Struggle. Prisoners of Darkness

Where are the insiders and where are the outsiders

While the catfish were working underground, the imaginary and actual bosses were sitting right above the mine. The actual boss was Manhr Chum. He had at his disposal the whole of Donetsk and Makeyevka, consisting of 24 catfish, developing 7 mines. Plus 12 security drills and two special purpose drills (mainly against the Maquis). Total 3728 people and 560 chums. Strangely enough, despite all the squeamishness of the chums towards people, they knew the exact number and checked on them once a week. I remember once thirty-eight people had defected to the Maquis, so Manhr himself went into the mine to beat up the Soma, who had lost twenty-two of her miners, along with her deputy. After the punishment she lost eight more killed. This was the only time a karak ("karak" being the head of a group in a column) went underground.

Manhir himself did not differ from all the others in his position, except for his weight: his peers ate up to two hundred kilograms, but he only up to ninety. The plagues actively propagandized this, explaining it by Manhir's sympathy and his desire to help people through constant, including his own work. The only truth here was the weight (the real reason was known to a very narrow circle of the column's leadership, which consisted in some terrible and very rare disease among the plagues; as for "help", it was said that he stole from his own people, and in such quantities that it was possible to buy his own mine of no smaller size).

Now the power is imaginary. Pavel Pozharin (number 726629A1) represented it. Underground, this man was hated more than the chums, despite the fact that it was not from him that the orders to stone them came. The Maquis hated this man more than anyone else, despite the fact that it wasn't from him that the orders to raid the "wild field" came. And even the plagues, including Manhra himself, hated him more than the Maquis and the miners, even though he wasn't the one who killed them and forced them into this place. He was hated by those who didn't know him, and those who did know him realized he was needed. Before him, no one had been in office for more than a year and a half; he had been there for ten.

The task of the number with the ending "A1" included a "basic" report to the karak on the work done, as well as some nuances in accounting. Manhr, with his help, was stealing. The miners and Maquis saw it as a benefit – since he was stealing for himself, less was going to the Empire.

Pozharin received privileges for his "labor": First, almost all the time A1 was on the surface of the earth, not in its depths, which allowed him at least to breathe air, not dust overflowing with methane, second, he had the opportunity to choose seven helpers from the mine, although he did not take any of them, and, third, special living conditions: good food, more time to sleep and so on.

All this Manhir tolerated, but for his own reasons. He hated him for letting him steal too much. He had been taught from birth to love and honor the power of the Darkstone, the Plague Empire, and his own kind, but he stole from his own kind. Shame and greed clashed in him, and the other always won.

Pozharin admired it all for him: the structure of the Empire's society, the supernatural abilities that had overcome once human civilization, the physiological makeup, and even his squeamishness towards humans. He disdained humans, even though he was one of them.

On March 25, the situation in the Donetsk-Makeyevka group changed: a message arrived from the center (the phones were working):

"Personally to the karak of Donetsk-Makeyevka Manhru from the broz of the Slavic column Bluh:

I am disgusted to inform you that some time ago I was informed that you, Karak Manhr, are engaged in treasury theft and are secretly transporting raw materials to the territories of Kuban, Sector 7, granted to you. Do not try to deny your involvement in this. You are required to return 264 tons of coal to the Dark Stone Empire within two weeks. In addition, pay 36,000 Roks as a fine. If you fail to do so, you will be stripped of your rank, position, lands and other property, and you will be placed in the employ of your former subordinates, where you will remain for the rest of your days.

Broz Slavic Column Bluh.

After reading this message, Manhra's eyelid twitched, the fingers on both hands shook, and the green snake tongue came out and became immobile.

Half a minute later Pozharin appeared in the karak's office. According to the rules, the man was not allowed to sit in the presence of the chum – an exception was often made for the A1 category. But this time Pozharin, when he saw the grimace on his patron's face, thoughts of that jumped out of his head.

