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 15 Escape from Altera, for the last time

We held a conference in Colonel Crawford's barracks that evening. Could we escape without Croft? Our chances were slim.

What else could we do? Could we stage a rescue, and break him out of solitary confinement? Without Croft, our plan had no chance of succeeding.

We were still discussing our options when Croft, the very subject of our discussions, came into the barracks, limping slightly. "Hey guys, how's the escape plan coming?"

We just stared at him.

"We're supposed to escape tonight, you know," said Croft. "I still think that is a good idea."

"How did you..."

"That Master Sergeant, the one who majors in malice...."

"Iron Club."

"Well, let's just say that Iron Club will only be eating soft foods for a while," said Croft. He flexed and unflexed his fist, as if it were sore. "But we have to leave now."

We got ready. Each of us carried a package. Before we left, Colonel Crawford had a last word with Croft. "Tell the League about us," said Crawford. "Let them know we're here."

"You can be sure I will," said Croft. "Now that I have firm proof that you guys are alive, I'm sure the League won't stand for this."

"Thank you,," said Crawford, giving Croft a firm handshake. "Good luck, Croft."

"Thank you, sir," said Croft.

We scuttled out of the barracks in the darkness. Croft guided us, telling us when to move and when to be still, watching the searchlights and the guards' movements carefully. Stealthy we crept up along the side of the commandant's barracks. Then we went underneath it.

We dug a bit in the earth and found a large rock. We over turned the rock and saw a dark hole. We went down it.

We had a jury-rigged flashlight that Half Commander Dalton had built, but Croft, who was in the lead, had it in front and very little light escaped from it in my direction, so it was almost completely dark for the rest of us. The tunnel was very small, and I had to mentally fight to keep back my claustrophobia.

We wiggled through the narrow passage, crawling on our hands and knees in silence. At one point, I felt dirt splattering my face from above, and I involuntarily cried out.

Everyone immediately stopped moving.

"Quiet!" Croft hissed.

"Is this tunnel safe?" I hissed.

"Yes, the inspectors checked it last week," Croft whispered back. "Now keep quiet!"

We crawled some more. It seemed like hours, but probably was just several minutes. I felt a few other drips of dirt on my head, and wondered what it would be like to be buried alive.

After a while, however, Croft stopped ahead. What had happened? Had there been a cave-in?

But then I saw Croft crouch upwards in the dim light and poke with an object, one of the homemade shovels. He dug for several minutes.

"How much air do we have in this thing?" I whispered.

"Enough," said the Whisperer. However, I'm not sure if he was answering my question, or telling me to be quiet.

Then I heard a small, crunching sound, and I saw a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I saw Croft poke his head out. Then he brought his head down, and spoke to us.

"We're only a few feet outside the wire. But they're all looking inside, not outside. Crawl on your hands and knees and make for the trees," he said.

He started first, heading out at a crawl. Then went the War Captain. Then it was my turn.

I climbed out of the hole like a crab on my hands and knees. Behind me, the bright searchlights of the camp were playing this way and that, cutting lines in the darkness. I resisted the urge to look up at the guard tower. I crawled towards the trees.

The Whisperer followed behind me.

After a short distance, we made it to the treeline. We had escaped!

Croft, hiding behind a cluster of trees, nodded approvingly. "Good," he said. "Now we go to the edge."

To the edge of the mountain.

It didn't take long. The eastern edge was closest. We marched in silence, glorious silence. No alarms were raised. Ten minutes later we were on the edge of the mountain, looking down. All I could see was blackness. The night sky above us was brighter than the way down.

Everyone opened their "parachute". Croft helped me into mine. They had improvised a harness connected to several sheets that had been sewn together. I resisted the urge to ask again whether this flimsy device would really work.

When Croft saw we were all ready to go, he said, "Try to jump as far forward as you can. You don't want to hit the mountainside as you go down. We'll regroup at the bottom."

And then he jumped.

The War Captain followed.

Then it was just me and the Whisperer.

"What are you waiting for?" I said.

"Croft gave me orders," he said.

"What orders?" I asked.

The Whisperer pushed me off the cliff.

I had done jumps before, but nothing like this. At first it seemed I felt sharp acceleration. But then the sheets above me seemed to catch the air, and I slowed. In moments my descent seemed almost gentle. To my right I could see someone else below me, though I wasn't sure who. The cold night air whipped around me.

