[Last Of The Jedi] - 04(6)

Within a day Ferus became used to the routine, because he had to. Any hesitation about where to line up or what to do was met with a blow and a curse from the Imperial guards. He was a step ahead of the other new prisoners. His Jedi training had taught him how to anticipate, how to read body cues, how to, as the Jedi said, “See without looking.” He was able to enter the flow of the prison without disturbance.

Also, like a Jedi, he was planning his escape. The only problem was the sheer impossibility of it. He had never seen so many guards for one prison. There were few exits that he could see. The prison itself was a square inside a square. The cells were in the interior, and the food hall was in the outer square in one corner. They left every day and marched down an underground tunnel to the factory. There didn’t seem to be any laundry facilities and the prisoners who had been here for some time looked half-dead and wore rags.

He had seen upon arrival — because they’d wanted him to see it - that the prison was set on a small planet with a dense jungle surrounding it. There were no cities or spaceports, only the small landing platform outside the prison and a larger spaceport floating within the inner atmosphere above.

It was clear that his only opportunity to escape would hinge on the factory. They were forced to work and production levels were high. Obviously what they were doing was more than busy work; it was important to the Empire. That meant there would be a regular pickup service and a delivery supply service, most likely the same ship. That ship would be his way out. Somehow.

He would have to wait to discover the routine. He’d keep his head down, follow the rules, and not make a stir.

He wished he’d kept his lightsaber. He had handed it to Solace, knowing they would have taken it when they captured him. He couldn’t bear the thought that his lightsaber, the lightsaber that had once been Garen Multi’s, would be tossed on a pile with the hundreds of others, lying on a floor in a storage room at the Temple. He had seen that pile, each lightsaber representing a life, and it had been a heartbreaking sight.

Ferus adopted the shuffle-walk of the other prisoners. He didn’t try to catch anyone’s eye. He didn’t speak. He could tell that the silence would get on his nerves after a while. He had never considered himself a social creature, but he’d come to realize after he left the Jedi that a life of solitude was not for him. He didn’t like to live inside his own head.

The prisoners were kept on starvation rations. When they’d arrived, they were each run through a bio-scanner that determined the minimum nutrition their bodies needed to survive. Then their meals were calibrated by droids and individually dished out. That left them with just enough strength to work.

By the time the midday meal came, they were ravenous. Still they had to walk slowly and stay in line as they slid their trays along a long counter. Droids served the food, first flashing a scanner at the ID tag on their uniforms. This gave them the nutrition count for the inmate. They then used a machine to dish out some sort of mealy glop and another equally mysterious portion of something.

Still, it was nourishment, and Ferus found his mouth watering. He would eat whatever was given to him, because he’d need his strength when the time came.

The droid wheeled around, stuck a spoon in a large tin, then wheeled back and deposited it on Ferus’s tray. Then another scoop of the other mass, whatever it was. Ferus didn’t care. He began to shuffle forward, keeping his eyes on the back of the neck of the prisoner in front of him. They would all file to long benches at tables and would have a few minutes to eat.

He was so intent on the idea of food - he could not remember the last time he ate a meal - it must have been at that mangy bar down at the Coruscant crust - that he wasn’t alert when suddenly, the prisoner ahead of him turned and, in a movement so smooth it must have been done many times, scooped Ferus’s food off his tray onto his own.

But if Ferus was a bit slow, he caught up. He saw in a glance that the inmate was tall, with enormous feet and hands and gray stubble on his skull. In a lightning flash of reflexes, he put one knee in the small of the prisoner’s back and one arm around his throat. At the same time, he grabbed the food with the other hand and scooped it back onto his tray.

Lunch might be disgusting, but he wasn’t about to miss it.

The prisoner in front of him gagged from the pressure on his throat and tripped. His own tray went flying. Quickly Ferus released his hold and by the time the guard turned he was staring clown at the floor, mimicking the exhausted shuffle of the others.

“Keep moving!” The guard lifted his force pike and brought it down on the prisoner’s shoulder. He fell, dropping his tray as he went down. Still he reached for the food, even as one arm dangled uselessly. Maliciously the guard kicked the tray away so that he couldn’t reach it.