Star Wars: Rebel Rising

by Revis, Beth

  It didn’t matter who she was as long as she wasn’t Jyn Erso. She picked up a code name, Liana Hallik, and created scandocs for the new ident that were so good they passed more than one Imperial inspection. She just hoped they were good enough to get her through the Five Points system unnoticed, when she returned there several years later.

  Jyn docked at Rumitaka with the intention of reaching out to a splicer she’d met before leaving the system. She needed credits after a run of bad luck. But instead of her contact, she ran into the old junker.

  “Hey!” he called, crossing the small spaceport to where she stood. “It’s been a while.”

  Jyn frowned, trying to add up the time. She was in her early twenties now, she supposed. She was surprised the Labbo remembered her.

  “Sold that ship of yours,” the junker continued, pulling up a chair. “Made a good price. Might have some work for you, if you’re interested.”

  She shrugged. She’d learned that lesson from her travels; never appear eager. The Labbo offered to discuss the finer points in the small cantina down the road, and Jyn allowed him to buy her a drink.

  When they were seated, the junker said, “Got some interest in the kind of codes you make.”

  Jyn closed her eyes and allowed herself one wistful moment of recalling who she had been before she went to seedy cantinas to haggle with dishonest skills. She could still remember when her life had been normal and good. No, she thought viciously, excising the memories. That’s not what I get. I don’t get normal. I don’t deserve good.

  Everything good dies.

  All she needed now was credits.

  “How much interest?” Jyn asked the junker.

  He told her his plan, and it was smart. If the ident codes and ship docs she forged were sold through the Labbo, her name wouldn’t be directly attached. It provided her with separation, although it did mean less payment.

  “I’ve got a group; they need past checkpoints. Want some manifests and logs that look a little more…mediocre,” the junker continued.

  “I could do that.” Jyn drained her glass. “How much?”

  This was the right thing to say; the junker wasn’t keen on small talk and preferred business. They quickly hashed out a payment plan and work schedule. “I don’t even know your name,” Jyn commented. It was her second dealing with the Labbo, and it had only just struck her as odd.

  “Risi Amps,” he said. “You?”

  “Liana Hallik.” The lie came easily. She hardly ever thought of herself as an Erso anymore, and it hurt too much to think of the name Ponta.

  The work Risi provided was simple enough, although time-consuming and tedious. Jyn kept careful tabs on her credits. She could eke out a better-than-average living with the illegal work, and she had her eye set on going deeper into the Outer Rim and leaving behind Five Points. Commander Solange may have been an inept and corrupt officer, but she was still an Imperial presence on the space station, far too close for Jyn’s comfort. So Jyn checked every ship that came into the spaceport, hoping each time to find someone who was keen on leaving the system behind.

  She didn’t find anyone. The holodramas she’d viewed as a kid implied that the Outer Rim was a constant source of adventures, new species to discover, strange new landscapes, and exciting exploits on ships that darted through the systems. Instead, Jyn spent her days in the little boarder room she rented on Rumitaka, hunched over a code replicator.

  That feeling of missing out, of making the wrong choice for her life by accepting this job, was strongest late at night, when Jyn carefully crafted ship logs for Risi, taking out damage reports from space battles and adding in cleared Imperial checkpoints or boring trade route runs. As she examined the records and altered them, Jyn grew certain that Risi was being paid by a subversive partisan group. Probably not the growing group of rebels that Xosad and Idryssa had joined—this one seemed smaller, a fleet of no more than six ships, she guessed. None of which was a shuttle like the one Saw had flown, or a Y-wing like she’d seen on Skuhl.

  Jyn traced the outline of a Y-wing in the dust on the table she was working at in her little dormer. What would life have been like if Saw hadn’t been so isolated on Wrea? If he had followed Xosad and Idryssa into the rebel group? He wouldn’t have taken that job on Inusagi, the one that still woke her up with nightmares sometimes. She might have met Hadder not on Skuhl but on some rebel base on some far-flung planet. Because if it wasn’t for Jyn, Hadder would have joined Xosad’s group.

  And he would have still been alive.

  She didn’t like having a name for the feeling that had been plaguing her for so many months now.

  Regret.

  She swiped her hand across her doodled Y-wing. The only regret she had was ever coming across groups like Saw’s, like Xosad’s. Like this one. Whatever they were doing now, these runs she was wiping from the manifests, the codes she was forging to get past blockades—Jyn was not so naive as to believe that they were helping anyone but their own entitled sense of justice.

  In the end, she didn’t care. As long as she got paid, as long as she was safe, as long as she could eat—that was all she cared about.

  That night, a loud knock on the front door of the old house Jyn was boarding in was so persistent that Jyn startled awake, even though she was on the second story. Her landlady cursed a blue streak as she clomped down the stairs to answer the door. Jyn sat up in bed, straining to hear what was being said. Her landlady was loud, protesting that someone shouldn’t come in.

  And then Jyn heard the boots. She was certain she would always be able to identify a stormtrooper just by the sound his boots made.