I could faintly see the ground below me in the darkness. Slowly it came rushing up to meet me.

I hit the ground rolling. At least I had been properly trained in this aspect. It was a hard impact, but not as bad as I feared.

"It really worked," I marveled, rubbing my sore ankle.

"Come on," said Croft. "We have to go."

"How far are we going to get before Iron Club wakes up and alerts the guards?" I said. "You should have killed him."

"Probably," said Croft. "But I'm actually

relying on him

to wake up and alert the guards."

We didn't have time to question any of this. Suddenly, we heard the faint sounds of klaxons above us.

"Good," said Croft. "Right on schedule."

What schedule?

We ran a few hundred feet into an open area near a clump of trees. Then Croft stopped.

"What are we doing?" I said, not understanding. We should be running as far and as fast as we could?

"We're stopping here," said Croft.

"But they will find us!" I said.

"That's the idea," said Croft.

"Isn't it about time you briefed us on the rest of your plan?" I asked.

As dawn broke several hours later, we were, incredibly, still standing there in the circle of trees. We saw a shuttle appear. At first it circled around the mountain looking for us on the sides of it at a higher altitude, and then it gradually moved lower, before spotting signs of our escape. The white sheets from our parachutes, which we thoughtfully left out in the open, were quite a giveaway,

And so was Clifford Croft, sitting on a big rock, waving at them.

The shuttle touched down.

Six Redcaps emerged, their blasters drawn.

They slowly approached Croft.

"Hi guys," he said.

He let them get within a few feet of him.

"Where are the others?" said one of the Redcaps.

"They're around," said Croft truthfully.

Suddenly, an arrow buried itself in the back of one of the Redcaps. A second arrow missed by a wide margin. A rock flew out and hit one Redcap in the head. He screamed, falling. Another rock hit a second Redcap in the head; he, too, fell to the ground.

Croft sprang up and started to wrestle with one of the Redcaps.

The remaining two Redcaps looked around to find the source of their attackers. Suddenly another arrow came whistling out of a thicket of trees, hitting a Redcap in the chest. A second arrow also came out, seemingly without aim.

The last Redcap fired his blaster into the trees. In response, another fist sized rock came out, hitting the Redcap square in the head. He fell to the ground, oozing blood.

The Whisperer ran for the shuttle, while the War Captain and I ran out from behind the trees to assist Croft. But by the time we got to Croft, the Redcap he had been wrestling with was on the ground, unconscious or dead.

The shuttle pilot realized something was wrong and he was cycling an emergency liftoff just as the Whisperer reached the ramp. The Whisperer disappeared inside as the shuttle lifted five feet, ten feet... and then suddenly crashed down on the ground.

"I hope he didn't damage it," said Croft mildly.

We ran for the shuttle. We got there just as the Whisperer was tossing out the body of the Redcap pilot.

"Good work," said Croft.

The Whisperer said nothing, as he grabbed the pilot's blaster, and adjusted the setting to kill.

I made my way to the cockpit, and climbed into the pilot's seats and started checking the systems.

"Is the ship all right?" the War Captain asked.

"We'll soon find out," I said, pressing the button for liftoff.

The shuttle groaned and creaked a bit as it left the ground. But in seconds we were airborne, and the main engines were ready to go.

"Check the onboard map," said Croft, coming back into the cockpit. "Set a course for Smolensk, and fly as close to the ground as you can, to evade their sensors."

I checked the onboard map. Smolensk was about 1200 miles away. We should get there in under three hours.

The Whisperer watched as I expertly piloted the shuttle above the treetops and hills we had to go over. "Well, at least you can do something well," he grunted.

"You're looking at the B squadron commander of the Command Carrier

Glory

," said War Captain Emmett North. "There's no one else I'd rather have at the controls."

I grinned; it was nice to be appreciated for something.

I had to admit, that this was a very nice escape! The shuttle couldn't take us off-planet, but it could get us directly to the spaceport. There would be no walking and trudging hundreds of miles. I said as much to Croft, and thanked him.

"Why walk when you can fly?" Croft smiled.

