THE RELIANT

THE BUTCHER OF BELAM

"So what is our new mission, Captain?" Lisa asked John after he stepped back onto the bridge.

"We're to escort this Morlon leader to some sort of treaty signing," he replied nonchalantly.

"A Morlon leader?"'

"Yes," John replied, nodding.

"Do you know what his name is?"

"It's General Kerrang."

"General Kerrang?"

"Yes." He looked right at Lisa who had a pensive look on her face. "Why? Do you know who he is?" Lisa said nothing in response. Instead, she let out a long, drawn-out sigh. "Commander?"

"Yeah, I know who he is. He ran one of the worst concentration camps on Adderon during the war called Belam."

"Yeah, I remember that camp. The supply ship I was on The Mayflower sent supplies there after the camp had been liberated."

"So you saw the devastation there firsthand."

"Yes, I did," John replied in a low voice.

"General Kerrang was known for his viciousness and his sadism. If anyone there at the camp so much as looked at him funny, he would torture them. And, unlike other Morlon leaders who ran other camps who would let their subordinates do the torturing, he liked to torture prisoners himself. He tortured and killed hundreds at the camp, including women and children. He was known as the Butcher of Belam."

"How did you know about all of this?" Lisa wasn't looking at John as she let out another long, drawn-out breath. "Commander?"

She finally looked directly at John and said to him, "Because the bastard tortured me."

"Really?"

She nodded as she looked away from him again. "Yes."

"What happened?"

"Well, the Resistance had been receiving reports about what General Kerrang was doing at Belam. So a group of us decided to take him out. So we raided the camp one night, but Kerrang and his troops knew we were coming."

"How did he know?"

"I'm not sure," she replied, shaking her head. "He apparently had a spy."

"Did you ever find out who this spy was?"

"No, but, if I was to hazard a guess, I would say it was someone who was at the camp Kerrang promised to go easy on if he worked for him."

"So what happened next?"

"Most of the group managed to get away while a few of us, including me, were captured." She paused as she gripped the arm rests of her chair. "I was taken to a room along with a Resistance fighter named Sandra. I'll spare you the gory details, but Kerrang and his goons tortured us for days trying to get us to give them the location of the Resistance fighters who raided the camp and tried to kill him."

"Obviously they weren't successful."

"Well," she began, pausing again, "we didn't tell him where the other Resistance fighters were located, though, I will admit, there were times when I thought about giving Kerrang what he wanted to get the torturing to stop. Especially when he murdered Sandra right in front of me to try to get me to talk."

"Damn."

"Yeah. And, after he killed Sandra, he focused all of his attention on me. And, well, I still have the scars from where he cut and slashed into me and burned me and-"

"Okay, Commander, I get it. So how did you manage to escape?"

"Patty launched a rescue effort to rescue me and the other captured Resistance fighters."