Star Wars: Rebel Rising(35)

Saw shook his head. He pointed to the Star Destroyer. “An operation this big? Everything’s documented. We can’t just show up. Even if your forgery was perfect—which I’m sure it would be—there would be no record of an inspection, and that would raise too many red flags.”

“We could pose as workers?” Codo suggested.

Saw was still looking at the holo, still shaking his head. “The workers on Tamsye Prime were born on Tamsye Prime. The Empire’s done that before. Take over a whole planet’s labor force, recruiting only from within. Keeps it secure. And ensures they don’t rebel.”

Jyn looked at him curiously, unsure of his meaning.

“If you’re alone, you don’t care as much.” Saw’s eyes were watery and seemed tired as he shifted his attention to Jyn. “If you’ve got no one left, it doesn’t matter as much what happens to you. There’s a sort of fearlessness in being alone. But when you start to love someone else…It’s ironic.”

“What is?” Jyn asked softly.

“You find out that you have so much more to fight for, but it becomes that much more dangerous to fight at all.” Saw took a deep, shaking breath. “Anyway, the Empire knows this. They employ not just the man, but his wife, his children. So if the man thinks of rebelling, the people he loves pay the price. Ensures no one protests.”

Jyn shifted her gaze to the holo, blinking away unexpected tears. Saw’s words reminded her of Galen Erso. Jyn didn’t let herself think the word Papa anymore. Galen was her father, but not Papa.

Jyn used to wake up in a cold sweat, reliving the day her mother was killed and her father was taken. Her father’s fate was more terrifying to her than her mother’s. Death’s pain was finite. The Empire’s was not. In Jyn’s worst nightmares, the Empire came for her, too, kidnapping her from her old home.

But no one ever came. And Jyn knew it was because no one needed her. Not her father, who had never tried to find her, but also not the Empire. There was no point in taking her to use against her father if he worked for the Empire willingly. The families on Tamsye Prime were all leveraged against each other, but Jyn couldn’t be leverage if no one cared about her.

“I have an idea,” Reece said, his voice cutting through Jyn’s dark thoughts.

“What is it?” Saw asked.

Reece stood up and started pacing. “The timing may not work out, but…”

“Out with it!” Saw demanded.

“I’ve got a few contacts on Coruscant, from my old group,” Reece said. Saw nodded in acknowledgement. Reece rarely spoke about how his former team had splintered and broken apart around him, how many of the men who used to call him boss deferred to Saw. “One of them works with the propaganda department. I remember hearing something….Tamsye Prime sounds familiar….”

He dashed to the comm unit and punched in some codes. Saw bristled; he didn’t like communications happening without his approval, but Reece whooped in triumph a moment later. “Yes!” he said. “They’re shooting a propaganda documentary, and Tamsye Prime is on the list. If you can get us scandocs, we can be assigned as tertiary units to help with the recording.”

“I can do scandocs,” Jyn said immediately.

Saw nodded his approval. “Yes,” he said, thinking. “That could work. Shoot for the Empire but send the info to Idryssa’s group instead.” He turned to Reece. “Set that up,” he ordered.

Reece pulled up a chair at the comm unit and got to work. Saw sent Codo to acquire cam droids, and Reece gave Jyn the specs she’d need to start on the forged scandocs.

This is the way it should be, Jyn thought as she applied herself to developing new scandocs. Idryssa may have joined some sort of bigger movement working with other partisans, but they were too big to actually do anything. This—this immediate action—was the way to fight the Empire.





Reece set everything up with his contact on Coruscant. Their cover was a replacement crew for a propaganda holo the Empire was developing. They had to move fast, but the contact was confident that their cover would hold.

Jyn showed Reece the forged scandocs and badges for his approval. “These are good,” he said. “They’re expecting us—my contact already filed our names for the work detail—so they’re not going to look too closely, but even if they did, these would still pass inspection.”

Despite herself, Jyn felt pride swelling in her chest at his compliment.

Codo returned the next day with a bevy of camera droids, each set to upload directly to Idryssa’s camp rather than to an Imperial server. They ran over the plan again and again, from cover story to two different emergency escape possibilities.

“The one area we want to avoid on Tamsye Prime,” Saw told them, using the holo of the planet to showcase the landscape, “is here.” He indicated a munitions testing ground. “Particularly this area, where they were experimenting with shelled artillery. We don’t know what’s there, but let’s not find out.”

Jyn nodded, memorizing the roads. The spaceport wasn’t that far from the munitions testing ground; if they got cornered there, it would be easier to make a run for their ship than veer into that area.

“We ready?” Saw asked, looking from Jyn to Reece to Codo.