Escape from Altera Ch. 11-12

[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 11: "Escape is Impossible"

I was on the run for an entire day before I twisted my ankle again and fell to the ground in the middle of a road, in total agony.

This was not entirely a coincidence. Mr. Chekov had not succeeded in entirely healing me from my last trauma there. Malnutrition and exhaustion had made my body susceptible to a number of minor illnesses. This time I didn't even trip over a rock; my injury flared up simply by the angle at which my foot touched the ground as I walked.

The funny thing was, as I lay there on that road, I wasn't thinking about capture, or escape, but the War Captain. Had he been right when he said he didn't have the genius of Battle Admiral, now War Admiral Norman North?

Admittedly, he had gotten captured, but the odds had been heavily stacked against us from the beginning. I think he had successfully, and safely, gotten us over two hundred miles from camp, and he had kept us free for two weeks. His last act, the shouted warning, was the reason I was still free.

Of course, his decision to steal the car had proved to be the end for most of us. Would the War Admiral have walked into such a trap? Would he, out of options, have selected this choice? Perhaps there were some battles that could not be won. More than once I've seen the War Admiral withdraw from a battle not to his liking.

But he always regrouped and attacked again. I hoped wherever he was, that the War Captain would do the same.

"You are hurt," came a feminine voice.

I stiffened, and turned over, to see a young, attractive woman standing over me. "Yes," I said in Slurian, careful not to say more.

"I take care of you," she said. "Can you walk?"

With her help, I got up and balanced on one foot. But I couldn't stand on the other. She acted as a crutch, helping me into her home, which was just down the street. At this point, I had few options.

Once she had me inside her home, a small two room cabin, she said, "My name is Natasha." She looked at me for a response.

I didn't know what to say.

"You are not Slurian," she said.

"How can you tell?" I said.

"Because you are so handsome," Natasha said. "You are one of the escaped prisoners."

"Are you going to turn me in?" I said grimly. Could I hobble out of there? I didn't think so.

"Let us talk of that later," she said. "For now, let me see your ankle."

I took off my mukluks and boots and socks, to reveal a very reddish ankle.

"We must apply heat to that, it will help the healing," she said, starting to boil some water.

Natasha took care of me that night. It didn't take much to realize that she was lonely. Most of the young men had been conscripted for the war. I slept on her bed that night, and was a little surprised when she lay next to me and hugged me as I slept.

The next day I tested the ankle. I was making progress; I could stand on it, with some discomfort. But I still couldn't walk. It would take several days to get me back into shape.

I started to have confidence that Natasha would not turn me in. She fed me and took care of me. But her behavior at night started to worry me. On the second night she started kissing me. I gently pushed her away. Then again, later in the night, the same thing.

It wasn't that I found her unattractive; she had long, flowing, black hair, and the typically large, fleshy Slurian breasts which Slurian men found so alluring. Unfortunately, she also seemed to have the intelligence of a grapefruit plant. She had a child-like intellect. Also, to be fair, romance didn't rank very high among my priorities, given my current circumstances. I was malnourished, temporarily crippled, and under intense stress.

Meanwhile, my leg was recovering. The next day I felt well enough to limp around. I suspected that, given my current rate of recovery, I'd at least be able to walk soon, and something intangible made me uneasy enough to decide to leave the next day.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of telling Natasha that.

She started crying. "You're going to leave me? All alone?" She wept some more.

I attempted to console her, but I also kept a close eye on her, for fear she would report me to the Redcaps.

That night she served me a strange tasting soup. I thought it was odd tasting because of the unusual vegetables in it, but had second thoughts as I suddenly became very drowsy. In fact, I had trouble keeping my eyes open.

"Why don't you get some rest?" she said, dragging me to the bed.

I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night. I knew immediately I had been drugged. I tried to move my arms and legs, but couldn't. Natasha had used leather belts to tie my arms and legs to the bed frame.

"Ah, you're awake and rested," she said.

"Are you going to turn me in?" I said fearfully.

"Idaho! I would never do that!" she said. She started to undo my pants.

"What are you doing?" I asked. Actually, though it seemed pretty self-explanatory.

She lowered my trousers, and then removed her own clothing. I might have admired her figure, if I weren't malnourished, tied to a bed, and feeling the psychological weight of several platoons of Redcaps searching for me.

"Do you like what you see?" asked Natasha, standing so I could admire her. She flaunted her large, jiggling pear shaped proletarian breasts at me.

"Ah, yes, well, they look very squeezable, but-"

Natasha started to lay down on me, rubbing against my body. Unfortunately, she started to get me excited despite myself. Those large Slurian breasts seemed to work wonders on me. Her softness above evoked a hardness below. In just a few moments she grew the response she had been looking for, and she took full advantage of it. She grabbed my organ put it in a place designed to maximize her pleasure.

Actually, it didn't do too badly for my pleasure, either.

Natasha groaned as she grinded on top of me. She seemed to be having a great deal of fun. I was just worried that her cries would attract the Redcaps.

She seemed to go on for a long time. How long had it been since she had been pleasured by a man? I could only wonder. For me, it was pleasurable, in a way, but I was really under too much stress to enjoy it properly. I was able to squirt inside of her, which pleased her to no end; she clapped her hands and yelled when she felt me explode inside of her. When she was done, and both of us were exhausted, she dismounted and gave me a quick kiss. "You were wonderful, Idaaho."

