Escape from Altera Ch. 05

Escape from Altera

[Note: This is not a "sexy story". It is a mix of WW II "The Great Escape" and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Achipelago"... set in outer space)

Chapter 5: Fighting Back

"I am very disappointed," said Major Colonel Tromov. He paced back and forth in front of us as we stood at attention in the blistering wind and snowfall.

"You lazy dogs have not been meeting you work quotas," said Tromov. Actually, he said something a little more severe than lazy dogs, but the entire concept doesn't translate well from the original Slurian.

He marched back and forth in his fashionable Redcap boots. While we were shivering, he certainly wasn't, with his triple insulated military parka.

"I was sent here to reform you, to make you into good communitarians," said Tromov. He paused. "Perhaps it is my fault. Perhaps you have taken advantage of my laxity and goodwill. It is painful to do so, but work time on Sundays will be increased an additional two hours a day. Also, no care packages will be distributed this month. That is all."

We were dismissed, and I saw Kerensky shaking his head. "I guess the guards are hungry," said Kerensky. "Someone must have bribed him pretty big to get our care packages."

"We get packages?"

"Certainly," said Kerensky. "The Slurian Union is a highly communitarian society, remember."

"I remember, I remember," I said. A new possibility occurred to me. If we could receive things, perhaps we could send them as well. "How would I go about sending a letter?"

Corporal Zyto Filitov was the labor camp's "mail man". Could it really be so simple as writing a letter and handing it in?

No. First, of course, one had to get access to a datapad to write a message. The "post office" only had three datapads, and these were reserved months in advance for the use of the other prisoners.

I looked at the three datapads in the room. None were in use. I pointed this out to Corporal Filitov, who simply harrumphed and turned away.

But by now I was learning the ways of the system and easily bribed Filitov for access to a datapad to write a letter. My "business" of selling stolen construction materials with Kolya had taken off, and I now had a small supply of Slurian currency.

"All right. You may have five minutes," he said generously.

I quickly sat down and started typing. I had decided in advance to write to my mother. Knowing the letter would probably be censored, I wrote

Dear Mother,

It is Idaho. I am alive and well. I just want to let you know that I am a prisoner of war being held by the Slurians. Please contact my unit and let them know I am all right. If you can, please send food and warm clothing as soon as possible to this return address. I promise to do better and not to get captured in the next war.

Your loving son,

Iday

I wrote the address and turned it into Filitov. He casually looked at it, and then at me. "Nyet," he said.

"What do you mean?"

Filitov crossed off all the sentences except the first two.

"What's wrong with the rest?" I asked. "What's wrong with saying I am a prisoner of war?"

"You are not a prisoner of war," said Filitov. "This is not a prisoner of war camp. This is a camp for thought reform. You are a spy. You are not a military prisoner. Furthermore, you are not allowed to give military information."

"What military information?"

Filitov gave me a stoney stare. "Telling your mother to relay this information to the military."

"But-" I was about to say that my mother probably would anyway. But if I said that, then this irritating Slurian bureaucrat might not let me send any letter at all.

"What about requesting food and warm clothing?"

"That was your cleverest line of all. You are surreptitiously conveying the propaganda that we do not provide you with everything you need!"

I licked my licks. "What if I just asked for a care package in general... would that be all right?"

Filitov considered, then nodded.

I turned back to the datapad.

Filitov barred me.

"What?"

"Datapad is booked up months in advance."

Sighing, I paid another bribe.

Dear Mother,

It is Idaho. I am alive and well. I just want to let you know that I am being held by the Slurians. If you care to, feel free to send me a package at this return address.

Your loving son,

Iday

I kept it short in the hopes that it wouldn't be rejected. But Filitov only shook his head again.

"What now?"

"Your letter says nothing nice about the Slurian Union."

"What does that matter?"

"You are using community resources to send this message. You should at least show some gratitude to the community."

"You want me to say something nice, about here, about this place?" I was incredulous.

Filitov looked adamant.

I thought for a moment. "All right."

After another bribe (of course), I started again. I got stuck in one part, though; what could I say that was nice about this place? Finally, I started writing again.

