Star Wars: Rebel Rising(43)

Their ship burst from the planet’s atmosphere, burning off oxygen as it entered the vacuum of space. “They’re scanning us,” the pilot said tightly, his eyes on the screens spread before him. The Star Destroyer hung ominously in the black.

“Don’t hesitate,” Jyn said. “Keep going; keep going.”

Another ship broke atmosphere behind them, the little planet hopper Jyn had seen in the corner of the spaceport. Apparently, more survivors were trying to escape. The scan for that ship was much quicker; in moments, it was shot from the sky, reduced to nothing but debris.

Her code replicator beeped, the sound blending into the alert on the pilot’s main console. “We’ve passed clearance,” the pilot said, his voice filled with wonder.

“Go!” Jyn shouted. Their saving grace had been the emergence of the other ship, distracting the Imperials from a close scan. As Jyn watched, TIE fighters deployed; their visual on the ship would doom Jyn and the pilot.

The pilot punched it, heading straight for the hyperspace route, programming the coordinates with a flurry of fingers. Jyn’s hands curled over the sides of her seat, her eyes darting between the pilot and the approaching TIE fighters.

The stars blended together, light and fog forming around them as they flew through hyperspace and away from the carnage of Tamsye Prime.





Jyn sagged in her seat, relief washing over her. She’d escaped.

She turned to the pilot. She wanted to ask his name, thank him for flying, but he stared straight ahead, his spine stiff, tear tracks tracing through the grime and soot on his face.

They had escaped, but he had lost his home, his family, everything he loved.

There was nothing she could say to that.

Jyn curled her legs up, drawing her knees to her chin as she mimicked the pilot and stared out at the blue-gray of hyperspace, nothing but silence between them as they traveled through the stars.



They emerged from hyperspace sooner than Jyn would have expected. A small planet with a lone, barren moon hung before them.

“Where are we?” Jyn asked.

“I don’t ever want to do that again,” the pilot said in a soft voice.

“Do what?”

“Abandon everyone else just so I can live. We could have saved more,” the pilot said, still staring straight ahead. “We could have saved someone other than ourselves.”

Guilt enshrouded the pilot. It sank into his skin, it pulled at his bones.

Jyn could feel the same sorrow reaching for her. It filled her lungs like smoke; it made her blood heavy and slow. She closed her eyes, pushing the smell of fire and the sounds of desperate screaming away from her thoughts. If there was one thing she’d learned in her sixteen years of life, it was that she couldn’t afford to think in regrets. “The Empire will know by now that my codes were forged,” she said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. “They will likely try to locate this ship. We need to land, and we need to leave it behind.”

“I know some junkers,” the pilot said.

Jyn raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“I’d been planning to escape,” he added. “I’d already set up a whole network of contacts so I could disappear. I just never…” He blew out his breath. “I never thought it’d be like this.”

Jyn nodded in agreement. It was a good plan—land the ship and let it be dismantled for parts, impossible to trace. The pilot used the ship’s comm system to set it up, then veered out of orbit and toward a landing station.

It all happened surprisingly quickly; the pilot landed the ship, the junkers offered him credits for it. There were no negotiations. The pilot handed Jyn half the credits as her share, and then the junkers offered them a ride on their cargo transport into the main town.

And that was it. When the cargo transport stopped in the center of the dusty little town, the pilot said good-bye and walked off. Jyn got out with her bag of gear, and the transport zoomed away.

She didn’t even know the name of the planet she was on.

The town was small, without much in the way of homes. A cantina, a few buildings, a tiny spaceport. The landscape was flat, with little more than scrub brush, and although the big yellow sun beat down on her, the air was chilly. Inside the cantina, Jyn knew she could purchase time on a comm. She could reach out to Saw. Maybe he was looking for her….

She shook her head. No. Either he hadn’t survived his wounds—a distinct possibility—or he had never intended to come back for her. There was no middle ground. There never was with Saw.

Jyn rubbed her arms and made her way to the spaceport.

“What you want?” a Lannik said, looking up at Jyn as she approached.

She looked behind him. Three ships were docked—a freighter, a cargo-class transport system, and a personal cruiser that had seen better days.

“Anyone looking for passengers?” Jyn asked.

“No one needs a mutt hanging around,” the Lannik growled. He scratched one of his impossibly large, long ears, and the metal hoops piercing the cartilage jingled.

“I can pay!” Jyn protested.

“Pay,” he sneered.

Behind him, a woman was using mag-lifts to load crates into the freighter.

“Hey!” Jyn called, ignoring the protests of the Lannik. “You need any help?”

The woman leaned back, pressing a hand into her lumbar. She looked Jyn up and down, but she kept her face impassive. She was human, with dark brown skin and black hair and eyes that Jyn hoped were kind.