by Revis, Beth
Jyn allowed herself one look down. Akshaya’s little house was on fire.
But they made it out, she told herself. They did.
The walker lurched to life.
Jyn cursed under her breath as the walker’s main cannons swiveled around, aiming straight for her. She spun the little shuttle in a loop, swerving out of range of the blast but almost losing control of the ship in the process. Hadder’s quick flight lessons hadn’t prepared her for a true space chase.
“That was close,” she muttered under her breath.
Jyn looped back around, desperately scanning the ground for signs of Akshaya and Hadder. There. There. They were surrounded by stormtroopers, the cluster of their armor shining like a bright white patch amid the tall grass. Jyn swooped the planet hopper down, aiming straight for the ground. The stormtroopers tried to fire their blasters at the ship, but when Jyn didn’t slow, they scattered like leaves on the wind. Akshaya and Hadder stood their ground, confident that Jyn wouldn’t hit them. Jyn pulled the ship up moments later, and she grinned as she saw Hadder and Akshaya run straight for the hangar and the freighter.
The walker stomped through the grass toward Jyn. Aerial reinforcements would be there in moments, she knew. She could only try to draw away their fire.
She swerved down, moving in zigzags across the sky, maneuvering so it was hard for the slow cannons of the walker to follow. The scanner on the console started beeping, alerting her of more ships approaching. Jyn cursed again, loudly, her heart thudding in her chest, but a small part of her relished this, the chase, the danger. The fear made her feel alive.
An explosion on the ground filled the cockpit window with light. Through the smoke and flames of the overturned walker, Akshaya’s freighter soared into the sky. The freighter had no cannons or guns, so Akshaya had simply rammed the Imperial machine.
“Hopper to freighter, hopper to freighter,” Jyn said, flicking on the comm switch.
“The ship has a name .” Hadder’s voice came over the intercom, as casual and carefree as always. “Ponta One here.”
Jyn whooped at the sound of his voice. “Let’s get out of here, Ponta One ,” she said.
“Copy that, love,” Hadder responded. She could hear the excitement in his voice, the thrill.
And then the TIEs arrived. Five of them, black against the night sky. The scanner came alive, sounding warnings.
“Straight to the port chip’s location,” Jyn shouted into the comlink. “Break atmosphere, jump to lightspeed as soon as you can. Copy?”
“Copy.” Akshaya’s voice was strained, distracted. Jyn’s planet hopper had less power than the freighter, but the freighter hadn’t had a chance to get up to full speed, and it wasn’t as nimble or easy to turn. Jyn swooped in, drawing fire from the TIEs, leading all the ships higher and higher.
Something silver and yellow flashed through the sky, zipping faster than the planet hopper could ever hope to go. Jyn grinned. She recognized the Y-wings from holos Idryssa had shown her. Xosad may have been in one of those ships, his so-called rebels in the others. At least five, drawing fire away from the civilian ships and Skuhl. A dogfight broke out, distracting the TIEs.
The Empire tried to hail both the planet hopper and the freighter, but Jyn didn’t reply and the open comlink told her Akshaya didn’t, either.
Laser fire streaked past Jyn’s cockpit, a bright light against the blackness of space as she burst out of Skuhl’s atmosphere. Beeping rang through the open comlink. Moments later, the TIEs and Y-wings streaked up and out, swarming like wasps, a blur of light and metal, yellow and black.
“Ponta One , you okay?” Jyn screamed into the mic.
“Go, go, go!” Hadder’s voice urged her forward.
“It’s getting hot out here,” Akshaya said. A plasma blast fired close to Jyn, too close for comfort. She couldn’t tell if it had been a stray shot from one of the Y-wings or a failed shot from a TIE, and she didn’t want to stick around to find out.
Behind her, something exploded. The force of it pushed her little shuttle faster, but she was already slipping into hyperspace, the blue-gray light filling the cockpit window.
She had escaped.
