Chapter Three
New Home Concentration and Re-ed Camp
KRML Enclave 36
New Home
Word of Blake Protectorate
October 24, 3068
The dropships came from all points of the Protectorate and its border worlds with prisoners packed in cargo bays. No amenities but just a bucket per hundred persons for waste purposes. The spaceport they land at was a busy, parched slab of ferrocrete that was practically a revolving door of ships landing and taking off. Hundreds of malnourished prisoners and the occasional dead bodies were offloaded from the crowded cargo bays and marched toward the maglev station where they were again jammed into cargo cars on trains that were headed to the middle of death and nowhere. Children cry and bury their faces into their parents, scared. The maglev trains go on for miles and more prisoners die en route to the camp. Finally trains arrive and pass through gates that read in several languages, “Work is Freedom.” The trains hiss to a stop and Militia soldiers slid open doors to the stench of death, urine and feces. The prisoners hear on loudspeakers, “All prisoners get into lines and report to camp staff for induction and assignment to your barracks. Any resistance or misbehavior will not be tolerated.” The prisoners get organized into lines and start orderly toward the first table. There was only one person at the table with the name “Dr Joseph Galt” stitched onto his uniform. Taking a look at the prisoners, he pointed where he wanted specific prisoners to go: for females he pointed right and said “West Camp” while the men, he pointed left for the main camp. Eventually a family that had a name from the many families that had wronged the Keller family over the past millennium were discovered. The ones that had only daughters were the most lucky ones, Galt thought, death for the man of the family didn’t come immediately. They get to be tortured by the thought of what was happening to their wives and daughters in the west camp. The West Camp was rumored by all the prisoners to be the true place of reeducation as well as being a breeding camp.
One such group of prisoners approached Galt’s table of whom he asked for identification: a mother, father and a nine year old boy. The father handed over all the papers for the whole family and the doctor looked it over. Looking at the wife, he pointed right, then to the males he pointed left and motioned guards over and loudly announced “This boy needs to be fast tracked to the special barracks. His last name is Heinze, a bloodline marked for rapid extermination.” The child, not understanding, clung to his mother and resisted the guards. However the guards were stronger and ripped the boy away while the mother was screaming and the father stood in shock Some of the guards prodded the parents to move along while they separated the kid from them and dragged him kicking and screaming toward the direction of the central buildings next to the main crematoria with large, already smoking exhaust chimneys.
“Let me go! No I won’t go,” the kid screamed. “What did I do wrong? Mommy, daddy help! Let me go!! Let...me...go!”
A guard took his rifle and slammed the butt down on the kid’s back, “Stop it you filthy Normbirth, you’re gonna die very soon anyway. Your mommy will be very valuable for our work anyway, that is, she and the new son we shall make with her.”
The rest of the throng were too shocked to ask aloud what a normbirth was as the lines kept going further. Nobody knew what they did wrong besides being unaccepting of the Blakists and their allies. Some speculate that this was no regular POW camp but a death camp reminiscent of those from Terra more than a millennium ago in a country formerly known as Poland. Station after station they passed as they surrendered money, possessions and even their clothes, forced to dress in open air into orange jumpsuits of various mismatched sizes and continue toward their first medical examination. Blakist personnel helped the KRML staff with managing the throng by ushering the women and girls toward their barracks with their barracks supplies while the men and boys went to the examinations to be poked, prodded, experimented on and have any surgical implants of value removed from their persons as loot, in addition to the contraband found in the area of the camp known as Rashalhague. Occasionally screams could be heard from the medical bunkers mingling with screams of men and boys with bloodlines being on the infamous Red List being dragged off toward a series of pits near the crematoria and shot in the head. Bodies that already lined the trenches were occasionally carried out on stretchers and taken to the crematoria while the rest were just left lying there as bulldozers filled the trenches in, burying the bodies.
