The Black Commander, the Dranta, kept inviting me to play Drantanara. She wasn't a great player but she was good enough. It eroded my support. When I pointed that out, she invited other Dranta to play with her. It quickly got out that she was Dranta.
That split the barracks again. I was looked at as a traitor for not having spoken sooner. I tried to explain. It wasn't really the Commander's fault. She'd been raised on the Black side, so of course she was going to think they were right. That was only logical. It wasn't seen like that. At least no one attempted to say we should free her. The Commander would have signed their execution papers within an hour. There were those who thought she was slaved to a machine. I had to admit that was possible, so did the other Dranta she played with. We had no idea what that collar was for and I wasn't the only one who had noticed the similarities between that one, and the one the Opar had put on.
The Opar, and her child, had been the only one who'd left us peacefully.
"Why did you take that Opar away?" I asked one day. The game was going my way. I felt bold.
"That Opar?" the Commander asked. She frowned slightly. She'd never told me her name. When I'd asked, she'd told me it was written on her desk. She'd even shown me the name plate. It was written in Black script. I had no idea what it said.
"The one that had the kid," I clarified.
Her confusion turned to surprise. "A POW Camp is no place to raise a child," she told me as if that should be obvious. I nodded. It was obvious. "We offered her a place with one of the Opar colonies."
The Commander had gotten good at reading me. The look she directed at my confusion told me to think. I quickly realised that there were multiple planets in Black Territory. The Alliance had lost so many. There were plenty of civilians, and POWs within their area.
It led to a new question. What happened to us? The war had been going for generations. I knew what the maps looked like. It wasn't going to end soon, either.
The Commander muttered something in Black. I think she'd been waiting for me to make that realisation. On some level, I had already made it, I'd just avoided thinking about it. Now I had no choice.
She pushed the game away completely. I'd been winning. I had no focus now. "Usually we'd be a lot harsher," she announced. "The genders would have been separated completely from the outset. There would be a male facility and a female facility. Neuters would have been distributed between, but never moved. You are soldiers after all. Civilians have it a bit easier," she added. She had told me she was a second gen, so obviously civilians could have children.
Her glance made me nod. This has been going on for a while. It made sense.
"For the soldiers, this is your life. Those that have been captured have lived out their lives in similar conditions to the ones you know. They are fed, they work, they are fed and they sleep, and repeat."
That was the rhythm to our lives. I imagined it going on until my death. I shuddered.
"Since we've been doing it for a few generations, you can rest assured our vigilance will not wane," the Commander added the emphasis. "The prisons are eventually closed, and reclaimed for other purposes.
I knew what she was trying to tell me. Arbriana's group was doomed to fail. The Blacks would have seen all resistance over time.
The Commander gave me some time to truly appreciate that. I understood. After years of the same routine work, we'd all do something stupid to end it. The Blacks would probably subtly provide the means as well. They didn't care if you suicided, so long as you didn't attempt to take them, or others, with you. They were very firm on that. Everyone could make their own choice.
"For civilians, it starts the same. The camps are more lenient. Those who adapt are encouraged to return to their old lives, to return to the trade they knew or something equally contributory. There's not much difference in their lives after all, except who is providing the security forces and the taxation system."
That was a contradiction I didn't want to consider. I suppose it made sense, soldiers had taken up arms against them. The civilians were just there. But the Alliance had quotas for soldiers. Not everyone volunteered.
"But the brass wants to experiment here. It's a small one. This isn't a large facility and it was predominantly for training."
"The brass?" I didn't recognise the term. I knew we were a small camp though. That was obvious. Qaoloe wasn't well developed. There hadn't been many troops here, not compared to the planets we usually fought on.
"Command," the Commander corrected. "It's an old slang term," she explained. "It comes from a time when the rank insignia was actually made from brass."
I didn't know what metal was brass. I assumed it was a Black thing. And it really wasn't important now.
"They've decided to experiment. They want to see if we can make the process quicker."
For a moment, I felt sick. I thought she meant make our deaths quicker. They could do that. There was nothing stopping them just lining us up and shooting. Nothing at all. Something in the Commander's eyes made it clear she wasn't referring to that.
"We want you to integrate," she confirmed.
"Integrate? You mean serve the Blacks." My voice was broken. "Why don't you just slave us all then?" I ignored the fact we were nothing better than slaves at the moment.
She looked at me incredulously. "You're intelligent, Dranitor." The Commander sounded disappointed. She seldom used my name. She wanted to make sure I was listening properly. "I would have thought you'd have realised by now, we don't slave organics to machines."
"Then what's that collar?" I demanded. I wanted to yell. I made sure I didn't. That would have brought the guards I knew were outside. The quadruped ones. They wouldn't have hesitated to maul me.
"It's necessary," she said, sitting back. Her voice was quiet.
"How?" I still wanted to know.
"It just is." That wasn't a comforting answer. "I'm not the best person to explain it." She defended the weakness of her answers. At least she realised that much.
"Who is then?"
The Commander was silent for a few moments. I knew I'd pushed too far. I didn't care. Essentially, she'd told me the Black command expected us to defect. That wasn't going to happen. Arbriana's faction would be here until they died. They'd do something to accelerate that. Mine would slowly go insane. We'd join Arbriana's. That was inevitable. I think the Commander knew it.
"I'll get someone," she said.
I didn't really know what that meant. But I knew we were finished for today. I rose to leave.
"Tell your faction, tell all of them, before they get uppity about what you've learned today, that this planet isn't important. The experiment doesn't matter to the Brass. It's nice if they can get it to happen. I argued it would be better to let you mob have children, to give you new ties to the world. The Brass decided they'd done that already. They want to deny you the option, but show that it's there if you co-operate. As such, they want to see if this will succeed, but they'll live with it if it doesn't. If you are too unruly, we'll abandon Qaoloe."
