"Today we went to Howe Town for a bit of fun. While we were there, Jim and Zander overheard someone talking about the Whitford refugee camp, saying people there were starving and freezing to death. You know how Zander is—he's as softhearted as an ice princess. The kind of guy who cries over a pretend family drama in a movie."
Tychus chuckled.
"I didn't take it seriously, but those two couldn't help but stick their noses in. Somehow, Zander came up with enough money to buy two truckloads of clothes and bread for the refugees. Jim and Harnack didn't want him going alone, so they tagged along... And yeah, I'm sure they chipped in, too."
"But not long after they entered the camp, the whole group—trucks and all—got seized by the local gangsters. Harnack and I had stepped away to take a leak, so we dodged the bullet."
"Whitford refugee camp…" Augustus muttered as he exited the apartment and stepped into the elevator, struggling to pull on his coat. He didn't have time to wonder why Tychus had gone along in the first place.
"I've never heard of that place."
"It's far from Fort Howe," Tychus explained. "South of the Whitford ruins, about 32 kilometers down in a basin. After Whitford got flattened by the Sea Dragon Legion, some survivors escaped and set up a camp there… Same old story—the Federation government pretends it doesn't exist, like all those refugees might as well be dead."
"Don't they realize who those refugees are? I'd bet good money someone tipped off the local gangs. We were in civilian clothes—those bastards had no idea we're with the Marines."
"Send me the coordinates."
Augustus entered the underground garage and jumped into his command vehicle.
"Stay put. I'm on my way."
"We're not going anywhere, boss," Harnack's voice suddenly chimed in.
"Damn it! Don't breathe in my face!"
Tychus yelled before cutting the call.
At least they still had the energy to argue—so things couldn't be too bad.
"Major Warfield," Augustus said, dialing another terminal as he sped toward the third-row barracks.
"Speak."
Warfield responded with a single word.
"Two of my men were captured by a gang at the Whitford refugee camp. I'm taking a team to get them back," Augustus said.
"I don't have time to write a report."
"Want me to send another platoon?" Warfield paused briefly before replying, "I'll have the landing pad prep a transport plane right away."
"A re-socialization platoon," Augustus said. "They're under my command."
Strictly speaking, deploying so many troops to the refugee camp wasn't necessary. But with such a chaotic mix of people there, Augustus couldn't be sure whether the gangsters might be armed with dangerous weapons.
"Avoid harming civilians as much as possible," Warfield said finally.
"I understand."
Augustus's command vehicle came to a halt at the entrance of the military barracks. The two sentries guarding the gate immediately snapped to attention and saluted upon seeing him.
"Alert all squads—we're working overtime tonight."
These two sentries belonged to Second Squad, Third Platoon under Augustus's command. Both were privates.
"Yes, sir!"
…
Two APOD light transport ships had already been in the air for about twenty minutes. In the darkness, their flashing lights made them look like fireflies soaring toward the horizon.
At one point, the ships began descending, their thrusters rotating to face downward, hovering steadily above the ground.
The hatches on either side of the ships slowly opened. One by one, Marines clad in powered armor jumped down from a height of several meters, using their jetpacks to cushion the fall as they landed on the soft snow.
Their armor was painted in the black-and-gray scheme exclusive to the Heaven's Devils, each visor adorned with a white skull insignia. One of the soldiers held tightly to a Heaven's Devils banner bearing the symbol of a winged demon.
In the distance, they began to see the ruined 'houses' of the refugee camp.
The refugees had used car frames, shipping containers, prefab panels, and other scavenged materials from the city to construct their shelters. The appearance of these odd-shaped, mismatched structures depended entirely on the strength of the materials and the builders' creativity.
No two shelters looked alike. The only thing they had in common was their extreme fragility—they all looked ready to collapse at any moment.
Clearly, those who built the camp hadn't considered sanitation. Between the tightly packed shacks, the frozen remains of domestic sewage and human waste filled the narrow spaces. Across the open fields, heaps of industrial refuse lay scattered, and useless trash was dumped everywhere.
The rickety shelters leaned at awkward angles, barely standing against the wind, smeared with engine oil, mud, and all kinds of grime. Large patches of dark red blight, resembling scabs or mold, clung to the walls and rooftops like some grotesque skin disease.
