sounds pained. Cassian focuses on flying.
Something hits the ship. Alarms blare. The calculations are almost done, the water is closing in, if he doesn't send it now they aren't—
The ship jumps into hyperspace, and everything goes blissfully still.
t=-7 minutes
They take the elevator down from the top of the citadel. Cassian is leaning against Jyn, his side burning from Krennic's shot, every breath painful. They limp through the building, back towards the landing pads. He keeps his blaster ready, but it remains unused.
He almost asks K2 for the odds that they see no one on their way out, but stops at the last second.
t=+1.5 minutes
The alarm is still going, even in hyperspace. Cassian can't make himself get up and check the ship, so whatever it is will have to last.
"We made it," Melshi says, the ship filling with disbelief, lighter than air, that then plunges into grief so heavy it feels like lead.
"Did anyone else?" Jyn asks. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see her reach towards what he now recognizes as Chirrut's staff.
"No."
t=-30 minutes
As they ride on the transport towards the citadel, Cassian scans the other docking bays. Empty, empty, can't fly that ship—a possibility.
"Contingency A," he whispers into the comm unit as loud as he dares. "If the freighter is no longer an option, convene at bay seven."
"Copy that," Melshi's voice rings out from the comm. "Has anyone ever told you that you're paranoid, Captain?"
"Keep the comms clear," Cassian says, but he's smiling.
t=+2 minutes
"Everyone I was with died," Melshi says, voice carefully neutral. "The rest would've followed the contingency. There wasn't anyone else at bay seven when I got there."
"We'll remember them." Jyn's tone brokers no argument. Names run through Cassian's mind, and he knows that they're running through Melshi's as well.
Bodhi
Chirrut
Baze
Sefla
Pao
Tonc
Lunak
Calfor
Nevis
Kestal
Basteren
Kappehl
Mefran
Rostok
Casrich
K2.
"Stone and Sky," he mutters.
t=-35 minutes
They land on Scarif, and Cassian's mind goes silent. Anything could happen in the Senate, on Yavin, but the only thing that matters now is the mission.
It's not something he learned from Luthen, but it's certainly something he perfected with him.
He still can't quite believe the bastard is dead.
Despite Luthen being dead, his godsforsaken rules were still ingrained in Cassian's mind. Following rule one was never his priority, and he trusts everyone on this ship enough. But that just means he always has to work twice as hard to follow rule two.
Build your exit on your way in.
t=+5 minutes
Jyn's scavenged a half-used medkit from somewhere in the back of the ship. Cassian's taken a bacta patch for his side, but there's not much he can do for the broken ribs or bruises. Melshi's wrapping bandages around his leg, hiding the charred flesh of a blaster burn. The alarm finally runs out. The ship is silent.
t=+30 minutes
"How much longer to the base?" Jyn asks. It sounds like she's been crying. They all have.
"A few hours."
t=+120 minutes
Cassian's been watching their ship inch along the map in order to stay awake. He's gone without sleep for longer, but the adrenaline that came with escaping Scarif has long since worn off, and the reality of the last few days has settled on him like a blanket. Everything they did, from running off to save Kleya, to the loss of Jedha and Scarif, just to send a transmission that probably failed.
He wonders if this is what Bix meant, when she said he was a messenger.
t=+180 minutes
"We're twenty minutes from Yavin," Cassian says. It's the first time anyone has spoken in hours.
"Do you think it worked?" Melshi asks. He sounds like he did on Niamos, all those years ago.
"It did." Jyn's voice is full of conviction that Cassian can't bring himself to feel.
"Well, whatever happens now," he says, and waits until Melshi looks at him. "Whatever happens now, we made it."
t=+200 minutes
"This is Rogue One, asking for permission to land," he says. They're nearly orbiting around Yavin IV, the comms system replying with nothing but static. "This is Rogue One, we're on a different stolen imperial freighter, it's damaged—"
"Rogue One, what's the clearance code?" General Draven says. Over the comm, it's impossible to read any tone.
"K16D152," Cassian rattles off, hoping they hadn't changed it in the day or so they've been gone. Hoping that Draven doesn't decide to shoot them out of the sky for insubordination anyway.
"Do you need medical?" Draven asks instead.
"Yes."
"Bay 3A," Draven says. It's the one closet to the medbay, Cassian notes with no small amount of relief.
"Acknowledged," Cassian says, and lands the ship.