Star Wars: Rebel Rising

by Revis, Beth

  “How much?” he asked.

  Jyn let her eyes linger on Mathey’s dirty hair, the oil staining one cheek, his disheveled clothes. “Probably more than you,” she said. She stood, gathering the ident pads, and added, “Where is my bunk?”

  Mathey grunted, hooking his thumb down the hall. Jyn left him grumbling at the table, and when she entered her room, the first thing she did was lock the door.

  Then she sat down and memorized the names at the top of each ident pad.

  A few hours later, the door rattled in its frame. “Eatin’ time,” Mathey growled.

  Jyn set the ident pads on her bed—a moldy pallet she had not yet decided whether or not she would actually sleep on—and stood up to join the rest of the crew for dinner.

  The others were longtime partners; Jyn was clearly the outsider. The two workers were older than Jyn had thought, in their midtwenties, and Mathey talked with pride of how many people they’d killed on the streets of Satotai before he picked them up. This seemed to be their chief selling point—that they had no compunction at all about pointing blasters at people and firing at will.

  The captain was known only as Captain, and his word was law.

  “How long have you been a slaver?” Jyn asked politely.

  Captain’s eyes widened. “Not a slaver,” he said. “Just transporting cargo.”

  “But the cargo is people,” Jyn said, keeping her voice cool and even. “Therefore, definitionally…”

  “Definitionally,” Mathey said, mocking Jyn’s polite tone. “Look, ain’t got to have all those fancy words. Ain’t got to be all high and mighty. You’re in the scum with us now.”

  Jyn looked down at her hands. “Indeed.”

  At the end of their meal—a sloppy sort of stew—Jyn offered to clear the plates away and wash them. The others laughed at her, saying it was high time they had a woman to take care of them, but Jyn was mostly concerned with ensuring that the next meal she ate would be on a clean plate.

  “And what about the slaves?” Jyn asked when she was done and the men were busy starting a game of sabacc.

  “Cargo,” Captain corrected. Jyn cocked her head but didn’t point out that changing what they were called did not actually make them less human.

  “What about ’em?” Mathey countered. He was like a rabid Gamorrean, always looking for a fight.

  “Have they been fed?” The pot of stew wasn’t good, but there was plenty of it. Jyn recited their names in her head. Greyjin, Kathlin, Dorset, Harvey.

  “They’re fine,” Captain said.

  “I don’t mind; I can take some food down.” Jyn started to pick up some bowls.

  “They’re. Fine.” Captain’s voice brooked no argument.

  Laurose, Owlen, Blane, Efford.

  “D’you not hear Captain?” Mathey shouted when Jyn didn’t move. “Leave ’em be! They got water. It’s only a week.”

  Jyn let the full impact of Mathey’s words slide into her soul.

  She left the pot on the stove, went to her room, and locked the door again.

  Several hours later, there was a soft knock on her door. Jyn stood to open it and was surprised to see Captain standing there. “May I come in?” he asked politely.

  Jyn stepped back.

  “Already working?” Captain nodded to the ident pads spread out on the bed.

  “It’s not an easy task,” Jyn said. “I’ll need almost the whole trip to finish.”

  “But you can do it?”

  Jyn nodded. She couldn’t tell if Captain was relieved or disappointed by that.

  “I wasn’t always a slaver,” he said finally, his eyes still on the ident pads. “Fact is, I used to be a slave myself.”

  Jyn didn’t speak. She had learned her lesson on Five Points well.

  “Allehander Pso was my last owner. Bought me from Kiretim, who bought me from my stepfather. Evil bastard, that man.”

  Jyn knew a thing or two about bastard fathers.

  “Being a slave…” Captain finally looked at Jyn. “It wears on you. I hated it. Kiretim made me wear a collar. It was a constant reminder that I was a thing. Not a person. Couldn’t do what I wanted. Couldn’t even dream, not with that thing strangling me.” He put his hand up to his bare neck. “Allehander took my collar off. He cares about what a person’s use is, not status. Saw I had a use.”

  “As a slaver,” Jyn couldn’t help saying.

