ch 8

The dying grounds

She opened her eyes hesitantly as she slowly came back to her senses. The first things she noticed aside from her splitting headache were that she wasn't outside anymore, a wet rag had been placed on her brows and that somewhat older female Procyonian was hovering above her, then she noticed her strangely marked left ear. She had no idea what those weird arbitrary looking strings of faintly fluorescent dots, burned inside the older female's left ear, were supposed to mean aside from the obvious use a prisoner-ID. Though Rocket could have probably told Nidnene what it was immediately, -a binary code etched in Badoon writing system, denoting the status, monetary value and usefulness of the slave prisoner in question along with each transgression, owner history and additional training which would be added to the tattoo and the chip that went with it, as they happened but Nidnene had no knowledge of that at the time. Of course, it wasn't really a tattoo in the traditional sense, but she wouldn't know that either until much later. Still it didn't take her long, even in this slightly staggered state, that she too was probably similarly marked.

"Easy now, don't move too fast. You had a nasty concussion. I'm Lenaire. You can tell me what happened if you wish or don't. It makes little difference here."

"Where-?" She started and the older female -Lenaire, spoke. "Slave barrack one hundred and forty-six. Malcompliance is punished harshly. Remember that. This bunk is where you come back each night and will stand next to for the countdown, first offence is no food for a day, the second is caning and third... You don't want that, trust me -most won't make it to provoke a fourth penance. Work time is 12h a day with one food break at the morning and one in the middle. I advise taking care of your needs then as well, pausing for pissing during work time is a malcompliance. Smiling, crying and other public showing of emotion is also a malcompliance. Attacking a trustee is a malcompliance. Attacking a guard will get you killed or beaten to inch of your life depending on your value. Showing up too dirty on the line at the morning is also a malcompliance. Planning to escape isn't merely a malcompliance, it's a capital offense with immediate execution when caught and the entire barrack is punished collectively. "

"So, I'm in hell" Nidnene whispered looking around, careful not to sit up too fast. Her throbbing head felt like the size of a beach ball. They were inside a drab metal walled barrack with a long row of latrine pits at the center of the rectangular room, one water main with a sink and dozens of metal bunk beds in four rows on stacks of four. There was a door at both far ends of the room. The female, Lenaire was wearing a different body glove from hers, it had three diagonal white stripes forming a stacked chevron at the front. She noticed her looking at her dress. "I'm a trustee or Kapo as it's in the camp slang, the new masters can't govern everything here, you see. When the first batch of us arrived, they attempted to implant us all with some kind of translation devices but most of us who were implanted, were lucky and died from the procedure -Those few of us who survived with our minds intact, were then made trustees to translate orders from our new masters and to explain the rules for the new slaves. Speaking of which; only speak when spoken to. While it's not a direct malcompliance, they don't like having the lesser creatures talking back or thinking that they might know better than heir betters."

"That's terrible." Nidnene gasped. Lenaire shrugged absently, rubbing the nape of her left ear. "There are worse fates than death, you'll see."

"I came here with two of my kits... I'll make a deal with you, you find out what happened to my kits and I'll owe you and trade some of my rations to sweeten the deal." She offers for the Trustee.

"A generous offer, I'll consider it." Lenaire says hopping down on the floor and freezes, turning to face the barrack door as it opened and three Badoon entered. They bark something to her to which she nodded and then shook her head. After a brief conversation she exits with the Badoon leaving Nidnene to lie at her bunk.

"Food is the only true commodity we slaves have here, you should be more careful about flaunting it." Nidnene gave a start at the sudden new voice and turned her head to regard another female looking down at her from above. She hadn't noted her being there before. She squinted at her while she climbed down to sit on Nidnene's bunk, looking carefully at the young but slightly disheveled looking female. There was something familiar about her, but she couldn't quite place it.

"Don't recall me, huh? well that's to be expected. It wasn't like we were ever really introduced. I'm Danine." and the recognition hit Nidnene.

"You're that chit trying to rob us with your friends! but weren't you..." She leaves it unfinished, trailing off when she realizes that the other one was no longer swollen from pregnancy.

"They happened... " Danine said, meaning the Badoon, while staring at the floor, clearly at the verge of tears despite fighting to keep her composure.

"They took mine as well. Lenaire has promised to find out where." Nidnene said scuttling closer to her to give a gentle shoulder squeeze.

