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Post by Yehoshua ben Israel on Sept 7, 2011 13:57:46 GMT
Among the Enslaved 2-1-1
Joshua grunted involuntarily as he was thrown into a transport crowded with many other people. He glanced around wondering to himself how it had come to this. Everything had happened so quickly. It had all started with the APM’s new attack on Israel; something had made the APM angry, angry enough to be willing to take their anger out on anyone they deemed too weak to resist. Yet again, Israel repelled the attacks; however, it was a pyric victory. Territory had been lost, and with it, many brave lives. As the APM pushed through each city, they would take their prisoners and ship them all off somewhere, Joshua always wondered where, now he knew. Joshua had been leading another strike force to recapture a city based on information from an informant that the APM had weakened the defenses … it was a trap.
Joshua cursed himself every time he went through the events in his mind, looking back in hindsight, he knew that it could have been nothing but a trap; but the desire for revenge and victory had blinded him. What hadn’t been killed of his task force was captured and now they were being shipped off from earth to some planet, who knows where, in the Arcian system. All Joshua could do now was wait and pray.
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Post by Yehoshua ben Israel on Sept 16, 2011 13:39:26 GMT
Among the Enslaved 2-1-2
Joshua was startled awake by the sudden burst of bright lights. The transport had landed somewhere and now the transport doors where being opened by APM troops and the people were being herded out. Joshua glanced around to try and see if David, his best friend and squad mate, was anywhere. He couldn't believe that David was dead after all they had been through together he had to be alive, he just had to find him.
Joshua was brought back to reality when an APM soldier shoved him forward with the butt of his gun. When Joshua didn't move the soldier made a move to hit him again, but the blow never came. As the gun came swinging at Joshua, he quickly sidestepped and let the gun follow all the way through, then as the soldier pulled it back up, Joshua caught the gun under his armpit and swiped the soldier's feet out from under him with his leg. As the man came crashing down Joshua had already moved up to the next unsuspecting guard and knocked him unconscious with a blow to the head.
Joshua then broke into an all out run, until he realized he had no idea where he was going. By this time the first guard was yelling at the top of his lungs that a prisoner had escaped. Joshua looked behind him to see that none of the other prisoners had made a move. Joshua quickly pushed that thought aside and looked for a way of escape. It was some type of docking facility, Joshua realized that he was in the middle of space, not on a planet, there was no where for him to go. Well, he thought, might as well take a few of them with me; but, before he could do anything, he blacked out.
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Post by Yehoshua ben Israel on Oct 6, 2011 0:36:15 GMT
Among the Enslaved 2-1-3
Joshua came to his senses in a sudden burst of pain. He groaned involuntarily as he tried to sit up. However, someone pushed him back down as he tried to get up. Joshua immediately began to fight back, until he was stopped by the sound of a familiar voice, "shalom …” Joshua tried to make out the face in the darkness. “Broker tov Joshua, maybe next time you will take account of your surroundings before you take off running.” “David!” Joshua exclaimed and he realized that his old friend was still alive. Joshua quickly leaned back down as he still felt dizzy, “What happened?”
“Well” David answered, “We docked at a midway stopping point between earth and the planet we are heading to. You didn’t know that we were in the middle of space and tried to escape. The reason you blacked out was a result of the new stun guns that the APM has been utilizing with the prisoners. I have had the chance to talk to a few “old-timers” aboard this transport. They said that they used the same weapon to take down someone pretty important on Apothos during some type of exchange.
Anyways, we are about to arrive shortly on the planet of Raynor.” “What are they going to do with us once we get there?” Joshua asked. “I don’t know, but I doubt it is anything good. Joshua continued, “What about the rest of our squad, did anyone else make it?” David replied, “I don’t know, the guards watch us pretty close and don’t like us to converse. We will find out more when we get where we are going. You better try and get some rest; we are going to need it where ever we are going.”
Joshua laid back and allowed himself a small sense of relief. With someone like David watching his back, he could focus on a way to get out of this mess and hopefully extract revenge from the APM at the same time.
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Post by Yehoshua ben Israel on Nov 5, 2011 21:40:33 GMT
Among the Enslaved 2-1-4
"Next!" The word came ringing out as the APM Officer motioned for the next person in line to step forward. Joshua's muscles tensed as he stood his ground and didn't move. "I said NEXT!" David whispered in to Joshua's ear, "You are going to do more good in getting us out of this mess if you will just go along with them for now, nothing you do here is going to make a difference." Joshua finally took a reluctant step forward.
