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)

Prologue

It didn't take me long to run out of breath. Being in a Slurian labor camp for six months will do that to you. You're tired even before you take the first step. You're experiencing borderline starvation to begin with, and the frigid cold of Altera and the brutal work shifts in the mines don't help at all.

But as I heard the barking of the dogs, I found the strength to keep moving. I was in the forest, just two miles outside the camp. I and my unlucky choice of co-conspirators had had hours to make a clean getaway, but we had ended up wandering around in circles in the night. This is, right before my fellow escapees tried to kill me.

I shouldn't have even been in a labor camp. I'm a fighter pilot for the League. One of the very best. I was shot down and made the mistake of trying to hide while wearing civilian clothes. I was captured and sentenced as a spy, rather than as a prisoner of war, and sent to a labor camp on Altera. For most people, that was a death sentence.

The dogs barked again and I started to run faster. But my strength was leaving my body faster than my resolve could replenish it. My lungs felt like they were going to burst. My legs were aching.

I fell down in the snow. The sound of the dogs were closer. And the Redcaps wouldn't be far behind.

I tried to get myself to get up. I couldn't. I was too weak. I dragged myself behind a tree. Maybe they wouldn't see me.

Who was I kidding? All they would have to do was follow my tracks in the snow.

But my body had made this decision. I could go no farther.

The barking of the dogs grew louder now. I thought of Battle Admiral Norman North, who had sent me on this mission. He probably thought I was dead. "MIA", or "Missing in Action", was the official designation. But in this war, that often meant they simply couldn't find the body.

I watched my breath form as vapors, as I exhaled into the cold morning air.

The dogs were close, now, and I could also hear the sounds of words, in fluent Slurian.

I closed my eyes, wishing they would all go away, wishing I was at home, wishing...

"Up!"

I opened my eyes, to see myself surrounded by hostile looking Redcaps, all with blaster rifles, pointed straight at me.

"Up!" their leader snarled, pointing his rifle at me while his finger tensed slightly on the trigger.

Slowly, painfully, I willed myself to get up. Suddenly, I felt the rifle butt of a blaster against my head, and I went down again.

As I lost consciousness, I knew that they had been right.

There was no escape from Altera.

Part I: Battle Lieutenant Idaho J. Took's Story

Chapter 1: Out of It

It was a time of war.

The League of United Planets was at war with the Slurian Union.

Again.

Even before the war was over, it was being referred to on the League side as "The Second Slurian War". (The Slurians called it "The Second War of Liberation".) The League, a relatively democratic group of free societies, had been attacked once again by the brutal Slurian dictatorship.

As war went, it was massive. Thousands of spaceships squared off against each other in space; millions of soldiers fought over planets that had the misfortune of being at the front lines. Millions more perished, were wounded, or captured.

The League kept their prisoners under strict detention. Slurian prisoners never starved, never froze to death, and were provided with at least minimal medical care. Their treatment was within the guidelines set by the Graftonite Accords.

But the Slurians, while a reluctant signatory to the Graftonite Accords, never observed any of the terms. They viewed prisoners as cowards, or simply a commodity, another source of expendable slave labor. Since the Slurians had ultimate confidence in winning this war (as they did all their wars), they felt there were little or no consequences to working their prisoners to death. After all, the Slurians treated their own people this way; why should foreigners be treated any better? As a result, prisoners were treated the same, or even worse, than Slurian civilians in labor camps.

This was the state of affairs as the war raged on....

********

From the Personal Log of Battle Lieutenant Idaho J. Took

My hands are still shaking. It's been several months since I've been released from the military hospital on Errata, but I'm still feeling the effects of my captivity. Just thinking about it makes me shiver. I was a prisoner of war for nearly three years. I saw men, both League and Slurians, die by the hundreds. These weren't anonymous blips killed by a long distance missile, or even people killed in close quarters battle; these were people who dropped off through starvation, or exhaustion, or exposure to the elements, right in front of my eyes. They were murdered, or executed.

