Star Wars: Rebel Rising(87)

Jyn pretended not to know her, but she did. Anyone with access to the HoloNet knew this woman. Mon Mothma, exiled senator and presumed leader of the Rebellion.

The rumors were right, she thought. Her gaze flicked over to another man she recognized from the HoloNet: Bail Organa.

There was movement to Mon Mothma’s left, and a captain emerged from the shadows. He had dark hair and eyes that crinkled pleasantly even though his expression was grave. There was something about him that reminded her of…she couldn’t quite place it. But he had a familiar sort of face, one she immediately wanted to trust. He looked like the kind of man who always got a laugh out of someone. Jyn couldn’t take her eyes off him. Part of her wondered if he wanted to laugh at her. Part of her wondered if she’d just forgotten the way people’s faces should be. There wasn’t laughter on Wobani.

“Be seated.” Mon Mothma’s cool, even voice demanded attention.

Jyn sank into her seat slowly, nervously. Wary.

One of the generals leveled his gaze at Jyn. “You’re currently calling yourself…” He checked his file. “Liana Hallik. Is that correct?”

Jyn’s heart ramped up. She felt trapped. Exposed. Confused.

The general looked down at his file again, smug. “Possession of unsanctioned weapons, forgery of Imperial documents, aggravated assault, escape from custody, resisting arrest…” He met Jyn’s eyes. “Imagine if the Imperial authorities had found out who you really were. Jyn Erso.”

The world bottomed out at the sound of her real name.

He knew. Her gaze flicked around to the others in the room. They all knew.

The general was eating it up. “That’s your given name, is it not? Jyn Erso? Daughter of Galen Erso.” He paused. “A known Imperial collaborator in weapons development.”

“I have no father,” Jyn said, her words strong with the conviction she put behind them.

Mon Mothma spoke softly, her voice sad, or maybe just tired. “A girl raised to be a soldier.”

Jyn turned her gaze to Mon Mothma. Did she expect Jyn to be sad that Saw had taught her how to fight? How to survive?

But she didn’t get her first lesson from Saw. Jyn looked at Mon Mothma’s pitying gaze, but she didn’t see her. She saw her parents, fleeing Coruscant, running away for their freedom from the Empire. They had settled on Lah’mu, but her mother had never quite given up the idea that they were still running. When the Empire came, Jyn’s father had surrendered easily. Far too easily. But her mother…her mother had fought.

Papa had told Mama to run.

She hadn’t.

The Empire had told her to stand down, to go quietly.

She hadn’t.

Jyn looked up, glaring at the rebels around her. Who were they to judge? They didn’t know the smell of rain on dirt mixed with blood and blaster fire. They couldn’t identify stormtrooper boots by sound alone.

They didn’t wake up with the nightmares of Jyn’s past, the choices that haunted her.

Had it been easy for them, black and white as a stormtrooper’s armor, when they chose to rebel against the Empire?

Mon Mothma and the others stated their case, giving the reason they wanted Jyn’s help. The ghosts of her past mocked her.

She could never escape her father’s long shadow.

She thought of Blue, of Hadder, of Saw, of her mother.

Of her father, walking away with the man in the long white cape.

They were asking her to find her father. To find him and uncover the weapon he had helped make. It was Saw’s old mission, fully realized.

Jyn could feel the kyber crystal necklace around her throat. She remembered the moment when her mother gave her that necklace, minutes before she was killed.

But she could remember further back, when her father had given her mother the crystal. They had been on Coruscant then. Her mother had been uneasy, unhappy, but her father had relished the funding from the Empire, the chance to follow his dreams deep into his research of the mysterious kyber crystals.

“This,” Papa had said, holding up a small kyber crystal after inspecting it in the crystalline spectrometer, “is so much more than a rock.”

“Really?” Her mother had laughed at him. “It looks like a rock to me.”

Papa shook his head. “That’s what makes kyber crystals so special,” he said. “They seem like innocent little stones. But they can harness so much more power than you would think. Their history is marred with legend, but the fact remains—they have the potential to change the whole galaxy.”

“One little rock,” Mom had said, wrapping her arms around him. “And there’s a crack in it.”

Papa quickly wrapped wire around the clear crystal, threaded it with a cord, and slipped the kyber over Mom’s head. He kissed her, a quick little peck, and said, “You never know. Something small and broken really can be powerful.”



The last thing Papa had said to Jyn was to trust him. The last thing Mama had said was to trust the Force.

She wasn’t sure she could do either of those things, but for the first time since she was eight years old, she was willing to try.

Jyn swallowed. She looked out at the faces of the people around her. Expectant. She recognized something in their expressions that she had never expected to see again.

Hope.

She had thought her hope had died on Wobani. Snuffed out like a flame deprived of oxygen. Before Zorahda had killed herself, Jyn had nothing to help her with, not even lies. But seeing these people, the way they still believed they had a chance—a chance hinged on her —rekindled that spark inside her heart that she had thought died long before.