  A shadow passed over Captain’s face. “As a pilot.”

  “And this…?” Jyn indicated the ship.

  “The cargo changes. It’s not all bad.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Is it worth it?” Jyn finally asked. “Is it worth helping other people be enslaved, just so you can have your freedom?” She sought his eyes, truly curious about his answer.

  “Yes,” he said emphatically. “Now I have to ask you something. You gonna be a problem? It’s okay to not like what you do, but you still have to do it.”

  “I was paid. That’s all I care about,” she lied.

  Captain nodded once, accepting her answer. “Don’t let the boys ride you,” he said. “They aren’t used to being reminded what they are. They give you trouble, let me know.”

  Jyn thanked him, but when he left, she locked her door again, making sure Captain heard the metallic click. Then she finally allowed herself to unpack. She spread out all her credits, the ones from Commander Solange and the ones from Allehander Pso, and she set them beside the twenty ident pads. She did not let herself think of the names written there again.

  She knew what she should do, and she knew what she had to do.

  Travel through the Five Points system was tedious, a series of short jumps as they zigzagged to avoid the space debris that littered the entire system. What should have been a quick journey was drawn out at an excruciatingly slow pace.

  It was three days before Mathey and the boys let her go into the cargo hold. The boys hung back near the stairs, watching, as Mathey led Jyn into the hold.

  There were seven cells, with two to three people in each one, despite the fact that the cells were about half the size of Jyn’s room. One bucket of water with a ladle hanging from the side stood near each door.

  Jyn covered her mouth.

  “Yeah, the smell’s the worst,” Mathey conceded. He had been warming to Jyn over the past few days. “We’re going to have to wash the floor with halliol acid to clear out the stink.”

  The slaves had been trying to keep their areas clean, but the only thing in each cell was the bucket, and they couldn’t defecate there. “Why not just let them go to the restroom?” Jyn asked.

  Mathey snorted. “Ain’t none of us have time to ‘escort’ ’em,” he sneered. “You volunteering?”

  Jyn’s eyes watered at the stench, but she shook her head. Don’t show emotion, she ordered herself.

  Jyn had read over all the ident pads, and she knew that most of the slaves were young, between the ages of seven and eleven. There was a difference, though, between reading names and numbers and seeing their faces.

  The five adult slaves were all women, and from the way they reached for the children through the bars, Jyn suspected that most of them were the children’s mothers. None of them had similar surnames, but names meant nothing. Jyn knew that.

  Mathey picked up a short stick that had been plugged into the wall. Jyn noticed that the nearby prisoners all scooted away as soon as he touched it, and she looked at it closer.

  “Stun prod,” he said, slapping it in his palm. “Don’t kill ’em, but gives ’em a buzz.” He drew the last word out, widening his eyes in a way that made him look mad. He lunged at one cell holding three children, and the little girl inside screamed and scrambled to the back wall, slipping on the filth covering the floor. He laughed; he had only meant to get a reaction out of her, and it had worked.

  “Leave her alone!” one of the women roared, straining to reach through the bars. “I’ll kill you!” she choked out, her face turning purple wit
h rage.

  Mathey turned, hate in his eyes, and Jyn stepped forward. She stood directly in front of the woman, but far enough away that her fingers couldn’t quite grasp Jyn.

  “I was raised by a man who taught me to fight,” Jyn said. “He was the strongest person I ever knew, and he’d never let anyone hurt me. You know what my most important lesson was?”

  The entire hold was silent, even the children.

  The woman shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

  “Don’t start a fight you can’t win.” Jyn turned on her heel and left the cargo hold. The boys howled at the woman, rattling the bars of her cage, laughing at her screams.

  That night, Jyn started cooking. “This slop is disgusting,” she said. “I don’t know much, but I can do better than this. For starters, let me introduce you to salt.”

  Captain laughed, pleased with the variety, and the boys in general eased up around Jyn.

  “You don’t seem like the kind to cook,” Captain said.

  Jyn stared down at the pot of boiling water. Her mother would have taught her to cook, but Jyn had been too young to retain any recipes. Saw hadn’t cared about food as anything more than a means of sustenance.

