Star Wars: Rebel Rising Read online

  © & TM 2017 Lucasfilm Ltd.

  Cover illustration by Brian Rood

  Design by Leigh Zieske

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Lucasfilm Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Lucasfilm Press, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.

  ISBN 978-1-4847-8685-7

  Visit the official Star Wars website at: www.starwars.com .

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Month 01_

  Chapter One_

  Chapter Two_

  Chapter Three_

  Chapter Four_

  Chapter Five_

  Chapter Six_

  Chapter Seven_

  Chapter Eight_

  Chapter Nine_

  Chapter Ten_

  Month 02_

  Chapter Eleven_

  Chapter Twelve_

  Chapter Thirteen_

  Chapter Fourteen_

  Chapter Fifteen_

  Chapter Sixteen_

  Chapter Seventeen_

  Chapter Eighteen_

  Chapter Nineteen_

  Chapter Twenty_

  Chapter Twenty-One_

  Chapter Twenty-Two_

  Chapter Twenty-Three_

  Month 03_

  Chapter Twenty-Four_

  Chapter Twenty-Five_

  Chapter Twenty-Six_

  Chapter Twenty-Seven_

  Chapter Twenty-Eight_

  Chapter Twenty-Nine_

  Chapter Thirty_

  Chapter Thirty-One_

  Chapter Thirty-Two_

  Chapter Thirty-Three_

  Chapter Thirty-Four_

  Month 04_

  Chapter Thirty-Five_

  Chapter Thirty-Six_

  Chapter Thirty-Seven_

  Chapter Thirty-Eight_

  Chapter Thirty-Nine_

  Chapter Forty_

  Chapter Forty-One_

  Chapter Forty-Two_

  Chapter Forty-Three_

  Chapter Forty-Four_

  Chapter Forty-Five_

  Chapter Forty-Six_

  Month 05_

  Month 06_

  Epilogue_

  About the Author

  For Corwin

  I know.

  IMPERIAL DETENTION CENTER & LABOR CAMP LEG-817

  LOCATION: Wobani

  PRISONER: Liana Hallik, #6295A

  CRIMES: Forgery of Imperial Documents, Resisting Arrest

  The stormtrooper chuckled as Jyn Erso fell to her knees. She raised her shackled wrists. “You can take these off now,” she said. “Where am I going to run?”

  She gestured to the long hallway and the dim glow from the illuminators above each cell door.

  “It’s more fun this way,” the stormtrooper said, lifting Jyn to her feet by the binders on her wrists. The metal bands cut into her skin and grated against the sensitive bones beneath, but Jyn barely flinched. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  “They’re always so…” The warden, a tall thin man dressed in black, waved his hand as if searching for the right word. “They’re always so noble when they first arrive, don’t you think?”

  The stormtrooper made a noncommittal noise as he prodded Jyn, forcing her farther down the dark hallway toward her cell.

  The warden chuckled at his own joke, then apologized. “I’m sorry, it just amuses me so. I can always spot a fresh one. They stand straighter.” His strides lengthened, and he passed Jyn and the stormtrooper, then turned in front of them, halting their progress. The warden grabbed Jyn’s chin, forcing her to face him, but Jyn jerked away defiantly. He chuckled again. “The fresh ones still have a little fight in them,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the word little .

  When Jyn didn’t rise to the bait, his face soured. “This way, prisoner.” He turned on his heel and walked quickly down the hall. Jyn stared ahead, trying to keep her tired feet straight so she wouldn’t stumble again and further prolong the ordeal.

  “They picked you up…where?” the warden asked casually.

  Jyn didn’t answer.

  The warden spun around and slapped her across the face, hard. “I asked you a question, Six-Two-Nine-Five-A.”

  “I was captured on a ship in the Five Points system,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Captured…and arrested.” The warden sounded proud of himself, even though he’d had nothing to do with it. “And now you’re here.” He swept his arm out but didn’t move. One of the cells was dark and empty. The stormtrooper nudged Jyn forward, and she stumbled into the tiny room. When she raised her wrists this time, he deactivated the binders. The light on the band blinked from red to green, and Jyn’s wrists fell from the heavy metal with relief.