"I'm even better when I'm untied," I said.

"No," she said. "You can never leave me."

She couldn't keep me tied up forever.

Could she?

The next day she fed me while I was tied up. She put a potty under me to take care of my other needs. And the following night she came to me again, turning me on so I would turn her on, so to speak.

This continued for three more days. I tugged and tugged on the straps holding my arms and legs, but the restraints were strong, and wouldn't budge.

Meanwhile I was starting to worry that my muscles were atrophying. After a few more days of this, I would no longer be able to walk. Maybe that's what Natasha was hoping for, waiting for that moment when she could untie me because I would no longer be able to stand on my own two feet.

"Love me!" cried Natasha that night, as she pulled down my pants and tried to get me excited again. I gritted my teeth and tried to resist, but it was ultimately futile. Those large Slurian breasts never failed to conquer me. The sight of them flopping up and down as she rode on top of me never failed to ignite my passion.

How would I get out of here? I didn't have a clue.

And then something very unexpected happened the following day.

I heard voices outside. Natasha looked outside the window. "Sshh!" she said. "Redcaps. You stay quiet. I will deal with them." She went outside.

I could only vaguely hear her voice as she talked to them. As I listened for a moment or two, I could sense that the conversation was quickly coming to a conclusion.

And then I thought of an idea. Yelling out.

Natasha hadn't bothered to gag me, believing that I would never, ever turn myself in to the Redcaps.

Indeed, the prospect of prison, labor camps, and torture didn't appeal to me.

But my chances of escaping on my own here were zero.

The thing that I'm embarrassed about is that I didn't even pause or take any time to consider my decision. I was so miserable I just did it.

I yelled out.

Nothing happened, but outside it was suddenly silent.

I yelled again, and as I was yelling, the Redcaps burst through the door.

"My heroes!" I said sarcastically.

One of the Redcaps turned to Natasha, who suddenly tried to spin a story of how she was keeping me captive for them. The Redcap slapped her, and she fell to the ground. As she spun about, I noticed her large breasts jiggling.

As the Redcaps untied me and propelled me to the door, Natasha, lying on the ground, still persisted, grabbing one of my legs. "No!" she cried. "Don't leave me! Love me! Love me!"

One of the Redcaps, a young officer, looked down at her, and then at me, and grinned.

********

"So, we meet again," said a familiar face.

The blindfold was taken off and I saw the blonde Redcap major standing before me. I was tied to the interrogation chair in her office.

"This was the last one, Major Almorsa," said one of the Redcaps.

Almorsa? Finally, I had a name to attach to my torturer's face. We hadn't been formally introduced in our first two encounters, and quite frankly I never expected a third one.

"Did I not say you would regret it if we met again?" she said, giving me a hard look.

"I've been having memory problems lately," I said.

Major Almorsa put her face close to mine. "I will help you to remember."

I'm not going to recount the torture, only to say it was very unpleasant, like last time, and the beatings were worse. One slightly positive effect of the sleep deprivation is that I didn't remember very much of the details afterwards.

The beatings went on for several days, but I could sense that her heart wasn't really in it. I certainly hadn't told her anything useful.

Finally, she said, "You are wasting my time! Guards! Get him ready for transport!"

Major Almorsa put her face close to mine. "I hope you've enjoyed our little encounter."

"Oh, every moment," I assured her.

"Because this will be our last meeting," she said. "You have caused us enough trouble, little man. W have received authorization to put 'shoot on sight' in your file. On your next escape attempt, there will be no more interrogations, no more sweet talk."

She watched me as the implications sunk in. If I tried to escape again and failed, there would be no further chances.

The next thing I knew, I was bundled on a shuttle. I assumed this was the first leg of my trip back to Labor Camp 94.

I couldn't have been more wrong. We flew for several hours. And then, eventually, I could see, out the window of the shuttle, an enormous mountain looming in the distance. As we got closer, I couldn't help but gasp. It was huge. It looked like a giant vertical pillar rising out of the earth, made of stone. There would be no climbing that, neither up nor down.

As the shuttle gained altitude, I saw that there was a plateau on the top of the mountain, relatively flat, with vegetation growing. "That's where we're going?" I asked.

One of the Redcaps nodded. "Mount Perm."

"Perm?"

"Perm," said the Redcap. "Our most secure prison facility. You will find no way off this mountain, unless you jump, Richman." The other Redcaps in the cabin laughed at this feeble attempt at humor.

The shuttle set down on a landing pad outside the encampment. To one side was a series of fields with tall vegetation. I wondered what they grew here. On the other side of the landing field was the camp. The Redcaps escorted me to the front gate.

One of the things I noticed immediately was that the guards at the gate were not Redcap. They were regular Slurian military. Did the military also maintain labor camps?

Salutes were given, receipts were signed, and I was turned over to them. The guards took me to the commandant's office. He turned out to be a balding Slurian military officer named Colonel Yevgeny Tenov.

Colonel Tenov was typing something on a screen when I came in. He continued typing for a minute more before turning to me.

"Ah, Idaho Tuch," he said, checking a readout. "Take a seat, please."