"I should definitely thank you! Slave!" – Roared the plague. Pozharin lowered his broad head and stared at the floor. "You don't know why?!"

"Nah, sir, I don't know."

"Ahh… You don't know… Ah, what I'm facing for this, do you know?" – Manhir got up from the table and walked over to 'his guilty self'.

"No, sir, I don't."

Manhir swung his palm at his opponent with a wide, nasty swing. Pozharin flew aside, against the wall, and fell to the floor; he knew well enough that if he tried to get up, he would get hit again. It was useless to argue with the chums – they were incapable of admitting their mistakes.

"They'll twist my head, that's what they'll do! Me! I, Manhru, will have my head cut off! Do you hear me, slave?! Me! Manhru! Do you hear?!" – Manhru went up to the lying man and kicked him with his foot as hard as he could. Then again. And again.

"Do you hear, slave? Do you hear?" – Karak went into hysterics. He couldn't believe this was even happening. It was simply impossible. He shouldn't be the one on trial – someone else. For thirty-five years he'd been in charge of this region, he'd had no complaints, and then suddenly here he was.

After a series of blows of varying strength and emotional coloring, Manhir stepped away from the half-dead, universally hated number 726629A1 toward the window and gazed into the distance. And for the first time in his destructive lying life, he looked objectively at the sky. Imperial propaganda had portrayed the Earth Sky without a shadow of a doubt as some kind of natural error: in their world, the sky was purple. Now it didn't seem like dogma, or a weighty statement at all. For the first time, Manhir could feel his own self, already separable, albeit at an insignificant distance, from the Empire. He had formed his own opinion.

"Your own opinion? – thought the karak. – What does it represent without everything else? Nothing. No… It does. It's me, after all. Manhr. But I'm separate now… Nonsense. How can anyone be separate? It's impossible. It's possible. That's how the Maquis live. No. That's humans. It's not like that with humans. They're people. Not us. We're better. Why are we better? Why are we better?"

Something stuck in Manhra's head, then everything else stopped. The whole machine came to a standstill. And all because of one trivial question, "Why?"

Chum turned around and looked at the still lying Pozharin, "How am I better than him? This is nonsense! He's a piece of garbage incapable of anything. Of course I'm better than him!… Him yes, but there are millions more people… They're working now. They sleep only eight hours. They endure such conditions… I couldn't do that… But then why did we defeat them if they're stronger?"

Manhir sat down at the table and leaned forward and clasped his head with his hands: he had never had to think before, he had only thought of money before. He was faced with a dilemma: on the one hand he thought of the superiority of the humans over the plagues, on the other hand he knew for sure that the humans had lost the war. It was impossible to reconcile the two, and it was simply not possible to cancel any of the theses. The second thesis was almost an irrefutable fact. And the first one was so ingrained in his soul, so obvious that it made him literally pick up arguments in his favor.

"Do you hear that, slave?" – Without moving his hands away from his head, Manhr asked.

Turning from his stomach to his side, Pozharin opened his mouth and tried to make a sound, but he couldn't – his breath wouldn't let him, it was too heavy. Manhir had broken three of his ribs.

"Speak!" – The karak's hands remained in the same position. Number A1 mumbled something and immediately coughed.

"Who's the strongest? – Manhr spoke loudly and menacingly as usual. – Tell me, who is stronger? Us or the humans?"

Seeing no options, Pozharin opened his mouth and, nodding in agreement, tried to answer. "Don't you dare lie to me! Think before you answer. Think! And tell me, who's the strongest?" The answer came out quickly crisp and from the last of his strength, "Chum!!!"

Manhra's eyes turned away to the side, his hands moved away from his head and rested on the windowsill, "You're lying to me. I know. You've all lied to me, all this time… But that's okay. I won't kill you… Okay. Go and get everyone working. Today's plan is to double the workload. Go and tell everyone that."