I had taken several sets of notes of my experiences, but they were repeatedly confiscated by the camp authorities. When I finally reached Mount Perm, I was able to write a rough set of notes that I was able to smuggle out with me. At first, when I was in the sickbay on the

Glory

, and even later, in the military hospital on Errata, I could hardly think. I was suffering from the aftereffects of starvation, exposure, and half a dozen illnesses. I had terrible nightmares. Now, I've started calming down. I thought I could finally write about it. Now that I'm getting the shivers again, maybe I was wrong.

But I don't want to wait to write about it before I forget; I mean, I can never forget what happened, but it's the little details, the faces, the people, that I don't want to lose. So let me try once again to tell what happened.

********

It started a little over three years ago, in what was to become the pivotal battle of Bangor. It turned out to be one of our biggest victories in the war against the Slurians; the Second Slurian War, that is. We were losing the war with the Slurians; they had, once again, surprised us, luring our politicians, and by extension, our military, off guard. We were struck off balance, by superior forces, and were losing ground rapidly.

That's when they put Battle Admiral (now War Admiral) Norman North in charge. He started to turn things around immediately. But it wasn't until Bangor that the war shifted in a major way.

Unfortunately, I never realized that Bangor was the turning point, not until many years later. I participated in the Bangor campaign. I was with one of the squadrons making a deep feint into Slurian space. My job was to convince the Slurians that the

Glory

was where it wasn't.

Unfortunately, I was shot down. It wasn't until years later that I learned how successful my mission had been, how the Battle Admiral had crushed the Slurians, how he had finally been promoted to War Admiral for his efforts. My Slurian captors, trying to paint the worst picture of everything, told me that the Battle Admiral's fleet was burning in space, and that the Slurian navy was conquering League space left and right. I wasn't so weak from torture as to believe everything they told me, of course, but I didn't know quite what to believe, either, and fear of my "failure" haunted me for nearly all of my captivity.

********

I remember being on the

Glory

. That was Battle Admiral North's ship, a relatively new Command Carrier, a combined battleship and fighter carrier, one of the best and most renown in the fleet.

We had just received our mission briefing. The mission we had been assigned was dangerous; but that was why, in the Battle Admiral's own words, he had sent my squadron in.

"Iday," he said, putting an arm on my shoulder, "It's a dangerous mission. You have to penetrate deep into Slurian space without being detected. If their heavies catch you, we won't be there to back you up." He looked me deep in the eyes to emphasis the seriousness of the situation.

But I already knew that. I stared back at him. "And you've picked me for this one-way mission because...."

"You're a survivor," said the Battle Admiral, not flinching from my gaze. "If anyone can survive, you can."

"I have great public relations people," I said. "It's just a pity they're not going with me."

The Battle Admiral gave me an odd look, the type he often does when I crack a joke. I'm never sure if he finds it amusing or not.

My squadron was sent out in specially retrofitted Harmony-14 fighter-bombers. Normally, we would have taken our Wildcat 122-A's, but Harmony fighters could carry more fuel internally and could carry larger external fuel tanks as well. On the downside, however, they weren't nearly as agile fighters as the 122-A's.

"But your mission isn't to go into ship to ship combat," the Battle Admiral had said. "I mean, you'll blow a few things up just to get noticed, but that's your primary mission, merely to get noticed."

"And to survive," I had added. But I was already having second and third thoughts when I saw the battered hull of the Harmony-14 I was assigned to. Our entire squadron was being shipped out to the battlecruiser

Royal Line

, which would carry us as close as possible to the infiltration zone.

Two days later, we launched. A silent squadron of 12. We were forced to keep off the comm, which I think made my nerves worse. Normally I like to chatter with the squadron. This time we could say nothing. Occasionally one of the other Harmony 14's sidled up to me, and I would exchange hand signals and worried glances with a wingman.

They all knew what the odds were. But they also knew our mission was vital. We had to convince the Slurians that we were in the area around the planet Volvograd.

We jettisoned our external fuel tanks before we got in-system. It was important that we looked like short-ranged fighters. A normal squadron of Harmony-14's without external tanks wouldn't have a cruising range much more than a Wildcat's. It would have been more credible to use Wildcats, but Wildcats, with their smaller external tanks, couldn't get out this far.

