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By Root 1805 0

As it was, too many compromises had been made. The wooden shelters, the disposal of bodies, the food … No matter the species, the prisoners had no stomach for the Yuuzhan Vong diet. With so many of them succumbing to their battle wounds or malnutrition, the prison commander had been forced to allow food to be delivered from a nearby settlement, where the residents plucked fish and other marine life from Selvaris’s bountiful seas, and harvested fruits from the planet’s equally generous forests. Against the possibility that resistance cells might be operating in the settlement, the place was even more closely guarded than the prison.

It was said among the warriors that Selvaris had no indigenous sentients, and in fact the settlers who called the planet home had the look of beings who had either been marooned or were in hiding.

The sentient who delivered the weekly rations of food was no exception.

Covered with a nap of smoke-colored fur, the being walked upright on two muscular legs, and yet was graced with a useful-looking tail. Paired eyes sparkled in a slender mustachioed face, the prominent feature of which was a beak of some cartilaginous substance, perforated at intervals like a flute and downcurving over a drooping polar mustache. He was harnessed to a wagon that rode on two yorik coral wheels and was laden with baskets, pots, and an assortment of bulging, homespun sacks.

“Nutrition for the prisoners,” the sentient announced as he neared the prison’s bonework front gate.

S’yito ambled over while a quartet of sentries busied themselves removing the lids of the baskets and undoing the drawstrings that secured the sacks. He sniffed at the contents of one of the open bags.

“All this has been prepared according to the commander’s instructions?” he asked the food bearer in Basic.

The being nodded. The fur on his head was pure white, and stood straight up, as if raised by fright. “Washed, decontaminated, separated into flesh, grains, and fruits, Fearsome One.”

The honorific was usually reserved for commanders, but S’yito didn’t bother to correct the food bearer. “Blessed, as well?”

“I arrive directly from the temple.”

S’yito glanced down the unsurfaced track that vanished into the high jungle. To provide the garrison with a place of worship, the priests had placed a statue of Yun-Yammka, the Slayer, in a grashal grown specifically for use as a temple. Close to the temple stood the commander’s grashal, and barracks grashals for the lesser officers.

S’yito lowered his flat-nosed face to an open basket. “Fish?”

“Of a kind, Fearsome One.”

The subaltern gestured to a cluster of hairy and hard-shelled spheres. “And these?”

“A fruit that grows in the crowns of the largest trees. Rich flesh, with a kind of milk inside.”

“Open one.”

The food bearer inserted a hooked finger deep into the seam of the fruit and pried it open. S’yito gouged out a fingerful of the pinkish flesh and brought it to his broad mouth.

“Too good for them,” he announced, as the flesh dissolved on his thorn-pierced tongue. “But necessary, I suppose.”

Few of the guards accepted that the prisoners couldn’t tolerate Yuuzhan Vong food. They suspected that the alleged intolerance was a ploy—part of an ongoing contest of wills between the captives and their captors.

The food bearer placed his hands, palms raised, just below his heart, in a position of prayer. “Yun-Yuuzhan is merciful, Fearsome One. He provides even for the enemies of the true faith.”

S’yito glowered at him. “What do you know of Yun-Yuuzhan?”

“I have embraced the truth. It took the coming of the Yuuzhan Vong to open my eyes to the existence of the gods. Through their mercy, even your captives will see the truth.”

S’yito shook his head firmly. “The prisoners cannot be converted. For them the war is over. But eventually all will kneel before Yun-Yuuzhan.” He waved a signal to the sentries. “Admit the food bearer.”

In the largest of the wooden huts, all of which had been built by the prisoners themselves, there was little to do but tend to the sick and dying, pass the daylight hours