Chum turned toward the window and looked at the Sky again, "I don't know how much stronger humans are, but their Sky is a hundred times more beautiful than ours."

Same on March 25.

After explaining all matters: family and work, Gabriel finally took charge of the purification. The task was extremely difficult – to clean no more than 12 tons. Ah, what a difficult word "no more" was, and what it meant to the miners. They had to hit that number: more than that, and the 253rd catfish would give everyone a long life; less than that, they themselves would give everyone a long life; the others were on a slightly different calculation, but still they would probably get some too.

In the past, coal was cleaned automatically – it was placed on a conveyor belt with water sprayers along it, which was necessary to prevent methane from condensing: it penetrates the lungs and can explode. Now we used our hands. Everything was long, and there was nothing to breathe, and everyone worked, and eventually everyone died from it.

The commander was somewhere in the middle of the hall when Deputy Rich approached him: "Commander, urgent business."

"What else? Some of the chums are in danger of not fulfilling their plan to stone us – do we need to help?" – Gora looked at his assistant with a look characterized by the phrase "we will help in this – we will help in this, as long as our old men are not touched" (only the old men kept them from "running over" to the Maquis).

"Kolya. The black laborer. I'm told he has something to say…" "Which one of us doesn't?"

Nikolay Zemlyakov (number 52436483C3) is one of only two black workers of 381 Soma, the other was Sergey Chernousov (number 77242388C3).

What could he say – they prepared him a royal "exit" – 20 kilograms. Is it too much for him? Nevertheless, seventeen minutes later Gabriel was standing by the pit, "You called, buddy?"

The six-meter-deep pit seemed like an infinite space, that all the coal mined for a month could be thrown in there, but in fact it reeked of rotten decomposing corpses of former workers: and no matter how many of them died there, the space did not get smaller – it is hard to believe that the bodies of the dead can so easily fold into nothing…, but it is so. Inside, the miners got used to it quite quickly, but those who came out of there alive told me that even after a full day's work the first week it was impossible to fall asleep, and then it was terrible to wake up, in the bones of their comrades and continue working.

In fact, they were "thrown in" ten or fifteen kilograms a day, and then honorably pulled out in front of the plagues, writing down the "plus" in a notebook. But no matter how much they wrote down in a day, they gave us almost no food, so that in case of rescue it was not difficult to get it at all. Skin and bones alone; the ribs were so prominent that the skin covering them was folded between them; the hands were almost immobile for a couple of days afterwards, the disease was called "Life Syndrome", because the patient did not quite realize that he was alive, it was as if he were born again; the face protruded forward with the cheekbones and especially in the chin because of the almost exhausted muscles. But there was always one factor that never faded to death: the eyes. They glittered with a fiery luster, and no one could understand whether it was from joy or from the grief of not being able to die.

Those eyes were glittering now, but with that fire that arises so abruptly and wants so much, and when not getting it quickly fades away, taking with it the one who carried it. This is the Fire of Freedom.

"Commander, you won't believe this…" – Nikolai looked up with his mouth open. Dust flew inward, but it didn't seem to matter.

Gora noticed something he had only seen in those who were not alive now, who had already died, "Since you think so, I won't argue…"

"Commander, this is…" "Uh-huh."

"What I found–"

"Oh, what have you found," Gabriel was already enjoying the drudgery. "Guns."

"What?"

"Weapons. Commander, there are tons of weapons here… It's just, I don't even know how to say it…"

"Okay. Throw something on the hoist, I'll get it up," the commander was ready to see anything; the people in this pit were going crazy by the dozens.

Something rattled below, whereupon Gabriel began to spin the winch.

Half a minute later the rope rose to the right level: an AK-74 was lying on the hoist. Gabriel looked around: there were no plagues.

"And you have a lot of that?" – he asked in a low voice.

"I don't know myself… But it looks like a whole warehouse," came the reply of a somewhat thoughtful man – apparently he really didn't know.