IMPERIAL DETENTION CENTER & LABOR CAMP LEG-817
LOCATION: Wobani
PRISONER: Liana Hallik, #6295A
CRIMES: Forgery of Imperial Documents, Resisting Arrest, Posession of an Unsanctioned Weapon, Aggravated Assault
Jyn’s cellmate, Zorahda, curled up in the tightest ball she could manage. Her soft white hair was matted and dirty, and her big yellow eyes were on Jyn.
Jyn rolled over, but she could still feel Zorahda’s gaze.
“What?” Jyn hissed at her cellmate.
Zorahda blinked. “How do you know?” she asked.
“Know what?” Jyn said in a low voice.
They waited while a stormtrooper patrolled the hall, his boots thudding on the metal floor. Jyn counted his steps until she couldn’t hear them anymore.
“Know what?” she repeated.
Zorahda’s look was sorrowful. “When to give up.” Her voice pitched a notch higher as she looked down at her own body, her knees pushed against the top of the cubby, her legs bent stiffly, her back curling just to fit her massive frame into the cramped space. “I’m old ,” she said. A sob choked her voice. “And my sentence is long.”
Jyn knew she should say something. Words flooded her mind—words of her mother, talking about the Force; of her father, saying all he did was for her; of Saw and his impossible battles; of Akshaya and her impossible hope.
But all those words belonged to other people.
And now, in the dark, as she watched the hope die in her cellmate’s eyes, Jyn found she had no words of her own to give.
The next evening, Zorahda and Jyn were assigned to the same work detail, inserting stabilizers in the craggy canyons west of the prison. The Empire was going to build another factory, but the planet had been experiencing minor groundquakes. Jyn didn’t like the job, but she did enjoy being outside.
Their transport took them twenty klicks south of the main prison compound, to a series of canyons that looked like the cracks in the crusts of bread Jyn’s mother used to bake. The stabilizer units had to be inserted into the rock face at a horizontal angle, as deep as Jyn and her fellow prisoners could get them.
The stormtroopers stood watch as she and her fellow prisoners lowered themselves into narrow canyons, the crevices in the rock rough and jagged. They were never allowed any type of safety rigging. But Jyn was glad for Zorahda. Lunnixes were meant to be outside; being cramped in their tiny prison cell or behind factory walls surely didn’t help her cellmate’s depression. Not that there was much light from the sun; Wobani was covered in a thick cloud of space dust that rarely provided a glimpse through the atmosphere.
Jyn was grateful for Saw’s training as she lowered herself, her tools strapped to her back, into the crevice. She kept her back against one wall and her feet in front of her, slowly inching down as far as she could, about twenty meters. The climb up would be worse; she knew from experience that her legs would cramp and her back would twist as she applied force to her tools against the hard rock wall.
She heard grunting nearby and saw Zorahda just a few meters from her, climbing down the canyon wall. She nodded to her cellmate; it was rare they were positioned so closely together.
Zorahda didn’t nod back. She leaned as far against the wall as she could, staring up and up into the sky.
“You, there! Lunnix! Get to work!” a stormtrooper shouted from the top of the canyon, pointing his blaster into the crevice.
“It never ends, Jyn,” Zorahda said without turning to her.
Jyn could not deny the truth.
“You too! Work!” The stormtrooper swept his blaster toward Jyn, then back to Zorahda. “No talking!”
Jyn took out her laser pick and started scanning the rock face. The laser cut deep into the surface of the stone, then beeped in Jyn’s hand, and she
read the information. Jyn set up the impact hammer drill to start digging into the hard rock. The tool vibrated her very bones, and bits of rock flew back, cutting into her exposed skin. As soon as the hole was big enough, Jyn slid the stabilizer unit into the rock.
She started the tedious work of climbing back up the canyon. Jyn had to concentrate on her footing, and her back was slick with sweat. Dust caked her skin, streaking and then drying in the cooling air. By the time she reached the top, lugging the impact hammer drill behind her, she was bone weary. The light was fading, casting long shadows over the broken surface of the planet. Terms like day and night didn’t really matter on Wobani; the prisoners worked fifteen straight hours and then ate and slept for eight more. Usually their shifts coincided with the sun, but sometimes they worked alongside droids at night.