After arriving on a planet, which Joshua learned soon afterwards was called Raynor, the prisoners had been taken to a holding facility where thousands of prisoners where located from numerous locations of APM conquest. With systematic efficiency, the APM soldiers would periodically come into the main holding facility and herd a selection of people out to a different room. Throughout the wait, the prisoners were forced to sit and no talking was allowed, the rule was simple, anyone caught talking would be shot on sight, no questions asked. Joshua didn't have to test the guards to see if they meant it. When the time came for Joshua's group to enter the next room, they were lined up, called up one at a time, and asked certain questions.
As Joshua walked up to the table where the APM officer was sitting, he couldn't help but feel completely helpless. "Name, Occupation, Age” The officer stated. Joshua answered quickly, "Yehoshua ben Israel, Soldier, 32” The officer raised an eyebrow as he heard Joshua's name and occupation. "Soldier eh, well, as does it fell to be on the losing team?" Joshua took a step forward but was quickly restrained by the two guards behind him. "Next!" The officer continued motioning Joshua on.
The next couple of hours occurred like a blur for Joshua. He was completely searched, forced to change into a Red jumpsuit, and was separated from David somewhere in the process. All that anyone would tell him was that he was being located to a place where he would further benefit the efforts of the APM war machine.
When Joshua finally arrived at his destination the first thing that he noticed was the cold, it was freezing and there was patches of snow and ice interspersed throughout the landing zone of the transport. As Joshua looked to his right, he could see what looked like a research facility and a small city beyond the facility. However, the soldiers made the prisoners walk in the opposite direction for about thirty minutes until the group made it to what looked like a cement shack. The head officers walked up to the shack and placed his hand at the center of the door looked into a peephole and spoke something in a language that Joshua did not understand. The door swung silently inward and the soldiers motioned the prisoners through the door and down the flight of steps into an elevator.
After getting out of the elevator, Joshua was amazed to a huge facility swarming with activity. He was nudged in the back, he looked behind him to see it was David; somehow they had managed to stick together, "Look over there." David murmured as he gestured with his head. Joshua looked to see a bunch of men in red jumpsuits working at some type of menial labor. Before he could determine what exactly the men were doing, the group was forced to move again to a separate area from the main underground facility. They were told to sit down on the floor in an open room, while a new officer whom Joshua had not seen before walked in front of all of them and began to speak.
"Welcome to Raynor. You will never be leaving this place, so dispel of thoughts of escape, I could go into every detail of our top security, but I will let someone else take care of the pleasure of conveying that fact to you. From now on you will only be known by the number on your jumpsuit and your only purpose is to do what you are told to do. If you follow orders, your life here will be a pleasant one, if you don't ... well let's just say that we will be showing you a few case studies that will give you the idea of how rebellion is treated here. You will now be taken to a holding cell until we can evaluate were you will serve us best." The officer motioned to the head guard who had led them into the facility, and he motioned for the prisoners to get up and follow him. As Joshua got up, he noticed the man who had spoken was staring at him, but before Joshua could look back, the guard had moved him on to the next room, which consisted of a long hallway.
After going down several flights of stairs, through several locked doors, and multiple guards, the prisoners where finally allowed to rest in a cellblock with four men to a cell. Joshua didn't recognize the other three men and they weren't very talkative, neither was he. He sat down on the floor with his back to the wall and fell into a trouble sleep.
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Post by Yehoshua ben Israel on Jan 25, 2012 18:26:18 GMT
Among the Enslaved 2-1-5
Joshua woke as heard the sound of the clatter of metal against metal. He looked up to see the guards walking down the rows of cells running their guns against the cell doors and yelling at the prisoners to get up on their feet. Joshua let out sigh and stiffly rose to his feet. He looked again at the other men standing next to him in the cell and noticed that one had a small symbol on the bottom of his left wrist. However, before Joshua could look at it any closer to distinguish what it was, a guard had opened the cell door and was motioning the men through at a rapid pace.