  Everything she knew about cooking, she knew from Hadder—from watching him toss spices into bubbling pans, her eyes glued to his quick hands as they chopped through glick before sending the white bits skidding through sizzling oil.

  “How much longer is this journey?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Eager to be off my ship?” Captain said.

  “Yes.” Jyn let the simplicity of her word show the honesty behind it.

  Captain pressed his lips together and nodded. “Three more days,” he said. “How’s the forgery going?”

  Jyn looked him right in the eyes. “Almost done,” she said.

  Two days later, and the boys were getting antsy. They kept going down to the cargo hold for entertainment, taunting the slaves by eating in front of them or jeering insults.

  Jyn prepared a feast for them all. “Our last full day together,” Jyn said. The ship was already in sight of Rumitaka; they’d dock by the next morning.

  “I’ve got a feeling that as soon as we land, you’re high-tailing outta here,” Captain said.

  “You’re not wrong,” Jyn said. She was eager to pretend this job had never happened. She put the food she’d made in the center of the table, and the boys started fighting over the bread.

  “What’s that?” Mathey asked as Jyn turned around.

  She held the stun prod, the one Captain had taken away from the cargo hold. “I’ve not seen one like this before,” she mused. Her thumb pressed the trigger, and electricity crackled at the end.

  Captain shrugged. “Mostly harmless,” he said

  “Mostly,” Jyn agreed, and she pressed the end of the stun prod to Captain’s skull. His eyes widened and his teeth chattered involuntarily, then he slumped to the table, knocked out cold.

  “Hey!” Mathey shouted, throwing his chair back and lunging for Jyn. She tossed the stun prod to her left hand, rammed it into Mathey’s stomach, and with her right hand withdrew the truncheon she’d secured to her back. As Mathey doubled over in pain, she walloped him in the back of his head with the truncheon, and he dropped like a stone.

  The boys were stupid. They could have run, but instead they tried to fight Jyn at the same time. It took her only minutes to knock them out.

  “Messy,” Jyn complained, dragging Captain up out of the bowl of gravy. She held both his arms and dragged him down the ship’s length. She opened the airlock chamber door and dumped his body on the floor, then went back for the others. As soon as all the men were inside the chamber, she locked the pressurized door, but she didn’t release the hatch. They would wake soon, but Jyn made sure the lock was sealed and they were trapped in the chamber.

  Jyn went straight to the cargo hold. The slaves inside were too weak to stand; they had lived on little more than water and the occasional ration cube for a week.

  Jyn sat down at the cage holding the mother she’d spoken to a few days before. “Why did you sell your children into slavery?” she asked.

  “I didn’t,” she said. She scowled at Jyn but was too tired to censor herself. “Laurose and Efford were born while I served Pso. Owlen became mine after his mother died.”

  “And you?” Jyn asked the other women. They all confirmed; their children were born into slavery. And they had all taken extended contracts with Allehander Pso in an effort to buy their own and their children’s freedom. Pso’s deal was to set them up on Rumitaka at the end of their service; instead, as soon as they’d boarded the Amarills -class freighter, Captain and Mathey had pushed them into cages, mocking them for their stupidity in trusting the gambling lord.

  Jyn stood after she finished speaking to the last woman. She moved to the end of the hall and set the all-release button. The cage doors opened simultaneously.

  “You’re…letting us go?” the mother who’d tried to fight Mathey asked.

  “Come with me,” Jyn said. To the other women, she added, “There’s food in the mess hall. Eat as much as you want.” They nodded and then led the children up the stairs.

  “I know you’re hungry,” she told the woman. “This won’t take long.”

  “As long as the children eat.”

  “What’s your name?” Jyn asked.

  “Annjin,” she said. Jyn recalled her ident pad; she’d known this woman had to be one of the five adult idents she had.

  “I was hired to alter your contracts,” Jyn said, leading Annjin to her room.

  “I know,” she growled. “That one man—he laughed about it. How dumb we were to fall for that plan. To trust a contract from Allehander Pso.”