I stared. It was the first time I had heard the word "please" come out of a Slurian's mouth. I sat.

"You are the latest troublemaker to be sent here," said Colonel Tenov mildly. "I presume the Loyalty Police didn't tell you where you were going or why?"

I shook my head.

"Yes, they are sometimes short on words," said Tenov. "This is a camp for prisoners of war who have repeatedly caused trouble by attempting to escape. Some of them are actually quite good at it. But not here." He punched up an image of the mountain on the screen. "As you can see, we are over two and a half Sluromiles up in the air. The way down is nearly entirely vertical. Even if you were to fashion ropes and spikes, you would be unlikely to make it. And long before you made it, we would find you, if you were lucky."

"And if I were unlucky?"

"The Loyalty Police would find you," said Tenov. "I see you have a shoot on sight order attached to your file. We are not barbarians; we understand it is the duty of officers to try to escape. But here it is not possible. And if you try to escape, it is our duty to make life unpleasant for you."

"Wait a minute," I said. "This is a prisoner of war camp?"

"Yes," said Tenov, giving a small smile. "I see from your record that you have spent over two years in civilian labor camps. Most amusing."

"Ha ha," I said, deadpan.

Tenov stared at me. "You may find life a little easier here, but no less strict. We are brutal when we need to be, but not for, how do you say it in your League English. "kicks" or "fun". Obey, and you will not be harmed. You will be provided with adequate food and clothing, and you will serve shifts on the farming team."

"Farming team?"

"We grow our own food here, so as not to be a burden on Slurian society," said Tenov. "We also grow a special crop... for export." He paused, and he looked away as he spoke again. "The only amenity you will not find here is mail."

"No mail?"

"This is a punishment camp, and mail is a luxury." For the first time, Tenov seemed to have trouble meeting my eyes, staring at the wall behind me. There was obviously more to the story than that. If they didn't want us to find out what was going on in the outside world, why not simply censor our mail?

And then Colonel Tenov looked at me again, and said something shocking to me that no Slurian had ever asked before.

"Do you have any questions?"

I shook my head.

"Sergeant Pigli," said Tenov. And then he was looking away, back at his screen.

A fat sergeant took me away. As I was marched into the compound, the fat Sergeant spoke to me. "The colonel likes you, I can tell," said Pigli.

"Oh, I'm flattered," I said dryly.

"Everything he said was true," said Pigli, as he walked me across the compound. "If you behave and don't get into trouble, no one will hurt you." He paused. "I notice the bruises on your face. Did the Redcaps do that to you?"

"Yes," I said.

"Shameful," said Pigli. "Well, you won't find those bastards here."

I was a little surprised by his attitude. I knew that the military had some rivalry with the Redcaps, but didn't realize that there was this level of dislike.

Pigli took me to a barracks, where I took in a view that I can only describe as a delight: League soldiers--Army, Navy, even pilots, by the faded uniforms they wore.

"Hey!" said a man with sergeant stripes. "We haven't seen a new face in a while!" He jumped up to shake my hand.

"Just a minute, Sergeant Bailey!" said Pigli sternly. "I have not yet introduced the new prisoner. Prisoners, this is Lieutenant Idaaho Tuch."

"Tuch?" someone asked.

"Took," I said.

"What ship did you serve on?"

"Where are you from?"

"Are we winning the war?"

There were so many questions coming so fast. "I don't know," I said, answering the first question last. "I've been a prisoner in a civilian labor camp for two years."

That raised another babble of questions.

"Hold it, hold it," said Sergeant Bailey. "He should report to the Colonel, first."

The other soldiers looked disappointed. Then I remembered they didn't get any mail. No wonder they were starved for news!

Sergeant Bailey took me to the senior officer, Colonel Robert Crawford. Crawford, I learned, had been a regimental commander who had been taken prisoner nearly four years ago.

Crawford interviewed me at some length, asking very specific questions. I started to get the idea that he was suspicious of me for some reason, and said as much.

"Forgive me, Lieutenant," said Crawford. "But the Slurs have been known to plant spies among us. I'm just trying to get all the facts. As a matter of fact, you have quite a credible reference."

"I do?" I asked. I hadn't recognized anyone I had met so far.

"Have him come in now," said the Colonel, speaking to an enlisted man.

The door opened, and none other than War Captain Emmett North stepped in.

"War Captain!" I said. "When did you get here?"

"Just a few days before you did," he said. "It's good to see you, Lieutenant."

"Do you know what happened to the others?" I asked.

The War Captain shook his head. "We can only hope they were sent back to the labor camp." There was a certain irony in how he said it. That was the best possible fate they could have hoped for.

"Like you, they determined I was too great of a security risk, and sent me here," said the War Captain. "Apparently, we're the first newcomers to arrive in nearly six months."

"What does that mean?" I said.

"Either that there aren't a lot of determined escapees, or there are fewer newer prisoners coming into the system," said the War Captain.

"That means we're winning the war!"

"Not necessarily," the War Captain corrected. "It may simply mean the war is at a stalemate."

"Oh," I said. "So what do we do now?"

"Escape again, naturally," said the War Captain, as if the question didn't really need answering.

Since the War Captain had vouched for me personally, the prisoners of Mount Perm were willing to share with me the details of their escape plan.