Even so, these makeshift homes were considered luxurious by refugee camp standards. A significant number of others had no walls at all—just beams and scrap metal forming a rough canopy, barely distinguishable from cattle pens. On this cold, dark night, those shelters were packed with corpses of people who had frozen or starved to death.
"Lundstein, take First Squad and go find Tychus and Harnack," Augustus said through the comm channel.
"Stay alert. This place isn't just filled with ordinary refugees. You've also got thugs, major gangsters, smugglers, terrorists, and separatists who hate the government—and the Marines."
...
The overhead schematic relayed by the geosynchronous orbital satellite station showed the refugee camp stretching nearly two kilometers, cobbled together from thousands of slanted, makeshift buildings. There were barely any navigable roads within, and no flickering lights to speak of. The most 'luxurious' homes were newly constructed wooden lofts and cabins, with only the faintest glimmers of firelight visible through their windows.
The issue of war refugees had long plagued the galaxy. On every war-torn planet, it was always the civilians who bore the brunt of the devastation. The Terran Federation government had no desire to invest resources in sheltering refugees on volatile planets where control of cities changed hands frequently amid the fighting.
As for the Kel-Morian Combine, their approach was to establish settlements and colonies on any planet rich in minerals, strip it of all usable resources, and then abandon it.
This predatory, nomadic form of colonization meant they controlled far fewer planets than the Terran Federation, with the bulk of their population concentrated in just a few core worlds. Most wars erupted within Federation territory, which turned the Terrans living on frontier worlds into refugees in droves.
In contrast, the Kel-Morians were a martial people. Every citizen was a soldier, and every adult who lost their home would join the military without hesitation.
Turaxis was a mineral-rich planet, but relatively lacking in high-energy gas, relying heavily on imports before the war. During the conflict, Federation trade routes were severely disrupted, plunging the local population—especially refugees—into even harsher conditions.
The Kel-Morian warships were nowhere near as large or heavily armored as those of the Federation, but their fast assault craft and interstellar skiffs excelled in hit-and-run tactics. Using pack strategies, they raided convoys and always slipped away before the furious Federation fleets could catch up.
With the backing of the Kel-Morian Combine Guilds, many Kel-Morian fleets effectively became professional pirates.
The drastic drop in imports threw Turaxis into a crisis of fuel and localized food shortages. Every gas refinery and mine on the planet had been redirected entirely to serve the front lines.
As a result, civilian trains, vehicles, and most forms of transportation ground to a halt. Seeders, harvesters, and agricultural robots stopped functioning altogether. In many regions of Turaxis—already barely managing self-sufficiency—massive famines broke out.
Take, for example, the city of Polk's Pride, where Augustus was first stationed after arriving on Turaxis: in the first year of the war alone, over half of the city's 1.2 million residents perished.
When the flames of war reached the city, its emergency food reserves were forcibly requisitioned. Soldiers, rifles in hand, drove law-abiding, tax-paying Federation citizens from their homes in the name of protecting them from the conflict. Many had no time to grab even a coat or a blanket.
City Hall officials told them that a refugee camp had already been built outside the city—when in truth, there was only a barren patch of wasteland.
The Tarsonis government had merely issued an order to evacuate civilians. Then, through outlets like UNN, they boasted of their 'accomplishments' to the media, but made no effort to actually build shelters for those displaced.
The deaf, blind, and indifferent bureaucrats and senators had no intention of spending a single credit more. Human lives meant nothing to them. They remembered the refugees just long enough to give the order to move them—then conveniently 'forgot', claiming they were too busy.
Neither the Federation government nor the old families of Tarsonis who pulled the strings behind it were willing to spend even a cent on refugees. Every spare credit had to be funneled into the booming war economy—into weapons manufacturing and other monopoly industries—to maximize their profits.
The war raged on, and both the planetary governor of Turaxis and the Supreme Command of the Federation military paid no attention to the refugees. They neither cared nor inquired.
The local Refugee Administration existed solely to silence media criticism. Staffed by just a dozen clerks and a few cheap local security hires, it received barely enough federal funding to pay their wages. The department had no authority and no usable budget.
In the increasingly bloated and corrupt bureaucracy of the Terran Federation, this office had simply become another means for greedy officials to embezzle public funds.
That winter, most of those who had been driven from Polk's Pride starved or froze to death.
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