"Lenaire!" Danine spat on the floor at the name. "That Kapo is crueller than the crocodiles by the river and twice as devious. She's no friend of yours or mine. Even the other Kapos fear her. You may not like the news when you hear them, what they do with the Kits they pick... we might be better off not knowing. I've also heard rumors that our new lords have already started shipping off people. Starting from the male camps... I just hope my friends won't be picked. Better the devil you know... if you're getting me." She sighs wringing her paws together in a sort of anxious washing motions, probably not even realizing she was doing it.

"I see, are those other Kapos like her as well?" Nidnene asks quietly, resisting the urge to do the same with the blanket corner.

"No, most of the Kapos are sympathetic and do what they can but that one... I think she was bad from the start but understand that despite having more leeway the Kapos are as chained as we are. Expect no help from anyone here but yourself."

"Wasn't really expecting anything less from this place." She admits feeling down.

"You should sleep as much as you can, it's a rare luxury. They'll put you to work come tomorrow." Danine reminds her before leaving Nidnene alone to lay down at the hard mattress where she blankly stares at the bottom of the bunk above her until the pull of sleep took over the worry for her kits, that was keeping her awake.

She looked in askance at the machine scanning her ear before grey slop was plopped on her tin bowl from the automated dispenser set-up at the yard. Even though it tasted slightly better than it looked her long experience as an inn hostess immediately told her that the rations were obviously too small to sustain a healthy Procyonian for long and she wasn't even going to debate on the skewed nutritional values. Touching it with her sensitive paw pads merely confirmed what her nose already suspected, it was some kind of "porridge" mostly consisting of plant proteins and (hopefully) animal fat.

Today's and apparently also the previous and next week's work was mostly consisting of manual labor. Digging a trench for some kind of foundations with picks and shovels and clearing rubble to enlarge the camp for the future. It was boring, thankless and backbreaking work. The only joy she felt from it was the fact that the guards didn't seem to care all that much if they talked quietly amongst themselves as long as the picks and shovels kept on ringing.

"So, this is what we're supposed to do, day after day?" Nidnene sighs already hating it after just a few scant hours." Danine looks at her with askance. "Keep that shovel moving! I don't mind chatting with you but it ain't worth the whipping." Nidnene looks a bit apologetic and gets back to work again.

"Tell you what. I'll tell you my story if you tell me yours." She offers a bit later.

"Why would you do that? Danine inquired quizzically.

"No reason really, just hoping it might help pass the time."

"Whatever, you go first since you're feeling so open all of a sudden." Danine sighs. If the other one wanted to prattle on she wasn't going to care and not probably even listen.

Nidnene peered their surrounding before starting to quietly retell how she and her kits were brought to the camp.

"Not everyone was a stranger to us here, but when we had arrived and been joined together with another line, we were then surrounded by people from all over the city and countryside. Not that we even wanted to hold a conversation, separated and surrounded by fear, as we were. I had no friends or relatives left to turn on for protection. Just the three of us, my children and I, were left and we held onto our each other's when without warning the guards separated the males from females and their kits into two separate columns, driving us to our respective holding barracks in a matter of few scant hours. That was when I had lost the sight of the last surviving males who had been living with us at the Inn.

Once inside those huge barracks we were told to strip down, and they took away all clothes and possessions we had had when captured. The stench was terrible and the floors were crusted with Procyonid feces, we soon realized that no one had bothered to build even as much as a latrine pit and the barrack was so full, with more people being shoved in all the time, that you had little choice but to make your needs where you were standing and later you would be forced to stepping and even sleeping on some of it."

"You mean...They're all dead? The people you had gathered up with that weird mate of yours. Is he dead too? We heard of it, you know. Rumors move fast here." Nidnene didn't feel like answering, continuing from where she had left. All the while their picks and shovel s kept their steady sounds of work.

"It was bright, warm autumn morning when they finally let us out. I reckoned that we'd been kept without food for almost three days now locked inside those jam packed, filthy barracks. At first the youngest kits had wailed and whined but now everyone was equally tired and hungry and quiet. Despite the constant hunger, fatigue, fear and humiliating nudity and the guards, who strengthened their orders with electric whips, I felt invigorated by the fresh air. We were ushered onward by the guards assisting with their whips and monsters of Badoon standing and growling menacingly by the razor wire fences. I could see high towers jutting at the edges of the compound, manned with armed guards and heavy weapons."

Nidnene sighs and straightens her back a little before continuing with the shoveling and her story.