As a “new home,” New Home had proven to be one of the most unfriendly and unfree places in the entire Inner Sphere. Within days the males inside the main camp had been beaten, bullied, put to work and starved on minimal amounts of food. Everyone in the main camp were also forced to listen to the loudspeakers shouting degrading propaganda across the maglev tracks over in the east camp. By then everyone knew why they were prisoners and some were starting to break under the strain. Others were starting to appear malnourished while the occasional one was taken away for experimentation to see what made them tick and determine what in their brains made them so cruel in various ways to disabled people at various stages of the life span. Some men attempt every few days to approach the fence and pass coded messages along to loved ones in the east camp but the guards in the towers quickly silenced their efforts and the attempts dwindled down within days. Meanwhile in the east camp, women 18 and older were being selected as comfort women by the KRML soldiers where orgies happen all night and the younger girls went to school within one bunker during day and worked during the night. Compared to the men and boys, the females of East Camp were well taken care of, which added to the effectiveness of the propaganda being pumped through the loudspeakers twenty hours a day. Days pass before the camp commandant developed a more effective method of killing that didn’t require any use of weapons so close to the camps. The trucks started coming every week from the nearest town a few miles away and with New Home being formerly of the Chaos March, these trucks had internal combustion instead of fusion engines installed as well as enclosed beds. The males loaded onto the conveyances were told they were being transferred to other camps where there were more room but soon the air in the trailers were replaced with carbon monoxide exhaust fumes and these victims were also buried in mass graves but out of sight of either the camp or the nearest town.
New Home Concentration and Re-ed Camp
KRML Enclave 36
New Home
Word of Blake Protectorate
June 11, 3069
More than six months later, life hadn’t got much better for the prisoners. Stockholm syndrome enveloped the entire East Camp and more prisoners from this “ladies camp” were begging to either marry or be adopted into KRML families as soon as possible. By then the news executions of the guys had been going through the entire camp though nobody could prove anything nobody could do anything about such news anyway. Trains still stop by the massive complex unloading more prisoners to replace the men and boys that had been “vaporized” and other trains, better ones, come to retrieve the Augmented newborns of the comfort women in specialized passenger cars manned by nannies and caregivers from the KRML laborer caste. The mothers of the babies didn’t cry, the brainwashing took great hold of their minds by now and no other thought but to serve the allies of the Blakists mattered.
In mid morning during lunch mess, a group of men sat around the table in the Main Camp’s cafeteria. Josh Williams spooned up some slop and grimaced as he put the spoonful in his mouth. The cafeteria was packed of course with the bodies and stink of normbirths in an obviously over packed bunker. Williams sat with a few others that went by the names of Don, Tom and Harry. They all ate the same thing. Everyone ate the same thing. Williams, the newcomer to the camp, looked up at the others.
“So are they just trying to break us down before releasing us back into the population,” he asked.
Tom spoke up, “I’m not sure, from what I heard they’re executing everyone over here in the main camp and saving the brainwashing for the east camp so they can rape the women.”
Harry chimed in, shocked, “No way that’s quite barbaric. We’re all prisoners of war and they would never do such a thing to us. There’s something called the Ares Convention with rules about that and such.”
Tom grimaced, “Don’t be absurd. For all we know, they take all the transferees out to the wilderness to be gassed in those trucks of theirs.”
“Uh-huh they’re being experimented on medically.”
Don and Josh looked up and both said, “Shut up, you two are just being nasty and dirty.”
“All of you over there, shut up and finish your eating. We need you back on the work detail,” a guard growled as he passed by the table, looking pissed enough to beat someone just because he can.
Don, who’s been prisoner the longest of the group, bent in and whispered to the others so trouble won’t come their way again, “Listen, I think I might have found a way out of this dump. As far as I’m concerned I’m tired of having my jumpsuit legs shorter and my arms longer than they need to be. I’m ready for an escape.”
“Are you crazy? Look at the guards and how many of them are there. There’s no hope that just a few POWs would make it through the fences in time. Besides, what about our families?”
“Forget about our families, as far as I’m concerned they are all long gone. They’re all mentally wired into all the Blakist/KRML propaganda and possibly don’t remember or think of us the same way anymore.”
Again Harry butted in, “If all those rumors are true then we’d better have a pretty good escape plan. We’d need all the help we can get too. Problem is,where do we find men strong enough mentally...ones that aren’t broken down and conditioned?”
