Star Wars: Rebel Rising(30)

“Welcome to Inusagi, Governor Tophervin,” the chieftess said in a defeated voice. She held something in her hand—a remote—and when she activated it, millions of golden sakoola petals floated from the sky, drifting like snow over the crowd. Cries of wonder and delight filled the ballroom.

Jyn almost didn’t hear the first launcher fire.

The flechettes were silver, cutting through the golden petals. People dropped, soaked in blood, before anyone thought to scream. The new governor’s body fell off the stage. The chieftess crumpled at the feet of the flowery starbird, her silvery-white gown stained red.

In mere minutes, the floor was covered in blood and bodies.





Jyn waited in the shuttle for Saw. She sat in the cockpit, staring out the viewport as Saw dropped his FC-1 on the deck and booted the launch sequence. But she knew—because of the way he didn’t talk to her, didn’t look at her—that he had noticed her in the palace. He knew that she knew.

Maia didn’t return.

Jyn had seen that, too. As soon as the alarm went up, the chaos and panic had served the partisans. Jyn had a head start; she was already at the zip ports when the alarm started. Through the glass, she had watched as people ran from the palace. Her eyes darted from person to person, looking for Saw. She’d seen Maia. A stormtrooper had tried to stop her—her robes were ripped, exposing the padding and the hidden armory under the silk.

The zip port had started to move away, zooming Jyn back to the ship, but she saw Maia fight with the stormtrooper, the blaster he raised, Maia’s limp body crumpling to the ground.

Jyn said nothing as Saw boarded the ship and they raced away. There was a little trouble at the exit, but so many people were trying to escape the planet by the time they reached the sky that the Empire had no chance of stopping everyone. Even so, Jyn checked the scanner codes she’d forged for Saw’s ship and knew that any record of them on Inusagi showed only a small transport-class vessel with full clearance.

They did not speak as they entered hyperspace. Jyn watched the blue-gray trail of stars, letting her eyes blur. Saw got up and went to the back of the ship. She didn’t know what he was doing, but she heard the metallic sound of the flechette launcher being picked up, and then, farther off, the sound of it being locked away.

When they reached Smuggler’s Run, Saw stopped the ship, overlooking the asteroid belt.

“Inusagi is near Naboo, the Emperor’s home planet,” Saw said, turning to Jyn. “An attack of this measure, this close to home, will send a message that needs to be sent. The new governor was a close ally to the Emperor, and the chieftess a key player. Not that the chieftess had much choice,” he conceded.

“This was a murder mission, Saw,” Jyn told the dead rocks floating in space. “We weren’t fighting for good or supporting the resistance or taking down the Empire. That was a massacre.”

“Oh, Jyn,” Saw said, his voice cracking, “what do you think war is?”

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.”