"My children and I walked forward with hesitant steps, behind and ahead of us dumb prisoners formed a long, convoluted line. That morning we were just three lonely creatures among the clump of hundreds, perhaps thousands of prisoners - and I couldn't but wonder how many thousands had 'they' already processed through this facility, wearing worn-out and uncomfortable foreignly designed clothes, faces blank from fear. There was no smiling here, no recognizing gazes nor encouraging gestures. Only deep and foreboding fear. Most of us just stared down blankly at the ground beneath our feet, hardened by nameless masses, by those who before us had been driven through here. Poor beings who had become nothing but nameless carriers of fear and submission. Each of us would stand in line together but alone, without hope or salvation, only to hear their doom; to be carried out immediately -death or slavery. This war had so far lasted no more than two weeks, but we already knew what to expect from the Badoon."

"You could say that again. I Feel weird thinking myself lucky to have stayed only a day or so in those damn barracks" Danine mutters darkly.

"The guards eyed us indifferently, but I knew they could lose their self-control and become brutally violent from the slightest of provocations. I had witnessed one such outburst earlier in the morning, when a guard had kicked a female prisoner to death right in front of her own kits just because he could. It happened in that huge big hall, where we had been gathered after the separation by sexes and been given our new clothes. The guards walked among us, making sure that nobody was stalling or trying to hide or smuggle anything from inside their old rags into new clothing before ceding their old garments away. This prisoner wasn't very old, she was perhaps even pretty and simply inquiring something, perhaps something as innocent as water for her kits when I saw it happen. Without warning the guard struck at her with his gauntleted fist, putting all his strength behind the strike and hit her savagely on the neck. Felling her on the ground. the prisoner convulsed and gurgled, writhing in pain and tried to shield her body with her feeble arms when the guard jumped on her over and over. At first, she screamed and howled from pain with each kick but soon she fell silent, having lost her consciousness. Her poor kits could only stare muted and a good thing they and everyone else did or he might have slain them too for interfering.

Once she was clearly dead he rolled the body aside and looked around him as if waiting for a challenge against his brutal act, of course none came. Satisfied, he then scrubbed his boots clean on the dead female's clothes and waved two random prisoners to approach him. With plenty of hand waving and grunted unintelligible commands he ordered the body to be taken away. The carriers had no idea where to, but they still took the body by the arms and legs and carried it outside somewhere. Within moments, a hundred new feet were already stomping over the patch of blood where she had been murdered. Leaving no trace of this heinous act, except that terrible lingering fear in the witnesses' hearts.

"Kits" I whispered. "We must be strong. We've got to hold on." They looked at me numb from fear. "Kits, we will survive, all of us. I promise."

"We dragged ourselves forward almost silent, just the scant wail, sigh or occasionally whispered prayers for any gods who might be listening. The morning sun gleamed at the guards armors and weapons, shiny metal boots and brass hued buckles, it shone from their slit pupil eyes watching us. Gigantic monsters stomped their feet. Slob running from their metal jawed mouths. Were they sensing our fear the way I smelt ours, acrid stench of dried sweat, which after days without shower had firmly clung to our bodies, the smell of urine and feces which we couldn't get rid of, the nauseating smell of sickness, hunger and unwashed teeth in our breath? I held on to my kits. We females packed closer to our each other in the long line, trying to find some common succor despite being complete strangers to one another.

I had managed to hold on to my kits thus far and now we were standing there, almost right in front of this unfeeling monster, in this long line with other females and their kits. The judgment kept on going and the rows leaped forward along with my poor heart. I still couldn't recognize any of the other prisoners with me. Not a word was spoken. We stood and waited in the broiling sun. I could hear the shuffling steps, weeping sniffs and gusts of anguish when kin were separated as more and more people were added to the lines but sharpest were the cracks from the guard's whips and their angry cries while pushing the prisoners to move faster. Even from a distance I could hear the metallic crash of compound gates closing -a new batch had arrived, soon to be crammed inside those filthy barracks we'd just left vacated.

I silently counted what I had left: a plastic spoon and metal bowl, this uncomfortably coarse, loosely fitting grey body glove and my kits, but most of all we still lived and were together even though we hadn't eaten in days and had been forced to sleep in our own feces. Not all prisoners had been able to cope, and many died from exhaustion or dehydration inside those steaming hot barracks. I could only scoff at those prideful guards standing in line by the fences, weapons at the ready, as if we haggard females and tired kits would have been able to cause any riot. Merely standing in a row for hours was more than some females were able to withstand and those who couldn't were unceremoniously dragged away never to be seen again.

The Badoon officer doing the next inspection was tall and well-proportioned enough that even I noticed it, standing proudly and basking at the attention, in front of the line, in his shining metal armor. The lord and center of this little slice of hell-on-earth. He would look at each prisoner coldly and calculating, looking for flaws or traits he deemed useful or useless, worth to be taken away now or for work. With scant emotionless hand jerks and barely with any words he judged us one by one. Each of us thought we knew what that meant."