Dear Mother,

It is Idaho. I am alive and well. I just want to let you know that I am being held by the Slurians. The cross country skiing and curling is fun great here. If you care to, feel free to send me a package at this return address.

Your loving son,

Iday

Filitov looked at the message. I cautiously held my breath. Then, he nodded. But he started typing vigorously, changing my message.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Must change wording of message. You are convicted spy; you may be attempting to use key words to send out code. I will change words but keep meaning," he assured me.

I got a look at the final text:

Dear Female Parent:

It is Idaho. I am very well and prospering. The Slurians are holding me for my crimes. They are very gentle and patient with me. The cross country skiing is also very good.

Your obedient son,

Iday

"You took out the part about sending the package!" I said.

"That was not necessary to put in."

"And what's this about the gentle and patient part? I never said that!"

"You must have a more positive attitude," said Filitov. He pointed to the door. My audience was over.

Well, at least my mother would find out I was still alive. If the message got through. I was still skeptical as to whether they really would transmit it.

But a few weeks later I DID get a reply. I was handed an old fashioned paper printout which read:

Dearest Idaho;

I am so very glad to hear from you. Your. I am. Heard from War. Sent package.

Your,

Mother

I showed the message to Filitov. "Was the transmission garbled?"

"No," said Filitov. "Came through clearly. But rest was censored."

"What could my mother possibly tell me that would be censored?"

But Filitov simply gave me a stony stare.

"Well, what about my package?"

"Tuesday."

"But you have it now!"

"Packages are given out on Tuesdays," said Filitov firmly.

As I left the post office I pondered my mother's message, reading it again over and over. I felt good that she and the rest of my family knew I was still alive. I reread the words. "Heard from War". Obviously, she was trying to tell me something about the war. But what?

I could tell it was an unusual sentence, even though it was censored. You don't hear from a war, you hear about a war. Maybe she was writing that she heard from the war front, or a war correspondent. Then I looked more closely at the words.

The word War was capitalized.

Now, anyone could have done that for emphasis, but not my mother. A journalist for nearly 200 years, she was a stickler for such details. She wouldn't capitalize the word war in general unless it were part of a proper name.

A proper name. Maybe War was a person. War could be some part of someone's rank.

War Captain. Did I know any War Captains? No.

War Major.

War Commander.

War Admiral.

No, that still didn't ring a bell.

Some military official had told my mother something important. But who and what?

I raced through my memories a second time. Did I know any officers of any rank with the prestigious title of War before their name? Not closely. Perhaps Mother was referring to some military spokesman. But why bother to mention him by name?

And if the war was really going badly for the League, why would the Slurians censor what she had to say?

That was my first inkling of hope.

I went back to the post office on Tuesday and collected my package. It had been opened, of course, and a number of items were missing. I knew this because my mother had been thoughtful enough to provide a list.

I didn't bother complaining to Filitov and simply went through what was still there. Heavily enriched nutritional crackers. A tin of pears. Winter gloves! I wonder how the guards had missed those. I guess their gloves were good enough for them. I tried them on over my homemade mittens. My hands instantly warmed up.

So did my morale.

After that I was never in danger of starving to death. I received packages on an irregular basis, and was able to scrounge for food on the camp's black market. While I was still malnourished and underfed, I had a relatively easy job and my main enemies were the cold, and repression.

The repression! The guards were worse than cruel. The head guard was a burly master sergeant named Kilikov. He treated us like sacks to be moved around and put to work. He would on rare occasion assault a prisoner, but usually he left that work to his subordinates. He turned a blind eye to all the beatings, humiliation, and torture that went on in the camp.

The torturer in chief was Sergeant Maxim Korky. Despite the cute name, he was one of the most brutal of the guards. He carried around an iron club and every day would hit at least one prisoner with it, simply for fun. The prisoner, who would be hit for any or no reason, would invariably suffer broken bones or internal injuries. Sergeant Iron Club was feared by all.

Another official, who wasn't exactly a profile in humanity, was Corporal Ivan Ushenko. He liked to humiliate prisoners. He would have a prisoner stand in front of a big pile of snow, scream "Gopher!" and expect the prisoner to burrow into the snow mountain using only his hands. Any part of the prisoner which was not submerged would get hit. Prisoners who didn't tunnel quickly enough out the other side would suffocate.

