Star Wars: Rebel Rising(4)
Saw was her last hope.
His eyes were red-lined, and he sighed heavily as he ran a hand over his smooth head. As if he could feel her eyes on him, he glanced down at Jyn, and he tried to shoot her a reassuring smile. But then he said, “I don’t know what to do with you, kid,” and any comfort she’d felt disappeared.
The farther they went from Lah’mu, the more surreal the journey felt to Jyn. She half expected this all to be some sort of mistake, and when they finally stopped flying, they’d be back home, everything normal again.
But when they dropped out of hyperspace a few days later, it wasn’t beautiful green-and-blue Lah’mu that was waiting for her. It was an asteroid belt.
Saw sat up straighter, and Jyn watched as his attention zeroed in on the viewport. “We’re coming up on Smuggler’s Run,” he said. “Strap in.”
At first, it was just a few stray asteroids, but soon they were in the thick of it, the shuttle lurching up and down, left and right as Saw expertly navigated the ship through the onslaught.
“I like Wrea,” Saw said. “The belt keeps people away. It’s quiet.”
Wrea . The planet they were going to. Jyn’s body slammed against the safety harness as Saw swerved around another asteroid. It suited him, to live on a planet so difficult to reach.
When they cleared the asteroids, Jyn saw Wrea. It was smaller than Lah’mu, and bluer. Water, she thought. With little land masses of green and white and brown scattered over the surface, the islands big and long like fingers clawing their way through the ocean.
Saw flew the shuttle straight down, landing in a small clearing surrounded by craggy rocks. Wrea was cold, and the air smelled like salt, but she couldn’t see the ocean. She could only see rocks and tangled scrub brush. As they approached a broken comm tower, Jyn realized there was more to it than just the base. A door was carved into the rock, a heavy blaster-proof door that Saw accessed with a biometric lock. The metal squeaked when it slid open. Lights cascaded down a long hallway bored directly into the stone.
Jyn lingered in the doorway, looking around at the small rocky island. At the top of a hill that seemed as if it were made of one giant boulder was a comm tower. Or at least part of one. The other half lay broken and rusted at the base.
“Not used since the Clone Wars,” Saw said, walking past Jyn and into the outpost. “The natives aren’t exactly friendly, but they stay off this island.”
“What are the natives?” Jyn asked, jogging to keep up. The door whisked shut behind her, closing her in the dank stone hallway.
“Wreans,” Saw said, winking. When Jyn didn’t respond, he peered at her, noting her nervousness. “They’re water creatures, and they stick to the deep. You’re safe.”
Jyn nodded, swallowing. She didn’t believe him, though. She didn’t believe in “safe” at all.
The outpost was bigger than it appeared from the outside. Built directly into the rock, it had three doors on either side of the main hallway, which ended in a common room larger than Saw’s shuttle. He stood in the hallway a moment, as if considering his options, then he opened the door immediately to his right. It was an old office and had obviously been used for storage. “This do?” he asked. Jyn wasn’t sure what he meant, so she just nodded.
He led her down the hallway. Jyn looked at the other closed doors curiously, but he didn’t pause. The large common room seemed to be half cave, with a stone ceiling curving up. Jyn didn’t like it at all. It was too much like the cave she’d hidden in.
A long table stood in the center, and cabinets had been built into the wall. Saw set Jyn down at the table and opened a can of nutritive milk for her. From her seat, she watched as he went back to the hall, to the first room, and started clearing stuff away. He worked quickly, his beefy arms straining as he lugged a desk into the hallway, then several crates.
“You should get a droid,” Jyn called down the hallway when Saw stopped to swipe at his sweating brow. Back on Coruscant, Jyn had had a Mac-Vee droid who took care of her sometimes and kept the apartment clean. Papa liked to complain that he wasn’t nearly as efficient as Mac-Vee had been, so Mama had to help him with the dishes.
“I dislike droids,” Saw said in a low voice before turning and stomping down the hallway.
Jyn scurried after Saw, following him into the first room on the right. Inside were a half-dozen beds, each with a thin mattress and a blue blanket. Saw handed her a blanket and pillow from one of the beds, and Jyn thought that meant she would be sleeping there, but instead Saw picked up the mattress from the frame and carried it down the hall to the little office by the front door. He plopped the mattress on the floor, and when Jyn just stood there, he took the blanket and pillow from her arms and put them on top of the mattress.
Saw had cleared out most of the other furniture and the crates that had cluttered the little room, but he’d left a small table and an old datapad. As he straightened the mattress on the floor and draped the blanket over the end, it finally dawned on Jyn that this was her room. A dusty, tiny room with a mattress on the floor. She wasn’t even worthy of the larger room down the hall that was already set up with beds. No. This was her room.
It was so pitiful that Jyn wanted to cry. This was nothing like her room in Coruscant, sleek and filled with the highest-tech toys available. It wasn’t even like her bedroom on Lah’mu, cramped but homey and filled with the little dolls Mama had made for her. But when Jyn turned to see Saw’s face, she swallowed her dismay. He looked so…so anxious for her approval that all she could do was whisper her thanks.