"Hold on, I won't be long," Mountain tossed down and, putting the machine gun aside in the shadows, went to the purification room.

Three minutes later the commander, held by Konstantin, was sinking to the bottom of the pit. Now it seemed to him that it was not so dark and damp, but it stank of decomposition more strongly, and his opinion about food had changed: strange as it may seem, but here in the pit, for some reason he felt hungry.

At the very bottom stood Nikolai, already calmed down but still as eager for "free air", with a pickaxe in his left hand and another AK-74 in his right.

"They're hungry for it, aren't they? – Gabriel thought. – They are tired of being slaves… It's not just one tortured man, it's all of us… We are all in his face now… Everyone here is already dreaming of war… I'm already dreaming about it… For example, today. I dream Manhir comes down to us. He comes up to me. He looks me straight in the eye. And then falls to his knees and says, "Forgive us, my lord. "Save our lives. And everyone, all the plagues do the same… God, we're supposed to be free, aren't we?"

"Commander?" – Nikolai asked, coming up to Gavriil. He immediately came to his senses, recognizing to himself that this had become a habit, and replied, "Well, Kol. Come on, show me what you've got here."

The one waved the machine gun back and stepped aside… A pile, just a pile of weapons was visible from the hole made in the ground.

"Ahem…" said Gora. – Okay, we'll take five of them with us. We'll leave the rest here – the plagues won't come down here anyway…"

"That's it?" – Nikolai was stunned, and had obviously planned a lot of things, so this answer knocked him for a loop.

Now he could be tricked or killed-what he had planned, he couldn't help but do.

Gabriel chose the first: "We need to prepare. I promise we will rise, but it will take time. Will you be patient? For my sake."

The authority is so strong charismatic, no one could argue with him, and if he asked for something, respect will make him do it. Gora, he's like a father.

"Commander," Konstantin heard from above.

"What?" – The voice took on its usual not-so-"charismatic" forms. "A1's here to see us. Himself."

The five minutes during which Hora reached the second sector were filled with deep thoughts: the people really need freedom as much as sunlight, which they are not allowed to see enough of, and the most important thing is that one day they will get it. Gabriel kept tying his son and daughter-in-law to all this: he wanted them to be free, and his grandson to know no slavery at all.

Sector number two was the office. Here everything is counted, everything is reported, and there was a separate room, though entirely empty, for separate meetings, which were very few (A1 really rarely went downstairs – it was difficult to breathe for the unaccustomed).

When Gavriil and his deputy arrived, everyone else was already there, including Pavel Pozharin himself. All but A1 nodded respectfully, Volin even smiling: a nice man after all.

"Well now that everyone's gathered, I can tell you what's the matter…" everyone could see how difficult it was for him to speak, and how he was greedily gulping for air. – I'm ready to take ten of your men upstairs with me. I was wrong about them. The plagues are bastards, they must die. They…"

Dominic was the first to speak: "You'd better explain what's going on today. My men are working like hell, and at night they can't sleep and they're thrown out to work. We need rest. Does this have to be explained in writing?"

Of course, his deputy Peter added oil: "They should not be explained in writing, but in a practical form. You should hit them between the eyes!"

Golushko and Preskovich, commander and deputy commander of Soma No. 647, had a friendly swearing, but to the

point.

"How much do you want us to load? Twenty-four tons? – Dubrovsky was perplexed. – Do you understand this

figure? Or is this someone joking?"

"Nah… They're devoid of a sense of humor. – Georgie intervened. – I've already tried to tell them a couple of jokes.

They thought I was crazy… I can tell them the Stirlitz joke now.

"It's Manhr," Pozharin tried to stop the onslaught against him. – It's all him."

