by Revis, Beth
The woman leaned back, pressing a hand into her lumbar. She looked Jyn up and down, but she kept her face impassive. She was human, with dark brown skin and black hair and eyes that Jyn hoped were kind.
“You looking for a job?” the woman called back.
The Lannik spit his disgust at Jyn and walked away, mumbling about vagabonds and thieves.
“Yeah,” Jyn said, jogging up to the woman. “Got a job for me?”
“I’m not sticking around,” she said.
“Suits me.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be flying?” she said, frowning.
“Old enough,” Jyn shot back.
“You don’t mind leaving the planet?”
Jyn laughed mirthlessly. “Why would I stay?”
“You don’t even care where you’re going?”
“Nope.” Jyn stuck her hands in her pockets.
The woman leaned back on her heels. “Can you fix a broken droid?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Jyn lied.
The woman stuck her hand out. “Name’s Akshaya Ponta,” she said.
“Jyn.” Jyn said immediately. She was tired; she knew better than to give her real name. “Jyn Dawn.”
Akshaya gestured to the SC3000 freighter behind her. Someone had handpainted the ship’s call sign on the hull: Ponta One . “Welcome aboard,” she said.
Jyn helped Akshaya finish loading up the ship. She was surprised to see that the crates were filled with ore; this hadn’t looked like a mining planet.
“I ship for the little guys,” Akshaya said. “Small operations, usually family-owned, not the corporate or government stuff.”
Akshaya took Jyn to a common area in the heart of the freighter. A small table was bolted to the floor, and there was a bowl of meiloorun fruit in the center. Jyn stared at it, hunger and exhaustion sweeping over her. She let her pack drop to the floor.
“What’s that?” Akshaya asked.
Jyn looked down to where she was pointing. Her pack had opened slightly, and the blaster Saw had given her on Tamsye Prime peeked through the top of the bag.
“That can’t be on this ship,” Akshaya said firmly.
“You won’t see it again,” Jyn promised, picking the pack back up and closing the top.
Akshaya shook her head. “No, give it to me. I’ll get rid of it.”
Jyn stared at her with wide eyes. “Look, I appreciate the ride off this rock,” she said. “But a blaster is a tool, and I intend to use it in the future. You can’t just get rid of it.”
Anger flashed in Akshaya’s eyes, but it melted away quickly. “I don’t really know who you are or where you’ve come from,” she said in a gentle voice. “But I don’t live like that, with the need to be armed just to feel safe.”
“It’s not—” Jyn started.
Akshaya was already shaking her head. “No weapons,” she said again. “I’m a peaceful operation. I don’t get involved with violence. Skuhl—the planet where I’m based—is neutral. You want to join my operation, you follow my rules.”
She crossed her arms and waited for Jyn’s reply.
“You need to make a choice,” Akshaya said, her tone growing louder. “Choose a peaceful life with my unit, or go back to a life where you need a blaster.”
Jyn weighed her options quickly. Finally, with a sigh, she handed over the blaster. She had enough credits, she knew, to purchase another one. A better one. It was more important that she get off-world than that she keep her blaster.
“Thank you,” Akshaya said, taking it. “There’s a spare bunk down there,” she added, pointing. “Help yourself to some grub and rest up. The droid can wait. When you’re ready, the pieces are there.” She pointed to a small door off the hallway. “I’m going to take care of this,” she said, hefting the blaster in her hand and walking off the ship.
Jyn gratefully sank into a seat by the table as Akshaya left. No need to tell her about the knife in my boot, she thought as she sucked the pulp from the skins of the fruit. She’d eaten three before Akshaya came back.
After the jump to hyperspace, Jyn made her way to the bunk Akshaya had offered and sank onto the bare mattress with such bone-weary relief that she fell asleep immediately.
Bang! Jyn startled awake, scrambling up. Her stomach churned with fear and disorientation before she was able to remind herself where she was and how she’d gotten there.
Saw had left her.
The planet had burned.
She was on a ship.
