Star Wars: Rebel Rising(37)

Except the stormtroopers. Saw was much more at home bashing helmets together than trotting behind them, pretending to work for the Empire.

The factory was oddly quiet. Jyn looked around at the rows of workers piecing together stormtrooper blasters. Everyone was silent, attentive to their work, and focused. They didn’t even look up as the holo crew passed. They’d been prepped and warned not to make a disturbance.

Jyn and the others left the main assembly line and veered into another branch of the factory. A plasma lathe dominated the floor. Giant cranes lined the ceiling, and when she squinted, Jyn could see that the roof itself was hinged. They could work on satellites taller than the building with a plasma lathe that large.

“I know,” Saw said in a low voice as they followed the PR group.

“These tools…” Jyn frowned.

“Yeah,” Saw said. “Id’s info was good. This place definitely is building…something.” There was frustration in his voice. Just being in the factory, they felt they were close to uncovering something big, but the information was still tantalizingly out of reach.

“Like that.” Jyn jerked her head to a crystalline spectrometer built into the wall. “Pa—my father used one of those. A smaller one, but that’s a tool for kyber crystals.”

Saw whipped his head around and stared at the giant piece of equipment and the array of lasers extending from it. Reece, noticing the way they lingered, motioned for them to catch up. Then his gaze fell on what Saw was staring at, and he narrowed his eyes, looking back at Jyn.

A chill danced up her spine. There was something…hungry about the way Reece looked at her. She was certain he knew what the crystalline spectrometer was and that he remembered the kyber crystal she kept hidden under her shirt. She readjusted the carbon-cotton scarf covering her neck.

In the heart of the factory, Lieutenant Colonel Senjax paused. “Why don’t you set up here,” he told the reporters. Members of his crew jumped to life, arranging chairs, adjusting lighting, directing the camera droids to find the best angles. He turned to Saw and Jyn, who were pretending to work on the camera droids.

“You two, come with me,” he said, motioning toward them.

Saw frowned but couldn’t reasonably deny the request. He and Jyn followed Lieutenant Colonel Senjax down the hall and into a small empty room.

“Is something wrong?” Saw asked. Jyn could feel the tension radiating from him.

“People forget—because I’m something of a celebrity, a public face—people forget that I’m still an Imperial officer,” Lieutenant Colonel Senjax said. He looked past Saw. “Ah, yes, come in, come in.”

A pair of stormtroopers entered the room, followed by Reece.

“What is this?” Saw growled. Jyn’s hands balled into fists.

“These are the anarchists you alerted my department of?” Lieutenant Colonel Senjax asked Reece.

He nodded. “Saw Gerrera,” Reece said.

Lieutenant Colonel Senjax’s eyes were alight. “This is excellent,” he said. “That name has been on our lists for quite some time.”

“This was a setup?” Saw said, disbelief in his voice—not disbelief that Reece would betray them but that he hadn’t caught on earlier. “Did Id—was she in on it?”

“Idryssa was a fool who took my suggestions easily.” Reece laughed. “But she was just a fool. By the way”—he turned back to the lieutenant colonel—“check where the signal of the camera droids is transmitting; it should lead you to a larger cell.”

“Traitor,” Saw growled at Reece.

“You betrayed me first,” Reece said in a bored tone. “You took my men. So I’m taking yours.”

The comms Reece had sent from Saw’s base, the “contact” he obviously never had. He’d been signaling the Empire directly. Jyn prayed that everyone back at the outpost had the sense to evacuate, knew the procedures and remembered the plans Saw had drilled into them.

And then Jyn thought of Jari. Had he been a traitor, too, or was he framed by Reece? Or—a dark thought flashed through her mind—had Saw just been so paranoid he saw a traitor where none had been?

“This is revenge from all those years ago?” Saw laughed. “You were a little boy then, and you’re a little boy now.”

The insult struck home; Reece’s face reddened with anger, and Jyn thought of how he’d looked when she’d beaten him in the sparring match.

His eyes landed on her. “And that one,” Reece said, pointing to Jyn. “You may be interested in her as well—and I’ll obviously be expecting higher payment if you are. Saw’s tried to keep her identity undercover, but I suspect she may be—”

He never finished the sentence. Saw moved with lightning speed, ripping the blaster from the stormtrooper positioned behind him and firing at Reece. Reece dropped like a stone, but Jyn was surprised to see that he was still breathing, still alive. The stormtrooper’s blaster had been set to stun.

Saw turned it toward the lieutenant colonel, but the other stormtrooper knocked his arm, sending the shot wild. Lieutenant Colonel Senjax commed for backup, and Jyn threw herself at the stormtrooper, fighting him back. She wasn’t armed well—Reece had told them specifically that they’d be scanned before working next to the lieutenant colonel and any blasters would be confiscated—but she had a knife in her boot. She withdrew it as fast as she could, slamming it into the stormtrooper’s elbow.