A shrill buzzer sounded before the dormitory’s light’s flickered on. Automatically Konrad rose from his bunk. It didn’t pay to loiter too long in your bunk because soon the Kapos would enter. The Kapos were inmates just like Konrad and the others, but in exchange for extra rations and preferential treatment, these prisoners brutally kept order in the dormitories and were usually drawn from the ranks of the camp’s criminal population and not from the political prisoners. As a result, the Kapos were resented by the other prisoners, but Konrad himself couldn’t blame them for selling out because all these men were doing was simply finding a way to survive just like him.
Now dressed, Konrad looked down the dormitory and saw that a large scrum had already formed outside the latrine. He scurried between the stoves to join the jostling mass of bodies. Outside the latrine the dreaded Kapos stood encouraging the waiting prisoners inside.
‘Keep moving, you filthy bastards!’ the Kapos cried. ‘Keep moving!’
Konrad successfully avoided their swinging fists and batons and entered the latrine. On one side of the poorly-lit room was a bank of wash-basins over which a prisoner was hunched, swilling their faces and bodies with the foul water that spat from the rusting taps. Opposite the basins and hidden behind a waist-high screen were a series of metal drums. The nauseating smell that emanated from these drums indicated what they contained. Suddenly a space appeared at the side of one of these containers. Konrad took his chance and deposited himself over it. He pulled down his pants and carefully rolled up the old newspaper that had clung to his bony body. This was his treasured insulation paper and a god-send in the cold environment. The last thing he wanted was for it to fall into the shit and piss below. It was an old newspaper, a copy of the popular Völkischer Beobachter which he had stolen long ago from the camp’s sickbay when he was part of a work-party that redecorated the facility. But the newspaper was a constant reminder to Konrad as to why he was stuck in the prison. By some terrible coincidence one of the stories in the edition he possessed reported his own court case. He could have discarded the mocking article, with its half-truths and down-right lies, but he had decided to keep it. The newspaper was a reminder of his previous life.
A Bremen schoolteacher who attempted to brainwash his pupils was yesterday jailed for life by the People’s Court. During the course of the week long trial, the court heard how Hans Konrad attempted to instil in his innocent pupils, some as young as 10-years-old, the warped and twisted notion of an alternative world in which Germany lost the war to the Bolsheviks and their Jewish-backed Western Allies.
Prosecutor Vogel said: “Konrad, despite his lack of violence, proved to be an extremely dangerous individual. The Reich is now, thankfully, a safer place now that he has been removed from society. His attempt to corrupt his own pupils with his venomous and insidious subversion has turned the stomach of every good and loyal German. He tried to foist his ludicrous and blasphemous fantasies upon the Reich’s most innocent members, its children, that if left unchecked could have bred an illogical belief of an alternative world without the power and beauty of Nazism and that of our beloved Überführer.”
The prosecutor went on to describe how it was one of Konrad’s own pupils who reported him to the authorities and brought his perverted career to an end. The young boy was rewarded with a 10 Reichsmark book token.
In the past, men’s lives had been destroyed in exchange for countries or great wealth, but Konrad’s was destroyed simply for the sake of a book token.
As he completed his natural duties, some prisoners, not bothering to wait for an empty drum, simply urinated against the screen or onto the tiled floor in front of him. The lack of shame from his fellow inmates wasn’t a surprise to him, and he was thankful that he hadn’t yet sunk to that level. The steaming liquid splashed Konrad as he pulled his pants back up. Moving past the screen he claimed a spot in front of an empty basin. Again he safely tucked his jacket and paper between his legs, then cupped his hands to catch the cool, brown water and used it to quickly wipe his face and body. He finished washing and then took another scoop of water. For a moment he considered swallowing the dirty liquid to wash away his constant thirst, but he restrained himself and allowed the gnawing thirst to remain his relentless companion. It was better to remain thirsty and alive than risk taking a drink and die from dysentery. Pulling away from the basin, Konrad eased himself back into the saggy jacket and reached down to retrieve the paper, but as he did the buzzer sounded once again, prompting a final rush to the basins and the latrines. The rush of bodies knocked Konrad forward into the dividing screen, and as he clattered into the tiled partition the newspaper slipped from his grasp and landed on the floor. He pushed several prisoners out of the way as he stooped to retrieve the paper, but it was already too late. A pool of urine had soaked into the newspaper. As a result the headlines that had been previously so stark and unchanging were transformed into smudged and distorted gibberish. He lifted the wet paper from the floor but it broke apart messily in his hands and so the last traces of his previous life and his most treasured possession in this god-forsaken place had now been taken from him too, just like the life that had been described in the headlines and the story.
Filing out of the dormitory, a downcast Konrad and his fellow prisoners, escorted by the Kapos, headed down a mine-like corridor whose surface twinkled with icy condensation. The rusting grating beneath their feet rattled rhythmically as they marched. As Konrad marched along he passed several port-holes set in the corridor’s wall. If he had been offered the chance to look out beyond the cold, blank walls he would have seen a spectacular sight, this was because the camp in which Konrad was imprisoned wasn’t located in some god-forsaken corner of Eastern Europe, or in the depths of the deserts of Africa, instead, it was to be found at the Reich’s most outer edge, it’s furthest extreme. The camp was housed within a captured asteroid that orbited the moon of Titan, one and half billion kilometres from the heart of Germany. The swastika now flew far beyond the borders of Europe, and it was hoped through the sweat and tears of Konrad and the other inmates that the swastika would soon fly over a land even further away.
CHAPTER TWO
Stahl’s breath smoked as he gazed down upon the giant glass sphere which dominated the room. The shining globe cast its light upon Stahl’s blue eyes and his slicked-back blonde hair. It also illuminated his black SS uniform. The solitude that the dark chamber afforded Stahl was welcomed and embraced by the Nazi officer. Its isolation and silence was in stark contrast to the hectic activity of the rest of the shuttle in which Stahl travelled. The chamber, deep within the hold of the craft, was a sanctuary away from the constant whine of the engines and the chatter of the crew.
A great amorphous sac was suspended inside the milky interior of the sphere. Its translucent skin undulated gently, distorting the light that played around the chamber. The flickering glow of this hibernation tank added a sacred touch to the chamber, it was like being within the confines of a church or temple illuminated by candlelight. And within the futuristic altarpiece and the amniotic mass floated hundreds of bodies. Men, women and children. They were engineers, scientists, soldiers, administrators, farmers, mothers, nurses; a vast cross-section of every profession and class of Nazi Germany. They were in hibernation in preparation for the great mission that awaited them and Stahl.
Stahl was still groggy from his own stint in hibernation. His arms and legs were weak from the inactivity they had endured during the four month journey from Earth. But as soon as he had clambered from his own hibernation pod, he had been drawn down here to this cold, gloomy chamber. He had been drawn here by an unspoken and irresistible compulsion. All his thoughts had been focussed upon seeing the hibernating colonists, and at the same time being in their presence drew Stahl into his own past, in particular his own birth. His SS uniform was the most obvious symbol of his position in the Reich, but his body also exhibited a potent symbol of his superiority. He possessed a unique and wholly artificial birthmark. An imperial eagle rested upon a set of the infamous double-lightning SS runes, along which was his own unique identification number. This man-made birthmark proved that he had been conceived in a test-tube and had been gestated in a synthetic womb rather like the container below him. His first moments in the world had not been in the arms of a loving mother but in the arms of a face-less technician. A cold and soulless birth to match his cold and soulless character.