The Concentration Camps

Kadyrov wept silently.  He watched his tears float gently
from his face, borne away on the fingertips of invisible angels to pool
into miniscule, barely visible spheres.

 

Around him, his fellow Chechens mourned in their own respective
ways.  The tunnel was dark, even with the harsh electric lighting
mounted at intervals in the stone walls.  Around him, shuffling
forms moved or wriggled against each other, seeking escape from the
biting cold.  A few sniffled.  Some - mostly women - sobbed
openly.  The children clasping their mamas' knees didn't know to
cry for what they had lost, but they shed tears too, in their own
sympathetic way.

 

Kadyrov had no children.  He gave thanks to whatever god
might be listening for that.  No child of his would endure such a
thing while he lived, while he had breath in his body to fight against
the Russians.  But he had not fought.  He was too much the
coward, and so when the soldiers had come to round his village up, he
did not protest except to speak to the commander of the soldiers about
the grandmothers of the village.  The commander had nodded, had
shown sympathy, and had done what he could to bring medicines and ease
the process.

 

He could not have been Russian, thought Kadyrov to
himself, bitterly.

 

He looked up, seeking some sort of comfort, and saw that a child
had clambered up the roughly-hewn tunnel walls, past the
thickly-insulated electrical cables that lined them, and had found a
niche for himself on the ceiling.  Kadyrov smiled quietly. 
"Come down, little Tapa," he called quietly.  "Or you will fall
and hurt your head, and make your mother sad."  Pouting, Tapa
pushed off gently from the ceiling and let himself drift into the
waiting arms below, ready to receive him.

 

"They call these emergency shelters," rumbled Didigov, the man
sitting next to Kadyrov.  The Chechen looked over, shaking his
head, as Didigov continued.  "But they are concentration
camps.  They will abandon us in the dark, Kadyrov."  But
Kadyrov knew better.  He said nothing.

 

"Second stage burn in two minutes.  All citizens, orient
yourselves to the painted strips on the tunnels marked DOWN. 
Anyone not secured will be injured when the thrusters engage," boomed a
voice.  Along with the lights, the Russians had installed one-way
speakers to broadcast instructions or news.  Sometimes, they
played Western music.  Kadyrov wondered where they had got it from.

 

"The End is a lie, you know.  The Russians made it up to have
excuses to imprison us and fire us into orbit.  Kadyrov, weren't
you in the air force once?"  Didigov was still talking to
him.  Kadyrov pulled his attention away.   "Yes, yes,
but that was a long time ago," he replied listlessly.

 

"Did you ever see anything about the end of the world there, or
hear anything about it?" Didigov was pressing, Kadyrov knew, looking
for any excuse to start an argument.  Maybe a riot.  For all
the good it would do him - there was nowhere to go.  Kadyrov felt
himself sinking ever further into the mire of angst.

 

"That was long ago," he replied at last, drawing a painful
breath of the cool air.  "Long before the
aliens arrived.  They brought the warning.  Not Moscow."

 

Didigov, seeing that he could not draw out the other man, fell
silent.  Kadyrov felt a brief moment of gratitude.

 

"Second stage burn in one minute.  All citizens, orient
yourselves to the painted strips on the tunnels marked DOWN. 
Anyone not secured will be injured when the thrusters engage."

 

Kadyrov gave one more long look around.  Tapa, and the other
children, were obeying orders, huddled against their parents.  He
sighed, then made sure at last that he too was secure.

 

"Thirty seconds .... fifteen seconds .... ten .... five ....
commence burn."

 

The voice shut off abruptly, as did all other sounds. 
Kadyrov felt an ancient hand of stone press against his back, while the
merciless palm of gravity closed in from the other side.  The
acceleration was abrupt and painful.  He felt blood rushing
through his body, urged along by the relentless forces pressing against
him.  Consciousness wavered.  How fast are they
accelerating?  No Russian rocket could have done this except at
takeoff, and then not for more than a few minutes.

 

Time passed in uncountable flickers as he struggled to keep his
mind alert.  Voices, distorted by the assault on his senses,
seemed to come from distant points all around him.

Around him, the mountain was shuddering.  The bedrock which for so
long had been nurtured by the planet protected them too, but the
trembling was rattling small pebbles and dusty grit from the
walls.  Kadyrov could hear crying.  Some of the children were
screaming.

 

The pain gradually eased off, and Kadyrov felt that his arms and
legs had gone temporarily numb.  Again the voice droned from the
speakers, echoing up and down the hallway.  "Primary gravity drive
has been engaged.  All citizens are encouraged to exercise briefly
to confirm their physical fitness.  Meals will be available
shortly."

Kadyrov sighed.  He had fared better through the harsh
acceleration, and he well knew what everyone had endured.  At the
same time, he recognized, even grudgingly accepted, that such thrust
had been moderate compared to what a cosmonaut might have endured even
five years ago.  The pilots were going easy.  That, or their
gravity-control science compensated somehow.

Everyone aboard was a cosmonaut now.  And an outcaste.