Star Wars: Rebel Rising(78)

When they were seated, the junker said, “Got some interest in the kind of codes you make.”

Jyn closed her eyes and allowed herself one wistful moment of recalling who she had been before she went to seedy cantinas to haggle with dishonest skills. She could still remember when her life had been normal and good. No, she thought viciously, excising the memories. That’s not what I get. I don’t get normal. I don’t deserve good.

Everything good dies.

All she needed now was credits.

“How much interest?” Jyn asked the junker.

He told her his plan, and it was smart. If the ident codes and ship docs she forged were sold through the Labbo, her name wouldn’t be directly attached. It provided her with separation, although it did mean less payment.

“I’ve got a group; they need past checkpoints. Want some manifests and logs that look a little more…mediocre,” the junker continued.

“I could do that.” Jyn drained her glass. “How much?”

This was the right thing to say; the junker wasn’t keen on small talk and preferred business. They quickly hashed out a payment plan and work schedule. “I don’t even know your name,” Jyn commented. It was her second dealing with the Labbo, and it had only just struck her as odd.

“Risi Amps,” he said. “You?”

“Liana Hallik.” The lie came easily. She hardly ever thought of herself as an Erso anymore, and it hurt too much to think of the name Ponta.

The work Risi provided was simple enough, although time-consuming and tedious. Jyn kept careful tabs on her credits. She could eke out a better-than-average living with the illegal work, and she had her eye set on going deeper into the Outer Rim and leaving behind Five Points. Commander Solange may have been an inept and corrupt officer, but she was still an Imperial presence on the space station, far too close for Jyn’s comfort. So Jyn checked every ship that came into the spaceport, hoping each time to find someone who was keen on leaving the system behind.

She didn’t find anyone. The holodramas she’d viewed as a kid implied that the Outer Rim was a constant source of adventures, new species to discover, strange new landscapes, and exciting exploits on ships that darted through the systems. Instead, Jyn spent her days in the little boarder room she rented on Rumitaka, hunched over a code replicator.

That feeling of missing out, of making the wrong choice for her life by accepting this job, was strongest late at night, when Jyn carefully crafted ship logs for Risi, taking out damage reports from space battles and adding in cleared Imperial checkpoints or boring trade route runs. As she examined the records and altered them, Jyn grew certain that Risi was being paid by a subversive partisan group. Probably not the growing group of rebels that Xosad and Idryssa had joined—this one seemed smaller, a fleet of no more than six ships, she guessed. None of which was a shuttle like the one Saw had flown, or a Y-wing like she’d seen on Skuhl.

Jyn traced the outline of a Y-wing in the dust on the table she was working at in her little dormer. What would life have been like if Saw hadn’t been so isolated on Wrea? If he had followed Xosad and Idryssa into the rebel group? He wouldn’t have taken that job on Inusagi, the one that still woke her up with nightmares sometimes. She might have met Hadder not on Skuhl but on some rebel base on some far-flung planet. Because if it wasn’t for Jyn, Hadder would have joined Xosad’s group.

And he would have still been alive.

She didn’t like having a name for the feeling that had been plaguing her for so many months now.

Regret.

She swiped her hand across her doodled Y-wing. The only regret she had was ever coming across groups like Saw’s, like Xosad’s. Like this one. Whatever they were doing now, these runs she was wiping from the manifests, the codes she was forging to get past blockades—Jyn was not so naive as to believe that they were helping anyone but their own entitled sense of justice.

In the end, she didn’t care. As long as she got paid, as long as she was safe, as long as she could eat—that was all she cared about.



That night, a loud knock on the front door of the old house Jyn was boarding in was so persistent that Jyn startled awake, even though she was on the second story. Her landlady cursed a blue streak as she clomped down the stairs to answer the door. Jyn sat up in bed, straining to hear what was being said. Her landlady was loud, protesting that someone shouldn’t come in.

And then Jyn heard the boots. She was certain she would always be able to identify a stormtrooper just by the sound his boots made.

She shot out of bed and went straight to her code replicator. She wiped the data as quickly as she could. It wasn’t a perfect job, but it was something. All the logs and scandocs she’d been working on for the past few days were gone. She could re-create the work, but…

Her bedroom door swung open. Jyn grabbed the scarf she’d taken off earlier and threw it around her neck and hair. She hoped she looked as if she were being modest in her low-cut top, and not that she was hiding her kyber crystal necklace.

“Tanith Ponta?” the stormtrooper said.

Jyn turned slowly.

“I told you, her name is Liana Hallik, not Tanith whatever,” the landlady shouted. “This is a violation of privacy!”

“You’re wanted for questioning,” the stormtrooper said.

“Am I being arrested?” Jyn asked.