"How can you possibly hope to escape off this huge mountain?" I asked. "I'm told it's unclimbable."

"Who told you that?" Sergeant Bailey said. "The Slurians?"

"It is climbable," said the War Captain. "But only by expert climbers in good physical condition. The Colonel was correct when he told you that long before you got to the bottom, your absence would be noticed, and they would find you."

"How do you know what Colonel Tenov told me?" I asked curiously.

The War Captain and Colonel Crawford exchanged glances. "We are, at times, able to listen in on the conversations in his office."

"A listening device?" I said.

"Nothing so sophisticated, Lieutenant," said Colonel Crawford. "Simply a man lying in the gap between the floorboards of his office and the ground below."

Oh. Then I noticed how all the barracks were elevated above the ground.

"That's to make it easy to spot diggers," said Crawford. "But they don't often look under their own buildings."

"So how do you dig a tunnel?" I asked.

"Carefully," said Crawford.

"But even if you do dig a tunnel... and get out... and somehow get down the mountain... what then?"

"We estimate the nearest village is over 200 Sluromiles away," said Colonel Crawford. "But we aren't certain. No one's gotten that far."

"Has anyone ever successfully escaped from here?"

There was a pause. Then, "No."

"So why do we-"

"Because we're officers, and it's our duty!" snapped Colonel Crawford. He turned to the War Captain. "Perhaps you have the wrong man."

"No, I don't," said the War Captain. He looked at me. "There's something else, isn't there?"

I nodded unhappily. "While I was in the gentle care of the Redcaps, they told me if I ever was caught escaping again, I'd be executed, on the spot."

"That's what they told me as well," said the War Captain softly.

Chapter 12: An Unexpected Visitor

Colonel Crawford seemed to think I had established a good rapport with Sergeant Pigli, so I was assigned to get information and favors out of him. It turned out he could be bribed with food, which, while not in great supply, was more freely available than it had been in the Slurian labor camp.

Each of us had an assigned task. Corporal Barry "Digger" Bayonne, despite his low rank, was in charge of the digging crew. He had dug several tunnels out of the camp already.

"What happened to them?"

"They got discovered," he said.

"So what do you do?"

"We dig more," he said cheerfully.

"Can't they just use seismic detectors to spot you the minute you start digging?" I asked.

"They could, if they had them," said Corporal Digger. "But everything here is very low priority, low tech. We even farm with hand implements."

"I noticed the vegetable farms, but then there is that tall crop, with the curly leaves-"

"Yes, you mean Khat."

"Khat?"

"It's highly addictive, very rare," said Digger.

"Why do they grow it here?"

"It only grows in a thin atmosphere, for some reason," said Digger. "We're two miles up, so it's perfect here. And since we're near the equator, we get warmer weather than the rest of the planet."

"We're at the equator?" I was stunned to learn this. It was so cold! "It must be no more than 30 degrees outside," I said.

"That's a pretty warm day, for Altera" said Digger.

Half Commander Gary Dalton was the gadget man. He would take bits and pieces of devices or equipment that the men managed to steal and turn them into usable items. For example, he somehow managed to turn a stolen hoe into two shovels. I'm still not sure how he did that. He was also very good at producing civilian clothing and identity papers.

"Identity papers?" I asked.

"Yes, they still use papers here, not electronic ID's," said Dalton. "They're only a few thousand years behind the times on this planet. It's a conscious decision, you know; the Slurians don't want to expend any resources here on this backwater planet."

I gradually met the other prisoners. It was nice to be back among my own kind, fellow League officers, even if my happiness was tempered by the fact that I was in prison. But there was no torture, beatings, or mistreatment, with only one or two exceptions. And Sergeant Pigli was actually friendly, which confused me utterly. A Slurian soldier, friendly?

And then there was the one prisoner who was different from all the rest. All the prisoners here were League soldiers. All except one, and I ran into him purely by accident, about a week after I arrived.

He was a tall, dark haired man with a continually angry look on his face.

He stood out because he was the only prisoner not wearing a uniform. He was dressed in civilian clothes, blue denim from the looks of it, underneath his fur jacket. We stood on line together for food. "Hello, I don't think I've met you before," I said.

The man said nothing.

"The name is Idaho, Idaho Took," I said. "That's with three o's, in total."

The man still said nothing.

"You won't get much out of him, Idaho," said Sergeant Bailey. "That's the Whisperer."

"The Whisperer?"

"That's what we call him, anyway. I'm not sure what his real name is."

As we were served our food (kem, with bits of carrots, for flavor), I sat down next to Bailey. "He's not wearing a military uniform. What service was he with?"

"No service, not that I know of," said Bailey. "He's a Graftonite."

"A Graftonite!" I said. Graftonites were a race of gunfighters with super fast reflexes. "What is he doing here?"

"I'm not sure of his story. He doesn't talk much," said Bailey. "But I think he got caught up in the fighting between the League and the Slurians, and he got captured."

"I can't imagine any Graftonite getting captured," I said.

The Whisperer turned and glared at me.

"Oh, sorry," I said, lowering my voice.

The Whisperer spoke, in a very soft voice, "You can imagine it when you're surrounded by two divisions in heavy battle tanks."

