It had been over two months now since Yong and the troops of his that had got cut off with him had surrendered to the Browncoats on Three Hills. They were not the only units that had been left as dead or missing by the Alliance command after things went South. There were actually several thousand men and women crammed together in a POW camp outside of Apachin, or what had been left of Apachin after the constant and futile artillery barrage from the Alliance. Generally, the prisoners were treated rather well by their captors, at least as far as Yong could tell. Of course food and drink was scarce, and sanitary conditions were not exactly core world standard, but the Independents and the locals did not have it any better. After all, the engagement in what now seemed like ages ago had destroyed everything that had once passed as infracstructure out here on the border. That was one of the reasons why the Alliance prisoners were not subjected to constant mistreatment and reprisals at the hands of the victors. There were of course some instances where people had been badly beaten up by some Independent soldiers off duty. There were rumours there had been some killings, but that could just as well have been the result of fighting among prisoners. Right at the beginning, of course, the officers had been separated from the rest of the troops, some feared to be summarily shot. That had not been the case, but there had been interrogations. Yong’s own had luckily been fairly soft, compared to some reports he had heard of others. There had been screaming and shouting, the blinding light, and he had been slapped on two occasions to get him to talk, but that was it. He could not tell much anyway. The Independents had apparently caught two officers of the rank of brigadier general, or maybe even above, who proved to be much more interesting subjects than a colonel like Yong. The rumour went that their interrogators had tortured them for several days, beating them, cutting on them, until they had finally died. One of the locals c