Another bang rattled through the metal of the SC3000, and Jyn forced her aching body up. She stumbled blearily through the hall and saw Akshaya signing off on a second load of cargo. Jyn had slept the entire time they were in hyperspace, through the landing, and even through the new cargo being loaded into the main bay.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
“Don’t apologize,” Akshaya said with a friendly smile. “You clearly needed a rest. That it?” she asked the droid with the cargo. It beeped its assent and left the ship.
“I mostly do little hops from system to system,” Akshaya said, heading back to the cockpit. Jyn followed her. “I like it, getting to see the different worlds, meeting the people. Always a friend on each world.”
“Sounds nice,” Jyn said absently.
“Keeps me up to date with the news, too,” Akshaya said. She settled into the pilot’s seat and waited for Jyn to strap into the copilot chair. She launched the ship, and Jyn got a glimpse of the planet—green and lush, with an exposed quarry off to the side—before they broke atmosphere. “For example,” Akshaya continued, “today I dropped in the diner before picking up my cargo, and I heard about a planet that had experienced some trouble.”
Ice water washed down Jyn’s spine. She didn’t say anything.
“Little rock of a world, mostly used for factories. Named Tamsye Prime. Looks like some sort of tragedy happened. Factories are all gone. Not much left there at all,” Akshaya said, keeping her eyes straight ahead.
She glanced at Jyn, worry evident on her face. Jyn had been right about Akshaya’s kind eyes.
“Seems to me,” Akshaya said, “someone from a planet like that may not know where to go or what to do.”
Akshaya punched in the next coordinates, and the ship jumped to lightspeed.
Jyn released the safety harness of her chair and stood. “I guess I should get to work on that broken droid,” she said, avoiding Akshaya’s eyes. She didn’t know what to do with her pity or concern. Akshaya didn’t follow her as she went back down the hall.
Jyn opened the door to the little closet where Akshaya had said the droid was. It was a small astromech unit, an older class, more outdated than some of the junk Jyn used to spar with on Saw’s outpost. She pulled the motivator out, then found a bag of bits and pieces that had broken off it and spread them out on the table.
I have no idea what I’m doing, she thought, staring down at the parts. She could tinker with her code replicator all day, finding the patterns and pulling at the algorithms, but with something mechanical like this…she was utterly lost.
Still, she gave it a go. She knew enough about how to destroy a droid to guess at how one should look when it wasn’t broken, but the internal mechanisms were far more complicated than she’d thought.
She’d been working for about an hour when they emerged from hyperspace. Jyn made her way back up front to the cockpit.
“An Imperial checkpoint,” Akshaya said, sighing heavily. “More and more of them these days.”
“Are your docs in order?” Jyn asked urgently.
Akshaya hesitated. “I may be behind on my cargo license,” she said. “Which means an inspection and a fine.” She sounded defeated.
Jyn ran back to her bunk, grabbed the code replicator out of her bag, and ran back to the ship’s main console. She plopped on the floor, quickly working as an alarm started ringing throughout the ship. A warning blared over the main screen.
IMPERIAL TRANSPORT CODE: VIOLATION
>
Jyn had done this sort of thing for Saw enough to know she had only moments to spare. The Empire would run an initial scan at a checkpoint, and those usually triggered alarms. They’d run a deeper scan in a few minutes. If Jyn could forge proper codes between then and now, the Imperial officers would likely not bother to physically check the ship.
She tapped on the datapad hooked into the ship’s core as quickly as possible, uploading the authenticator code generator into the processor. She marked the permissions for the cargo as home crafts. There was a market in the Core worlds for “genuine” crafts from smaller, Outer Rim planets, and that would both explain the ship’s log visiting a half dozen different planets and make the cargo completely uninteresting to any Imperial inspectors.
The alarm cut off abruptly, and a new code flashed through the ship’s receptors.
IMPERIAL TRANSPORT CODE: APPROVED
Akshaya, startled, quickly resumed her seat in the pilot’s chair and set the ship on course toward the planet. She kept shooting Jyn curious looks. When they landed, rather than get to work, Akshaya put her hand over Jyn’s, keeping her in the chair.
“How did you learn to do that?” she asked.
Jyn shrugged.
“No,” Akshaya said, her voice firm. “You’re on my ship, I expect honesty. Did you come from Tamsye Prime?”