For one shining instant, I was overwhelmed by the thought of freedom. Then reality set in. I knew that wasn't what the Commander meant. "We'll withdraw," she explained. Her eyes were focused on nothing. "And then drop a kinetic round."
She didn't need to say anything more. I knew she wasn't lying. Qaoloe was a rock with atmosphere. It wasn't valuable. No one would even notice. The action went against what we'd experienced with the Blacks but I knew they'd do it. The Commander would regret it but she'd do it. She was a Black after all. I couldn't forget that.
"I'll tell them," I promised. I would. I already knew it wouldn't do any good. But I'd tell them. I hoped if it came to that they'd take my faction. We were reasonable, after all. I recognised the irony there. Of all the factions, we were the ones the experiment was likely to succeed with.
The traitorous part of me wondered what it might be like. What other options were out there if I agreed to what the Blacks wanted.
Arbriana of course refused to listen to me. The nicest thing she called me was a traitor. Her faction began subtly fighting us. Mostly, it was an annoyance. They left messages. Collaborators. Unforgiven. Traitors. That sort of thing. There wasn't much we could do. We ignored their attacks. They weren't meant to succeed. Not on us.
Her faction's defiance got bolder. The Commander wasn't happy. The Blacks executed those they caught defying them but for some reason they never executed Arbriana. Eventually, I asked why.
"Because she hasn't done anything," the Commander paused from the game, looking up at me.
"Nothing?" I was incredulous. "You executed that Gryna yesterday for attacking, but you know who ordered it. You know she's the leader of that group." What was happening here?
The Commander sighed, pushing the Drantanara game aside. "We know she's the leader of that faction, just as we know you have lost support of many. There's now those who still follow the more tolerant path, and those who are wondering how long things will remain as they are. They are beginning to wonder about the possibilities that might lie in their future." The Commander just looked at me smugly. Those were the ones who would turn to the Blacks first. She also didn't mention those who had already turned. We knew there were some. There had to be. It was inevitable. "But she, Arbriana, hasn't done anything."
I stared. It seemed wrong but my mind provided context to the Commander's announcement. Arbriana hadn't actually done anything. She led her faction, she organised what they did. She didn't actually do much in the end. She let them do it. I wondered if I could use that to sway a few back to me. I don't seek power, I just knew it was a matter of time before they got fed up and attacked. At that point, we'd all be dragged in. It was something of a miracle it hadn't happened already. It said much for Black vigilance.
As the Commander had promised me some time ago, they had not faltered. I think Arbriana realised there had to be those who were prisoners for decades and the Blacks had practice in guarding them. I don't know what she thought of that. Maybe I should ask her.
"So you are deciding on a concept of personal responsibility?"
"Everyone is responsible for their own actions."
"Even if they are ordered?" We were soldiers. We had to carry out our superior's orders. Not even the Blacks could be that different. It would be chaos.
"It is command's responsibility to ensure their orders are h-" At this the Commander paused. "I'll say moral," she continued, having decided what word to use. I wondered what word she was going to say. Honourable sprang to mind but did not explain the pause. "If I am ordered to withdraw from this facility and deal with it, I am still responsible. Those who carry out my orders are responsible. Those who ordered me are responsible. We all bear responsibility for the actions."
Again, she reminded me of the earlier threat. I wondered if anything had changed, but stuck to the issue at hand. "So why isn't Arbriana responsible?" I pressed.
"Because she hasn't ordered anything," the Commander told me. "You think she has. I know she hasn't. She has encouraged, she has supported, but she has never instructed anyone to do anything."
I felt cold. That sort of information said the Commander knew every word that was spoken in the barracks, knew every interaction between our people. How did the Blacks know? How many were spies? All of us knew that some might betray us. This seemed more far more than that.
"You don't believe me," the Commander made it a statement. She knew what I was thinking and wasn't going to explain. "It's the way the W'ymic are," she added with a shrug. I couldn't deny they were manipulative. "And it's not like we aren't punishing her." That was true. Arbriana was sent to solitary more than the others. I realised what that meant.
The Blacks were controlling the situation. They were keeping Arbriana in power. She got punished. Her faction saw that. They were encouraged even with her absences. To them, the punishment was justification for her leadership. I wondered if I might point that out to some of her more moderate faction people. They'd never listen.
"Think about what I have told you objectively. Think about what you know with a view to the future," the Commander added. I knew she was referring to the map we'd been shown this morning. Drana was getting very close to disputed territory. I could only imagine the panic my people were experiencing.
I stared at her. It was true, being a POW was nothing like what the Alliance said it would be. I could understand that. The Alliance didn't retake many planets. There wasn't a lot of information about what happened. If I looked at the war objectively, the Alliance was losing the war.
But that didn't mean I should ally with the Blacks. It didn't mean that everything the Commander had told me was true. It didn't explain the Destroyers. Those were Bright Ones. They were slaved.
"Tell me about the collar," I countered. I knew there was something with the collars. No one had explained.
"Soon," the Commander promised. "I told you I was not the best person to explain. I have sent for someone."
"Who?" I'd never asked before.
"Someone who can explain," the Commander countered. She wasn't going to tell me.
I glared but it's not like I was in a position of power. And then I was dismissed. I left. I still had a lot to think about. Every meeting with the Commander only seemed to generate more questions. I wondered if that was part of the experiment. Doubt could lead to compliance and if the Blacks were controlling Arbriana's faction, what else were they controlling?
I didn't like that thought.