"You're not wrong there, that's no 'doctor'. The butcher. The worst. Pray you won't get sick and end under his 'care'. Danine curses almost whispering.

"I wasn't sure what the parameters were for us to be segregated, though the actual process was quick and surprisingly hands-off, it was no less harrowing. We were marched through some kind of metal arch and then sent either left or right"

"Medical scanner and the hoses. That's the two alleys, formed from barbwire, as we've become to call them in the camp slang." Danine supplies helpfully. Nidnene nods thankfully.

"I was relieved that my kits were sent along the same 'hose' as me and we quickly moved to the next building at the end (and last before the actual camp grounds) where a line had already formed. The prisoners were led inside one-by-one and presumably then let out at the other side.

Only we never really got that far. Suddenly the guards approached us and grabbed a hold of my kits. I protested wildly but my claws and teeth were no use against their armors. I was kicked in the stomach for my troubles and fell face first on the dirt, all wind knocked out of my body. A guard placed his foot against my neck, pushing me harder against the ground and though I knew that if I'd move they'd likely kill me, I moved anyway. The last thing I heard, before I lost my consciousness, were my kits crying out."

"My kits... I would have probably delivered within a day or two anyway. That one, The Butcher, he didn't care. I was pointed out and grabbed from the line, ushered into some sort of operating theatre and then strapped into a table. I don't recall much after, only that they had taken my unborn kits. After that they washed, clothed and marked me, like some cattle, before releasing me into the compound." Danine confesses starting to stare blankly ahead, which prompts Nidnene to pat Danine hard on the back to get her back to 'reality'.

"We'll make them pay. One way or another." Nidenene promises with barely concealed rage.

"Bold words for a slave but damn if I'm going to waste away in this rotten camp." Danine agrees.

"I know, but it won't be easy, and I won't leave without my kits." Nidnene reminds her and they both shut their yaps when a guard walks by.

The electronic work horn blares, signaling the end of the first half of shift. Climbing out from the huge pit via ladders without being rushed, Nidnene, for the first time had the actual time to really look at what they were working on. It seemed like an oval pit, a bit like underground stadium, maybe.

"Any idea what we're actually digging here for? she asked wearily from Danine.

"Before, I didn't know, didn't care. I just worked, but now... I think we should find out and fuck it to the best of our ability." She replies sounding much less petered than what she looked like.

Days started to fold together despite her attempts to track them, wake up -go to work at the pit -get back to barracks for the night, only real changes were brought by weather or occasional new people bringing rumors from outside. According to rumors something was happening outside, perhaps the war was reaching its climax? But even more worrying were the move outs. People were being picked and taken away with increasing frequency but to where? Nobody knew, not even the Kapos or if they did they refused to talk about it. Lenaire had proven as mean as Danine claimed, dashing Nidnene's hopes of ever finding out what really had happened to her poor kits. The only end result of her incessant pestering was to get herself caned. The morning, following her caning, started with a drizzle of rain which turned into a torrent as the day progressed towards noon. The lizards didn't care whether you were too young or too old, you still worked unless you were clearly too sick to even stand up. There were no exceptions or rainy-day breaks from working at the pit.

There they were all drenched and miserable, crawling on their knees in mud, trudging waist high in rain water down at the pit, back and shoulders protesting in pain, both from caning and rigors of work. It was useless to dig or shovel the sludge out, but they were told to do so anyway, and she was slowly getting a feeling that they were not so much digging foundations but their own graves with this useless work.

"I think I've figured out what this is for." Nidnene mutters brushing wet soaked fur away from her eyes with the back of her grimy paw.

"Really?" Danine says without much enthusiasm.

"It's a placeholder, a way to keep us busy. To break us."

"how can you tell?"

"Think about it, these lizards can travel in space. Yet they put us into digging for a hole as if they didn't know what an excavator is... A machine digs in an hour what takes days by hand and we've been doing this for Maker only knows how long. Or haven't you noticed how they seem to choose the most meek and hardworking when taking people away?"

"What else is new? Also, still waiting on your master plan for the great escape..." Danine sighs sarcastically, shivering slightly from cold and Nidnene couldn't really blame her for 'quitting easily'.

Even if they could escape, where would they go? There was no place safe left anymore, but she couldn't deny her yearning. They had to find a way out. She could already see some of her ribs and her once plump & fluffy tail now resembled something of a hairy rope than proper tail, the excess fat having dwindled away from the lack of adequate sustenance. Danine looked even worse and had contacted a rasping cough that was gradually getting worse. there had to be a way out before they'd both die in this pit.