BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Narwin is pleasant enough world. Its lone continent boasts a predominately temperate climate, is blessed with plentiful rainfall and benefits from a long growing season. Over time, a diverse flora and fauna has evolved here. The first settlers from Earth, lead by Michael Narwin, arrived around three hundred years ago.
After a recent devastating interplanetary war between Tor-Ganistan and the nearby Sor-Ganistan had resulted in the total destruction of Sor-Ganistan's entire ecosystem and Tor-Ganistan's sole source of grain, the first division of Tor-Ganistan's victorious, military machine arrived on Narwin and quickly overcame the weak resistance offered by the settlers. Inside of a month, Narwin's administration had become an extension of Tor-Ganistan's. Naturally, there were protests against the new government, but these were suppressed quickly and brutally. Protesters were arrested, imprisoned and executed. This policy succeeded in stopping the protest marches, but not, of course, resistance to the harsh regime, which simply went underground and began using terror tactics. Bombs would be left in places frequented by off-duty soldiers, as well as attacks on guard posts and lone patrol vehicles. There were reprisals, of course, but the violence continued spasmodically.
By the end of the first six months of the occupation, with dissidents being arrested almost daily, the warehouses that had been commandeered to provide prison facilities were full to overflowing. Securing these unsuitable sites against attempts to free the inmates was also proving to be extremely difficult, and diverted a significant number of troops from their principle task - capturing even more dissidents. For these reasons, the Tor-Ganistan administration opted to take advantage of the fact that the ice covered polar caps were separated from the single continent by three thousand miles to the north, and two thousand, three hundred miles to the south. Two large prisons were constructed - one on the northern permanent ice pack, called, Kanja, and one on the southern one, known as Darmanja. Both were designed to ultimately accommodate upwards of fourteen thousand prisoners each.
Since escape from either facility involved crossing more than a thousand miles of sub-zero wilderness, battered by two hundred mile an hour blizzards, and crisscrossed by deep ravines, security was also less of a problem. In fact, being ejected through the main gate and into the freezing, arctic night, dressed only in lightweight prison fatigues, became a regularly employed means of punishment.
Let us now introduce our three principle characters. They are :-
Arbelo, Suda: male, 28, 6'0", 185lbs, blue eyes, black hair.
Duchas, Kan: male, 32, 5'10", 195lbs, brown eyes, brown hair.
Karass, Julia: female, 26, 5'8", 128lbs, blue eyes, black hair.
All three were arrested on the same day, found guilty of terrorism at the same mass trial, and transferred on the same transport to 'Kanja', where they were scheduled to be executed within ninety days of their arrival.
Although the long-term well-being of the inmates was hardly an important issue - after all, six hundred or more of them were due to be executed well before the spring thaw - a four hour exercise and free association period was instituted four times a week to give the prison staff ample time to complete a thorough search of every cell in each of the sixteen cell blocks. It was during several of these exercise periods that our three intrepid prisoners planned their extraordinary escape. What follows is Julia Karass' story, in her own words. Enjoy!
"Suda, Kan and me were picked up outside Frazi's bar around three in the morning. We'd only really hooked up that night, though we'd seen each other there a few times. As the place emptied, we kind of gravitated to the same end of the bar and got talking. We'll, the drink blurred 'make-believe' and 'reality' and pretty soon we were finalizing our master plan for the downfall of the entire Tor-Ganistan regime. Eventually, though Frazi offered us a place to sleep it off, we decided to risk the walk home. It was to be 'our little protest'. Inside three minutes, we were stopped by a passing patrol. The patrol leader said we'd broken curfew - which I guess we had - so would we pretty please climb in the back of the truck so he could give us a lift home? Actually, he didn't. We were each prodded in the small of the back with the business ends of fully charged lances (energy weapons) until we reached their transport, and then encouraged to climb inside by crude threats, lots of swearing and name calling - from both sides, I might add - and even more prodding in the back with those damn lances.
It took twenty minutes to get to the holding center, and a couple more to realize we weren't ever going home again. The list of charges read out by the booking clerk included, 'resisting arrest' and 'assaulting the person of a representative of the Tor-Ganistan Occupation Force'. There were a few other, minor ones, of course, but these two on their own were enough. 'Resisting' was worth ten years. The 'Assault' had earned us the death penalty. Three days later, after the duty magistrate had recorded a 'guilty' verdict on all the charges listed against each of our names - even though we hadn't left the holding cells - we were all three put on a transport headed for 'Kanja'...
Thirty of us were inducted into Kanja polite society, that day - twenty-six males and four females. Warden Commandant, Jank Cannute, had a policy of not placing females with males - not because he was bothered about rape or anything, but because he didn't believe in offering even the smallest opportunity for prisoners to enjoy themselves. Unfortunately, our ever-watchful warden had never heard of 'girls who like girls' and put me in with Janasra, a very large, very strong and highly motivated girl, who just couldn't take 'No' for an answer. I spent a long week, constantly watching her from the safety of one corner of our 'ten by twelve'. Well, of course, nature had to have its way eventually and I fell asleep. I woke with a start to find Janasra standing over me with... Well, you surely must know what she had attached to her anatomy... Anyway, to cut the story short, I was so tired and strung out I just burst out laughing. That really tweaked Janasra's tail. She came at me, screaming her head off, with her huge arms flailing. I was moved to another cell immediately after that. Cannute must have figured Janasra had enjoyed herself way too much while she was beating me up.
Suda and Kan were lucky! They got to share a cell together.
After we'd been there ten days, we were ushered outside into the bitter cold for our first period of 'free association'. It was right then that Kan suggested we break out. Although I had bruised ribs, courtesy of Janasra, I managed to laugh - but only briefly. Suda, though, looked thoughtful. Thanks to the lottery of Kanja's prison cell allocation system, the two men had been given the opportunity to get to know each other - while stone cold sober, this time. Now they were outside their cell, and away from the intrusive, and obvious, surveillance equipment, they were free to discuss - albeit in a whisper - what they'd been individually thinking about since they first arrived at Kanja. It was obvious to me they'd become good friends. A couple of hours later, as the guards were ordering us back inside, we all agreed to start the slow, but probably hopeless, process of planning our escape. It wasn't brain surgery we were planning. All we had to do was break out and march across eighty miles of freezing wilderness to the supply base. What we would do when we finally got there - if we got there - we hadn't figured out, quite yet. But that didn't matter. At least we had the first glimmerings of hope in our hearts; and that can warm a person, through and through, even when it's sixty below!