Jyn swallowed. “Yes,” she said.
“Were you born there?”
“No,” Jyn said. “I…I was raised on another planet.”
“By your parents?”
“No,” Jyn said in a soft voice.
“You’re a bit of a wanderer, aren’t you?” Akshaya said. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, and she reached over to smooth down Jyn’s hair. It was such a motherly action that Jyn couldn’t help leaning into the touch.
“It’s not safe for you,” Akshaya chided. “Just bouncing around from planet to planet. When we get back to Skuhl, you can stay with me for a bit, okay? Get back on your feet properly.”
Akshaya stood, clapping her hands, ready to get back to work.
“Um,” Jyn said.
“Yes?”
“If we’re being honest, then I’d better add that I have no idea how to fix your droid.”
Akshaya laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. “With that little trick, you’ve already paid for your passage.”
Jyn allowed herself a tiny smile of relief, then followed Akshaya off the ship.
Skuhl was not what Jyn had expected. Akshaya docked her ship in a private hangar outside of town, and Jyn grabbed her lone bag. She hated not knowing what to expect next. When she stepped outside, Jyn was blasted with cool air, so refreshing that she just stood there, sucking it in the same way she’d gulped down the meiloorun fruit. The planet was gorgeously serene. Flat in every direction, with fields of blue-green grass that moved like ocean waves in the breeze. The sky was a rich blue, and a single sun peeked through fluffy white clouds.
It reminded her of Lah’mu but flatter and grassier and bluer.
Behind the hangar was something of a town—a warehouse where Akshaya’s cargo was being sent, some sort of factory, a few shops, a diner, and a cluster of homes. The main street cutting through the town was decorated with baskets of flowers hanging from poles lined with bells that tinkled in a beautiful melody. The people walking down the street greeted each other in a friendly way, as if they all knew each other. Even from there, Jyn could hear cheerful music and smell the roasting meat from the inviting diner. At the opposite end of the town, Jyn could just make out a small spaceport, not good for much beyond shuttles and planet hoppers.
Akshaya’s house stood just a little downhill from the hangar. It was a small clapboard building, painted bright blue, a color that blended in perfectly with the clear sky and the blue-green grasslands that stretched into the distance. The door was red, and yellow designs had been painted around each window. It was the strangest house Jyn had ever seen, but it seemed to fit well there.
When Akshaya pushed open the front door, someone called out.
“Mum?”
“Hadder,” Akshaya said, “come and greet our guest.”
A boy about Jyn’s age peered around the corner. He had the same dark brown skin with red undertones that Akshaya had, and the same black hair, though his was cropped to chin length. His eyes widened when he saw Jyn standing behind his mother.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hello.” Jyn stuck out her hand.
“Where’d Mum find you?” His tone was friendly but curious.
“Near old Hamma’s place,” Akshaya said, shoving her son goodnaturedly into the room and leading Jyn inside before closing the door.
“My name is Jyn,” Jyn said.
“Where is she staying?” Hadder asked his mother.
Jyn had been staring at the beautiful mandalas painted on every possible surface in the room—walls, floors, ceiling. But the question made her focus on Akshaya.
“Where do you want to stay, Jyn?” Akshaya asked politely.
Jyn shrugged with one shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I could…stay on the ship?”
Hadder started to speak, but his mother cut him off. “You could. Do you want to? You could stay here if you like.”
Jyn’s eyes darted around the warm house. “Here?”
Akshaya seemed to be asking her son a question with her eyes. “You know I don’t care,” Hadder said. Akshaya nodded as if she’d made a decision.
“You can have Tanith’s room,” she said.
Akshaya’s house was small, and the bedroom Akshaya showed Jyn was a lot like a ship’s bunk. She suspected that the room was originally part of a larger one and that the whitewashed wall had been added more recently. The small bedroom had just enough space for a pallet on the floor, a small shelf that contained a wooden box, a vase with dried flowers, and little else. It seemed stark and empty compared with the beautiful bright mandalas and designs decorating the rest of the house.
“You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like,” Akshaya said graciously.