  She shot out of bed and went straight to her code replicator. She wiped the data as quickly as she could. It wasn’t a perfect job, but it was something. All the logs and scandocs she’d been working on for the past few days were gone. She could re-create the work, but…

  Her bedroom door swung open. Jyn grabbed the scarf she’d taken off earlier and threw it around her neck and hair. She hoped she looked as if she were being modest in her low-cut top, and not that she was hiding her kyber crystal necklace.

  “Tanith Ponta?” the stormtrooper said.

  Jyn turned slowly.

  “I told you, her name is Liana Hallik, not Tanith whatever,” the landlady shouted. “This is a violation of privacy!”

  “You’re wanted for questioning,” the stormtrooper said.

  “Am I being arrested?” Jyn asked.

  The landlady stared at her, as if it had only just occurred to her that Jyn could have lied about her name.

  “No,” the stormtrooper said.

  “Do I have a choice in whether or not I come with you?” Jyn asked.

  “No,” the stormtrooper said.

  “Can I at least get dressed first?”

  The stormtrooper hesitated.

  “It’s cold outside,” Jyn said, looking down at her bare arms and legs.

  “You may dress,” the stormtrooper said, but he didn’t leave the doorway. He watched as Jyn awkwardly stepped into pants without removing her shorts and layered another shirt under a heavier coat. She shoved her feet into her boots and stood awkwardly.

  “Don’t rent my room out,” Jyn told her landlady. “I’m coming back.”

  The older woman nodded vigorously, and Jyn hoped she would be honest enough not to loot the credits Jyn had hidden under the mattress.

  The stormtrooper led Jyn to the spaceport. Risi Amps sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his hands held in heavy durasteel locks. He looked up at Jyn with watery eyes as the stormtrooper pushed her forward. The guards on Risi yanked him to a standing position.

  It did not bode well that Risi had been arrested. He had been her go-between for the codes and logs and docs she forged for what was obviously a rebel group. While Jyn could reasonably protest that she didn’t know she’d been working for partisans, she couldn’t deny that her actions—forgery—were illegal. She wasn’t sure why Risi had been arreste
d and not her, but she couldn’t help feeling nervous as the stormtrooper escorted her into an Imperial transport ship and they headed back to Five Points station.

  Risi Amps was put in a separate, locked room on the ship during the trip to Five Points. Jyn didn’t see him again until they docked on the station and two stormtroopers unlocked his room and led him silently off the ship. Another stormtrooper guarded Jyn, and after several long minutes, he led her off the transport ship as well. There was no sign of the other stormtroopers or Risi—no sign of any other ship on this level. The long expanse of ports was empty and silent, save for Jyn, the stormtrooper, and the sleek transport shuttle.

  The stormtrooper walked a little behind Jyn, on high alert despite the fact that the bay was empty. It surprised Jyn; she hadn’t thought Commander Solange was capable of running an efficient troop.

  At the end of the bay, the stormtrooper nudged Jyn to a small private turbolift. They went up three floors, then got out on a hallway that Jyn recognized as the Imperial headquarters on the station.

  “That way,” the stormtrooper said, pushing Jyn down the hall toward Commander Solange’s office.

  Although she was wearing a heavy coat that was making her sweat on the warm station, Jyn felt a little naked without her usual access to at least some form of weapon. She felt like a nerf being led to a rancor’s den.

  The stormtrooper stopped outside the door to Commander Solange’s office. He pressed a button, and the sleek enameled door slid open. The stormtrooper did not move to enter the room, but nodded for Jyn to do so. She stepped inside, her chin tilted up, her spine straight.

  “Yes,” drawled a voice on the opposite side of the room. “I can see why you thought she was a good choice, Solange.”

  Jyn felt a chill move down her spine, one that seemed to undermine her false bravado. “Who are you?” she asked.

  The woman tilted her head, her ice-blue eyes narrowing just a tiny bit. “Speak only when spoken to,” she said in an even voice that brooked no argument. Jyn found she had none to give.

  Jyn examined the woman’s insignia plaque; she was an admiral. Her crisp gray uniform was impeccable, making her pale skin look even whiter in contrast. Her platinum-blonde hair was braided so tightly it made Jyn’s head ache. The only real color on her, aside from her insignia plaque, was on her long eyelashes, which had been tinted red.

  The admiral glanced at a file. “Our records show you gave us the name Tanith Ponta,” she said in a bored voice. “But you were under the alias Liana Hallik when our troopers picked you up.” She looked up, analyzing Jyn. “Which is your real name?” When Jyn didn’t answer, she added, “You may speak now.”

  “Hallik,” Jyn said.

  The admiral nodded. She put the file on the desk, angling it so Jyn could see her own image, with the name Liana Hallik emblazoned across the top, followed by the ident code she’d forged when she first started using that name. As she’d suspected, the troopers had pillaged her room after taking her and assumed the scandoc she’d left there was real.

  The admiral waved her hand at Commander Solange.

  “We’ve been looking for you, Liana,” the commander said. “Where have you been?”

  Jyn leveled a cold stare at her and didn’t answer. Where had she been? In the Anoat system, working on a Tibanna gas tanker. Bouncing around the Mid Rim for a bit—Cerea and Coyerti—before settling in Takodana for nearly a year. On a freighter that needed clearance codes and no questions asked for so long that Jyn had forgetten the smell of fresh air by the time she switched jobs and went planetside again.

