Star Wars: Rebel Rising(38)

“We have to go!” Saw shouted at her. The outer room was large, but there was only one exit and entry, and already more stormtroopers were charging inside.

Saw wheeled around, pressing the barrel of the blaster against Lieutenant Colonel Senjax’s skull. “Jyn,” he said, “get Reece.”

Jyn didn’t question him; she grabbed Reece’s limp arms and dragged him behind her. Using the lieutenant colonel as cover, Saw and Jyn exited the room.

The rest of the crew stood, shocked. The stormtroopers were listening to orders in their helmets. Jyn sent an emergency comm to Codo in the ship. For a moment, they all stared at each other.

And then the entire building shook.

“An aerial attack?” Jyn gasped, catching a glimpse of black TIE fighters through the high windows.

Lieutenant Colonel Senjax laughed mirthlessly. “This factory is on its way out,” he said. “The Empire is finished with it. It’s worthless. If you think they’ll let the building stand when they could destroy you…”

But the people, Jyn thought as an alarm blared through the building and all the workers tried to evacuate.

Lieutenant Colonel Senjax used the chaos to wrench free, jerking from Saw’s grasp and knocking the blaster aside. Jyn picked it up from the ground, letting Reece’s limp body drop, and fired at the retreating officer. Saw pulled her behind the edge of the plasma lathe, giving her cover.

The lieutenant colonel raced out of view, but the wall behind him erupted in flames. Debris rained down on them, rock and metal, flames and timbers. The crystalline spectrometer shook free from the wall, the laser array spinning.

Saw leapt toward Jyn, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her behind him. “We have to go!” he screamed.

Panic flooded Jyn’s senses. Everywhere was chaos and burning. Through the exposed roof, Jyn could see more TIE fighters screaming through the air. Everyone scattered, racing down the hall to the exit. Rumbling filled the room.

Someone was shouting her name, pulling on her.

Saw.

“Come on!” he shouted in her face.

Just past him, Jyn noted the giant power cells lining the wall. She blinked, shock overwhelming her system. She watched as if frozen as a green beam of plasma from a TIE fighter’s cannon whizzed through the air, striking the power cells.

The world exploded.

Saw threw himself at Jyn, covering her body with his. They landed on the floor with a skull-cracking crash, and Jyn was knocked out of her dazed shock. Fire and metal rained down on them.

Saw bucked in pain, screaming in agony, a sound Jyn would never forget. She scrambled out from under him.

Blood blossomed all over his body.





Jyn analyzed the wounds as quickly as she could. A mixture of sharp metal debris and something else—a chemical of some kind, she wasn’t sure—had fallen over them. The chemical burns were deep, but they were mostly seared shut. The same could not be said of the wounds caused by the metal debris. Dozens of deep, long cuts littered Saw’s body, but the worst was where a long, flat triangular-shaped piece of metal that had pierced Saw’s shoulder, clean through to his chest. Jyn knew not to remove the metal; she just hoped it hadn’t sliced any arteries. Saw still bled, but he might not bleed to death, and not dying was about the only thing Jyn hoped for at that point.

Reece groaned. Somehow, despite being unconscious and unprotected, he’d escaped the main blast mostly unscathed. His face was covered in blood-streaked soot, but the superficial head wound was nothing.

Jyn kicked him. “Get up!” she screamed. “Help me!”

He groaned again, rolling over, then his eyes widened, taking in the horror of everything around him.

“Help me!” Jyn shouted again, struggling with Saw’s body. He had passed out from the pain. Or at least Jyn hoped it was the pain. His shirt was so soaked that it dripped blood, but he still had a pulse, breath. It wasn’t over yet.

Reece, still stunned and possibly in shock, lifted one of Saw’s arms around his shoulders, and Jyn supported the other side, holding him so as not to disturb the metal in his shoulder. She kept the blaster she’d stolen from the stormtrooper in her other hand in case they met resistance. They hobble-ran through the raining debris.

“They’re toying with us,” Reece said, choking on smoke. “We’ll never escape.”

Jyn thought about the crystalline spectrometer, the hinged roof that was even now falling aside, flattening everything in its wake. They stumbled to the door.

“Jyn,” Saw groaned.

They cleared the building. The spaceport was a kilometer away, and it was, miraculously, not destroyed. Reece picked up his pace, but Saw, becoming more conscious of what was happening and his injuries, pulled away. He made a noise, deep and guttural, animal-like, a bellow of rage and regret. Reece yanked him forward, but Saw struggled against him, stumbling and pushing Reece away.

“Traitor,” Saw growled. He slipped from Jyn’s tenuous grasp, falling to the ground, hissing in pain as the metal shard in his shoulder shifted.

In her desperate attempt to flee, Jyn had almost let herself forget that Reece had been the cause of all this. She raised her blaster, pointing at him, and he froze.

Saw had not forgotten. He was bleeding, broken, maybe even dying, but he looked more dangerous than Jyn had ever seen him.

“Saw!” Codo—stupid, simple Codo—stood in the path leading to the spaceport. He started running as a TIE fighter zoomed overhead.