“Hurry up, down there!” a stormtrooper called, leaning over the side of the canyon, where Zorahda was. Jyn moved closer.
Zorahda was still in the crevice, her laser pick loose in her hand. She hadn’t even taken out her impact hammer drill. If she didn’t hurry with her work, she’d receive a mark for top level.
Zorahda’s yellow eyes looked up. Jyn thought maybe she was glaring at the stormtrooper and then maybe that Zorahda was looking at her, but she realized that the Lunnix was really just looking at the thick clouds in the sky, as if they had entranced her.
“Prisoner! To work! Now! ” the stormtrooper shouted. Another stormtrooper moved forward, his blaster raised, his head cocked as he listened to orders from the warden.
“Zorahda!” Jyn yelled.
“What’s the point?” Zorahda asked, looking back down at the rock in front of her.
“There is no point,” Jyn whispered. The answer came to her immediately, slipping from her mouth before she could bite back the words, but it was true, perhaps the truest thing she’d ever spoken. There was no point. Not to the Empire that was mercilessly cruel for no reason. Not to the people who stood against the Empire, causing just as much destruction and death as the government they opposed. There was no point to loving family who left or men who died.
Lie, a voice whispered in Jyn’s head, the word niggling through her brain. Lie to her.
Zorahda looked up, and Jyn could see in her cellmate’s yellow eyes something that she hadn’t seen there before. Determination. And with horror, Jyn realized just what Zorahda was determined to do.
Tell her there is still hope, the voice in Jyn’s mind whispered. Lie.
Jyn opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Instead, the stormtrooper closest to her yelled into the canyon, “Get to work!”
There was a little sad smile on Zorahda’s face. “No,” she said simply, and she raised the laser pick to her own eye and depressed the trigger. For one brief moment, red light filled the Lunnix’s skull, turning her other yellow eye orange.
Then there was no more light, but there was much more red.
Zorahda’s blood splattered across the canyon wall behind her, smearing in her white fur as she slumped deeper into the canyon, her lifeless body wedging between the narrow stones.
“Right,” the stormtrooper said flatly. “You, there, go down and get her gear.” He pointed to Jyn.
Jyn’s eyes blurred. It was this—this lack of humanity, lack of respect for life itself—this was what had killed Zorahda.
“I said go.” The stormtrooper pointed into the canyon, at the red-smeared rock face.
Jyn’s hands curled into fists.
But then her fingers grew slack.
She hadn’t even been able to lie to Zorahda when she knew it may have saved her life. She couldn’t lie to herself.
There was no point.
No hope.
Nothing at all but this: orders, and following them.
Jyn dropped her own tools and lowered herself into the canyon. As the other prisoners ate their allotted ration cubes and drank from the filtration canteens, Jyn sweated and grunted and worked her way down the wall. She tried to avoid the blood. When she reached Zorahda, her hands shook from exhaustion and emotion as she pulled the impact hammer drill from the Lunnix’s shoulders and then reached for the laser pick still wrapped in her hand. Jyn blew out a shaky breath, unable to see properly through her tears.
She looked up.
And—for the first time since she had landed on Wobani—the thick clouds of space dust parted. For just a moment, she could see past the planet’s atmosphere, into the night sky sprinkled with stars. They looked deceptively close.
But she knew it was simply a trick of the eyes. The stars weren’t close together. Hyperspace made the distance seem negligible, but the truth? The truth was that the stars were separated by light-years. Each star was its own system, each planet its own world, each person in their own individual prison.
There was nothing connecting anyone.
Jyn’s necklace pressed against her collarbone, reminding her of her mother. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment to remember Lyra Erso. The strong set of her jaw, her flashing eyes. She had promised Jyn that there was meaning to this life.
The Force, she had said, connects us all. All living things. We don’t always feel it, but we’re connected.
Jyn knew that her mother had meant for those words to give her comfort.
Hope.