Volin laughed from the bottom of his heart: "No, Stirlitz's name was Max von. Only he was Russian… Anyway, you're not used to such subtleties. Except that he was Russian from birth. And you became a plague in the process." The others, except Gora, told Pozharin in brief everything they thought of him. The "brief" was enough to make him wish to vaporize – the truth can be kept out for a long time, but once it's out, it won't come back.

"Explain his fault?" – After Gora's words, everyone fell silent.

"He… Ah, he…" Pozharin stiffened from his knees to his neck. – He got a message from the broz. With an accusation."

As each word was squeezed out as a confession, and few wanted to wait, Dominic began to encourage him with exclamations of "Well done," "Well," "Come on more," "Don't give up," and "Go ahead."

It went like this: "Well, well, go ahead. – Corruption. – Well done. Do more. – He's been told to… uh… – Give more. Don't give up. – To give it back. Give it all back. – More. More! That's it. – Well, no.

At the end of his mad speech, Dominic gave a look of extreme displeasure, and Peter folded his lips and nodded sympathetically.

"Yeah we should soak him," Dominic said as if drawing a conclusion from his part of the dialog. "Why, he's not a Jew," the deputy deduced.

"I'm sick of him too," Dubrovsky confirmed.

"Maybe…" – A1 started to say, but then Golushko interrupted him: "Shut up. You're not being asked," – in another way, ashamed to admit, I couldn't say it.

Pozharin shut up. He looked at his patch, which had a number in black and white, with "A1" at the end, and shut up like that. He could have called the guards right now, as he had done before, and told them to shoot anyone for disobeying him, for disobeying the hierarchy, which in the plague empire was akin to heresy, for thinking of killing a karak, which, though he had submitted – anything; because they would listen to him, he was "A1," above them. But he didn't. Couldn't. He saw their faces: scarred, dirty, tense with worry for his subordinates, and knew that his face was not haggard, not dirty, and really didn't deserve to be. Pozharin had never been loved, and knowing this, he raved about the plagues who hated him, even more than other people. And when the plagues turned their backs on him, showed that he was a tool for them, he decided to "change sides." But who needs such a man but his mother.

Now almost everyone in the office was disgruntled, half asleep and angry about it. They had only had three hours of sleep after their hard work.

Try to wake up a person, and then ask him about his attitude to you at a given time – if it is not your closest relative, the answer will most likely be "negative". Wake up a bear early, and he will go around and kill everyone who gets caught, and not because he is so bad, but because you broke his regime. You break the regime, you break the system. You break the system in one place, you break it everywhere.

Those present were also in charge of several hundred people, all of whom they thought about without ceasing. Pozharin felt it all perfectly, especially now that he was alone with them. In private, reality itself, without challenge,

comes out.

After two minutes of exclamation of all but Gabriel about what was going on, everything was stopped by Volin with the question: "Gora, why are you silent?".

Gabriel looked at Dominic, "You're right. He should be killed."

Everyone knew the commander of the 381st Soma perfectly well, and even better knew his instructions about not killing chums now, because for each of them they would kill a dozen of ours, toughen the regime and God knows what else; nobody expected such an answer.

"Have you decided to change your positions. Or is this Volinsky humor," Dubrovsky asked.

"No. The positions are the same. – Gabriel continued to speak. – But Manhr is dangerous to us now. Because he is alone, without an empire. But only for now. Until he pays his debts. And only now can he be killed."

Surprisingly enough, it was the most ardent supporter of "killing enemies indiscriminately" who opposed him: "He's a plague. He is one of them. When we kill one of them, they will kill a dozen of us. You said so yourself.

"I did. And I don't deny it… But he's not one of them now. He's one of them now. And when we kill him, they'll take his possessions and rest on that. He's a thief. Who'd want to avenge a thief like that? And to make sure we don't have any questions, we'll get the Maquis involved."

"It would have been all right. – Peter continued to ask. – But how will you convince them too? If they wanted it, they would have done it a long time ago.

"That's already my problem… Right now I need three men on the surface, and Manhr will be dead by the 27th."