  “Around,” Jyn answered.

  “Yes, well,” Commander Solange said, frowning, “we have a job for you. There’s a rebel cell in the area that we want to crush.”

  The admiral cleared her throat.

  “That we will crush,” Commander Solange amended. “A partisan group that is particularly vicious. They’ve been using the criminal Risi Amps as a source for clearance codes that have enabled them to bypass the security measures we’ve implemented in this system.” She raised her eyebrows, and Jyn knew that everyone in the room was well aware that the codes had actually come from her.

  “Risi Amps is, sadly, ill-informed of where this partisan group is actually located,” the admiral commented, speaking in an impatient voice.

  “Admiral Rocwyn has implemented a plan that should help us locate the main base of the partisan group,” Commander Solange continued. “With Risi Amps arrested, they will need a new way to bypass our checkpoints, and we want you to give it to them…but we have a bit of additional code for you to add that will enable us to better keep tabs on this group. This ship is the little bee that will lead us to the hive.”

  Jyn thought about trying to protest that she knew nothing about forgery, but she sensed it would be futile and only anger the admiral. “I don’t have a code replicator with me,” she said instead.

  Commander Solange reached into her desk and withdrew a new code replicator. Jyn opened it and scanned the contents, noting the tracker program already installed on the device.

  “What will my payment be?” Jyn asked.

  The admiral stared at Jyn just long enough for Jyn to be uncomfortable, not long enough to reasonably break her gaze. “This way,” Admiral Rocwyn said finally, striding toward the door. She didn’t turn around; she expected Jyn and Commander Solange to follow her and knew they would.

  Jyn followed the admiral down the white-tiled hallway and through a door with a high-security lock, guarded by a pair of Imperial privates. The room past the door was dimly lit and smelled odd, like a combination of burning and something else, something metallic.

  “Hello, Bardbee,” the admiral said in a pleasant voice.

  For the first time, Jyn noticed a pale white creature strung up in the center of the room. The creature was diamond-shaped, the torso about as tall as Jyn but with almost translucent membranes connecting the top of the head to the tips of the fingers, and then another membrane connecting the fingers all the way to the ankles.

  “The Rayeth people are very strange,” the admiral said to Jyn, as if this were a casual observation. “They’re amphibious, did you know?”

  “Yes,” Jyn whispered. She remembered the first time she’d seen a Rayeth, on Inusagi, where they’d been pleading with stormtroopers to allow them entrance to the palace. They had been so elegant and beautiful, soaring through the waters of the azure pools. When they had wrapped their thin membranes around themselves like robes, they had seemed noble and tall.

  So it was especially strange and cruel to see this Rayeth exposed the way he was. His arms were stretched out to their maximum length, held painfully in place by a pair of magnetic cuffs built into the wall. The Rayeth kept straining against the cuffs, his instinct to cover his body overriding the pain of the restraints on his bruised and bloody wrists. His face was mostly flat, with a little bump and two slits for a nose and a flat, long horizontal slit for a mouth. The Rayeth’s eyes were milky white, and a glue-like mucus dripped from his eyes and down his face.

  He was crying.

  “This particular Rayeth is proving rather difficult,” the admiral continued, her voice light. “He has worked with the partisan group we’ve been targeting for years, and we’re certain he knows the location of the group’s headquarters and main operation paths. But he just. Won’t. Talk.” With each of these last words, the admiral gently slapped the side of the Rayeth’s face, then pulled her hand back in disgust and wiped the mucus off with a handkerchief.

  “That’s why we are hiring you,” the admiral continued.

  The Rayeth jerked in his restraints, a low growl emanating from its throat. His white eyes flashed at Jyn, and she saw accusation and rage there. He was being tortured for the information that Jyn was going to give the Empire.

  “Now, now,” the admiral admonished, and an interrogation droid zoomed into view. The Rayeth whimpered, but his hate-filled eyes bored into Jyn.

  Admiral Rocwyn
turned to Jyn. “You asked about payment,” she said in a cool voice. “I think we’ve come to an understanding.”

  “Yes,” Jyn whispered. Her payment was her freedom. Her payment was to escape the fate of this Rayeth.

  The Imperial presence on Five Points station had been something of a joke, if Jyn was honest. Commander Solange had sullied herself, her rank, and her authority by entering the gambling halls. This new admiral, however, had reinstated the terror and subservience the Empire demanded, merely by her presence.

  How does the Empire keep finding such horrible people? Jyn wondered, looking at the emaciated body of the Rayeth.

  “This particular partisan group is rather obtusely antihuman,” the admiral continued, her gaze sliding over to Jyn. “We have paid a contact to recommend you highly, and they have made an exception for you.”

  “I have worked with groups like that before,” Jyn said. She tried hard to focus on the admiral’s impartial gaze, not on the Rayeth watching, listening.

  The admiral raised a brow. “No doubt.” The words were delivered as an insult, and inexplicably, Jyn felt her cheeks reddening.

  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.