Another of Ivan's favorite games was even worse. He would take a prisoner to a pool of water covered by thin ice, and scream, "Fish!". The prisoner would be expected to dive into the frigid water, and Ivan would use his electrowhip to snare the prisoner, like a fishing rod, if the prisoner came out too quickly. More than one prisoner died in the frigid water.

Another variant on the game was "Rabbit", where prisoners had to hop through snow that was very deep; if they weren't nimble enough, they would sink in.

And of course, the most common torture was exposure to the elements. Prisoners would be stripped down to their undergarments and tied to the gate. If they were let down usually only after their extremities had been frostbitten.

Beatings were the rule rather than the exception, and the authorities usually looked away. Whether this was part of the institutional sadism designed to keep the prisoners down, or simply a matter of criminal neglect on the part of the authorities, was never made clear to me.

Every day when we stood at lineup, we had to fight to prevent ourselves from trembling to see who would be made an example of that day. No one knew who would be picked.

I was told that it was possible to bribe the guards to avoid beatings, but that it wasn't easy. Some guards like Ivan wouldn't accept bribes. I mostly kept out of their way, accepting minor beatings when I had to.

Another dangerous game we were forced to play were the foot races. At irregular intervals, we were called out to race the other prisoners around the perimeter of the compound. This in and of itself wasn't the dangerous part; the dangerous part was that the prisoner to arrive in last place got beaten up by the guards.

But even this sadism was insufficient for Ivan. Most of the prisoners knew they were safe as long as they weren't in the back of the pack, and so didn't run very feverishly; so Ivan changed the rules and dictated that the last few prisoners would be beaten. He never told in advance how many a "few" could be--it could be three, or it could be five or more. And the prisoners were forced to run in smaller groups so that there was a greater chance they would be in the end group.

That only increased the terror, which, of course, was Ivan's foremost goal. The sadist loved seeing the look of fear on our faces. He scheduled runs right after work shifts, ensuring that we would have to run when we were most tired. More than one prisoner simply collapsed into the snow from exhaustion in midrace, and more than a few died from exhaustion or the beatings that followed.

When that game ceased to be amusing, Ivan thought of others. At times he forced two prisoners to fight. A prisoner would be forced to batter his opponent senseless. But Ivan wouldn't be satisfied until there was "blood on the snow." If he wasn't sufficiently satisfied, both prisoners would be beaten. Many times friends were purposely forced to fight each other.

But the situation touched me most personally when my fellow prisoner, Kolya, who had helped me so much, was killed. He was tapped to play a game of "Rabbit" with Ivan, and he sunk into a huge snowdrift, but he never came out. His body was never found.

I decided at that point that Ivan had to go. I spoke about the matter with Kerensky.

He shook his head. "You are fool, Idaaho Tuch," he said. "You will never succeed. Even if you do, do you know what they will do to you?"

"I'm not thinking of killing him myself," I said.

Kerensky looked puzzled.

"I was hoping that the Slurian guards would help."

Kerensky shook his head. "You do not have enough money to bribe a guard to kill another guard."

"That's not what I mean," I said. "Who of all the officers hates Ivan?"

Kerensky shrug his head. I handed him some of my hard earned (stolen) credits. "Spread some money and find out."

Kerensky came back with the answer two days later.

"Lieutenant Kirshenko."

"Good," I said.

"What do you plan?" said Kerensky.

"The less you know, the better."

To make my plan work, I needed the services of three prisoners--a forger, someone who worked in administration, and a thief.

I found the thief first, a man named Raffen. He was a criminal inmate, sentenced here for a wide variety of crimes including theft and armed robbery. Unlike the others, he didn't haggle over price, only the job itself.

"Who you want me to rob?" he said bluntly.

"No one," I said with a smile.

"Then what you paying me for, to do charity work, Richman?"

"I don't want you to take something from someone, I want you to give something to someone."

Raffen looked at me suspiciously. "Who?"

I looked around. There was no one about. "If I tell you, you have to agree to do it."