Don then said, “I’ve been studying several guys in the neighboring bunker. They’ve kept themselves strong physically despite the rationing of food. I heard they’ve also started up a black market trading system within the camp itself. Cigarettes, fragments of reading material, shoes; if you think of it, they’re probably trading it. I’ve been thinking of either approaching them, the prisoner council or both.”
Josh cocked an eyebrow, “There’s a prisoner council? Really? With all the brainwashing and solid rumors floating around this place, the Blakists and their allies are allowing a liaison council?”
“Yep, the alliance appears to think that those appearing to have been fully indoctrinated before their liquidation are more likely to rat out troublemakers and other lesser undesirables. Problem is, they couldn’t keep out the fakers and others that have given up on escape.”
Harry screwed his face then asked, “What about what I heard about the KRML? That they have a group within their number that actually disagrees with the alliance with the WoB?”
Don pondered and noted, “I’ve heard of them but the scuttle going around the camp is that’s another rumor. Also heard their self styled Mega Warlord is aligned with these so called Preservers but then again that’s to be disputed. How could she stay so far up the chain and question the policies of that crackpot Canales?”
Josh mused, “He may or may not know that she’s in opposition. For all I know, this Emrin might be secretly plotting behind the scenes and supporting these Preservers or that she’s openly supporting them and that Canales is just keeping his opponents where he could watch them.”
Before another thought was spoken the alarm blared the end of the lunch break and the lunch shift rotated out to let the next one in. Several mean looking guys came in through the door as the group was leaving and Harry bumped into one of them by accident. The man stepped back and looked him up and down.
“Watch it moron, the exit’s that way,” he snarled under his breath. Pushing Harry he made his way toward the food line as Harry’s group continued outside. However one of the other guys tripped Harry and he went sprawling on the floor. Looking around with a mean aspect to his face, Harry had to be held back by the others to be stopped from causing a fight. The numbers aren’t in his favor and the camp staff would have a reason to single him out.
The scene lasted only a minute or two as the crowd’s feigned interest died away. The new guys moved toward the food and Don helped Harry up. “Thanks,” he muttered, “Noobs. They’ll learn how to behave soon enough.”
“Maybe but if they hold up, they could be useful in our plan,” Don replied.
New Home Concentration and Re-ed Camp
KRML Enclave 36
New Home
Word of Blake Protectorate
10 February, 3071
Months pass as the escape plan grew with the number of escapees. Tom smuggled material from the small part assembly bunkers while Josh smuggled out silverware from the mess bunker. Everyone involved was lucky when several inspections didn’t reveal anything in the bunkers. However one day....
“Everyone attention! Stand at the ends of your bunks,” the capo shouted as he and a guard strode in through the door. The entire barracks started and nervously hurried to stand at the end of their bunks. The guard motioned more guards into the room for help and they started tossing belongings and bed material around, searching for contraband or stolen material. The head guard stood around watching and explaining the inspection.
“We have reason to believe that somebody or multiple somebodies have been smuggling supplies out of the mess and other areas of the camp. If we do find these missing materials, whoever involved will be sorry. They will be provided the minimal amount of rations that we have been ordered to give. This would be added to the amount of torture we shall feel is proportionate to your crime.”
The guards continue to search the barracks, going through footlockers, searching between mattresses and even the pillows. Several shivs were found while some of the missing supplies were spotted that weren’t hidden well. The head guard gloated as he watched the search conclude.
“This is quite a surprise and also an outrage. We have thought you have learned to love it here, to be in service to us, to learn your place as slaves to True Humanity and the True Order.” Picking several men out of the barracks, the guards led them out of the bunker into the dirt paths where they were beaten in front of everyone. Their faces were hit with bludgeons so hard that several teeth went missing and blood streaked everywhere.
“Let this be a lesson to you all,” the guard sounded evenly, “Oh by the way, rations for everyone are now reduced to the minimal amount. This is done to discourage conspiracies to revolt and escape.”
The guards and the capo turned and left. As soon as the last one closed the door, Harry spat.
“Collaborators, they all make me sick,” the young Asian quietly said.
