[As Vel brings Nemik to Dr Quadpaw for treatment, Skeen and Andor talk about the Aldhani raid]
ASArvel Skeen
You think he'll make it?
AAndor
It drives the whole damn galaxy, doesn't it?
SSkeen
You wanna guess how much is in there?
AAndor
Eighty million, give or take.
SSkeen
What'd you tell me? You wanna win and walk away. Well... 40million apiece. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it. See, I can't fly the trawler, but I do have a safe place we can hole up. Between the two of us, we could be the winners here.
AAndor
So no Rebellion for you?
SSkeen
Oh, I'm a rebel. It's just, uh... me against everybody else. Where would that put me? Forty million credits is enough for me to forget all about you.
AAndor
Your brother, with the orchard?
SSkeen
I don't have a brother.
AAndor
So just leave them here?
SSkeen
Don't play the high mind with me. You're not here to save anybody but yourself. I saw it the first minute you came into camp. You're like me, we were born in the hole, all we know is climbing over somebody else to get out. There's a moon eight parsecs from here with nobody home. Put that thing down, catch our breath, split up the winnings, and walk - [Andor shoots him dead]
[ISB director Col Wullf Yularen addresses Major Partagaz and all ISB officers in the wake of the Aldhani raid]
CWCol Wullf Yularen
The criminals responsible for last night's atrocity on Aldhani think they've taken the Empire by surprise. We know better. We know the real shock will be when they discover how ready and eager we are to respond, to be prepared, to be here this morning and know that the only question we need to answer is how tight to close our fist. This is why we plan. This is why we work so hard when we're at peace. This is why we recruit so carefully and demand so much. The following measures will be adopted Empire-wide as of today. A tribute tax equal to five times the amount stolen from Aldhani will be levied on any sector harboring partisan activity. We will make it clear that no one steals from the Empire. The use of any local custom, festival, or tradition as cover for rebel activity will trigger permanent revocation of Imperial tolerance. I spoke with Emperor Palpatine last night, and he's assured me that the ISB will be taking the lead going forward. No one in this room should have trouble accessing Army or Naval resources in future. The Emperor will be convening an emergency session of the Senate to propose a legislation package of bills and amendments that will free our hands in all matters of surveillance, search, and seizure. We will be invoking the Public Order Resentencing Directive later today. P-O-R-D. Any criminal act, with even indirect effect on the Empire, will henceforth be branded a Class One Offense. All prison sentences are immediately re-evaluated. All outstanding fines and levies are to be paid in full.
[Maarva is defiant against Cassian's offer to take her and B2EMO away to a far place]
MAMaarva Andor
You have a different path, Cass, and I am not judging you. Everything you've been through, everything that was taken away from you before you even started? Take all the money you've found and go and find some peace.
I won't have peace. I'll be worried about you all the time.
MMaarva
That's just love. Nothing you can do about that. I've never loved anything the way I love you, and I've never fretted on anything more, but this time... you can't stay, and I can't go!
[Cassian Andor and a number of men are sent to the Narkina Five prison complex]
PPrison officer
Welcome to Narkina Five. This is an Imperial factory facility. You've all been assessed as labor-worthy. Now, following this introduction, you'll be transferred to your level assignment and workroom, where your floor manager will explain the details of our schedule and expectations. Your length of stay has been predetermined. The quality of that time will be up to you. Now, those who've been incarcerated before will be surprised by the calm, sanitary conditions, and our minimally invasive enforcement techniques. Well, I'm sure some, if not all of you, are wondering, how we risk standing before you without weapons? It's a potent question. And hopefully, one you won't need to have answered very often, but... [activates electric floor and the new prisoners are shocked to floor before he turns it off] You may stand. That was level one of three. Our floors are Tunqstoid steel. Do your time productively, keep to your lane, and this needn't be more than a memory. Good luck to you.
[Supervisor Meero is interrogating Karn about the Ferrix incident and his search for Cassian Andor]
Here's what we'll do, Mr. Karn. You'll stop filing requests for Andor. Anticipating that, I will inform the Bureau of Standards that you were of service to the Empire today. [leaves]
I was a good deputy inspector!! [Meero stops] I was very good. I solved a double murder and found the killer in two days. I was overly ambitious, yes, but time was slipping away, and the opportunity was real. Service to the Empire, you just said it. Can one ever be too aggressive in preserving order? I didn't deserve what happened.