"Nyet."

"All right," I said. "But if I tell you, and you tell anyone else, I'll kill you." By this time I had gained some rough edges in prison.

Raffen just looked at me.

I told him who the intended target was and what I wanted done.

"What is on this thing you want me to put in his pocket?" said Raffen.

"You don't need to know that," I said.

Raffen looked at me.

"Job is risky," he said.

"I'm sure there are a few dozen other petty thieves I can find who might find the risk acceptable," I said.

Raffen paused, then nodded. "All right. But pay first."

"When the work is done," I said. I really had learned the ropes by then.

My second task was to find someone in administration, and then a forger. It turned out my two tasks could be combined into one when I found a prisoner named Kantiprev. He worked for administration and was a master forger. In fact, he worked for the administration because he was a master forger. He would regularly forge glowing recommendations in the guards' personnel files, giving raises and promotions to nearly any guard who bribed or threatened him. Unfortunately he was not so generous with the prisoners.

"What is it you want?"

I explained I simply wanted a few words typed in and printed out.

"That will cost you two bowls of kem," Kantiprev sniffed. "What is it you want typed and printed?"

I handed him a handwritten document on a scrap of paper I had managed to secure.

Kantiprev's eyes widened as he quickly read the paper. "Why could you possibly want this?"

"That's not all I want," I said. "I need a signature forged on the bottom." I told him which signature.

Kantiprev shook his head vigorously. "No. It is too risky. I will not do."

I named a price, in stolen gembles, the Slurian currency.

Kantiprev shook his head.

"Double."

Kantiprev shook his head again. "No."

"Let us discuss the philosophy of the matter," I said.

"What philosophy?" Kantiprev said.

"I'm glad you asked, because we have one of the foremost professors of philosophy here."

Sasha stepped into view, casting a large shadow over Kantiprev.

"I won't be intimidated!" said Kantiprev.

Sasha simply folded his giant arms.

"No!" said Kantiprev.

Sasha took a step forward, and raised a bear-like arm.

"All right!" said Kantiprev. He looked up at Sasha, and said, "But why are you involved?

"Because," said Sasha, in his deep rumbling voice, "It is nice to be nice to the nice."

I got everything I needed, and I was just giving Raffen the final instructions, when none other than Corporal Ivan himself strode up to me.

"Richman!" he said. He was flanked by two of his leering cronies.

I turned around. Raffen melted into the background.

"You have time for talk, you have time for little game!"

I tried not to show the fear on my face.

"You will play game of Gopher!" said Ivan.

They led me to a large snowbank inside the camp. A group of guards were gathered here for the entertainment. I saw one unmoving prisoner being dragged away.

"Get ready!" said Ivan

I looked at the huge snowbank. I was expected to dive into it and tunnel my way to the other side before I suffocated. There were several tunnel entrances in front of me, dug by past players of the game, no doubt, but there was no telling how far each tunnel went. A player might have frozen midway through a tunnel, or a tunnel might have collapsed in the middle. The game of Gopher had a high fatality rate.

I wasn't interested in playing the odds. I wondered what super spy Clifford Croft would have done in a situation like this.

I didn't have much time to consider, because at that moment Ivan yelled, "Gopher!"

I dove into the snowbank, choosing one of the tunnels higher up along the bank. I had no intention of risking my life in this suicidal game; so instead of tunneling across the bank, I started tunneling up.

As I dug through the icy snow, I felt myself gasping for breath, not only from my efforts but the dwindling oxygen supply. As I dug farther and farther, the oxygen level decreased.

I was wheezing for air when my hand scooped a bit of snow above me. It was brighter, somehow. I kept digging, and then I felt my hand go through. In seconds I poked my head up.

I was near the top of the bank, in the middle, not on the other side.

The guards were jeering as I slowly pulled myself out of the hole.

Ivan yanked me down when I got close enough. "You cheat, Richman, you cheat!" he yelled. He punched me, sending me falling to the ground, and started beating me. Other guards joined in.

Prisoners watched from a short distance away, but didn't dare interfere. I can't pretend it felt good, but at least when it was over, I was still alive.