Star Wars: Rebel Rising(50)

Hadder sat up and patted the patch of grass beside him. Jyn sat down tentatively. Hadder broke off a blade of the long grass and handed it to Jyn before popping one in his own mouth.

Jyn shifted uncomfortably, not used to Hadder’s intense gaze. “What?” she asked more aggressively than she’d intended.

“Your eyes are strange,” Hadder said pleasantly.

“You do realize that’s not a compliment?”

Hadder grinned. “Yeah, it is. They’re unique. I like that.”

Jyn tried to look away, but she could still feel his gaze on her.

“It’s like they shift color in the sunlight,” he continued, oblivious to her discomfort at his attention. “Like there’re holos in them or something.”

“My father used to say that it looked as if there was stardust in my eyes,” Jyn said. “He called me that sometimes. Stardust.”

Hadder repeated the word softly. “Yeah,” he said. “I like that.” He paused, and Jyn felt him look away, up toward the sky that was settling into dusk. “So what happened to your father?” he asked.

Jyn shrugged, not answering him. It was easier to say he was dead, but she didn’t want to speak the lie in that moment. Without realizing what she was doing, she started to fiddle with her kyber crystal necklace.

“Nice rock,” Hadder said casually.

She dropped the crystal as if it had burned her, letting it fall against her chest, then quickly tucked it back under her shirt.

Hadder stared at her. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but you’re kind of weird.”

Jyn rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “How am I supposed to not take that the wrong way? What other way could there be to take that?”

Hadder’s grin was lopsided. “You want me to not think you’re weird? Answer some questions.”

Jyn chewed on the end of the grass. “Fine,” she said begrudgingly. She could always lie.

“What happened to your parents?” Hadder asked.

“My mother’s dead.”

“And your father?”

“As good as.” Without meaning to, Jyn’s voice had taken on an edge, sharp as the knife she still hid in her boot.

“Did he leave you on Tamsye Prime?” Hadder asked.

“No,” Jyn said, her eyes focusing on the horizon. “My father didn’t leave me on Tamsye Prime. Saw did.”

“Saw? Who’s he?” Now Hadder had an edge to his voice. Jyn shot him a look, trying to figure him out. He sounded almost like he wanted to protect her, which was ridiculous. He hardly knew her. And she didn’t need protecting.

“He’s who I was living with. Kind of like family. We worked together.”

Hadder squinted. “Which is it? Someone you lived with like family or a business partner?”

“Can’t he be both?” Jyn asked.

“No,” Hadder said in a way that made Jyn feel like she was slow. “If someone’s your family, they’re not your employer or just someone you share a house with. They’re…important.” He seemed to be struggling with the right words to make Jyn understand.

Jyn thought of Saw. What had he been to her? He had been…everything. The only one she thought she could trust. But what had she been to him? He’d left her on Tamsye Prime. He had to, she told herself, remembering Reece. But he hadn’t come back for her. She thought of the sure way Lieutenant Colonel Senjax had spoken of the defeat of the rebels. She thought of Saw’s injuries, the way he had coughed blood.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jyn said, swallowing her emotion. “He’s probably dead now.”

“Oh.” Hadder didn’t speak again for a while, but then he said, “So you just got on the nearest ship and left.”

“Pretty much.”

“I want to do that basically all the time.” Hadder sighed. “But the only real ship on Skuhl that’s not a planet hopper is Mum’s, and the point is to get away. Like you did. Just get on a random ship and see where it takes me.”

Jyn gaped at the boy. Did he not get it? She hadn’t just hopped on Akshaya’s ship for fun . She’d been betrayed, hungry, alone, desperate. She’d had nothing, no one left. Nobody got on a ship going anywhere if they had ties binding them to someone else. Nobody willingly became adrift.

“What?” Hadder asked when he noticed Jyn’s face.

She shook her head. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know what it meant to lose everything. “Just thinking how stupid you are,” she said in a casual voice, leaning back.

“You’re weird, and I’m stupid.” Hadder copied her, flopping down on the grass. “We’re quite the match.”





Before Akshaya left at the end of the week, Jyn uploaded new clearance codes and scandocs into the ship’s mainframe.

“One day, I want to know how you got to be so good at forging Imperial documents,” Akshaya said.

Hadder stood nearby. “Well, I’m glad this little scam artist is working on our side,” he said. “I don’t like how close the Empire’s gotten to your trade routes.”

“You know the Empire is after ore,” Jyn added. “You’d be better off transporting something else, something the Empire didn’t want.”