I wish you luck. I'm running late.
It's clear you need Andor in order to find his partner. This is more important than the death of two Corporate Security guards. I could be a valuable asset going forward.
Raise the alarm one more time, and it won't be me you're speaking to. Forget this happened.
[At the Imperial Senate chambers in Coruscant, Mon Mothma addresses the floor even when she knows the other senators will just holler at her or ignore her entirely]
The senator from Chandrila stands with those in opposition to the Emperor's new public safety legislation. Is there a more important issue facing this body right now than Imperial overreach? The Public Order Resentencing Directive is the next step on an all-too-predictable march toward complete unchallenged authority. Our first responsibility is to the citizens who have sent us here. Our second vow is to protect the power and independence of this remarkable chamber. I stand here today to speak with senators who've come with open minds, those of you who still believe that when we enter this building we are in a temple.
[Cassian and Kino Loy have successfully broken out of their cell block and took over the prison complex's command center]
Kino. Tell them what to do. It has to be you. Come on, Kino. You do this every day. Tell them what to do.
[presses PA system] My name is Kino Loy. I'm the day shift manager on Level Five. I'm speaking to you from the command center on Level Eight. We are, at this moment, in control of the facility.
AAndor
Is that the best you got?
How long we hang on, how far we get, how many of us make it out, all of that is now up to us. We have deactivated every floor in the facility. All floors are cold. Wherever you are right now, get up, stop the work. Get out of your cells, take charge and start climbing. They don't have enough guards and they know it. If we wait until they figure that out, it'll be too late. We will never have a better chance than this and [looks at Cassian, knowing he said it] "I would rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want." We know they fried a hundred men on Level Two. We know that they are making up our sentences as we go along. We know that no one outside here knows what's happening. And now we know, that when they say we are being released, we are being transferred to some other prison to go and die, and that ends today! There is one way out. Right now, the building is ours. You need to run, climb, kill! You need to help each other. You see someone who's confused, someone who is lost, you get them moving and you keep them moving until we put this place behind us. There are 5,000 of us. If we can fight half as hard as we've been working, we will be home in no time. One way out! [repeats it multiple times as he leaves the command center]
AAndor
Come on! Let's get out of here!
[Luthen Rael meets ISB Supervisor Lonni Jung, who warns him about Supervisor Meero's current work. He is not too pleased to see Jung have doubts about working for him]
Tell me why we're really here today, Lonni?
LJLonni Jung
I can't do this anymore. I'm a father now. I had no idea how it would feel.
JJung
I'm giving you Dedra Meero. I'm giving you Spellhaus. I'm warning you about Ferrix. I'm honoring my vow. I've been working my way through there for six years. Working my way up. Alone.
So, what was your plan? Gather a big basket of goodies for me as a farewell gift? What were you planning to tell the ISB?
JJung
My health. My wife's family has an import business.
Even as you say the words, you know it's impossible. We can't let you go, Lonni. We can't spare you. We've been grooming you for too long. And yes, you've been alone, but your career has profited greatly from information that we've provided. Information that cost me dearly. You love your daughter. Kreegyr's men will be dying to make sure she has a father. You're trapped, Lonni. There's no pleasure in saying it but you're going nowhere.
JJung
My sacrifice? It means nothing to you, does it?
I said I think of you constantly and I do. Your investment in the Rebellion is epic. A double life? Every day a performance? The stress of that? We need heroes, Lonni, and here you are.
JJung
And what do you sacrifice?
Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I've given up all chance at inner peace. I've made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there's only one conclusion: I'm damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my, my eagerness to fight, they've set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost, and by the time I looked down…there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? EVERYTHING! You'll stay with me, Lonni. I need all the heroes I can get.
[Mon Mothma talks to her cousin Vel while her daughter, Leida, takes up a Chandrilan spiritual chant class in another room]
I'm in so much trouble, Vel. Last year, I was pulling 100,000 credits every month from the family trust without a trace.
