Star Wars: Rebel Rising(19)
IMPERIAL DETENTION CENTER & LABOR CAMP LEG-817
LOCATION: Wobani
PRISONER: Liana Hallik, #6295A
CRIMES: Forgery of Imperial Documents, Resisting Arrest, Possession of an Unsanctioned Weapon
Jyn had no sense of time at the prison camp on Wobani. There were no windows in her cell, the only light coming from the hallway in the center. It was so humid during the day that even the stones sweated and so cold at night that they sometimes frosted over. It reminded her of the cave where she had hidden on Lah’mu. She thought of that cave more and more. Sometimes when she woke in the middle of the night, she had to remind herself that she wasn’t eight years old, hiding from stormtroopers.
And that Saw wasn’t coming to save her.
Her cell was tiny, even more so since they had paired her with a new cellmate, a Lunnix named Zorahda. Zorahda was older than most of the other prisoners, with white fur covering her body and fading yellow eyes, but she never cowered in front of the stormtroopers and did her best to show no weakness. It wasn’t hard; a flash of her smooth black teeth behind the fine white whiskers on her lips was enough to keep most at bay.
The cells were narrow, with mattresses crammed onto slabs built into the walls. The beds were cramped for Jyn’s short frame; for Zorahda’s two-meter-tall lanky body, they were almost impossible. On her first night at LEG-817, she had stretched out on the floor of the narrow space between the cubbies. A stormtrooper on patrol had paused by their cell door.
“All prisoners in their beds during night shift,” he ordered.
Zorahda had flicked him a rude gesture with her long fingers.
The stormtrooper called for backup and stun prods. Zorahda scrambled to get up and curl into the little cubby, but it was too late. The warden watched, smiling, as four stormtroopers first stunned Zorahda with high-voltage shocks and then beat her until reddish-brown blood matted her snowy fur.
Jyn had wanted to offer some sort of comfort, but she knew it would be worse if a stormtrooper saw her showing sympathy or compassion. It hadn’t taken long to learn that lesson.
Every morning, an alarm pulsed through the prison to mark the start of a new workday. Food—a single ration cube—appeared in the small compartment by each prisoner’s bed. Jyn stuffed hers in her mouth, ignoring the saltiness, and chewed as she quickly got ready for the day. The stormtroopers selected farm detail laborers first. This was the best and easiest job, the one everyone wanted. After the first selection, everyone was forced into the halls and assigned other work details.
Zorahda finished her ablutions and stood beside Jyn as soon as she was ready. They could hear the tedious process of prisoner relocation starting far down the hall. The stormtroopers made their first choices; neither Jyn nor Zorahda would get to work on the farms that day. Jyn watched the lucky prisoners with envy as they filed down the hall.
“I hate it here,” Zorahda said in a low voice full of bitterness.
Jyn nodded but didn’t answer. There wasn’t much to add to that.
A stormtrooper unlocked their door and cuffed them. The heavy binders were huge on Jyn’s wrists, weighing down her arms. On Zorahda, they pinched painfully. Neither complained.
Once the day’s work detail was lined up, they were forced into a frustrating quick step that was between walking and jogging. The prisoners with longer legs, like the Gigorans or the lone Wookiee on Jyn’s level, awkwardly shortened their gaits while the ones with shorter legs, most noticeably a family of Ociocks, flat-out ran to avoid being trampled. At the end of the aisle, their scandocs were flashed and they were pointed to various turbo tank transport units to complete the day’s labor in the factories.
The prison towered over the factories spread around its base like supplicants. Nearest to the prison were factories developing small parts—screws and bolts used in ship manufacturing mostly. Rumor was that stormtrooper armor had originally been manufactured on Wobani, but Jyn saw no evidence of that. Just countless screws and bolts, enough to make more Star Destroyers than could possibly be needed in the galaxy. Other factories on the planet developed ship panels used in floors and walls that were then sent off-world for construction. It was hard, brutal work with liquid-hot metals, and Jyn hated being assigned details in those factories. She spared another bitter longing for the missed farm detail, which at least was outside in the fresh air.
Not that Jyn had a choice. Every day, the prisoners worked in different groups, at different tasks. It was a way to prevent alliances from forming. It didn’t matter what their bodies were like, what skills they had. The physically weak worked along with the strong, and if they were lucky, their fellow prisoners helped them complete the labor. Jyn had made the mistake of mentioning that she had tech skills and could be assigned to the engineering department. She had been beaten for her trouble and had never once been allowed near tech because of it.
Her prison badge beeped. “Panels,” the stormtrooper who’d scanned her said, jerking his thumb toward a turbo tank.
Jyn trudged to the tank, where she was scanned again and given a partitioned seat made of hard metal. Stormtroopers patrolled the center aisle, but no one was talking or even looking at each other. They knew they had a hard day of labor in front of them. Working droid harvestors and irrigation units in the fields or aligning screws and inspecting bolts on the main production line wasn’t that difficult, just tedious. Smelting panels meant singed hair and burned skin, aching muscles and bleary eyes and dry throats and lungs full of ash.