Star Wars: Rebel Rising(79)

The landlady stared at her, as if it had only just occurred to her that Jyn could have lied about her name.

“No,” the stormtrooper said.

“Do I have a choice in whether or not I come with you?” Jyn asked.

“No,” the stormtrooper said.

“Can I at least get dressed first?”

The stormtrooper hesitated.

“It’s cold outside,” Jyn said, looking down at her bare arms and legs.

“You may dress,” the stormtrooper said, but he didn’t leave the doorway. He watched as Jyn awkwardly stepped into pants without removing her shorts and layered another shirt under a heavier coat. She shoved her feet into her boots and stood awkwardly.

“Don’t rent my room out,” Jyn told her landlady. “I’m coming back.”

The older woman nodded vigorously, and Jyn hoped she would be honest enough not to loot the credits Jyn had hidden under the mattress.

The stormtrooper led Jyn to the spaceport. Risi Amps sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his hands held in heavy durasteel locks. He looked up at Jyn with watery eyes as the stormtrooper pushed her forward. The guards on Risi yanked him to a standing position.

It did not bode well that Risi had been arrested. He had been her go-between for the codes and logs and docs she forged for what was obviously a rebel group. While Jyn could reasonably protest that she didn’t know she’d been working for partisans, she couldn’t deny that her actions—forgery—were illegal. She wasn’t sure why Risi had been arrested and not her, but she couldn’t help feeling nervous as the stormtrooper escorted her into an Imperial transport ship and they headed back to Five Points station.





Risi Amps was put in a separate, locked room on the ship during the trip to Five Points. Jyn didn’t see him again until they docked on the station and two stormtroopers unlocked his room and led him silently off the ship. Another stormtrooper guarded Jyn, and after several long minutes, he led her off the transport ship as well. There was no sign of the other stormtroopers or Risi—no sign of any other ship on this level. The long expanse of ports was empty and silent, save for Jyn, the stormtrooper, and the sleek transport shuttle.

The stormtrooper walked a little behind Jyn, on high alert despite the fact that the bay was empty. It surprised Jyn; she hadn’t thought Commander Solange was capable of running an efficient troop.

At the end of the bay, the stormtrooper nudged Jyn to a small private turbolift. They went up three floors, then got out on a hallway that Jyn recognized as the Imperial headquarters on the station.

“That way,” the stormtrooper said, pushing Jyn down the hall toward Commander Solange’s office.

Although she was wearing a heavy coat that was making her sweat on the warm station, Jyn felt a little naked without her usual access to at least some form of weapon. She felt like a nerf being led to a rancor’s den.

The stormtrooper stopped outside the door to Commander Solange’s office. He pressed a button, and the sleek enameled door slid open. The stormtrooper did not move to enter the room, but nodded for Jyn to do so. She stepped inside, her chin tilted up, her spine straight.

“Yes,” drawled a voice on the opposite side of the room. “I can see why you thought she was a good choice, Solange.”

Jyn felt a chill move down her spine, one that seemed to undermine her false bravado. “Who are you?” she asked.

The woman tilted her head, her ice-blue eyes narrowing just a tiny bit. “Speak only when spoken to,” she said in an even voice that brooked no argument. Jyn found she had none to give.

Jyn examined the woman’s insignia plaque; she was an admiral. Her crisp gray uniform was impeccable, making her pale skin look even whiter in contrast. Her platinum-blonde hair was braided so tightly it made Jyn’s head ache. The only real color on her, aside from her insignia plaque, was on her long eyelashes, which had been tinted red.

The admiral glanced at a file. “Our records show you gave us the name Tanith Ponta,” she said in a bored voice. “But you were under the alias Liana Hallik when our troopers picked you up.” She looked up, analyzing Jyn. “Which is your real name?” When Jyn didn’t answer, she added, “You may speak now.”

“Hallik,” Jyn said.

The admiral nodded. She put the file on the desk, angling it so Jyn could see her own image, with the name Liana Hallik emblazoned across the top, followed by the ident code she’d forged when she first started using that name. As she’d suspected, the troopers had pillaged her room after taking her and assumed the scandoc she’d left there was real.

The admiral waved her hand at Commander Solange.

“We’ve been looking for you, Liana,” the commander said. “Where have you been?”

Jyn leveled a cold stare at her and didn’t answer. Where had she been? In the Anoat system, working on a Tibanna gas tanker. Bouncing around the Mid Rim for a bit—Cerea and Coyerti—before settling in Takodana for nearly a year. On a freighter that needed clearance codes and no questions asked for so long that Jyn had forgetten the smell of fresh air by the time she switched jobs and went planetside again.

“Around,” Jyn answered.

“Yes, well,” Commander Solange said, frowning, “we have a job for you. There’s a rebel cell in the area that we want to crush.”