He stared at me a moment further, which made me rather uncomfortable. Then he turned away.

"I don't think I got off to a good start with him," I said.

Life settled into a routine. We farmed, we dug tunnels, we planned, and we improvised. It took some time to dig a tunnel, and we were a camp which was simply filled with escape artists. It was only inevitable that every so often one of us would attempt an escape.

One of the masters of the escape attempt was a fellow named Lieutenant Riley. He held the record for largest number of escape attempts. He usually escaped outside the camp, while on farming duty. The farming area was outside the camp, but still on the mountaintop, and the area was surrounded by guards.

But that didn't stop Riley from improvising. One time as we were being escorted back to the camp, we came to a bend in the road, and Riley was out of sight of the guards for a few seconds. He ducked into a ditch, took out a blanket covered with dirt and leaves, and covered himself with it. The guards never noticed.

Another time, while on a work break, some of the prisoners built a snowman near the fields. The guards took no notice of it until a headcount showed that Riley had disappeared--he was inside of it.

Perhaps Riley's most audacious escape attempt occurred when he simply walked out of the front gates, impersonating Sergeant Pigli. Dalton helped him modify a League uniform to look like a Slurian one, and he stuck some pillows under it, to simulate Pigli's obesity. They even made a mock blaster to match Pigli's.

Then, one evening, after the sun had set, he headed to the front gate. Riley had practiced imitating Pigli's voice, and in fact was quite a good mimic. The guards at the front gate were completely taken in, and they let him escape.

Unfortunately, each escape ended in failure. Although Riley had successfully escaped beyond the front gate several times, he was usually caught attempting to scale down the mountain. The mountain was two miles high, and scaling down its length, even with rope and other equipment, simply took too long. Once a prisoner was discovered missing, the first thing the guards would do is call in a shuttle to circle around the mountain. There, usually on the side of some part of the mountain face, they would find the dangling prisoner.

The punishment for attempted escape was always the same: two weeks in isolation. But this was no cold cell, there was no torture or other beatings. The Slurians treated us as professionals.

My fellow prisoners were fascinated by my connection with War Admiral North. None of the others there had ever served under him, and they plied me with all sorts of questions. Actually, they were even more fascinated by War Captain North, since he looked a little like the War Admiral, and talked like him too. Although I had no news of the war to tell them, they always loved to hear stories of the battles I had fought under the War Admiral.

I kept in close contact with Sergeant Pigli, as I became his designated contact for goods and information. We would bribe him with food to get what we wanted--usually innocuous things like blankets, pieces of wood, or ink, which we could turn to our own purposes. Sometimes, however, we would pay for information.

"So, how goes the war?" I asked one evening, as I stood outside the barracks with Pigli.

"Now, Idaaho, you know I am not allowed to divulge classified information," said Pigli, scolding me. By this time I had learned that he hated the war, hated being a conscript, and wanted nothing more than to go back to Sluria and resume his native profession. He was a tailor, actually. When Riley was caught impersonating him, Pigli demanded to know who had made his uniform. At first, we refused to tell, figuring that Pigli would take some sort of revenge, but Pigli assured us that was not the case.

When Dalton admitted doing it, Pigli shook his hand and gave him a small piece of chocolate.

Why? Because his uniform was getting worn out, and now he had a good spare!

I don't want to present a picture of guards who became fast friends with us. Most kept a cold, professional distance. A few were borderline cruel. They had a job to do and they did it. Most didn't want to be there and would have preferred being somewhere else.

But Pigli was an exception. He was a chatterbox, and though he never intentionally helped us, he sometimes let something slip through.

"Come on, Pigli, you can tell me," I asked. "Why isn't the war over yet?"

"We still have some, ah, mopping up to do," he said, giving a small grin.

"Don't give me that," I said. "I hear you've been giving people the same mopping up line for years."

"Idaaho, I only know what is told to me. Officially, we are continuing to win the war at a fantastic rate."

"And unofficially?"

Pigli looked around. There were no other guards.

"Let's just say that Slurian war bonds wouldn't be a good buy now. But you didn't hear that from me."

"So we are winning the war," I said, reporting to Colonel Crawford.

"As we surmised. But it could still take years to end," said Crawford. "Therefore, we must proceed with our escape plans."

"Even assuming you manage to finish one of your tunnels without being detected, how do you plan to get us off the mountain?" I asked.

"That will be explained in time," said Crawford. "In the meantime, I want you to work with Corporal Jensen on your speech."

"My speech?"

"Your accent," said Crawford. "When Jensen is done with you, you'll speak Slurian flawlessly."

So I started lessons with the corporal. He taught me to properly speak all forms of Slurian--low, medium, and high. A lot of it depended on the inflection.

"No, no no," said Corporal Jensen, one time when I pronounced the word "ticket".

"What did I do?"

"You pronounced it using a high Slurian inflection."

"So?"

"You changed the meaning of the word from 'ticket' to 'prostitute'," said Jensen.

"That's not so bad," I theorized.

"You'd be given away instantly if you tried to buy a ticket to somewhere," said Jensen. "Please keep practicing. Sir."

So I did.

The Slurians knew we were building tunnels, of course. Every so often they would find one of them, and weeks of work would go down the drain.