I worried that our shuttle would be shot down before we got to Smolensk, but Croft told me not to worry. "It will be at least an hour before the shuttle is reported missing. Then another hour or two while they figure out what to do about it. Typical Slurian efficiency."

Sure enough, we flew nearly the entire distance to Smolensk unmolested before Croft had me set down in an isolated area outside of the city.

"We made it! We really made it!" I said, as I set the ship down in an open field.

"Calm down," said Croft. "There's got to be a general alert out for us, and anyone with half a brain will know that we're heading for the spaceport. We'll probably have to get through a division of Slurian Redcaps whose only job will be to shoot us on sight. Now change into your civilian clothing like the rest of us, and let's be on our way."

We not only had civilian clothing, but civilian ID papers that Dalton had prepared. Croft had given the papers a measured examination and grudgingly nodded, but even he had no way of knowing if they would stand up to close inspection.

We walked in the forest a short distance before reaching a dirt road. We started on that dirt road to the city. It wasn't long before we saw a checkpoint in the distance.

"Should we go around it?" I asked.

"This isn't going to be our first checkpoint nor our last," said Croft. "We all have blasters now. If worst comes to worst, we'll use them."

"What if they point their blasters at us first?" I asked.

"You forget, we have a Graftonite with us," said Croft simply.

The Whisperer had been the one throwing the rocks before. He didn't care for the bow and arrows. He had taken out most of the guards with rocks! He was probably several times deadlier with a blaster.

(For the record, I was the one who missed with every arrow I shot. That's why it was nice to have my piloting skills appreciated. It was good to be appreciated for something!)

The four of us walked up to the checkpoint.

There were four Redcap guards on duty. "Papers," said one of them.

We handed them over. The guards studied them, then looked at us. "It says here you are cafeteria workers."

"Yes," said Croft, in fluent Slurian, without a trace of an accent. He slouched like a lazy and tired worker.

"Where are you going?"

"To work."

"It is late in the morning to be going to work, is it not?"

"Not if you work the afternoon shift," said Croft, looking and sounding bored.

The guard stared at us for a moment longer, then returned our papers. He nodded at us to move on without saying a word.

When we had gotten some distance down the road, I said, "You handled that so well!"

"That's my job," said Croft. "If you had done several hundred infiltration missions, it would be routine for you too."

Gradually we entered the city of Smolensk. Another hour of walking (and another checkpoint) later, we found ourselves on paved streets with people walking by. None of them appeared to pay us any attention.

Croft took us into a restaurant where we bought a meal with some of our hoarded gembles. There were several Redcaps there eating lunch but we ignored them, just as the other diners did. But I nervously remembered the restaurant where I had almost been caught during our last escape....

"We have several challenges still facing us," said Croft, speaking in a soft voice he knew would not carry beyond the table. "Number one, we have to find out where the spaceport is. Number two, we have to go there. Number three, we have to scout out its defenses and procedures. Number four, we have to get in. Number five, we have to steal or get onboard a ship. Number five will be the hardest part."

"Why?" I asked.

"If we steal a ship, we'll be pursued immediately and probably caught by the military," said Croft softly. "Our best bet is to buy a ticket to get us out of here."

"To League space?" I whispered.

"You won't find flights to League space from this planet," said Croft. "Remember where you are. But we may be able to get to a relatively less protected Slurian planet where we can steal a ship or find another way to escape."

"What do you propose?" the War Captain asked.

"We need a groundcar, and directions," said Croft. "Let me get both while you remain here."

"You don't want us with you?" the War Captain asked.

"No, it's easier if I do this alone," said Croft.

"Won't they be suspicious if we simply sit here after we've eaten?"

Croft shrugged. "Buy some drinks. I shouldn't be gone more than a half hour or so."

We agreed. Croft got up and left.

"He's really great, isn't he?" I asked.

"You don't get to be a Column agent, much less one of the Eight, if you don't have the skillset to match," said the War Captain. "I get the impression that there's no prison or jail that could hold him for very long."

We talked for a while, and I noticed that the Redcaps who had been eating got up and left, which made me feel easier.

A half hour later, however, Croft had not returned.

A half hour turned into 45 minutes, which eventually turned into an hour.

"Do you think he's been caught?" I hissed.

"I don't know," said the War Captain.

"Should we go?"

"If we do, we'll be permanently separated," said the War Captain. "Let's give him another half hour."

