Star Wars: Rebel Rising

by Revis, Beth

  A flicker of movement darted between the asteroids. No matter how much repellant she used, the mynocks always came back.

  “Let’s go home,” she whispered. She slid out of her seat, moving as far away from Saw as she could go.

  She found Maia’s synthskin gloves. She held them close to her face, but all she could smell was the carbon scoring.

  Sometimes at night, when the broken communications tower creaked in the wind, Jyn still heard the thousands of flechettes flying through the air, slicing the drifting sakoola blossoms apart. On those nights, the damp stone of the outpost walls smelled of blood, and Jyn would pull the quilt over her head, forming a tent, and spend all night looking up old holos of her father.

  “There’s a leak,” Saw announced to the group at large a few days after Inusagi and Maia’s death.

  “A…leak?” Staven asked. He had been the most bereft without Maia.

  Saw nodded grimly. “I’ll find it,” he promised, and a chill descended over the room. Jyn’s eyes darted from person to person. These were no longer her friends, her compatriots. She wondered which one had betrayed Saw.

  “Is that why Maia died?” Codo asked.

  “Maybe,” Saw growled.

  Saw began taking a larger role in the training of the cadre as a whole. He stood on top of the broken comm tower, screaming orders down at his soldiers as they ran through drill after drill. “Not like that!” he bellowed as Jyn crouched with Jari and Codo in a mock battle. “You cluster together like that, you all die!”

  Codo scooted off for a different vantage point, but Jari hung back. “He’s paranoid,” he whispered, glaring at Saw.

  “He’s right ,” Jyn said, pushing Jari away as Staven, sparring for the other side, descended on them.

  The new recruits to Saw’s cadre of partisans were given even harsher training. Many quit within days, but the few that remained—including, Jyn was sad to see, the human Reece Tallent—became the most fervent supporters of Saw’s methods.

  “Why did you have to come back?” Jyn said as Reece took a seat beside her after a long day of target practice.

  “I lost most of my original crew to Saw,” Reece said. Jyn was a little surprised to remember that was true; she no longer thought of the men who’d defected from Reece and joined Saw as Reece’s. “Figured I should get some training myself.”

  Jyn evaluated him. Over the past year, Reece had lost some of his cockiness. Maybe Saw would do him good.

  Still, she was surprised when Saw selected Reece for his next mission. “You too,” he said, pointing at Jari. The Togruta looked surprised. “And Jyn.”

  “What’s the mission?” Jyn asked as they boarded the little shuttle. This was one of the newer ships, purchased with money from the mission on Inusagi.

  “You’re to help with the clearance codes,” Saw said, and Jyn got to work with her code replicator. She stayed focused on the task at hand, and it wasn’t until she was finished that she realized an uneasy silence had fallen on the small crew.

  Saw grunted his approval at the clearance codes she’d forged. Soon after, he pulled the ship out of hyperspace. Jyn didn’t recognize the planet. No Imperial checkpoint scanned her new codes, but there was an Imperial outpost and barracks not far away. As soon as the ship landed, Saw led the small crew to a safe house.

  “I told you there was a leak in our unit,” he said. “Probably someone who wants to defect.”

  Jari, Jyn, and Reece gave each other worried looks.

  “Did you discover who it was?” Jari asked.

  Saw stared at the Togruta. “Yes,” he replied shortly.

  He spread out a map of the planet, and they all crowded around the holocube to see. “Imperial barracks here,” he said, pointing to a location about four klicks east of the safe house. “They’ve been receiving transmissions from our base.”

  “From our base?” Jyn gasped.

  Saw nodded grimly.

  “The traitor has told them of a few of our missions, and they’ve gone sour. We’ve lost a ship. Some men.”

  “Men like Bilder,” Jari said in a low voice.

  Saw nodded. Jyn lowered her eyes. She hadn’t even realized the Twi’lek was gone; she just thought he’d been on a long mission. How many of the people who’d left the outpost and never returned had died? Why didn’t Saw mourn them, let the others mourn them?

  If Jyn hadn’t witnessed Maia’s death, would she have spent the rest of her life thinking Maia was off on some mission or had left the group?

