Star Wars: Rebel Rising(81)

The admiral waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Take care of the details,” she said to Commander Solange, dismissing them.

Commander Solange turned immediately and headed out of the room. Jyn hesitated only a moment, then followed on her heels.

“Now, where were we?” the admiral asked the Rayeth just before the door slid shut. Jyn could hear the Rayeth’s screams through the walls. They chased her down the hall, and they still rang in her ears as Commander Solange led Jyn back to her office to go over the final details of the assignment.





It was surprisingly easy to join the partisan group. Jyn was given the name of a contact and the ship’s slip number. She went to the ship, a midsized XO1 yacht, and introduced herself as Liana Hallik. When the captain of the XO1 pressed her, she added the name of her contact and that she’d worked with Risi Amps before his arrest. Jyn easily pointed out some of the ways she’d already worked with the group, altering logs.

“I like that,” the leader of a group, a Devaronian female named Blue, said. “You’ve worked with us before, but kept your tongue so silent we didn’t even know it.”

“More like Risi kept his tongue quiet because he didn’t want me asking for a bigger cut by going directly to you,” Jyn said.

Blue smiled. “Risi spoke the universal language of credits,” she said. “You and I, I think, speak another tongue.” She threw an arm around Jyn’s shoulders, her downy fur tickling the back of Jyn’s neck.

Jyn shook her head. “I just want to get paid,” she said. Her stomach churned. She was caught between the Empire and a rebel group, and she hated it.

Blue’s group operated throughout the Five Points system, with a few runs beyond into neighboring solar systems. Despite the ship’s size, the crew was small—Blue, Jyn, a pair of Ma’cella brothers, an older Krish pilot, and a mechanic whose species Jyn couldn’t identify and was too shy to ask. It was odd at first for Jyn to be the only human, but she soon fell into a fairly easy comradery with the group.

“You work quick,” Blue commented as Jyn uploaded a new manifest and set of clearance codes for the ship after the first week of flight. The ship had done nothing major, just a few legitimate cargo runs. Blue wanted to keep everything on the up and up after Risi Amp’s arrest, just in case.

“Thanks,” Jyn said.

“I’m thinking we’ll head to Watassay next,” she continued, taking a sip of caf from her thermal canteen.

“Okay,” Jyn said.

“But I don’t want it to look like we went to Watassay,” she said. “Can the manifest say Hirara instead?”

“Sure,” Jyn reached for her code replicator. She paused. It didn’t matter. The Imperial tracking code had already been uploaded in the ship’s mainframe; Admiral Rocwyn knew exactly where the ship was going and where it had been. But if Blue was taking her to the headquarters, Jyn’s participation with the group would be over sooner rather than later. “What’s on Watassay?” she asked.

“A job,” Blue said simply.



Watassay was surrounded by an Imperial blockade. “Time to see if those clearance codes of yours work, girl,” said Shawburn, the pilot of Blue’s ship.

“They’ll work,” Jyn said confidently. In part because they’ve got a true Imperial tag.

There was tense silence as the ship was scanned, then docking clearance flashed over their comm screen.

“Good work,” Blue said in a soft voice, dropping a big hand on Jyn’s shoulder and giving it a comforting squeeze.

The job, it turned out, was unloading the crates that had been in storage on the freighter. Each crate was full of foodstuffs—not very appetizing, but a full round of nutrients and easily distributable to the locals.

“Thank you, thank you,” the man who accepted the delivery kept saying. His cheeks were hollowed, and he had a gaunt look about him.

Blue had the crew work as quickly as possible, unloading and helping with the distribution in a small makeshift town. They were back in the air as soon as possible.

“What was wrong with them?” Jyn asked.

“What do you mean?” Blue countered.

“The people. They looked like they were starving.”

The Krish pilot looked at Jyn with wide eyes. “Because they were ,” she said. “Why do you think we were bringing them food?”

Jyn frowned down at the table.

“The Empire wants that part of Watassay for their own resources, so they’re trying to starve them out,” Blue said. “They’ve cut them off from importing any food. That was the first shipment they’ve had in a standard month. Dwindun said they’d been softening tree bark to fill their bellies. The foodstuffs we gave them should help.”

Jyn felt something in her heart, a stabbing sensation, like a knife twisting. She looked down at the code replicator in her hand. She had already infected the ship with the Empire’s tracker. It was done. There was no going back.

And why can’t they just help themselves? Jyn thought savagely. How many times had the Empire done this sort of thing, forcing a company out of business, taking over an area? They could have just left. They didn’t need Blue. They needed to leave. If there was one lesson Jyn had learned, it was simply this: whenever the Empire or the rebellion showed up at your door, the best thing you could do was run.