Anakin's Fortress - Book II (temporary cover)

Forty-one - Bulwark

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent what you're gonna do about it.
Year 13

—————

Kat
Two weeks later

It took Vader's demands to get me approved to visit Erso—and was only accepted if Vader came too. Krennic threw a fit about the inconvenience, but we'd expected that. He'll be even more angry when he discovers his lead scientist is gone, his contract broken. There's a reason he hasn't been informed of that.

"Turn off the cameras," Anakin snaps. Krennic looks perplexed but does so. I follow Vader in and click the button to scramble any remaining surveillance equipment.

Letty, who happily agreed to help, will now be requesting a tour of his surveillance setups. Krennic, being a proud man, will absolutely love being praised for his ingenious solutions. A decent distraction.

"Doctor Erso," I say with a nod before taking the seat across from him. He looks at me with tired eyes. "Do you know who I am?"

"No."

"I am Angel Velez." His eyes perk up, the fatigue washing away with a glimmer of hope. His gaze shifts to Vader and the hope dies.

"You think my father would be disappointed," I say with a small, rueful grin.

"I didn't say that."

"Your expression did. Jyn isn't all that much younger than me, yes? She's fifteen? Sixteen?"

Pain sears his expression. "She just turned sixteen," he says in a soft voice. "I often discussed the difficulties of raising a kid with your father, though you were a teenager by then."

I nod lightly. "I miss him," I admit. He would undoubtedly hate my job and probably Anakin, but sometimes, I deeply wish he was here to help me.

The man looks me over, his eyes once more holding the appearance of a man exhausted with life. "He loved you."

I push my datapad across the table with the image of the core to Anakin's mods—the brain for everything inside him he wasn't born with. "What does this mean to you?"

He frowns and picks it up with the familiar face of a scientist focusing. It's been a long time since I've seen that look.

"It's your father's work," he says before tapping more details. His eyebrows raise high on his face before he looks up at me.

"These are your analyses?" I nod. "You..." He trails off without completing the thought and returns his eyes to the device. His head shakes as he reads it. What was he going to say? I frown as I watch him.

After a sigh, he puts it down. "What exactly are you wanting to know? This isn't my specialty. I barely understand what I'm looking at."

I know what he's thinking. He does have some minor idea—but he's not willing to share it with me. The disappointment he tries to hide is obvious. Erso is imagining his own daughter in my shoes, and a flair of irritation appears within me. The girl I met is as hard as a rock; she will go far. He has no right to judge her path. Or mine.

"You and my father are more similar than you think. You left Jyn with a psycho for her protection." His face hardens. "But my father left me on Mustafar with no identity." His face falls. "You both did the best you could." He forces his face to even out. This man is not adept at hiding his feelings, that's for sure.

"Do you know who Saw has become, sir?" I knew the basics from Imperial reports, but it was the Organas that filled in the gaps. Turns out, Saw isn't anyone's favorite—though, Anakin seems to respect him quite a bit.