  “And the Gamorreans,” Saw added.

  Jyn frowned. The giant Gamorrean brothers hadn’t been a part of Saw’s cadre for long, but they had looked invincible.

  “How did you track down the traitor?” Jari asked.

  Saw stared at him a long time. “I have my means,” he said finally.

  “Is the traitor at the Imperial compound?” Reece asked.

  “No,” Saw said, still staring at Jari.

  Jyn’s eyes flicked between Saw and the Togruta. She noticed the way Saw kept his hand hidden in his coat.

  No, she thought, and she wasn’t sure if she had said it out loud.

  Saw revealed his blaster. “Tie him up,” he said.

  Reece was the first to jump into action; Jyn was still too shocked. Jari tried to jerk away, but Saw fired a blast into his shoulder. Moaning, Jari couldn’t protest as Saw held the blaster to his head and Reece bound him with plastoid ties.

  “Blindfold him.” Saw tossed a scrap of cloth at Jyn.

  Her hands shook as she wound the cloth over the Togruta’s eyes and his montrals. “Jyn,” Jari said in a low voice. “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t. Bilder was my friend. I would never betray—”

  “And gag him,” Saw ordered. Reece stuffed another cloth in Jari’s mouth.

  “Saw,” Jyn said in a small voice, a pleading voice.

  Saw’s eyes softened—just for a moment—when he looked at her. He motioned for her to come closer. “He knows,” he whispered in her ear, but she didn’t understand what he was saying.

  Saw holstered his blaster and grabbed Jari by the plastoid ties, dragging him to the airspeeder parked in front of the safe house. Jyn followed on his heels, but Saw needed no help, punching the open wound on Jari’s shoulder when the Togruta made one last desperate attempt to escape.

  Jyn and Reece ran to the roof of the safe house, both of them watching as Saw sped across the open field toward the Imperial barracks. Saw pushed the airspeeder faster and faster.

  “Here.” Reece had a pair of quadnocs. Jyn didn’t question where he got them; she just accepted them and watched as Saw zoomed toward the Imperial barracks. She could see white-and-black stormtroopers pointing at the blur that was Saw and Jari.

  Saw drew the airspeeder up short just in front of the barracks. The stormtroopers were shouting something, but Saw didn’t say anything back. He just kicked Jari off the airspeeder and started back toward the safe house.

  “We have to go,” Jyn said. She threw the quadnocs at Reece, and together they ran toward the spaceport. Saw had been so enraged by Jari’s betrayal that he hadn’t stopped to consider how quickly they’d need to leave after that little stunt.

  Jyn and Reece were racing up the boarding ramp into the ship when Saw brought the airspeeder up short. He threw himself on board, initiated the launch sequence, and burst out of the spaceport. Reece examined the scanner. “At least three on our tail,” he said.

  “We can make it,” Saw growled, leaning into the throttle.

  Jyn’s heart was racing, beating out a staccato rhythm that felt impossibly fast. As Saw burst past the Imperial ships, through the planet’s atmosphere, and into hyperspace, all she could think about was the way Jari had whispered that he was innocent, that Saw was paranoid, that Bilder had been his friend.

  Saw stomped off the ship as soon as it landed on their island on Wrea. Reece looked over at Jyn.

  “That was…illuminating,” he said.

  “Really?” Jyn s
hot back.

  Reece nodded. He moved to sit beside Jyn, and she was surprised at the way she didn’t move away from him. “Saw is a difficult man, and one not to betray. I think he wanted us both to learn that lesson as much as Jari.”

  “I would never betray Saw,” Jyn said.

  “Perhaps it was more for your benefit in terms of assurance,” Reece said. When Jyn shot him a confused look, he continued, “He was proving how far he’d go to protect you.”

  Jyn’s eyes unfocused. Was that what it had been? But…Jari hadn’t been a threat. At least, not that she had known.

  She didn’t like these doubts. This fear.

  What had Saw meant when he said, He knows?

  “How well do you know Saw?” Reece asked.

  The question surprised Jyn. “Very well,” she said. “He’s like a father.”

  “And you trust him?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Reece gave her a doubtful look.

