Star Wars: Rebel Rising(2)

A sob escaped her. Saw! He had come to save her!

But not Mama. He was too late for Mama.

“Come, my child,” he said. “We have a long ride ahead of us.” He reached his hand down into the cave, helping her up.

Jyn looked into Saw’s face, hesitating for just a moment to take his hand. The last time she’d seen him, he’d brought her and her family to Lah’mu, to make a fresh start after they’d left Coruscant. Mama and Papa had drilled into Jyn the different scenarios that might happen if—when—the Empire found them.

“And this,” Mama would say, showing her how to operate the comm tower. “If the worst happens and you need help but Papa and I aren’t around, you press this button here, and Saw Gerrera will come.”

And every time, Jyn would reach out for the button, eager to hit it right then. “He never visits!” she’d say as Mama pulled her back, chiding her daughter that he was to be summoned in emergencies only.

Now Saw’s jaw was set in a grim line. There was no smile on his lips, no joviality in his eyes like the last time she’d seen him. A long scar cut through his left eye, making the lid droopy. His eyes bulged slightly, his lips turned downward. The rain streaked his bald head. He looked angry.

Jyn reached up and slipped her small pale hand through his dark calloused one. He squeezed her fingers gently, and she gripped his back, holding on as if she were drowning and he was the rope pulling her back to shore.

“We have to go,” Saw said.

Jyn swallowed her fear, her sorrow. She nodded.

The air smelled clean, fresh after the cool rain, as she and Saw ran back through the field toward Jyn’s house. It seemed extraordinarily odd that the world was sleeping around them, beautiful and still, but Mama was…

“There were troopers,” Jyn said, tugging on Saw’s hand. She bit her lower lip as she silently chastised herself. She should have counted how many soldiers had come to the farm. There was the man in white, the man Papa worked with sometimes. And the black-armored troopers. And…

She should have paid better attention. But it had all happened so fast.

“No one else is here,” Saw said.

Her home and the farm equipment—a comm tower, irrigation units, a droid harvester—were the tallest objects in a sea of gently waving skycorn. A shirt fluttered up, caught by the breeze, soaring like a ghost against the night sky before wafting back down.

Jyn was pretty sure the shirt was her father’s, the one that was frayed at the cuffs and always smelled like him, a mixture of cloves and dirt and grease and something else, something cold and hard. But before she could grab the shirt and wrap it around her, the wind picked up and blew it away.

The closer they got to Jyn’s house, the more laundry flapped in the breeze, scattering throughout the grasslands and disappearing in the night. And then she saw the laundry basket, and the depression in the grass, stained with blood.

Hope surged in Jyn’s heart. Her mama’s body wasn’t there.

But she knew, deep down she knew it wasn’t because Mama had survived. No one could survive a blaster shot to the chest like that.

Jyn bit the inside of her cheek, tasting the metallic tang of blood. But she didn’t say a word.

Saw moved with purpose, flinging open the door to the farmhouse. Jyn followed silently, a waft of bitter smoke making her nose crinkle. The troopers had started a fire that still sputtered in the kitchen, singeing the bright wall a sooty black.

Saw knew where to look—the work cabinet, the hidden nooks and crannies, the floorboards under the carpet. It was all empty.

He cursed. “They took it all,” he growled.

And they took him, Jyn thought in dull shock. They took Papa.

Her eyes watered, but not from the smoke. Even though it had been Saw who’d come to save her, not Papa, she’d still hoped that maybe he would be there. Hiding. Waiting. For her.

But he wasn’t. He was gone.

Broken crockery littered the floor. Jyn knew her father had tried to destroy his work before he’d told her to run. There would be nothing left. Papa wouldn’t let there be anything left.

Saw narrowed his eyes and whirled on Jyn. “Your pa have any secret hiding places? Something the Empire wouldn’t know about?”

Their home was ransacked, and while Mama had been able to destroy some of Papa’s research, the Empire had come too quickly. She pointed to where the safe was hidden in her parents’ room, but it was empty. The log case was missing, and Papa’s file bank was gone. She peeked into her own room. The black-clad troopers had even upturned her bed and shredded her dolls, looking for more of Papa’s work. She wasn’t sure if they’d found anything. But it didn’t matter anyway; everything was in Papa’s brain. And they had him now.

“We need to jump planet,” Saw said gruffly. “Think, Jyn. Anything else of your father’s work that may be here?”

“No,” she said in a small voice.

“Then we’re going.”

Jyn started to move toward her room, but Saw put a heavy hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

Jyn swallowed, one hand moving to clutch the crystal necklace her mother had given her. She had left everything once, when her family had abandoned Coruscant. She could do it again. At least she had her satchel.

Jyn left the house first, and she heard something metallic and heavy drop on the wooden floorboard in the farmhouse before Saw closed the door. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her along; she almost had to run to keep up with his long strides. They were only about fifty meters away when the house exploded. Jyn stumbled at the sound and felt a whoosh of heat wash over her. What was left of the last place she called home burned, the yellow-orange flames licking at the pale grass and threatening to start a field fire.