Star Wars: Rebel Rising(24)

Jyn stopped by her room, preparing carefully, checking her weapons, packing a small satchel of essentials. She turned to face the door and caught her reflection in the smooth metal.

She was surprised at the woman she saw there.

Saw didn’t like mirrors, and the sea outside was always too rocky to be reflective. And Jyn rarely cared about her appearance. But she paused now, staring at herself.

First she saw her eyes. Her father used to say that she had stardust in her eyes, that’s what made them such an unusual color. She could still hear his voice, his whiskers scratching her chin as he hugged her and whispered, I love you, Stardust.

Jyn shook herself, dispelling the memory. She set her jaw, steeling her spine, letting her sorrow give her strength.

And then she saw her mother in her reflection.

Jyn reached out, touching the smooth surface of the door, her fingertips pressing against the cold metal. That was the way her mother had stood. Tall. Proud.

Determined.

Jyn spent so much of her life hoping she could be different from her father, sometimes she forgot how much she wished she could be half as brave as her mother. She squared her shoulders.

She would prove that she was.



On the ride to Horuz, Staven went over additional details with Jyn. He described the landscape, the timing, the drop point and rendezvous point. “We’ve set some other traps for him and the work detail,” he added. “But Saw likes having insurance.”

Jyn’s fingers ran over the barrel of the long-range blaster. It did not escape her notice when they pulled out of hyperspace that Staven was using forged ship clearance codes that Jyn had made for Saw in her spare time.

Staven dropped Jyn off near a little canyon. “If they follow our intel,” he said, “they’ll be walking on a trail down there.” He pointed over the edge of the cliff, at the dusty canyon floor. “But if not, the other access point is that way.” He pointed south, at another trail cut into the small forest. From Jyn’s vantage point, she had cover and a clear view of both trails. “Either way,” Staven concluded, “they’ll likely end up there.” He indicated a point about a kilometer away from Jyn. She viewed it through her sniper scope. That was her target.

Staven left, and she was alone.

Saw had arranged for Jyn to arrive on Horuz early, so she had hours to wait. Hours to wait, with a blaster in her hand.

I can do this, she thought, and knew it to be true.

She didn’t let herself think of whether or not she wanted to.

When the Imperial scouts finally came, long after the time she’d been expecting them, Jyn was nearly asleep. She scrambled to attention. They came from the second trail, through the trees. Jyn was glad of her position, of the way she was mostly hidden on the canyon ridge.

She drew in a breath. The blaster was set up with a small tripod. She’d calculated the distance, the angles. She watched the dust cloud rise as the small transport unit pulled to a stop just outside of the area Staven had said they would be.

Jyn took a deep breath.

The first time she was supposed to pull the trigger, it had been a scientist. One that reminded her of her father. And he’d been right in front of her. She could hear him, smell him.

This was better. This was farther away. Impersonal.

Jyn squared Dorin Bell in her sights. He was younger than Jyn had expected. He was smiling. Jyn moved the scope down, to Dorin’s chest, where she didn’t have to see the easy curve of his lips, the light in his eyes. Jyn focused on the gray of the Imperial uniform, the little black shield badge over Dorin’s heart.

She looked over the scope. From that distance, they hardly looked like people at all.

Jyn angled her head down, pressing her eye into the scope. She charged the modified blaster, and the additional power cell hummed.

Her finger felt the curve of the trigger.

It’s just like target practice, she told herself, but her mind was screaming at her, over and over: It’s not, it’s not, it’s not.

She thought of Saw. Of the disappointment on his face when she’d failed the detonator test.

She squeezed the trigger.

The blaster jumped in her hand, the overclocked power cell so hot that it left a scalding blister on her palm. She didn’t notice that though; she was distracted by the billow of smoke and dust that rose up from the area where, moments before, the Imperials had been standing. A booming echo rang across the land.

“The traps,” she muttered. Staven had told her that she was insurance, that there were traps laid where the Imperials were expected to be. Something must have triggered them; she assumed they were land mines, based on the explosion. Jyn forced herself to watch the cloud dissipate, to look for survivors. To prepare.

When the dust and smoke cleared, she used her sniper scope to examine the carnage. She saw Dorin Bell’s body, broken, bleeding, and she squinted at his wounds, inspecting them. She was equally ashamed and relieved that it had been the land mines, not her blast that had killed him.





After that mission, Jyn never knew when she woke up if Saw would send her outside to train or if he’d tell her to load up and meet him on the ship. She liked the unexpectedness of her life and the fact that she was a partner, not a student. Most of their missions were to worlds in the Outer Rim, typically along trade routes. Saw was preoccupied with the Empire’s increased focus on cargo, certain that it was gearing up for a major weapons development. Ore from Siriamp, Jelucan, and Centori; the occupied mines on Ilum…Saw went over galactic maps nightly, trying to connect the pieces of the Empire’s plans. While he did that, Jyn scoured all the records she could, gathering information on how to falsify clearance codes and develop scandocs so that Saw could continue his missions. The Empire was showing more and more interest in the planets on the edges of civilization, and the previously neglected reaches of the Outer Rim were starting to feel very crowded indeed.