  “I’m sure you’ll enjoy our little operation at L-E-G-Eight-One-Seven,” the warden said. He pronounced the abbreviation of the prison system branch in a rush, turning the letters LEG into elegy . Jyn felt it was an appropriate title. “Welcome to Wobani.” He grinned at the words, well aware of the reputation the planet held.

  “Your crimes, though not the worst the Empire has encountered, are not to be tolerated. You have done a disservice to the galaxy, and to repay your debt to society, you will work.” The warden punched in a code on the biometric datapad by Jyn’s door, and the metal bars slid into place, trapping her inside the cell. “You will not like the work,” the warden added, his tone still mild and pleasant. “And you will not like your new home here. But that’s what you get when you commit crimes against the Empire. Welcome to the worst days of your life.”

  The warden looked down his nose at Jyn through the bars. He smirked slightly. No doubt he was used to criminals breaking down at this practiced little speech, but Jyn just gaped at him.

  The worst days of her life?

  The warden could do no more than scowl as Jyn laughed in his face.

  JYN ERSO, AGE 8

  Jyn Erso hid in the dark.

  She was not afraid of the dark. She used to be, yes, but not anymore. She knew this dark. She had been in it for hours.

  Ever since she had seen her mother slaughtered.

  The cave was cramped, but not as cramped as it was supposed to be. She and Mama and Papa had practiced these drills, and when they had pretended the Empire was coming and it was time to hide, they had hidden together.

  Jyn was alone now.

  She had a satchel with her, a few possessions she’d crammed into the bag when her mama had told her it was time. Abommy the Gig wasn’t there. She’d left him under her bed, where he’d protected her from the monsters she was old enough to know didn’t exist. She wished she had him now; she wished she could stroke his soft synthetic fur that smelled of Papa’s clove aftershave.

  Jyn shook her head. No. A toy wouldn’t bring her comfort now. It was a stupid thing to wish for. She couldn’t be such a baby.

  Jyn clutched the necklace her mother had given her moments before she died. She squeezed her eyes shut. She wondered if death hurt. She supposed it must.

  It was so dark.

  Jyn lit a lantern. The shadows danced along the rocky interior of the cave.

  They reminded her of the troopers dressed in black.

  “Papa will come,” she told herself, the sound of her voice tinny and fragile in the darkness.

  Mama had said, “Trust the Force.” Jyn tried. She tried to believe. To hope.

  The hatch above her rattled. Jyn sucked in a scream of fear as the door ope
ned and a man’s face peered down.

  A sob escaped her. Saw! He had come to save her!

  But not Mama. He was too late for Mama.

  “Come, my child,” he said. “We have a long ride ahead of us.” He reached his hand down into the cave, helping her up.

  Jyn looked into Saw’s face, hesitating for just a moment to take his hand. The last time she’d seen him, he’d brought her and her family to Lah’mu, to make a fresh start after they’d left Coruscant. Mama and Papa had drilled into Jyn the different scenarios that might happen if—when—the Empire found them.

  “And this,” Mama would say, showing her how to operate the comm tower. “If the worst happens and you need help but Papa and I aren’t around, you press this button here, and Saw Gerrera will come.”

  And every time, Jyn would reach out for the button, eager to hit it right then. “He never visits!” she’d say as Mama pulled her back, chiding her daughter that he was to be summoned in emergencies only.

  Now Saw’s jaw was set in a grim line. There was no smile on his lips, no joviality in his eyes like the last time she’d seen him. A long scar cut through his left eye, making the lid droopy. His eyes bulged slightly, his lips turned downward. The rain streaked his bald head. He looked angry.

  Jyn reached up and slipped her small pale hand through his dark calloused one. He squeezed her fingers gently, and she gripped his back, holding on as if she were drowning and he was the rope pulling her back to shore.

  “We have to go,” Saw said.