At that moment, however, a group of Redcaps entered the restaurant. They started asking everyone for papers.

When they got to our table, they asked for ours. We handed them over.

The officer in charge, a Redcap Lieutenant, looked at our papers. "It says here you're cafeteria workers. Why aren't you at work?"

"We work the evening shift," said the War Captain, in fluent Slurian.

"At which establishment?" the Redcap asked.

The War Captain paused, only slightly. "On the east side of town."

The Redcap noticed the slight pause. "You didn't answer my question. What is the name of that establishment?" he asked.

What did we do next? Anything we said next would surely be checked and found out to be a lie. We weren't prepared for this level of questioning.

The Redcap called some guards over with a wave of his hands. "Stand up!" he said.

We slowly stood up.

"You are all coming with me," said the Redcap.

"What do you mean?" said a new voice.

It was a new Redcap, standing behind the Redcap Lieutenant. All I could see was that the new Redcap was a Major, from his shoulder bars.

"Sir! I did not see you. These individuals have suspicious-"

"These individuals work for me, and are not your concern, Lieutenant," said the Major, speaking perfect High Slurian. "They are on a mission for me right now, and your presence is interfering with their assignment." The Major stepped into view, revealing the impeccably dressed Clifford Croft.

"S-sir," the Lieutenant stammered. "I am sorry, I had no idea-"

"It is quite obvious you have no ideas," said "Major" Croft, continuing to speak perfectly in crisp High Slurian. "Now get your men out of here. The last thing we need is this kind of attention."

The Lieutenant sent his men packing in a hurry.

"Sorry I'm late," said Croft, in a lower tone. "I had trouble finding a uniform my size."

The groundcar was parked right outside. Croft did the driving.

"Do you know where the spaceport is?" I asked.

Croft nodded.

"How did you find out where it was?" I wondered.

"The owner of this uniform told me," said Croft. "That's why I was gone longer than I expected. He required a little persuading."

Oh.

As we headed towards the spaceport, we saw truckloads of Redcap troops moving in every direction. The military was certainly stirred up here. I remarked as much.

"They have a lot at stake here," said Croft. "If you guys get out, everyone finds out about your buddies."

"So much at stake, just for the spite and arrogance of keeping us prisoner," said the War Captain.

"That's the Slurian mentality, spite and arrogance," said Croft. "That's what caused them to start two wars with us. On the other hand, it's also what caused them to lose two wars with us."

We were stopped at another checkpoint. Before the Redcap Lieutenant in charge could ask for papers, Croft barked, "What's this all about, Corporal?"

The Lieutenant looked at Croft's shoulder bars. "It's, ah, Lieutenant, sir-"

"Are you contradicting me, soldier?"

"N-no, sir," said the Lieutenant.

"Then let me pass," said Croft.

The Lieutenant nodded, and Croft went ahead.

Ahead, in the distance, we could see the flat stretches of road leading to the spaceport. We saw a ship taking off, and hear the roar. We were getting close.

"Don't celebrate yet," said Croft. "You can expect their defenses to be even stiffer as we get closer to the spaceport."

"What can we do?" I asked.

"Hope the next checkpoint isn't run by any Redcap officers higher in rank than a Major," said Croft. "There's no way I can show the original Redcap's ID papers and attempt to pass for him. Redcap ID's are much more elaborate and harder to forge, especially without the right tools."

We were stopped at another roadblock, as we got closer to the spaceport. This time, the officer was a Captain, and he was backed up by a squad of soldiers. The defenses were getting thicker. And this time, the Captain was not quite as easily intimidated.

"Are you going to waste my time too, Captain?" Croft said icily.

"No sir," said the Captain. "Can you just tell me your name, sir?"

"My name?"

"For the record," said the Captain, holding up a datapad.

"Major Surov," said Croft, giving a Redcap glare.

"Thank you sir. You may proceed."

As we drove Croft said, "Not good."

"Why?"

"I couldn't give the name of the real Redcap I impersonated, in case they've already found his body."

"His body?" I said.

"There was no time to be gentle," said Croft. "Remember, there's a shoot on sight order for you guys. So I picked a random name. Chances are they're going to feed it into their tactical command database, and when they don't find a match, we'll be stopped with a little more force next time."