JYN ERSO REMEMBERED the exact day the Empire destroyed her life. She was only eight years old, and she and her parents—Galen and Lyra—were living on Lah’mu, a backwater planet far from the luxurious home they’d once known on the Imperial capital world, Coruscant.
Jyn spotted the Imperial shuttle scudding through the sky and knew it meant trouble. She raced home from where she’d been playing alone in the thick lush grass to warn her parents, but they were already packing.
“Jyn,” her father told her, “gather your things. It’s time.”
They’d drilled countless times for this. While Jyn followed Galen’s orders, Lyra activated the family’s comm unit. “Saw,” she said. “It’s happened. He’s come for us.”
Before Lyra took Jyn from their home, Galen gave his daughter one last kiss.
“I love you, Stardust,” he said.
“I love you, too, Papa.”
The shuttle landed outside, and six death troopers emerged in their shiny black armor, along with an Imperial officer in a white uniform and cape. Jyn recognized him. He had worked with her father back on Coruscant. His name was Orson Krennic.
Lyra took her by the arm and led her through the back door while her father went to greet their visitors. Once they were out of sight, Lyra took off her necklace and put it on Jyn. The kyber crystal pendant sparkled in the light.
“You know where to go, don’t you?” Lyra asked.
Jyn nodded.
“Trust the Force,” Lyra said as she hugged her daughter, and somehow Jyn knew she meant good-bye.
Despite her orders to run and hide, Jyn refused to leave her parents behind. She covertly trailed her mother back to the house and watched as her father confronted Krennic.
“What is it you want?” Galen demanded.
“The work has stalled,” Krennic said. “I need you to come back.”
“I won’t do it.”
“We were on the verge of greatness. We were this close to providing peace. Security for the galaxy.”
“You’re confusing peace with terror. You lied about what we were building. You wanted to kill people.”
Krennic shrugged. “You have to start somewhere.”
Lyra stepped forward then. Mystified why she would show herself—against the plan they’d drilled—Jyn watched in horror. When the death troopers spotted Lyra, they turned their weapons on her, but Krennic ordered them to hold their fire.
That’s when Lyra revealed the blaster she was carrying and leveled it at Krennic.
“You’re not taking him,” she said.
“Of course not.” Krennic smiled. “I’m taking you all. You, your child. You’ll all live in comfort.”
“As hostages,” Lyra said.
“As ‘heroes of the Empire.’”
Lyra refused to lower her weapon. “You’ll never win,” she said.
Krennic came to a decision. “Do it,” he ordered the death troopers.
The elite Imperial soldiers shot Lyra down, but not before she got off a shot of her own, which struck Krennic in the shoulder. Jyn knew, though, that the Imperial officer would recover. Her mother never would.
Galen caught Lyra as she fell. Her weight and his grief brought him to his knees.
“They have a child,” Krennic said to the death troopers, through teeth gritted in pain. “Find it.”
Jyn fled.
She knew where to go, just like they’d done in their drills. But she didn’t know if she could get there before the death troopers found her.
She ran without looking back. She reached a cave in the rocky hills behind her house, and she dashed into it. There she lifted a concealed hatch and slipped through, closing it behind her.
She stayed there, gazing out at the daylight through a crack in the hatch. When the death troopers hunting for her came close, she held her breath and went as still as a statue. When they finally passed by, she crept deeper into her hidey-hole and waited, just as she’d been told.
She remained there for hours, alone. She smelled smoke in the air, from a fire she later learned was consuming her home. At one point, she thought she heard the shuttle leave, but she knew that she was to stay put until one of her parents came for her.
But what if that never happened? If her mother was already dead and the death troopers had taken her father, no one would ever come for her. She would be on her own.
She huddled in the dark as night fell, terrified and unsure what to do. A storm came raging through, and she startled at the sound of thunder.
She lit a lantern and tried to keep her spirits up. Eventually, she would have to defy her parents’ orders, but when? Not until the storm had passed, for sure.
Before that happened, though, she heard a noise above and froze. This was not thunder but footsteps, coming closer. Someone had entered the cave.
A moment later, the hatch opened, and the man Lyra had been talking to on the comm unit stared down at Jyn. Saw Gerrera.
“Come, my child,” he said as he offered her his hand. “We have a long ride ahead of us.”
That had been many years before. A lot of things had happened since then. More things than Jyn cared to count. They’d all added up to put her where she was now: rotting away in an Imperial prison and wondering how she’d fought so hard and long just to wind up there.