Star Wars: Rebel Rising(45)

Ice water washed down Jyn’s spine. She didn’t say anything.

“Little rock of a world, mostly used for factories. Named Tamsye Prime. Looks like some sort of tragedy happened. Factories are all gone. Not much left there at all,” Akshaya said, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

She glanced at Jyn, worry evident on her face. Jyn had been right about Akshaya’s kind eyes.

“Seems to me,” Akshaya said, “someone from a planet like that may not know where to go or what to do.”

Akshaya punched in the next coordinates, and the ship jumped to lightspeed.

Jyn released the safety harness of her chair and stood. “I guess I should get to work on that broken droid,” she said, avoiding Akshaya’s eyes. She didn’t know what to do with her pity or concern. Akshaya didn’t follow her as she went back down the hall.

Jyn opened the door to the little closet where Akshaya had said the droid was. It was a small astromech unit, an older class, more outdated than some of the junk Jyn used to spar with on Saw’s outpost. She pulled the motivator out, then found a bag of bits and pieces that had broken off it and spread them out on the table.

I have no idea what I’m doing, she thought, staring down at the parts. She could tinker with her code replicator all day, finding the patterns and pulling at the algorithms, but with something mechanical like this…she was utterly lost.

Still, she gave it a go. She knew enough about how to destroy a droid to guess at how one should look when it wasn’t broken, but the internal mechanisms were far more complicated than she’d thought.

She’d been working for about an hour when they emerged from hyperspace. Jyn made her way back up front to the cockpit.

“An Imperial checkpoint,” Akshaya said, sighing heavily. “More and more of them these days.”

“Are your docs in order?” Jyn asked urgently.

Akshaya hesitated. “I may be behind on my cargo license,” she said. “Which means an inspection and a fine.” She sounded defeated.

Jyn ran back to her bunk, grabbed the code replicator out of her bag, and ran back to the ship’s main console. She plopped on the floor, quickly working as an alarm started ringing throughout the ship. A warning blared over the main screen.


IMPERIAL TRANSPORT CODE: VIOLATION

Jyn had done this sort of thing for Saw enough to know she had only moments to spare. The Empire would run an initial scan at a checkpoint, and those usually triggered alarms. They’d run a deeper scan in a few minutes. If Jyn could forge proper codes between then and now, the Imperial officers would likely not bother to physically check the ship.

She tapped on the datapad hooked into the ship’s core as quickly as possible, uploading the authenticator code generator into the processor. She marked the permissions for the cargo as home crafts. There was a market in the Core worlds for “genuine” crafts from smaller, Outer Rim planets, and that would both explain the ship’s log visiting a half dozen different planets and make the cargo completely uninteresting to any Imperial inspectors.

The alarm cut off abruptly, and a new code flashed through the ship’s receptors.


IMPERIAL TRANSPORT CODE: APPROVED

Akshaya, startled, quickly resumed her seat in the pilot’s chair and set the ship on course toward the planet. She kept shooting Jyn curious looks. When they landed, rather than get to work, Akshaya put her hand over Jyn’s, keeping her in the chair.

“How did you learn to do that?” she asked.

Jyn shrugged.

“No,” Akshaya said, her voice firm. “You’re on my ship, I expect honesty. Did you come from Tamsye Prime?”

Jyn swallowed. “Yes,” she said.

“Were you born there?”

“No,” Jyn said. “I…I was raised on another planet.”

“By your parents?”

“No,” Jyn said in a soft voice.

“You’re a bit of a wanderer, aren’t you?” Akshaya said. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, and she reached over to smooth down Jyn’s hair. It was such a motherly action that Jyn couldn’t help leaning into the touch.

“It’s not safe for you,” Akshaya chided. “Just bouncing around from planet to planet. When we get back to Skuhl, you can stay with me for a bit, okay? Get back on your feet properly.”

Akshaya stood, clapping her hands, ready to get back to work.

“Um,” Jyn said.

“Yes?”

“If we’re being honest, then I’d better add that I have no idea how to fix your droid.”

Akshaya laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “With that little trick, you’ve already paid for your passage.”

Jyn allowed herself a tiny smile of relief, then followed Akshaya off the ship.





Skuhl was not what Jyn had expected. Akshaya docked her ship in a private hangar outside of town, and Jyn grabbed her lone bag. She hated not knowing what to expect next. When she stepped outside, Jyn was blasted with cool air, so refreshing that she just stood there, sucking it in the same way she’d gulped down the meiloorun fruit. The planet was gorgeously serene. Flat in every direction, with fields of blue-green grass that moved like ocean waves in the breeze. The sky was a rich blue, and a single sun peeked through fluffy white clouds.

It reminded her of Lah’mu but flatter and grassier and bluer.