We picked up the battlestation in orbit around the second planet fairly quickly. That would do. I broke radio silence, ordering the squadron in.

I would've preferred to squeeze off one shot and then leave, but that would have been uncharacteristic of a real attacking force. So I lashed into the battlestation with my lasers, carefully avoiding the barrage of fire coming out towards me. It really wasn't much of a danger, not to a skilled pilot; those defending lasers couldn't really hit anything so small, so fast.

I was having such a good time blasting away that I almost didn't notice the pursuing force until they registered on my short range sensors. In all fairness to me they must have come up from the planet's surface; a large number of cruisers, destroyers, and smaller craft. Good.

After this attack, the Slurians should be convinced that the fleet was nearby, and divert even more ships to this sector. After all, how could short range fighters have come this far on their own?

"Break off," I said. Our mission was over. How successful it had been would only be determined in an after-battle analysis. For now, we had to evade pursuit and make our way to a gas giant two systems over, where a refueling tanker was waiting for us.

We headed out of orbit, splitting up in different directions, so the Slurians couldn't follow all of us. Unfortunately, I was one of those they chose to follow.

One especially speedy destroyer was closing on my flank. It must have been the Slurian's own version of a fast attack destroyer. It started firing on me; I took evasive action.

Suddenly, there were four blips behind me.

Fighters. Badger 17's. And they were catching up even more quickly.

I had to turn and fight. I've analyzed that decision at least a million times in the past three years. I still think it was my only choice.

I spiraled behind one fighter as a another got behind me. I quickly lined up and got my shot, but just as I was spinning away, I felt a jolt, and the ship spun wildly.

Spinning wildly, I attempted to regain control while all the controls flickered around me. I regained control, pulled out of the spin, assessed the damage, and spun again to evade pursuers, all in the space of two seconds. The Battle Admiral's faith in me was well placed; you don't get to be the squadron leader of a "B" squadron if you're not a top pilot. Not on the Command Carrier

Glory

you don't.

The damage wasn't fatal, but it wasn't good; one of the Harmony's four engines had been knocked out.

That meant I would never be able to outrun the Slurians. Sure, I could do some fancy moves to keep them off my tail, but not for the distance of two solar systems. I checked my scanner. I was still close to Volvograd. Well, that was it then; I'd have to go to ground.

I didn't bother to radio my wingmen; they all had orders to go their separate ways; it wasn't until three years later that I learned how many of them had survived (eight).

I flew into the Volvograd atmosphere, madly zigging this way and that, leaving a squadron of undoubtedly very frustrated Slurian Badger pilots behind me. My wings started to glow with the heat as I came in on a steeper angle than I should.

I'd like to say that in the few seconds that I took to enter the atmosphere that I checked my scans and considered the best place to bail out. That was standard operating procedure. Unfortunately, events were moving a little too quickly even for me.

All my instrumentation was flashing wildly, systems were failing, the Badgers were closing, and the ground was coming up too quickly....

I leveled the Harmony out and it groaned. I executed a sudden horizontal U turn into a nearby cloud cover. The Badgers followed; it would be impossible to lose them on sensors; but perhaps I could get out of visual range, just for a few seconds.

I set the autopilot and then, taking a deep breath, pressed the eject button.

I was being shot into the air at fantastic speeds. My blood was rushing. And then, below me, I saw the planet's landscape. I cringed inwardly. Isn't that odd, an ace pilot like me, being afraid of heights?

But of course, I hadn't activated my emergency gravitator yet. Nor did I for several seconds.

My emergency gravitator was fitted in my backpack behind me. They hadn't figured out how to make full fledged gravitators small enough to fit into such a small space, so what I had was a "gravitator light", with limited power, that should slow me down sufficiently so that my impact wouldn't be too hard... as long as I didn't activate it for more than two minutes; that was the trick; the gravitator only had enough slowing power for two minutes.

I grimaced as I watched the ground closing. Waiting a few seconds more, I activated it.