  Jyn opened her door and Annjin followed her inside. All twenty of the ident pads were stacked neatly on the bed. Jyn picked them up and handed them to the woman. “I didn’t alter them,” she said. “The contracts are free and clear. Don’t lose these.”

  Before the woman could say anything, Jyn led her back down the hall. Behind them, they could hear the other women and children eating, their hunger all-consuming. Annjin looked as if she wanted to join them, but Jyn was almost done.

  “Where are you taking us?” Annjin asked, suspicion in her voice.

  “Nowhere. I’m leaving. I suggest you go elsewhere. The Empire’s waiting for you on Rumitaka.” Annjin looked confused, so Jyn added, “There’s a shuttle. I’m taking it. You can have the ship.”

  “What about—” Annjin started, but Jyn stopped in front of the airlock. Annjin stared through the porthole window, her eyes widening.

  Captain and Mathey were almost lucid now; the boys at least were awake. “Let us out!” Mathey shouted.

  “If we land on Rumitaka with these men as prisoners, they’ll blame us,” Annjin said. “Our contracts don’t run out until tomorrow; we’re technically still slaves until then. We’ll be put on trial for revolting against our masters.”

  Jyn put her hand next to the release switch. Annjin’s eyes fell to the large red handle. Jyn had already set up the airlock; all the safety measures were overridden. All it would take was for the handle to be pulled down, and the four men who had locked up Annjin and her family on the slave ship for a solid week to rot in their own filth with less food than they could live on would be shot into the blackness of space.

  “So,” Jyn said, once she was sure Annjin had seen the release handle, “I’m taking the shuttle. I’m also taking the credits I was paid. You may want to check Captain’s quarters. There may be more for you. Or you could sell the ship. I don’t care. But I’m leaving.”

  Annjin stared at the porthole. The men had realized what the women were looking at; they were all too aware of the big red handle.

  “Please don’t go,” Annjin said softly. “I’ve been a slave since I was a teenager. I don’t know what to do. We could…we could be your crew. We could take the ship and go anywhere.”

  “No,” Jyn
said simply.

  She turned around and headed toward the shuttle. It wasn’t much, about the same size as the planet hopper, and fortunately it had similar controls. Jyn was no pilot—she couldn’t have stolen the freighter if she’d wanted to—but she knew she could at least land the shuttle on Rumitaka. It was a straight shot with autopilot engaged.

  Jyn had disconnected from the freighter in a matter of minutes, pulling away from the larger ship. She watched as it soared toward Rumitaka, the planet barely in view. And she watched as the airlock opened and four men drifted out into space.

  Rumitaka was a dusty planet that had very little going for it. There was a small mining operation to the south, a refinery on-site, and irrigation farms to the north. The spaceport was located near a small town. When Jyn landed, she inquired about any nearby junkers.

  “Looks like a good little shuttle,” the junker, a male Labbo, said, eyeing it. “What’s wrong with it?” His long ears twitched, the flaps brushing his shoulders.

  “It’d be better off as parts,” Jyn said. “And the ident code isn’t original.”

  The junker eyed Jyn, then scanned the ship’s codes. Jyn’s work was good, and in general, the ship would pass any clearance, but there was already an alert out for it. “Reckon I could keep this in storage for a bit,” the junker said. “Until things are a little calmed down.”

  “Good plan,” Jyn replied. They settled on a price, and Jyn cashed out. She could have earned more, but it was evident that she had to sell fast.

  She went right back to the spaceport. She bought passage on an interplanetary transport unit and disembarked on Uchinao a few weeks later. From there, she picked up odd jobs, moving between the planets in the system whenever she got antsy.

  As soon as possible, Jyn took a job on a freighter leaving the Five Points system. Between Commander Solange and Allehander Pso, she had no reason to stay and every reason to leave.

  Time and distance blended together as Jyn criss-crossed the galaxy. Sometimes she thought about how much Hadder would have liked this life, seeing new planets from the viewports of different ships, but usually she tried not to think about him at all. Instead, she pretended to be the starbird she had heard about on Inusagi, the one that turned to stardust and spread across the galaxy.