"All according to plan," said the War Captain.

"Plan? What plan?" I said.

"We make a smaller series of dummy tunnels for them to find, from time to time. That distracts them from our real tunnels."

"Which are..."

"On a need to know basis," said the War Captain. The Colonel had made him our chief strategist, which everyone agreed made a great deal of sense.

Finally, after I had been there a few months, we were ready to make our escape. One of the tunnels was ready. Ten prisoners were chosen to make the escape attempt. I happened to be one of the ten (through the War Captain's influence? I'll never know). We were given civilian clothes and forged documents, painstakingly constructed over the past few months by Half Commander Dalton.

"Can you tell us now how we're going to get off the mountain?" I asked.

"We're going to climb down it," said the War Captain.

"What will stop them from picking us off the side of the mountain when they discover we're missing?" I said.

The War Captain indicated a rough model of the mountain made out of clay. "Do you see this fissure here, along the north face?"

We nodded.

"We think there's a crack there, perhaps a cave, large enough to hide in. We'll hide there until they conclude, logically, that we're already off the mountain."

"Has anyone actually seen this cave?" I asked.

The War Captain shook his head. "Only from a distance. We'll explore it when we get there."

If it's there, I thought silently.

But then, the day before we were supposed to go, our tunnel was discovered.

We were so close!

"This can't be a coincidence," said Colonel Crawford.

"No, it can't," the War Captain agreed.

As it turned out, we had a spy in the camp. But the story of how we uncovered his identity and exposed him was nothing compared to an event that occurred the following week.

An unscheduled shuttle landed on the mountaintop. Some senior officials entered the base.

Redcaps.

We tried to get a man under the Commandant's cabin, but security was too tight. It wasn't until after the officials had left and the shuttle had lifted off that we could get a man in place. What he heard was only the aftermath of whatever had happened.

"Colonel Tenov seemed really shaken up, sir," said Sergeant Bailey, who had been the appointed spy. "He kept saying that they can't do it, that it wasn't right, that it was all wrong."

"But what is 'it'?" said Colonel Crawford.

"I don't know, sir," said Sergeant Bailey. "But Tenov, he sounded very upset."

"Maybe the war is over," I said brightly. "Maybe we won. That would upset him."

"He wouldn't refer to it as a wrongness," said the War Captain, his eyes gleaming. "I wonder... what could possibly upset a military officer? Besides defeat in battle."

"Unprofessionalism," said Colonel Crawford. "The Slurian military despises the Redcaps for their unprofessionalism."

"Unprofessionalism regarding what?" the War Captain said.

Then even stranger things happened. A campwide meeting of all the guards was held, except for a few left to guard us. It was so secret that it was held outside the gates of the camp, out of hearing range.

When the guards came back, they looked dazed and sullen.

Even Pigli looked shocked.

"What's up, Pigli?" I asked, as he came by.

He just walked passed me, shaking his head.

The other shoe dropped a week later, when a transport landed. A platoon of Redcap soldiers got off. A platoon of Slurian military officers got on. One of them was Pigli.

He dropped by before he left. "I just came to say goodbye," he said to me, with his pack on his back.

"Why?" I said. "What's going on?"

"You'll find out soon enough," said Pigli. His eyes averted, he added,. "I... I am sorry, Idaaho. I would not do things in this way."

He turned and left, not looking back, even after I called out his name.

The Redcaps took over guard positions inside the camp. Rumors abounded. The Redcaps were taking over; the Redcaps intended to kill us; we all didn't have long to live.

It was with great trepidation when we were called to rollcall right after the Redcaps arrived. We all stood at attention at the side of the Pit. The Pit was a great crevice in the compound that seemed to be an endless chasm inside of the mountain. Occasionally one of the guards joked about dropping one of us in it, because it was believed that anything dropped in there would not make the sound of hitting bottom for a full minute. Rumor had it that the Pit extended all the way to the base of the mountain, but we found the interiors of the Pit virtually unclimbable, so we could hardly explore it as an escape route.

We stood at attention nervously as we saw the new Redcap guards in place with their blaster rifles.

But the regular military was still there too, to a lesser extent, in the watchtowers and on the walls and outer fence guard. Colonel Tenov came out of his office. A Redcap major came up and stood by his side.

Looking extremely unhappy, Tenov stepped forward and addressed us.

"Attention prisoners. From this day forward, we will have new... assistance. Half the garrison has been shifted back to active duty. They are being replaced with special units of the Loyalty Police, under the command of Major Semvarsk."

That must be the Redcap standing by his side. He had a smug smile on his face. That was not a good sign.

"The military... will still be in overall control of the camp, especially perimeter security. The Loyalty Police will assist in interior security. That is all." He abruptly turned, and headed back into his office.

What exactly was going on here?

"It couldn't be a reaction to anything we've done," said Colonel Crawford, back in the barracks.

"Something must have happened," I said. "We must be winning the war. They probably called up that platoon to fight because they're running out of reserves."

"Perhaps," said the War Captain. "But I'm not convinced that that's what's really happening. One more platoon will not make much of a difference in the war effort. Colonel Tenov is genuinely unhappy about something, and I don't think his unhappiness is confined to the loss of a platoon."