  “He saved me,” Jyn said simply. She wasn’t sure why she was telling Reece, whom she’d never really liked, but the darkness helped her speak. “I was in a bunker. A hatch. I was just a little girl. And I thought I was going to die. But…Saw saved me.” Reece didn’t speak, so Jyn continued. “I still think of that cave. It was so dark. I waited for so long. When I’m scared, it sometimes feels like I’m back there.”

  “Trapped inside a cave inside your mind,” Reece said softly.

  Jyn nodded in the dark. “But Saw always comes,” she said.

  Saw turned the great room from a lounge and eating area into a command center. He always had at least three missions in the air, planning a half dozen more. The area was littered with holocubes showing planets and Imperial posts, and the comm never stopped buzzing with new intel.

  “So close,” he’d tell Jyn, grinning.

  But he didn’t send her on any more missions.

  Sometimes, when the missions landed at night, Saw would leave his impromptu command center. Jyn could always identify him by the way he stomped down the hall. On those nights, he boarded the ships that arrived.

  He never spoke of what he did. But Jyn could guess.

  She could hear the screams.

  She cornered him once. He was wiping blood from his hands, a distant look in his eyes.

  “Saw,” she said.

  He stopped short.

  “Did you see—” he started.

  She shook her head. “No.” She hadn’t seen. But she had heard. She suspected everyone on the island had heard.

  “Why?” she asked. Why the secrecy, the lies. The torture.

  Saw followed Jyn into her room. “They know,” he said.

  It was an echo of what he’d said about Jari. “Know what?” Jyn demanded.

  Saw leaned in close. He jabbed a finger at her chest, but rather than pressing into her flesh, his finger hit the kyber crystal necklace she kept hidden under her shirt. “They. Know,” he said slowly, watching the realization dawn in Jyn’s eyes.

  Someone knew who her father was.

  Who she was.

  Idryssa Barruck seemed surprised at how crowded Saw’s outpost was when her Z-95 landed.

  “Nice ship,” Jyn said as she disembarked.

  “Who are all these people?” Idryssa asked.

  “You’re not the only one with ‘alliances,’” Saw said, calling out to Idryssa as he crossed the island.

  “Saw,” Idryssa said, smiling at him in a way no one had smiled at Saw recently.

  Saw’s face crinkled up. “Id.” There was warmth in his voice, and respect. But then the look melted into sourness. “I don’t need another lecture.” He motioned for Jyn and Idryssa to follow him into the outpost. He cleared the command center with a wave of his hand, only Reece pausing to nod at Idryssa as he left. Reece and Idryssa had been a part of the old crowd. Saw trusted them in ways he didn’t the newcomers.

  But Jari was one of Xosad’s crew, a part of the old crowd, too, Jyn thought. And that didn’t save him.

  “Why are you here?” Saw asked Idryssa.

  Idryssa still seemed a little shocked by Saw’s outpost. “This isn’t what I expected,” she said.

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “I can tell.” Idryssa’s face darkened. “And Inusagi…”

  Jyn wanted to cover her ears. The attack—particularly the slaughter of the chieftess and the newly appointed governor—had been widely publicized. There was talk of banning flechette launchers from civilian use, and new measures were being taken to ensure safety from the “terrorists” and “anarchists” who’d gunned down the innocents. Jyn didn’t want to think about Inusagi again.

  Neither, it seemed, did Saw. “Drop it,” he growled.

  “That was…bad.” Idryssa didn’t take her eyes off Saw’s. “Saw, that is not what we stood for.”

  “There is no ‘we.’”

  “There could be, you know,” Idryssa said. She stared at a holocube. Saw reached around her and turned it off. “We’ve offered. You could command your own unit.”

  “I don’t want to take orders, and I don’t want to give them.” Saw heaved himself into a chair.

  “Isn’t that what you did when you worked for Arane’s partisans?” Idryssa asked. “She gave the orders. You pulled the trigger.”

  “That’s different.”

  Idryssa didn’t respond as she looked over at Jyn.

  “Are you bringing us a mission?” Jyn asked.

  “Not exactly,” Idryssa said. Her eyes questioned Saw—could she talk in front of Jyn? Saw nodded curtly.

