Star Wars: Rebel Rising(10)

“Just because you don’t want to hear a truth doesn’t make it less true,” Saw said in that same calm voice.

“But you don’t know ,” Jyn insisted, her voice turning into a plea. “It just seems like he’s working for the Empire. Maybe he’s being forced or…” Her voice trailed off at Saw’s pitying look.

“Has he said it?” Jyn asked. “Has he said he chose the Empire?”

Saw shook his head.

It can’t be true, Jyn thought. Papa can’t lie. Everyone said so. Mama used to make fun of him for it. He was a terrible liar. Jyn wouldn’t believe he left her for the Empire unless he said he did.

“Jyn…” Saw started, and the tone of his voice broke her heart and her resolve.

She shook her head frantically, the ends of her hair whipping her cheeks, her whole body screaming no, no, no over and over again.

“Galen Erso has chosen which side he wants to be on, and it’s not ours.”

Jyn stood up. “Mama died !” she screamed. “I watched her be killed by that man! And Papa works for him now?”

“By all appearances, they’re friends,” Saw said.

Jyn threw herself at Saw. She used everything she had learned in the weeks she’d been living with him, punching and kicking, slashing out at him. Anything to make him hurt the way she was hurting.

And Saw took it. He didn’t raise a hand to defend himself. He let her slap him and slam her fist into his chest. He let her scream in his face without flinching. And when she started to tire, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and just held her.

“He’s not coming for you,” Saw said. “You can’t trust him. The bastard’s with the Empire now.”

Jyn stared down at the floor, and Saw let the silence hang between them.

“I understand,” Jyn said, the emotion drained from her voice. My father is alive, she thought. My father is a coward. She thought the word Saw had used. My father is a bastard.





Time passed. Years. And Jyn’s knowledge that Papa had left her for good, had chosen the Empire over her, was cemented by the proof of his continued absence.

But she didn’t cry about it ever again.

Sometimes Saw left on “missions.” Sometimes people came to Saw. Handfuls of men and women at a time, occasionally organized groups, more often a hodgepodge of discontented people who were looking for a fight. Jyn had thought the first night at Saw’s outpost that he’d given her an old office as a sign of how unimportant she was, but she came to value her private room, especially when the bunkers filled up with more people than they could hold.

The better Jyn got at fighting, the more Saw let her participate when visitors came to the outpost. He instructed her very clearly: She was to listen. She was to judge. She was to decide whether or not the mission presented to Saw was worthwhile in the fight against the Empire. He always consulted Jyn. He didn’t always take her advice, but he always listened, and that meant more to her than she could say.

Saw had gotten Jyn a code replicator of her own, something for her to tinker with to appear unobtrusive while he met with different people who were against the Empire. If she hid behind a screen, people forgot she was there, and she enjoyed the work.

Saw knocked on Jyn’s door one evening after kinesthetic training. She’d been slicing holos, a practice Saw encouraged. Jyn would alter an image, and Saw would try to figure out what she had changed.

When Jyn opened the door, she was surprised to see another person standing next to Saw, a woman a head taller than him, with thick hair and skin darker than his.

“Jyn,” Saw said, “do you remember Idryssa?”

Idryssa had come to Saw’s base often when Jyn was younger but had not returned in a long time. Her skin sparkled with a slight greenish tint this time instead of blue, and Jyn realized that she wore some sort of makeup for the effect and had not been born with sparkling skin.

Jyn’s gaze slid to Saw. “Are you going away on a mission?”

Idryssa smiled at her. “I’m just here to talk. Nice to see you again. It’s been a long time. How old are you now?” Idryssa asked.

Jyn hated this question. It always came from people who thought she was too young, and if she told the truth—that she was fourteen—they would give her a pitying glance or tsk quietly. “Old enough,” she said curtly.

Saw was relaxed around Idryssa, more so than he was when other partisans came to visit, even if Jyn didn’t like the age question.

“I don’t know what you expect of me,” he told Idryssa in a good-natured tone. “I’ve got no info for you; I’m not the Ante.”

Idryssa barked a laugh. “I couldn’t afford you if you were.”

“So do you have information for me?” Saw asked eagerly.

Idryssa shook her head. “A bunch of dead ends. The Empire is most definitely researching crystals, like you suggested, and the entire market for various minerals has been upended.”

“I know all that,” Saw said. “What I want to know is what the Empire plans to do with these resources.”

Idryssa held her palms out and shrugged. She didn’t know.

Jyn silently noted Idryssa’s information, and she knew Saw had summoned her in part so she could hear. He hadn’t given up trying to discover the Empire’s purpose for Galen and his research, and Jyn hadn’t forgotten, either.