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 7: Something Odd
Our time at Labor Camp 94 wasn't all about starving and dying. We tried to have what little fun where we could. We played cards, indoors, and when the weather permitted, we played bocce outside.
I'll never understand the Slurian fascination with bocce, the game where you roll little balls so that they hit one another, but every Slurian I met seemed fixated by it. Naturally, since there were no bocce balls here, they played with snowballs. They could seem to do this in all kinds of weather, even a raging snowstorm, and so fascinated were they with the sport that just ignore the temperature around them.
And then there was my kind of fun, getting back at the Redcaps. I quickly found an ally in this with a prisoner named Korolev.
Korolev was a practical joker who, predictably, had been sent to Altera for making a string of impolitic jokes about the Slurian system. But that didn't get him down. Nothing seemed to depress Korolev. Whenever the guards were harsh with us, Korolev would say, "Hey, don't get angry. Just get even."
He would do provocative stunts that were enough to get him in serious trouble if he were ever discovered. His signature prank was to hit guards on the back of the head with snowballs. Such was his skill that he could curve-throw a snowball so that it would appear to come from a completely different direction. Many of us would just watch with fascination whenever we saw Korolev standing around in the prison yard. We knew he had a snowball in his hand, looking for a guard to turn his head away, just waiting for the opportunity.
Korolev was long suspected by the guards, but whenever they did a snap search, they never found any snowballs on him. I asked him once about it. "Where do you keep the snowball when you're searched?"
"In one place they never look," said Korolev, gesturing to his underwear. I doubt he was serious, but with Korolev, one never knew.
Another favorite tactic of Korolev was the avalanche trap. When no one was looking, Korolev would scamper onto the roof of an administrative building and pack up the snow over the door in such a way that it would come tumbling down on anyone who opened it. One time we got really lucky and the Commandant, Major Colonel Tromov himself, came out the door and was suddenly clobbered by several cubic feet of snow.
He made us stand at attention in the freezing outdoors for an entire day, but no one revealed the perpetrator. It was worth it just to see the expression of rage on his face as he marched back and forth in front of us and screamed.
Korolev always tried to test the limits, trying to hit officers with his snowballs even when they weren't looking directly away from him. But somehow he never got caught.
His special targets were our VIP's. Every so often senior Slurian officers would visit the camp, to inspect or do whatever it was that Slurians came to do. Korolev would consider it his special mission to "get" them.
The guards, wise to past snowball "assassination" attempts, started a new routine of forming a ring around a visitor as soon as he emerged from his groundcar. That way they would surely see anyone throwing a snowball at the visitor, in one case a full Redcap Colonel.
Korolev stood leaning against the barracks, clearly watching the visitor arriving, his hands in his pockets, whistling softly.
"How are you going to get that one, Kory?" a prisoner asked.
The circle of guards opened up so that the visiting colonel could make his way from the groundcar to the administrative building. The Colonel walked up the snow covered path and-
Suddenly he slipped as the ground collapsed underneath him and the Colonel sank into two feet of snow. The Colonel yelled in rage and actually hit one of his assistants who tried to get him out of the shallow pit.
Korolev gave a small smile.
"How did you manage that one?" I asked.
Korolev said nothing, but continued to smile.
Not all our visitors were Redcaps. Once in a very long while we were visited from officials from the Interstellar Human Rights Coalition. The IHRC inspected and visited the Slurian camps, just as they inspected League camps where Slurians were held prisoners. I was altogether surprised to see the IHRC; after all, this was not, as I kept being reminded, a prisoner of war camp, but a labor reform camp, largely for Slurian civilians.
The Slurians were probably allowing it for public relations. During the visit, brand new clothing was taken out of storage, blankets were issued, and we were given full meals of carrots and potatoes--real carrots and potatoes! After they left, of course, the clothes and blankets were confiscated, and we weren't fed for a full day afterwards because, after all, we had already "over eaten". Each prisoner had to sign for each article of clothing and blanket, and if that prisoner didn't return what was given, he was sent to a cold cell, which tended to encourage prompt returns.
And then there was the IHRC itself. Officially neutral, it was perceived to be pro-Slurian, always eager to point out "human rights abuses" on League worlds but largely silent about those in the Slurian sphere.
Still, this was a chance to get a message out about the conditions here.
"How?" Kerensky asked when I told him my intention. "Interviews are conducted with handpicked prisoners in front of all the guards. If you try to say something negative, you will be taken away to a cold cell."
A cold cell. I shivered merely at the thought. I didn't want to go back there.
"But we have to get the word out about conditions here."
"What will that accomplish?" said Kerensky cynically.
"It will embarrass the Slurians, and put pressure on them to improve conditions for us."
"Richman, you do not understand anything," said Kerensky cynically. "All you will do is get yourself sent to a cold cell, or worse."
"What about it?" I said, raising my voice to the others listening in the barracks. "Is everyone happy here with the way things are going? Are you all so beaten that you don't want to even try to protest?"
"We protested once," said a voice from one of the shelf beds. "Many of us were shot."
"All I'm talking about is getting the word out," I said.
"How?" Someone asked.
"We'll pass one of the visiting officials a note," I said.
"Who will do that?" Sasha asked.
I looked around. The barracks were silent. Then someone stepped out of the gloom. It was Korolev.
"Normally, I would just snowball them," said Korolev.
The officials from the IHRC nodded approvingly as they listened to a prisoner speak about the conditions at Camp 94. They had already seen the full meals we had, the good bedding and clothes, and the easy working conditions (obviously, they weren't shown the mines), and the fully stocked prison hospital.
A prisoner stood in a circle with several IHRC officials, surrounded by guards and other prisoners who knew well enough to keep silent.
"Yes, we are treated quite well here," said the prisoner dully.
There would be no retribution; this was no snitch or camp stooly, simply a prisoner who had been promised an extra bowl of kem for cooperating. Most of us would have done it.
The IHRC officials were all smiles. "And the guards, what do you think of them?"
The prisoner cast a worried glance at the armed guards around him. "Uh, they're very nice, we play cards together."
"Very good," said an IHRC official, rapidly scribbling notes into his datapad. This would be great material for the documentary he was putting together for transmission on the League network.
"And the food?"
"Very nice, the food is very nice," said the prisoner, also with a notable lack of enthusiasm.
"Good, good," said the IHRC official, not paying the slightest attention to the prisoner's highly suspect affect.
Suddenly a snowball came whizzing over the heads of the ring of prisoners around the interview circle and smacked a guard in the face. And then a second one came in, smacking another guard.
The guards yelled, brandishing their weapons, and moved to break out of the circle, to find the perpetrator. They pushed prisoners out of the way and they plowed their way out. In the confusion, I brushed by one of the IHRC officials and put something in his hand.
When order was restored (the guards, of course, didn't find the mystery attacker, but reinforced the "chat session" with another dozen guards outside the circle of prisoners), everyone could see an IHRC official reading a piece of wrinkled paper.
"What is this?" said the IHRC official.
I looked at the IHRC official in dismay. What was he doing?
"What?" said Sergeant Maxim "Iron Club" Korky, the torturer in chief of the guards.
"I have just received a piece of paper with the most astounding content," said the IHRC official. "It said that the prisoners are regularly worked to death. It says that the prisoners are tortured and killed, and malnourished-"