  “This isn’t something my people have the means or”—her gaze flicked to Saw again—“the incentive to pursue.”

  Saw straightened, and Jyn leaned forward. Her thoughts went immediately to her father. As much as she wanted to dismiss him, she couldn’t help hoping, somehow, that Idryssa had found him, that he really was a prisoner somewhere and that she and Saw could save him.

  “This have to do with kyber crystals?” Saw asked.

  Idryssa shook her head, and Jyn’s heart sank. “You sent me coordinates of mines for ore as well. Remember?”

  “Doonium and dolovite,” Saw said. “Key components of Star Destroyers.”

  “But there hasn’t been a marked increase of production for Star Destroyers,” Jyn added. “At least not that we have found.”

  “Nor us,” Idryssa conceded. “But we have traced a large percentage of the ore being shipped to factories on the planet Tamsye Prime, near the Tion Hegemony. One in particular is being operated under extremely oppressive terms.”

  Saw glowered. “The usual debt system?”

  Idryssa nodded grimly.

  “Debt system?” Jyn asked.

  Idryssa turned her attention to Jyn. “Tamsye Prime has the manufacturing factories and laborers; the Empire wants them. The Empire offers to ‘loan’ equipment, resources, and so on. Seems like a great deal, but the credits add up, until everyone’s basically an indentured servant, working off the debt the Empire pressed upon them.”

  “Slavery, more like,” Saw growled. Jyn could tell this system struck close to home for him, and she wondered what mission he’d had in the past that made Imperial indentured servitude such a sore point. “So what are we doing?” he asked Idryssa. “Blowing up the factory?”

  Idryssa shook her head. “The Empire would just bill the planet for new and more expensive materials, adding to their debt.” She paused. “Besides, we both know that no deck sweep will ever clear out the Empire. Or,” she added, “at least I hope we both know that now.”

  “Id.” Saw’s voice held a warning. “I have never done anything that the Empire didn’t do first.”

  “That’s not a very high standard, Saw.”

  “So then, how do we help the people of Tamsye Prime?” Jyn asked, interrupting what threatened to be the start of another fight.

  Idryssa looked down at the table.

  “We don’t,” Saw said. Jyn looked startled, but he shook his head,
silencing her. “You said your people don’t have the means to fight this. That just means you want us to do the work, but you’re not going to pay us.”

  “Saw—” Idryssa started, but he cut her off.

  “You may not like Arane, but she pays well. And I can’t fight if I can’t get supplies, can’t feed my daughter.” He gestured to Jyn.

  And you can’t outfit any of the other partisans, Jyn thought, thinking of all the soldiers that had been displaced to give them privacy in the command center. She imagined Codo and Staven and Reece and the others standing idly outside, tapping their feet impatiently.

  “Saw, have you ever thought that we could do more if we worked together?” Idryssa said. Jyn narrowed her eyes, noting the smooth way Idryssa had shifted the conversation.

  “You recruiting for that squadron of yours?” Saw sneered.

  “It’s not that different from your outposts,” Idryssa insisted. “If you joined up with us…”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said in a tone that Jyn knew meant he didn’t want to discuss it further. But she also could tell he was intrigued.

  “I know you like to be in charge,” Idryssa pressed. “But something like this…it would be for the greater good.”

  “Greater good?” Saw asked, his voice rising. “I’ve heard that excuse before. But it’s not for the greater good that you’re here today, is it?”

  Idryssa cut her eyes away. “It’s not like that.”

  “What do you mean?” Jyn asked.

  Saw didn’t look away from Idryssa. “It’s those higher-ups you were talking about, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” Jyn asked again.

  “Idryssa’s squadron.” Saw smirked. “You went to them first, didn’t you? But they didn’t want to get their hands dirty on this.” Saw kept talking, even though Idryssa opened her mouth to protest. “You told me once you wanted to help. ‘A free galaxy,’ isn’t that what you said? You had such ideals. How’s that working now, when you see people who need help but the best thing you can do is just hope someone like me will pick up the slack.”

  “It’s not like that!” Idryssa said, more powerfully this time. “I tried, Saw, is that what you want to hear? I pitched this plan to the generals. But there are other battles we have to fight first.”