  Jyn swallowed her fear, her sorrow. She nodded.

  The air smelled clean, fresh after the cool rain, as she and Saw ran back through the field toward Jyn’s house. It seemed extraordinarily odd that the world was sleeping around them, beautiful and still, but Mama was…

  “There were troopers,” Jyn said, tugging on Saw’s hand. She bit her lower lip as she silently chastised herself. She should have counted how many soldiers had come to the farm. There was the man in white, the man Papa worked with sometimes. And the black-armored troopers. And…

  She should have paid better attention. But it had all happened so fast.

  “No one else is here,” Saw said.

  Her home and the farm equipment—a comm tower, irrigation units, a droid harvester—were the tallest objects in a sea of gently waving skycorn. A shirt fluttered up, caught by the breeze, soaring like a ghost against the night sky before wafting back down.

  Jyn was pretty sure the shirt was her father’s, the one that was frayed at the cuffs and always smelled like him, a mixture of cloves and dirt and grease and something else, something cold and hard. But before she could grab the shirt and wrap it around her, the wind picked up and blew it away.

  The closer they got to Jyn’s house, the more laundry flapped in the breeze, scattering throughout the grasslands and disappearing in the night. And then she saw the laundry basket, and the depression in the grass, stained with blood.

  Hope surged in Jyn’s heart. Her mama’s body wasn’t there.

  But she knew, deep down she knew it wasn’t because Mama had survived. No one could survive a blaster shot to the chest like that.

  Jyn bit the inside of her cheek, tasting the metallic tang of blood. But she didn’t say a word.

  Saw moved with purpose, flinging open the door to the farmhouse. Jyn followed silently, a waft of bitter smoke making her nose crinkle. The troopers had started a fire that still sputtered in the kitchen, singeing the bright wall a sooty black.

  Saw knew where to look—the work cabinet, the hidden nooks and crannies, the floorboards under the carpet. It was all empty.

  He cursed. “They took it all,” he growled.

  And they took him, Jyn thought in dull shock. They took Papa.

  Her eyes watered, but not from the smoke. Even though it had been Saw who’d come to save her, not Papa, she’d still hoped that maybe he would be there. Hiding. Waiting. For her.

  But he wasn’t. He was gone.

  Broken crockery littered the floor. Jyn knew her father had tried to destroy his work before he’d told her to run. There would be nothing left. Papa wouldn’t let there be anything left.

  Saw narrowed his eyes and whirled on Jyn. “Your pa have any secret hiding places? Something the Empire wouldn’t know about?”

  Their home was ransacked, and while Mama had been able to destroy some of Papa’s research, the Empire had come too quickly. She pointed to where the safe was hidden in her parents’ room, but it was empty. The log case was missing, and Papa’s file bank was gone. She peeked into her own room. The black-clad troopers had even upturned her bed and shredded her dolls, looking for more of Papa’s work. She wasn’t sure if they’d found anything. But it didn’t matter anyway; everything was in Papa’s brain. And they had him now.

  “We need to jump planet,” Saw said gruffly. “Think, Jyn. Anything else of your father’s work that may be here?”

  “No,” she said in a small voice.

  “Then we’re going.”

  Jyn started to move toward her room, but Saw put a heavy hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

  Jyn swallowed, one hand moving to clutch the crystal necklace her mother had given her. She had left everything once, when her family had abandoned Coruscant. She could do it again. At least she had her satchel.

  Jyn left the house first, and she heard something metallic and heavy drop on the wooden floorboard in the farmhouse before Saw closed the door. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her along; she almost had to run to keep up with his long strides. They were only about fifty meters away when the house exploded. Jyn stumbled at the sound and felt a whoosh of heat wash over her. What was left of the last place she called home burned, the yellow-orange flames licking at the pale grass and threatening to start a field fire.

  Saw didn’t stop walking. He didn’t even look back at the fire or at Jyn. His shuttle was waiting for them, and Saw bounded up the boarding ramp. Jyn paused, glancing back at the smoke.