"Of course, he's losing some of his authority to a Redcap officer, what regular military officer would want that?" said Colonel Crawford.

"Perhaps," said the War Captain again. "But-"

Suddenly the door to the barracks burst open, and Redcaps swarmed in. "Inspection!" one of them yelled.

We stood at attention at our bunks.

The Redcap leading the inspection looked vaguely familiar. Then, when he got closer, I recognized him. And his eyes widened when he recognized me.

It was Sergeant Maxim Korky. Sergeant Iron Club, from Labor Camp 94.

It was a small planet.

"So, Richman, we meet again," said Korky. He lifted up his iron bar, and slammed it into my stomach. I doubled over and fell to the ground.

The other soldiers yelled out and started to jump forward, but Korky's men raised their blaster rifles.

"Let me introduce myself!" he said loudly. "I am Master Sergeant Maxim Korky. Major Semvarsk has appointed me his personal liaison to you scum. It's my job to keep you in line."

"I have some news for you," he said. "We are no longer running a luxury hotel. Effective immediately, escaping prisoners will be shot on sight. Work hours will be increased, and the rather exorbitant rations you receive will be cut. Are there any questions?"

Colonel Crawford spoke. "Assaulting one of my men without cause is a violation of the Graftonite accords."

Sergeant Iron Club walked slowly to Colonel Crawford, slowly waving his bar. If he hit the Colonel, I knew there would be blood spilled, and most of it would be ours. They had the blasters, not us.

Iron Club looked Crawford up and down. Crawford cooly returned his glare.

"You are the one called Crawford."

"Colonel Crawford to you," said Crawford.

Iron Bar hooked a thumb. "Take him to Major Semvarsk."

Two Redcap guards moved to grab Crawford. He shrugged them away and started walking on his own.

"The rest of you," said Iron Club, casually appraising the prisoners with his eyes,"... the rest of you can talk to Richman here to find out what kind of treatment you'll get."

He and his men left.

Two prisoners bent down to help me up. I felt a pain in the gut but I didn't think he had broken any bones. I had been lucky, this time.

We waited anxiously for Colonel Crawford to return. When he didn't, the next ranking officer, Major Ingushetti, a tough as nails marine officer, went to see Colonel Tenov. He returned with an enraged expression.

"The Colonel has been put in solitary," he said.

"Why?" Sergeant Bailey asked.

"For behaving insolently to that new Redcap Major."

That did it. We all went on strike; we went in the courtyard and sat down and refused to move, and refused to work. The Redcaps yelled at us, screamed at us to get up, even kicked us. When that didn't work, one of them fired his blaster rifle over our heads.

I felt my heart hammering, but I didn't move.

The blaster fire got Colonel Tenov out of his office in a hurry.

"What is this?" he said.

"The prisoners are being disobedient," said Major Semvarsk. "I may have to make an example of a few of them."

"We want Colonel Crawford released!" one of the men shouted.

One of the Redcaps went over and gave the prisoner a vicious kick.

"Stop!" said Colonel Tenov. He turned to the Redcap Major. "Release Colonel Crawford immediately."

"But sir-"

"You're punishing him for nothing and they know it!" said Tenov, apparently not caring that we were listening. "Now, we need this workforce alive and cooperative to get the Khat harvested. Are you going to write the report after they mutiny and you murder half the workforce?"

Major Semvarsk glared at Tenov, and for a moment I thought he was going to escalate matters to an exploding point. But then he cooled down and nodded. "Release the Colonel," he said.

We actually clapped as Colonel Crawford was let out.

"Don't think you've won anything, dogs!" said Semvarsk. "I will be watching you. And if any of you get out of line, you'll think solitary confinement will be a picnic!"

Things went downhill from there. Our food ration was cut, as promised, and our work hours were increased. At least the work wasn't as grueling, or as dangerous, as working in the mines.

But the Redcap abuse of our men steadily increased. First they called us names; then they pushed or slapped us; then they administered minor beatings; then they broke bones and openly used torture.

Our appeals to Colonel Tenov went unanswered. His office was now off-limits to us, and only rarely could we get a spy under his office. The regular military men in the watchtowers, on the fence line, often looked away, out of the camp, whenever the Redcaps became abusive. They knew better than to interfere with the Loyalty Police.

Sergeant Iron Club picked on a number of us, but for some reason he developed a special disliking for the Whisperer. He would often pick him out of line and taunt him. "You're the Graftonite, you're not so tough, are you? Show me how tough you are, Graftonite man!"

He would punch and kick the Whisperer, but that only worked once; even in his beaten state, the Whisperer had much faster reflexes than Sergeant Iron Club, and the first time Iron Club attacked, he found himself on the ground, spitting out blood and wondering what happened.

Thereafter he started using an electrowhip on the Whisperer, with blaster armed Redcap soldiers standing in backup. He would whip the Whisperer with little or no provocation whatsoever. Sometimes the Whisperer would get in a punch, or a kick, but Iron Club would only whip him harder.

One time Iron Club whipped him so much that he stopped moving. But that didn't stop Iron Club. I think he meant to kill the Whisperer that time.

Sergeant Bailey ran over to the Whisperer's body and checked for a pulse. He found it, but it was faint. "He's barely alive," said Bailey.

"Get out of the way," Iron Club growled.