Nothing happened.

Then, gradually, I perceived that my descent was starting to slow.

I didn't want it to get too slow; if the gravitator ran out of power, I would fall straight to the ground without any braking power.

My altimeter said I was still 200 feet over the ground when my gravitator gave the 15 second warning beep. Gulping, I turned it off.

I started to plunge down to the ground again.

I meant to turn it back on at 100 feet, but I was falling so fast that it kicked in at about 70 feet. The ground was still coming too fast.... and I was still falling, even as I hit the ground.

Ooof! My feet hit with a mighty jolt, and I felt a tremendous pain in my legs as I rolled to the side, as I had been trained to do.

I lay there for a second, catching my breath. I was in some kind of field. Birds were flying in the distance. There was absolutely no noise of any kind, except a gentle breeze.

But however peaceful it looked, the situation was bad. I was trapped far behind enemy lines. I could be captured, tortured, executed. I still hadn't moved my legs. Had I broken them? I feared the worst.

Then I spoke my first words on Volvograd.

"I'm fearing the worst?" I said aloud, to no one in particular. And then, "I'm already on a planet crawling with Slurians, with no way home; how much worse can a pair of broken legs be?"

Cautiously I sat up, and then tenderly stood up. I winced as I flexed my legs. I was bruised, but nothing was broken.

"There," I said. "Maybe this day won't turn out so badly after all."

Suddenly a pair of Badger 17's streaked through the air. They sounded like a thunderclap above me, startling me despite myself.

"Time to celebrate later," I muttered. I grabbed my emergency supply pack ,and started walking rapidly, the best I could do for the moment on my weakened joints.

I was in a large open field. There was no sign of civilization anywhere around me. There were some woods in the distance. That looked like a good destination.

A Badger flew overhead again, so low that I was forced to duck. Undoubtedly he was radioing all his little friends. As it overflew a third time, the wind knocked me to the ground.

As I stood up, I realized the Badger hadn't fired on me. They wanted me alive; probably for interrogation. Well, that was a good thing; I wanted me alive too.

As I reached the trees, I could already see a pair of shuttles streaking across the air, not two miles away.

I had perhaps a ten minutes head start, no more.

I started running.

Ten minutes isn't much time to escape capture in an open field. But in ten minutes one can blend into the forest, if one is good enough, and fast enough.

I was.

An hour later, puffing for breath, I took a break behind a tree, giving my abused legs a break. Does it sound improbable that I escaped from my pursuers? They had come quickly in response to my sighting, so they probably weren't equipped with search parties--there was only a pilot and a minimal crew in each shuttle. Such a small number of people could hardly comb the forest for me.

By now, of course, more reinforcements would have arrived. My primary duty was not to get captured; if I were interrogated and revealed the real location of the Battle Admiral's fleet, all our plans would be lost. Actually, I hadn't been told the exact location our fleet would be attacking from, but I did know enough to tell the Slurians where the fleet wasn't; and if they made me talk, all our efforts would have been wasted.

I had to evade capture then, for at least two days, maybe three. After that the battle would be joined, and it wouldn't matter what the Slurians learned from me; it would all be old news.

The sun was setting, and it was starting to get cold. I noticed a small path in the forest, and peered through the dim light as best I could. I couldn't see anyone. Should I take the path? I could go more quickly and quietly that way than trying to blaze a path through the forest, which was more dense in this area. I decided to take a risk and use the path.

I walked quickly, alert for the slightest sound, of a snapping twig or plant squashed underfoot. I heard sounds of animals in the forest but thought I could distinguish them from real people. I walked quickly, too quickly, and had to stop myself as I entered a clearing.

There was a small farmhouse at the edge of the clearing, and a barn. There was a light on in the farmhouse.

I immediately thought of the barn. I knew I couldn't hide out there; that would be the first place the Slurians would look.

But there could be food there. I had enough concentrated rations to last a week, but could always use more. More importantly, there could be local clothes there I could use to blend in with the population. My uniform would give me away immediately. If I could dress like the locals perhaps I could go into one of their cities, find a ship and escape.