But they were hollow, as dead as Zorahda. Jyn shook her head and got back to work, climbing up the canyon wall and leaving behind her cellmate.
There was nothing connecting anyone. The distance between stars was filled only with silence.
Jyn’s planet hopper emerged from hyperspace with a stomach-dropping lurch. She didn’t need the alarms blaring throughout the ship to know that something was wrong. She silenced them and flipped on the comlink for Akshaya’s freighter.
Static.
They may have been delayed jumping to lightspeed, or the explosion that pushed Jyn’s shuttle as she entered hyperspace may have set them off course. But Hadder and Akshaya had the port chip; they knew where to meet up. Meanwhile, Jyn had to dock as soon as possible, preferably before whatever had damaged her shuttle could leave her stranded.
Jyn checked out the ship’s analytics; she was definitely leaking fuel. Not a good situation.
The Five Points system was a group of five small planets, closer together than normal. In the center was a space station, one that could not be reached by a direct hyperspace route, as the gravitational force of the star system constantly altered its location just enough to make it dangerous to approach too quickly, without the ability to alter course. Jyn set her course for the station. All the planets in the Five Points system were inhabited, but Jyn knew she’d find help more easily in the central station.
The space between the stars felt infinite. Limping to the station with no comms from Hadder and the warning lights blaring on the shuttle made Jyn paranoid. She paced the small planet hopper, praying that it held together at the seams long enough to deposit her somewhere safe. The Five Points system was far enough into the Outer Rim that the Empire hadn’t quite reached there yet, but Jyn knew it was only a matter of time. The Empire spread and spread, like a Dothnian slime, creeping over every star system, infecting every planet.
If Skuhl hadn’t been safe, nowhere would ever be safe.
The console in the planet hopper’s cockpit was nothing but flashing lights and warnings by the time Jyn hailed the station.
“Ponta Two to Five Points station,” Jyn said into the comm unit, hoping that at least worked.
“Five Points copy, Ponta Two . Our scans show ship damage.” The voice sounded tinny, almost bored.
“Yeah, a little,” Jyn said as another warning flashed across the main screen. “Permission to dock?”
“Granted.”
Before the comlink severed, Jyn said, “Has an SC3000 freighter docked already? Its call sign is Ponta One . I was separated from my”—she paused—“family.”
She waited on the edge of her seat. After a moment, the voice cracked over th
e intercom, “No record of SC3000 freighter on file, and I’ve certainly not seen one of those ancient rigs in a long time.”
The station sent Jyn a landing code, and Jyn pointed the planet hopper to the waiting port.
“They’re fine,” she told herself.
There was an odd hissing, crunching sound as Jyn docked. A few port workers rushed forward, one with a fire extinguisher hose already foaming and pointing at the ship’s hull. Jyn grabbed her few belongings and headed off the ship.
“Looks like you flew through hell,” a port worker said as a droid linked into the ship’s mainframe.
“Something like that,” Jyn said. She stared at the planet hopper glumly. She’d hoped that when she, Akshaya, and Hadder remade their lives off of Skuhl, they’d be able to use the planet hopper to do smaller runs, diversify their income, or even sell it. It was worth nothing but scrap now.
“Docking fees are—” the port worker started.
“Take the ship.” Jyn hated to say it, but whatever the fees were, she knew she couldn’t pay them, and the ship wasn’t worth it. She’d long before given Akshaya the credits she’d earned from selling the ship she’d taken from Tamsye Prime. Stupid. She should have asked for some back before they’d escaped, but it hadn’t occured to her that they’d be separated.
The port worker marked something on his file. “Your comm indicated another ship was coming?”
“Yeah.” Jyn squinted at the hull of the planet hopper.
“Will that ship be scrap as well?”
She shook her head. “There was an explosion as we entered hyperspace, and we were separated, but I’m sure everything’s fine,” she said slowly. She crept closer. The extinguisher foam was dissipating, exposing a chunk of metal that had ripped into the side of her shuttle.
“Names?” the port worker asked.
“SC3000, carrying Akshaya and Hadder Ponta,” Jyn said. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears.
