Logbook entry

Purgatory, 6: Dawn of a New Day

09 Jan 2024Meowers

Warning: graphic descriptions.

"A conscious, persisting will to live is maybe the strongest defensive mechanism known to me. Animals have the survival instinct, yet we, humans, are able to reinforce it with our mindpower, withstanding unbelievable horrors that could make one die several times."

T + 15h...Ssshit, whatever. Smith woke me up saying those captives went out of their blocks and now pounding the building door, they took the rifles from the dead mercs, demanding a parley with the commanding officer. Mmmgh... Okay. That's what I call a good morning. A very early morning, by local timeline.

Asked the medics about our wounded. Dammit. Garraway and Richardson didn't make it. Therrien and Roberts are getting better but still too weak. What kind of heck have we gotten ourselves into?..

T + 15h 31min. Going to do that parley thing. Though it's all looking like Smith has been simply too riled up. I understand her though. They aren't bashing the door but knocking until someone pays attention, and they don't point those rifles at it, they're just carrying them.

T + 16h 04min. Uhhh... Yeah, did the talking. Got back with a lot of things to flex our brains over. And these captives, damn they aren't looking good. Out of their rotting wooden blocks, breathing fresh air for the first time in I can't even start to guess how long, wandering and looking around aimlessly or simply sitting or laying on the muddy ground, completely lost. Now, they're free. Now, they can go. Yet... Where? And what's next? The sudden gift of freedom which they dreamed of for a long while seemed to happen to be overwhelming for them, they don't know what to do with it once it has been finally given to them, maybe they didn't even believe in it, in fact.

Hundreds of people brought to desperation. Wet torn rags distantly resembling civilian clothing and even flight suits, on awfully malnourished, dirty, battered bodies. Gaunt, weak, with strikingly white eyes on exhausted, emaciated faces, discoloured skin, cracked lips, tangled hair, those people have really seen better times. The way they stared at me... Once I exited the building and the metal creaking noise of the door attracted them, they all turned their faces to me and just stared hollowly. Silently. Motionlessly.

Recent captives were a contrast to the rest of this crowd. Yes, they looked far more healthy, yet strong emotions of shock and fear, refusal to fully comprehend what had happened to them a couple of days ago etched their faces.

A little group of prisoners, both recent and those who spent almost a year here already, formed near the entrance of the command building, waiting for me. Compared to the rest, they held themselves determined, ready to take the lead in this decisive moment, and they were the ones whom I talked with.

So yeah... In short, I told them we can't take them with us since we aren't a rescue operation, we don't have that many ships, and that's why I didn't free them immediately upon clearing the camp of mercs. But I'm going to call a proper SAR once that whole place stops being that hot. Some mercs carry signal flares and I don't like it, we might get those bastards raining on our heads in case of a full-scale alert. Thankfully, they didn't use them, maybe presuming they were dealing with crazed prisoners, not professional marines whooping their arses, and we left none alive to tell the story.

Told about the truck hidden behind the road curve and the T-7 still standing in its place, intact. Maybe they have pilots in their group though I discouraged them from taking off right now, those mercs might have AA weaponry or ships to chase them down. They'd better use those rifles to make a somewhat concealed defence point near the closest crossroads and ferry folks to the T-7 whilst avoiding a contact of that grass with open wounds at all costs.

And they gave me more information to consider. Once in a day or two, a similar truck arrives through the gate on the opposite side of the compound. On the other side of that gate, a road led deeper into the jungle, uncharted, neither on the computer of the truck we used, nor on any maps we've found in the building. A person in that truck, sometimes the same, sometimes a different one, but not armour-clad as your typical merc, picked a small group of captives every time and nobody saw those people again. In the best cases. Randomly, that person returns a few people back, in such a state that those survivors can't even explain what they've been through. And then they die, too soon to describe their last days. Escape attempts, despite occurring regularly, have been futile so far, corpses of those who tried to run were left for months littering the perimeter, seemingly the mercs weren't bothered by removing them... Or they were left for a reason. Even that one stuck on the top of the fence, I didn't notice him in the dark, yet now the body was clearly visible, a harrowing and gruesome reminder.

Everything looked like he'd tried climbing over the top of the barbed wire fence. Desperation can make people try doing almost anything. He'd climbed to the top and apparently tried to swing himself over the barbs, perhaps hoping to catch the fence again on the other side and climb down, or just hoping that he didn't injure himself too badly and didn't hit the metal spikes if he fell cleanly all the way to the ground.

Instead, exhausted, lacking in mental judgement, or both, he failed to swing himself over the top, and instead landed fully on top of the wire. The barbs tore deeply into him. Instinctively he had immediately tried to get off of them, but, with nothing to push against, his only way to free himself was to try to roll and slide himself down. The barbs ripped at his flesh as he did so. He managed to get far enough that he could again reach to hold onto the fence and try to push himself up with his hands to try to relieve some of the pressure, but it was too late. The damage was done, he could not separate his flesh from the barbs ripping deeper and deeper, and the pain was so severe that he could not move. The blood loss weakened him, and gravity took over. His weight pressed him fully back onto them, and then he began to slip and fall towards the ground. The barbs tore his abdomen open and ripped muscle from bone. His hands gripped the fence unyieldingly tightly as some subconscious reflex action tried to fight the inevitable. His fall was halted by the barbs tearing at his face catching into his skull, and by one of his legs being entangled in the wire, hanging him there. He died in excruciating agony as his torn entrails slipped out and hung freely from his ruptured stomach.

Judging by the decomposition of the body this happened around a week ago. His rigour mortised hands clung to the fence for the first night, and now, decaying and disintegrating, they looked like a part of the construction.

"Poor Billy. He was just seventeen. Screamed for the entire night."

Also, an interesting thing I've discovered. They were from completely different organisations, factions, social groups, standings, places, origins, from formerly successful businesspersons and authority representatives to simple lowest-wage workers or even Imperial sla... Indentured servants of that godsdamned sick society. Or even criminals. And their ways to this friggin place were somewhat similar, a straight away capture or an ambush for a group of people. The thing I decided to do... Before they went to the truck, I wrote down a list of organisations they were a part of and what they did there in general. Hm... Even some lower-level Aegis members were here.

No answers about that 'David Buckley' guy. They were too shocked and too busy being herded into trucks and then into containment blocks to keep track of him, and then nobody saw him again. That's a clue... That arsehole may be actually cooperating with the mercs.

T + 16h 38min. Captives left the compound. Medics gave everyone in the platoon a vaccine shot and put the remaining injectors into their medkits. Poor Garraway and Richardson will be left here, in bags, I will tell the SAR or our Reapers about them. And we have to split for a little while.

T + 16h 51min. Set up an ambush near the gate, some people inside behind the buildings, some outside in the grass. First rifles, both machineguns, Marcos as medic. Marksmen on the towers, pretending to be mercs. Everyone else are watching through the main building windows to support us if needed. Platoon HQ are busy running through my list, cross-checking the information, but ready to join the fight.

T + 17h 51min. Still nothing. Godsdamned road has a curve in, like, fifty metres from the gate, no way to see them from afar.

T + 18h 47min. Damn nothing... Don't tell me we have to spend another night here.

T + 19h 14min. Distant gunfire sounds. Presumably down the road. The heck? Okay, taking first rifles and Marcos with me. Will go through the jungle to take a look.

* * *
Next part: #7: Sinner vs. Sinner
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