After going through another series of long corridors, the guards had ushered the men in Joshua’s cell block to a large room with hundreds of small white squares, about 3 ft by 3 ft in length, on the ground with a number painted red in the center. “FIND YOU NUMBER AND STAND ON IT!” the head guard yelled motioning rapidly for each person to move quickly. Joshua reluctantly looked at the number on his red jumpsuit, 41C, a moved in the direction that he thought his number might be located.
As he walked, he tried to scan to the crowd of men to see if there was anyone that he recognized. He soon found the task impossible, trying to find his number and trying to find people at the same time, so he soon gave up. Eventually he found his number just as the final people found their own as well. The officer seemed to be waiting patiently as each person found his spot. Once it appeared that everyone was in place, the officer began speaking. “Every morning you will come to this spot at 6:30 every morning and find your number in a timely manner. If you ever are late you will be punished severely, the Apothos Private Military Corporation does not allow tardiness. Your very being here is a merciful gesture of the APM. They have decided that your life is worth living to help serve the Corporation’s needs. If you ever stop serving that purpose then … your services will no longer be required. You will be grouped together by your section Letter and will be told what you tasks will be. Serve the APM well, and live. When I call out your section letter, move to where I direct you.
As the head officer started calling out letters, Joshua kept looking for people that he’d recognize, a few times he thought he saw someone, but he couldn’t tell for sure. When his letter was called he made his way over to the head officer had directed them, where a very tall and strong looking man stood. He was about 6’6” and looked like he weighed 200 pounds of nothing but muscle. As the men in Section C came to where he stood, he motioned for them to follow him. And without a second glance he turned around and started walking very rapidly down a flight of stairs that continued on for quite some time. After reaching the bottom of the long flight of stairs, they stood in front of a very large metal door. The man went up to the door and put both hands on the center of the door, after a couple seconds, there was an audible click and the doors swung inwards with an eerie creak.
As the Joshua and the other men made their way through the door, they were amazed by the sheer size of the room they had just entered. The Room was as long as five football fields and almost as wide. Throughout the entire room were hundreds of prisoners all working on different tasks. Joshua wondered how such a huge complex could be completely underground. The man leading them spoke for the first time. “Welcome to the APM Raynor Research Facility Work Station Alpha…” A man quipped beside Joshua, “I bet they have had a nightmare trying to turn that name into an acronym.” Joshua smiled briefly before returning his attention back to the man. “This is where all the dirty work of the facility is done. You need not worry about what others tasks are here, only your own. If you do well on this first level of work you might get promoted to better positions. Contrary to what some of you think, despite the fact you are prisoners, we don’t want to kill you, it is in our best interests to keep you alive. Prisoners always work better if they are alive anyways. However, if you do anything stupid, that doesn’t mean you will not get punished severely. Now, if you will follow me I will show you what you will be doing for the majority of your time here.”
The man led them down a ramp from the door they entered until they reached the main floor of the complex and across to where they was another door in one of the walls on the left side of the complex. The door was already opened so they walked through stopping inside a long hallway that had equipment lining the walls. The man told them to grab, what Joshua learned later to be called a polelight(a modern shovel that has another sheet of metal on the end that contains whatever is picked up and a light on the top of the handle the glows illuminating a certain radius around the pole), a helmet, and gloves. After picking up their needed equipment, the men made their way through another door that led to a big elevator, which the entire group of men was able to fit on. The man selected the lever to go down.
After a several minutes, the group made it to the even lower destination. When the elevator doors opened all they could see was solid rock with tunnels leading in every direction. The man made a motion for them to follow him, and they followed him down one of the long dark tunnels. They walked until they reached a huge trench in the ground that something resembling a rail system running through the trench in both directions. The men followed the man onto what resembled a train and sat down on the chairs and seatbelts. The man spoke, “Put your seatbelt on and when the light on the seat in front of you turns yellow, hold your head hard against the back of your chair, otherwise you’ll regret it.”
Joshua did as he was told and as the lights changed for red to yellow to green, he was glad that he had. The train had shot off like a cannon and if Joshua hadn’t braced himself, he might have had his neck broken. The train was moving so fast that Joshua couldn’t have got himself out of his seat even if he had wanted to. When they came to a complete stop, Joshua was also very thankful for the seatbelt, which kept him from slamming into the seat in front of him. Once they got off the transport, they walked a little distance further down another tunnel until they arrived at site where it appeared their work would begin.
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