Jyn nodded, although she wasn’t sure how much of that she believed. But she didn’t want to go back to hiding and being alone.
“I’m just on the other side,” Hadder added, pointing to the whitewashed wall.
Jyn dropped her bag on the floor.
“That’s settled then,” Akshaya said. She turned to her son. “Is dinner ready? I’m starving.”
“I mean, I made bunn,” Hadder said, although Jyn wasn’t sure what bunn was, “but we have a new housemate! We should celebrate!”
Hadder hustled Akshaya and Jyn back to the door. Akshaya laughed. “Any excuse to eat out, huh?” she said.
Jyn glanced behind her as they headed into town, noting that Akshaya hadn’t locked the door to the house. Come to think of it, she hadn’t locked up her ship, either. Even when they were the only ones on Wrea, she and Saw had kept everything secure.
As dusk dipped into night, fewer people were on the main street, but it was still well lit. Those who lived directly in town lingered on their stoops, chatting with neighbors. A few waved in greeting to Akshaya or Hadder, making the trip down the road take twice as long as they stopped to give updates. Most looked at Jyn curiously, but Akshaya ignored the pointed looks and discreet questions.
“You’re the most interesting thing to happen here in ages,” Hadder said in an undertone as he pushed open the door to the diner.
Jyn was a little surprised at how big the diner actually was, and how crowded.
“There’s a refinery on the other end,” Akshaya supplied, guessing what Jyn’s expression meant.
Jyn recalled the building that had looked like a factory. It made sense. Akshaya carted ore from small mining facilities to the refinery and then took the refined stock to manufacturing planets to sell it. This section of the Outer Rim was rather close to some rising Mid Rim worlds, and trade was growing.
“I’m surprised there are so many different kinds of
people here,” Jyn commented as she sat down with Hadder at a table near the bar.
Jyn looked around. A Drabatan was laughing loudly with a Cyran. Over in the corner sat a group of Winrocs, talking darkly among themselves. The owner of the diner was a Chagrian, his mottled blue skin the same color as the sky outside. He caught Jyn staring at his lethorns and flicked a forked black tongue at her, winking when she smiled at him.
Akshaya ordered plates of food, which were served family style for their table. A steamed, sticky grain made up the base of all their choices, but there were hot dumplings in pale brown broth and thick gummy noodles that had been sautéed in oil with long strips of green vegetables. Jyn slurped noisily, and Hadder copied her, laughing.
It was such a warm, comforting experience that Jyn allowed herself to believe the moment would last.
Over the bar, an old-fashioned viewscreen showed the news. Jyn was fake-fighting with Hadder over who got the fourth and last sugared dumpling when someone across the room shouted, “Hey, everyone, look!”
Nearly everyone turned to the news, and the owner adjusted the volume.
“We turn now to our ongoing coverage of the disaster on an Outer Rim world, Tamsye Prime, a small manufacturing planet.” The reporter was a female human, and she spoke with sincerity that sounded real.
Jyn felt Akshaya stiffen beside her. Hadder’s eyes darted from his mother to Jyn, then back to the screen.
“For the first time since the attack, Lieutenant Colonel Senjax is with us today,” the reporter continued. The camera droids shifted, showing the Imperial officer.
Jyn sucked in a breath. If Lieutenant Colonel Senjax had been the Empire’s pretty boy before the attack, now he was the dignified hero with battle scars to prove it. He’d lost an eye, and it had been replaced with an artful mechanical optic implant that glittered with decorative sweeps of gold. A scar had been etched down the left side of his face, disappearing under his crisp uniform. His hair was shorter now, giving him the appearance of having aged significantly in just a few days.
“Thank you,” Lieutenant Colonel Senjax told the reporter. His voice held none of the lighthearted, easygoing joy that it had when Jyn had met him. “The terrorists who attacked Tamsye Prime had a single goal,” he continued, looking straight out. It felt as if he was staring directly at Jyn. “The factories on that planet were key in manufacturing items the Empire uses for the defense of its citizens. This was a focused, pointed attack, and the anarchists who implemented it did not care that they destroyed not just the plant, which can be replaced, but also the lives of more than a thousand beloved citizens.”