  There was nothing left for her there.

  Jyn sat beside Saw in the cockpit of his ship. She stared straight out the window, watching as they soared through the clouds of Lah’mu. The ring that circled the planet in a constant white rainbow arched overhead, and then they broke atmosphere. The sky turned black, speckled with white stars, a glow of light from the reflected sunlight on the planet’s belt just visible.

  Jyn gasped.

  Saw glanced where she was looking and nodded grimly. A Star Destroyer hung in the blackness of space, the sun illuminating the underbelly of the ship.

  They’d sent a Star Destroyer for her father.

  Papa is on that ship, Jyn realized, her eyes widening. He was somewhere, somewhere there , just out of reach but so close.

  Saw was busy at the controls. His ship was so tiny compared with the Star Destroyer, a flea next to a giant, but his mumbling curses informed Jyn that he was worried about being spotted. Within seconds, they were well past the Destroyer, and in minutes, they’d lurched into hyperspace. The blue-gray stream of lights out the window made Jyn blink, hard, her sight blurring not just with the light but with the unshed tears that were building in her eyes.

  “Hey, kid,” Saw said, swiveling his chair so he could see Jyn fully. “I…”

  He stopped. Jyn knew he was going to say he was sorry, but there was something in his eyes that made her realize he knew just how futile those words were.

  She stared at his face, wondering at her memories of him being funny and kind. His dark skin made the puckered scars near his left eye stand out. He looked angry. Except for his eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Jyn said, pulling her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around her legs.

  Saw’s expression grew hard. “Too bad,” he said, “because I need to know why the Empire came after your father like that.”

  “You knew why my parents went into hiding,” Jyn said.

  “I knew bits. But I had no idea they’d send a Star Destroyer after
him.”

  Jyn had to admit she was a little surprised, too. She knew her father was important and that he’d worked as a scientist for the Empire before fleeing Coruscant and going into hiding on Lah’mu. She knew some of what he did. Mama and Papa had said never to tell anyone about Papa’s research, but she could trust Saw. Mama had.

  “He studied crystals,” Jyn said, pulling the necklace her mother had given her from under her shirt. She slipped it over her head and handed it to Saw when he held out his hand.

  He turned it over in his palm and held it up to the light, squinting at the clear crystal. It was, Jyn knew, a kyber crystal. Not a very good one, not worth a lot of money. Papa had worked with very good kyber crystals when he worked with the Empire. He liked rocks.

  “I know about the crystals,” Saw said, handing the necklace back to Jyn. “But your father must have been working on something else, something more concrete. Something they want. The Empire doesn’t just come down like that for crystals.”

  “That’s all he worked on,” she insisted.

  “That you know of,” Saw said darkly. “Did he say anything when the Empire came? Anything at all—maybe he told you something that could be a clue.”

  Jyn closed her eyes. She could still hear her father’s voice. Jyn, whatever I do, he’d said, I do it to protect you.

  And then he had gone with the man who killed Mama.

  “No,” Jyn told Saw.

  Saw turned to the window and stared at the blue-gray light of hyperspace. “There’s something more here,” he said, mostly to himself. “Since Coruscant, Galen has been working on something big, I know it. We have to figure out what it was.”

  Jyn felt tears burn in her eyes. Her father had been working on a broken harvester droid the night before the Empire came. Not some big secret. But she knew Saw was right. Mama and Papa talked about it, late at night when they thought Jyn was asleep. Research and crystals and fears. She wished she’d paid better attention. She wished she could at least understand why all this was happening.

  She forced herself to remember the way things used to be. On Coruscant, when her father had openly worked for the Empire. She had been littler then, and easily distracted, but even she knew that her parents weren’t happy. When they’d moved to Lah’mu, things seemed better. More relaxed. Mama taught her every day, math and science and literature and history. Papa worked in the fields, and at night he continued his research, but it wasn’t like on Coruscant. He didn’t work until he collapsed, mumbling to himself, ignoring her. Things were better.