"What? So you can kill a defenseless man?" said Bailey. He gulped. "If you're going to whip a defenseless prisoner, whip me."

"As you wish!" said Iron Club, raising the electrowhip.

"And me," said another prisoner, stepping forward.

"And me," said another, and then still another came forward.

Iron Club raised his whip again, but scowled. This wasn't giving him the kind of pleasure he was looking for. He stomped off, looking annoyed.

The Whisperer survived, but it took many days of bed rest before he returned to even a shadow of his former self. When he regained consciousness, he had a private conversation with Sergeant Bailey. Well, it was almost private; I was eavesdropping.

"Why?" the Whisperer asked simply.

"I would have done it for any innocent person," said Bailey.

"I wouldn't have done it for you," said the Whisperer.

"That's not important," said Bailey.

"Maybe it is," said the Whisperer. And then he dropped off to sleep again.

It was three whole months after the Redcaps arrived, that we learned the total, awful truth. It was Sergeant Bailey, who had been listening under Colonel Tenov's office, who heard the news. He looked stunned, really stunned.

"What?" we all said.

He was in shock, almost speechless. "The war," he managed to get out. He was almost in tears.

"What?"

"The war... is over," said Bailey.

"What, Bailey?" I said. "Did we lose?"

"No!" said Bailey. "We won!" He was crying now.

"Then why are you crying?" I said.

"We won the war over three months ago!" Bailey wailed.

Over three months ago. And we were still prisoners of war. It didn't take the brightest bulb to figure out what had happened. The only question was... why.

The Colonel, the War Captain and I asked for an interview with Colonel Tenov. After repeated requests, we got it.

Tenov looked haggard and pale. Of course. It was all clear now.

"Why are we still here?" asked Colonel Crawford.

"What do you mean?" said Tenov nervously.

"The war is over," said Crawford. "It's been over for some time."

Tenov bit his lip. "I know," he said unhappily.

"Why have we not been told? Why have we not been released?"

"I didn't think they were serious," said Tenov. "Even when they set it up, I thought it was a contingency plan."

"What was?" said Crawford.

"Didn't you ever wonder, why you never received any mail or were allowed to send any?"

"We were told it was part of being in this punishment camp," said Crawford slowly.

"Wrong," said Tenov, shaking his head. "The minute you were transferred here, you were immediately listed in our official records as dead, deceased, shot while trying to escape. The authorities felt that you had used up so many resources in your repeated escapes that you needed to spend the rest of your life working off the debt."

"You knew all along?"

"I hoped they would change their minds when the war ended. I thought maybe they would use you as bargaining chips. Perhaps a change in administration would change the policy-"

"But that didn't happen, did it?" the War Captain asked.

"No," said Tenov. "When the war ended, the Loyalty Police wanted to take total control over the installation. We knew what would happen if they did. You would all be slaughtered! There was an internal fight in the bureaucracy. A compromise was reached."

"You would stay in overall control, while the Redcaps would run things inside the fence line."

"Correct."

"But that didn't really happen, did it?" the War Captain asked. "The Redcaps really run this camp, don't they?"

"Yes," said Tenov. He couldn't even look at us. "I'm sorry for what's happened to you. I tried to resign, but... but... I was not allowed to."

"You have to help us, get a message out-"

"No!' said Tenov. "I am a loyal Slurian, I will not-"

"A good thing," said Major Semvarsk, bursting into the office with a few of his Redcaps. They had obviously been listening from the outside. He turned to Colonel Crawford. "Any more questions?" he smiled.

So they were keeping us here out of spite. Spite, anger at losing the war, whatever you want to call it. There didn't seem to be anything we could do about it.

Except redouble our efforts to escape.

But the Redcaps were even more thorough at detecting our tunnels. No tunnel ever got more than 20 feet before it was found by a Redcap. They simply were too observant.

"So we will simply have to construct a new tunnel in a place they won't think to look," said Colonel Crawford.

"Where would that be?" I asked.

"Under the Commandant's office."

Under his office! We could only sneak people there on an irregular basis at best. But Crawford was right; the Slurians almost never looked under there.

We began work on the tunnel. But work was slow, because of our irregular access to the area under his office. In the meantime more of us were beaten. One of the prisoners was killed and thrown into the Pit. There was a riot after that, which resulted in the deaths of three more of us.

Meanwhile, work on the tunnel progressed. Corporal Digger had almost made it to the wire, when something very unexpected happened to me at lunch one day.

I looked up from my very boring meal of Kem and saw a very unexpected face.

Clifford Croft.

Clifford Croft, perhaps the most famous spy in all the League, Clifford Croft, one of the Column's legendary Eight.

I looked again

It was him.

"Croft?" I said uncertainly.

He suddenly glanced at me. Recognition dawned on his face. It really was him! I wasn't imagining it!

"You've been sent to rescue us!" I said, jumping to conclusions

"Quiet!" said Croft sharply. He sat down opposite me. "You couldn't be more wrong."

"What?"

"I wasn't sent here to rescue you," said Croft.

"Then... the War Captain! You were sent for him," I said.

"Who?" said Croft. "No, I was sent here to rescue him," he said, pointing to the man sitting right next to me.

The Whisperer, for once, had a very surprised look on his face.