Star Wars: Rebel Rising(42)
She remembered what Lieutenant Colonel Senjax had said: The Empire has no further use for Tamsye Prime.
The TIE fighters had decimated the factories, destroying any evidence of what the Empire had been making in its facilities. But the people still knew. They had worked on whatever it was. They knew.
Jyn was hardly surprised when the first plasma beam shot from the Star Destroyer. She watched almost impassively as it cut through the air, sending down flames and destruction.
Escaping from the factory had not given her much time to look around; running from Reece had narrowed her focus to a pinpoint. But now, with the Star Destroyer low in the sky, fading into the billows of smoke rising from the ground, Jyn saw just how great and terrible the destruction was. And just how much worse it was going to be.
She had to go. Now.
As Jyn raced toward the spaceport, another blast from the Star Destroyer shook the ground. Closer this time. And not too far away, a secondary explosion. She didn’t look back, but she was keenly aware that she was on a munitions testing ground that was being fired upon. Any leftover torpedos or mines or whatever other monstrosities that remained from the Clone Wars munitions manufacturing days would be set off inadvertently by the Empire’s plasma blasts.
The stones of the shell turret rattled as the ground shook from explosive shock. Jyn scrabbled over the sharp, rocky ground, ignoring the cuts that sprang up on her fingers and sliced her pants.
Nothing but smoke and ash was behind her. Distantly, an alarm cut through the sounds of screaming, a steady, high-pitched pulse that seemed oddly rhythmic amid the staccato bursts of random explosions and blaster fire. People covered in soot and streaked with blood stood out in the streets, staring up at the Star Destroyer in horror.
I have to go. The words echoed in Jyn’s mind, the only truth she knew. She had to leave this planet. She had to escape.
Jyn turned her back on the rubble and faced the spaceport. Ships. Reece’s ship was still there.
Not that she knew how to fly it.
But it was a start. She had only luck left, and she could only hope it hadn’t run out entirely.
Jyn darted out of the munitions testing ground toward the spaceport. As soon as the shock of the attack wore off, this was going to be the most popular place on the entire planet, but none of the natives on Tamsye Prime had yet thought of escape. When something bad happened, people’s natural instinct was to go home. It had not yet occurred to the people of Tamsye Prime that there was anywhere else to go.
She went straight to Reece’s ship, thankfully still open. She raced first to her own locker, withdrawing the small satchel of her belongings that she’d brought with her on the trip. A change of clothes, her truncheons, and the code replicator.
Then she went into the cockpit.
She’d seen Saw fly their shuttle a hundred times over the years. She’d watched as Reece piloted this ship. But the array of buttons and gauges, dials and levers was completely alien to her. She had no idea how to even begin launch sequence, let alone fly past a Star Destroyer.
Another rumble, closer this time. The Empire had been toying with them; now Jyn wasn’t sure if there would be any survivors at all. She dashed back out of Reece’s ship, wildly looking around as if some sort of escape would just appear. Maybe she could take one of the other ships, the smaller planet hopper….She scanned the spaceport and saw a young man beating on the outside of one of the few remaining Imperial shuttles.
“Hey!” she shouted. When he looked up, she called, “Can you fly this thing?” She jerked her thumb toward Reece’s ship.
“I work transport; I can fly anything,” he called back. “But it won’t do any good. They’ll blow anything that’s not Imperial out of the sky!”
Jyn thought fast. “I’ve got Imperial clearance codes,” she shouted. “And those things are locked up tight.”
The man hesitated, weighing his odds. Finally, he nodded, making up his mind, and ran over to Jyn. She was already turning around and started pulling up the metal ramp as soon as he boarded.
The man knew his way around a ship. He went straight to the cockpit and threw himself into the pilot’s chair. Jyn sat down in the copilot’s seat, her code replicator in her hand and hooked up to the ship’s mainframe.
“We should get others,” the man said, hesitating. “There are survivors….We could help them….”
Jyn paused. She wanted to help others, but when she pushed past her emotions, she knew there was no way they could organize an evacuation. So she focused on the code replicator. If Saw and Reece escaped on an Imperial ship, the Star Destroyer would be even more hesitant to let another ship slide through its grasp. This had to be perfect.
“It wouldn’t take long,” the man said, turning around as if there were a group of survivors waiting behind him for permission to board.
“There’s no time!” Jyn screamed at him when he still didn’t launch the ship. “Go!”
He slammed his hand down on the console and initiated launch sequence. The engine roared to life, and they shot into the sky.
Jyn tapped on the code replicator furiously. She used an Imperial code she’d been working on in her spare time, one with high levels of complex security. She didn’t know if it would work, and if she used it now, she knew it would never work again; as soon as the Empire saw her trick, they’d crack down on the codes. But if she was ever going to use it, now was the time. She uploaded the code into the ship’s system, masking the ship’s identification and labeling it as a medical emergency with high-level clearance for evacuation. She used all her best work on this one shot.