For Luthen? I had no idea it was that much.
It was so easy. I did it myself. Set up a stream of accounts. It was like water running downhill. I'd empty the bottom, and it would just flow. No one the wiser. [sighs] A few months ago, I was contacted by one of the bankers back home, I was warned that Imperial inspectors might be taking a close look at Chandrilan accounts. He said they were contacting clients to make sure everything was in order. I did what I could. I pulled everything I could access up the hill into the main account. There was one empty ledger at the end of the line that was off-balance. But it was so obscure and I just didn't know what else to do. I was nervous. I went to Luthen. I told him that I needed help from the outside, that I knew the risk...
Yes, I do. But then, Aldhani. Now, suddenly everything was frozen. I thought Tay could help me replace the credits and get me started again, but what he really did was discover just how much more trouble I was in. Here I am.
And they're looking into this when?
[At the Partisans hideout, Luthen asks Saw Gerrera not to provide air support for Anto Kreegyr's Spellhaus power station raid, knowing the Empire is waiting for them. He tricks Saw into believing Tubes is his mole]
What is this? What kind of game is this? [sees Luthen point Tubes' pistol at him] Oh. There's no way out alive. Of that you must be sure.
I'm doing this so you'll listen. So, listen. Kreegyr goes down, the ISB will feel invincible. They'll feel untouchable. We'll have a clear field to play. The alternative... Kreegyr pulls out, we wave him off. They'll know they'll have to wonder. They'll trust nothing. If I were ISB, Saw, why wouldn't I just send you out there with him? I didn't want you to have to make this choice.
[Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]
KNKaris Nemik
There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.
[Brasso meets Andor again, but when he sees Andor trying to blame himself for not truly insisting he leave Morlana One together with Maarva and B2EMO...]
BBrasso
Stop. She told me you'd say all this. [recites what Maarva told him] "Tell him, none of this is his fault. It was already burning. He's just the first spark of the fire. Tell him, he knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel. And when the day comes, and those two pull together, he will be an unstoppable force for good. Tell him...I love him more than anything he could ever do wrong."
[at Maarva Andor's funeral service on Ferrix, Brasso and B2EMO step forward and the droid plays a holomessage: Maarva Andor herself]
MAMaarva Andor
My name is Maarva Carassi Andor. I'm honored to stand before you. I'm honored to be a Daughter of Ferrix, and honored to be worthy of the stone. Strange, I...feel as if I can see it. I was six, I think, first time I touched a funerary stone. Heard our music, felt our history. Holding my sister's hand as we walked all the way from Fountain Square. Where you stand now, I've been more times than I can remember. I always wanted to be lifted. I was always eager, always waiting to be inspired. I remember every time it happened, every time the dead lifted me...with their truth. And now I'm dead. And I yearn to lift you. Not because I want to shine or even be remembered. It's because I want you to go on. I want Ferrix to continue. In my waning hours, that's what comforts me most. But I fear for you. We've been sleeping. We've had each other, and Ferrix, our work, our days. We had each other, and they left us alone. We kept the trade lanes open, and they left us alone. We took their money and ignored them, we kept their engines churning, and the moment they pulled away, we forgot them. Because we had each other. We had Ferrix. But we were sleeping. I've been sleeping. And I've been turning away from the truth I wanted not to face. There is a wound that won't heal at the center of the galaxy. There is a darkness reaching like rust [holomessage glitches] into everything around us. We let it grow, and now it's here. It's here, and it's not visiting anymore. It wants to stay. The Empire is a disease that thrives in darkness, it is never more alive than when we sleep. It's easy for the dead to tell you to fight, and maybe it's true, maybe fighting is useless. Perhaps it's too late. But I'll tell you this. If I could do it again, I'd wake up early and be fighting [contemptuous as an Imperial officer walks forward] these bastards...
IImperial officer
Halt! [walks past Brasso to get to B2EMO]
MMaarva
[as the Imperial officer drapes his coat over B2EMO to disrupt the holofeed] ...from the start. [mourners are insulted at the move] Fight the Empire!
IImperial officer
ENOUGH! [flips over B2EMO and gets kicked by Brasso, instantly sparking a riot]
