Entry 22

I quickly moved back to the woods where I left the dead Virevole. Luckily no other predator had found it. I picked up the large rodent and hefted it up on my shoulders. I then jogged back to the boys' hut before somebody could see me with the animal. I ducked into the shelter and tossed the animal on the ground. "Can these be eaten? The thing attacked me and I had to whack it with a branch."

"Kriff!" one of the boys whispered. "You killed a virevole!"

"Quiet!" Norro whispered back. "Or somebody will come and take it from us."

"So you can eat it." I looked at each boy for an answer.

"Sure you can eat it." Kyler said as he reached under his makeshift sleeping mat and pulled out a piece of metal. It looked like it once was part of a food container, but was now formed and sharpened into a knife. "We use this to cut up the small rats, but it probably will work on this monster." He grabbed some old palm leaves from his bed and laid it out on the floor as a work area. He put the Virevole on top of the leaves and started cutting it up. He held out a couple strips of raw meat to us before he started to eat. I looked down at the bloody strip of meat he handed me. The fact that the animal's coarse hair black hair was still stuck to the raw flesh made it even more unappetizing. My stomach lurched at the thought of eating meat uncooked.

"You're not going to roast it?"

The boys shook their heads. "The smell will attract every inmate on the planet. We may cook some later when we had our fill."

I brought the virevole meat up to my nose and sniffed it and then handed it back to Norro. "I think I'll pass. I had rodent for lunch."

The teens chuckled as they chewed the meat. "You won't turn down any food in a week or two." Byson said.

They took apart the animal, gutting it and draining the blood and offal into a metal container. Kyler saw me grimace and smiled. "We can make some stew later. If we get enough friends together to share the psycho thugs may actually have second thoughts about stealing from us."

Norro shoved another piece of raw meat in his mouth. "Until tomorrow we eat what we can. Once people know we have food it won't stay in our hands for long."

"We might be able to do a trade with Thomad," Byson said. "Meat for salt. Perhaps we can salt down some strips and save it for later."

I watched as the boys shoved their faces with food for most of the night until they got sick. They would run out of the shelter to a makeshift latrine before coming back to eat some more. I assume having so much food is a shock to their digestive track. Norro confessed that he might have a parasite that was slowly starving him.

"My weight loss started two years ago. I don't know what's wrong."

"Can't you see a doctor?"

The boys laughed as if I said something extremely funny. "Twice a year a doctor comes to the planet to administer immunizations. The only people who get medical assistance are inmates that have a special skill to build that thing up there." He pointed up to the roof of the shelter, but I knew he was referring to the construction project orbiting the planet.

"Do you know what they are building?"

Norro shrugged. "We've heard it will be an Imperial space station, but nobody knows what it'll be used for."

Byson lowered his voice and leaned toward me. "There are rumors though."

"Like what?"

"It was said it might be a maximum security prison station for the worst of the worst. Nobody could escape from a prison in space."

Kyler shook his head. "I heard it was going to be an Imperial capital city. The Emperor and bureaucrats would be housed in the station instead of Coruscant."

I knew both were possibilities. "Whatever it is, it's big." I decided to ask them about Sheel. "Have you seen a Torguta female in the town? She's a very good friend of mine that might have shown up a few weeks ago."

"No," Norro mumbled with a full mouth. "Most women go to Sister Central. They haven't had a new female in the main part of the prison for a month."

"That's going to change soon through," Byson announced. "I heard some of the Lifers are going on a hunt tomorrow."

"A hunt?"

"Yeah, they get a large group of men and they attack Sister Central and try to bring back women."

"This is happening tomorrow?"

Byson nodded. "At sunset."

"I would like to go with the Lifers if possible."

The three boys glowered at me. "To look for my friend," I clarified. "Not to kidnap women."

"Oh," Norro mumbled with his mouth full. "It's dangerous. The women work together and take no prisoners."

Byson laughed. "That's not exactly true. I heard they sometimes keep a male or two as pleasure slaves."

"Ha!" Kyler said in a mocking tone. "That's an urban legend created to get more men into the attack parties." He took another bite of Virevole. "They don't keep pleasure slaves."

Norro scoffed. "How would you know, you never lived in Sister Central. They keep men sometimes."

I looked at the young man confused. "You lived there?"

He nodded. "I was born there." He held up his wrist in a strange gesture. My obvious confusion prompted him to explain. "No, wristband. I've never been convicted of a crime."

"Except being born here," Byson pointed out.

"Yeah, that," he said with a roll of the eyes. "Anyway, boys are allowed to live there with their mothers until they turn ten and then they are sent here. Sometimes the mothers leave with their sons…but my mom died of some waterborne illness when I was three. One of the older women cared for me until I was ten and then she sent me here. That was almost four years ago."

I was deeply disturbed by his admission. If he committed no crime then he wouldn't have a release date. He would live and die in this prison unless somebody petitioned for his release. He would need a lawyer and that's not something a person living on a prison planet could afford. As far as I knew the Empire didn't provide attorneys to indigent citizens.

"Can you talk to security and explain the situation? Will anybody listen to you?"

He shook his head. "That should have been done when I was a baby, but it's believed any youngling given to the guards will be sold into slavery or killed. My mother decided to keep me. If I go to the guards now they'll just say I removed my identification band. Then they'll probably put me in the solitary confinement box for punishment."

I shook my head in disgust. When I returned to Coruscant I would ask Pol Haus to try to do something of gain Norro's release…if possible. Looking at the way this place was run I doubt anything could be accomplished through proper channels. I looked over to the other boys. "How about you? How long have you been here?"

Kyler finished chewing his mouth full of virevole meat. "Byson and I came here together almost two years ago."

"We're pirates!" Byson said with some bravado.

Norro rolled his eyes. "They want people to believe they're pirates. They worked on a smuggling vessel." He turned to the other two boys. "If you were a pirate you would've gotten more than a two year sentence." Norro turned back to me. "Because they were only fifteen when they were arrested they were tried as juveniles. They have three more months before their release date, right?"

Byson smiled back. "Yeah."

I could tell Norro was happy for his friends, but despondent about his own situation.

The boys put the remaining meat in a large plastic bag and hung it from the roof of the shelter…I assume to keep rats from gnawing on the bag. Tomorrow I would start early to look for Sheel and if I couldn't find her here then I would finagle my way onto the hunting party.