//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: The Great Escape! // by Wheller //------------------------------// The Great Escape! Chapter 1 Five years. Five long, hard years, and she had never been in one place for very long. As the truck rolled up to her new 'home', she knew that while it would be a different place than the last five places that she'd been at, there would be no difference between any of them. That was just how the world worked. The Nagadan gulag would be no different. Summer Lightfall let out a sigh as she sat in the back of the truck, watching out the window as it pulled past a gatehouse and into the labour camp proper. Summer was an Equestrian. A unicorn no less, and here she was being shuffled around once more to endure yet another year of forced labour for the Unified Præsidium of Socialist Republics. Summer hated what they were doing to her, but as far as she was concerned she had something to hate more. Hatred was what was keeping her going, the desire for revenge taking precedent above all others. This was Madeline Wolsey's fault. Five years ago. Summer Lightfall had been a soldier in the Equestrian Republican Army's Fillydelphia regiment with the rank of lance corporal. She had been serving under Lieutenant Madeline Wolsey, a direct descendent of Field Marshal Trixie, the Republican Army's greatest leader. Wolsey, unfortunately, was nothing like her grandmother. Wolsey had been inept and careless during the communist uprising in an island nation in the South Sea, known as the Salayan Emergency. Summer had been taken prisoner by Præsidium Spetsnaz forces, and Wolsey had been left for dead, but in her heart, Summer knew that Wolsey had lived. Her ultimate goal was to escape from the Præsidium and correct that. Madeline Wolsey's inept command had gotten a lot of good ponies killed during the Emergency. She'd had heard the guards talking at Vorkuta, the last camp that she was at, the Emergency was apparently over now. The Equestrian Republic had won and had been able to defeat the communist uprising. Good for them. Honestly though? She didn't really care. That was the past. The only thing that mattered to her now was putting a bullet between Madeline Wolsey's eyes. Summer didn't know how, she didn't know when, but she did know this. She would escape from the gulag. Leave the Præsidium behind and return to Equestria where she would find and kill Madeline Wolsey. She would have her revenge, and nothing would stop her. After that... Summer didn't know. Maybe she'd hang herself, wouldn't be much point in continuing to live afterwards. That didn't matter now. She had to kill Wolsey first, she would think about what to do afterwards after it had happened. The truck came to a stop, the doors to the driver's compartment opened, and then immediately shut behind them. She heard some light chatter in the cossack language before the back of the truck opened up. Two cossack soldiers climbed up into the truck, brandishing assault rifles at her. Summer made no response to them, simply getting up and following them out without putting up any real resistance, she had learned a while ago that trying to do so didn’t get anywhere. She would save her strength for the real thing. Summer walked quietly behind the two cossack soldiers. Only the sounds of her restrains could be heard as they walked towards an interior checkpoint. ‘‘Tolʹko odin? Chto proiskhodit?’ one of the guards asked, looking up as the two soldiers escorting Summer approached. ‘U nas yestʹ spetsialʹnyye prikazy NKVD, eto odin schitayetsya ochenʹ opasnym, i budet transportirovatʹsya v odinochku’, one of Summer’s guards said as they walked past. ‘Da, da. Nezavisimo, idti vpered do kontsa’, the other guard said before motioning them forward. Summer had mostly understood what they had said. One didn’t live in the Præsidium for as long as she did without picking up some of the language. She generally understood what the guards and other prisoners were saying at the labour camps, even if she couldn’t speak the language herself. The important thing to get out of the conversation between the Præsidium soldiers was that the NKVD, the Præsidium’s intelligence agency, considered Summer to be very dangerous, and wanted her isolated when going between labour camps. Summer wasn’t quite sure why. She’d never caused any major disturbances during her time at any of the work camps. Her anger was not directed towards the Præsidium, she had no desire to do anything to any of the forced labour camps she had been interned in, only to escape, and return to Equestria and kill Madeline Wolsey. Her guards led her deep into the Nagadan facility to a small concrete cell. It was currently empty, and there was a single wooden bunk for her to sleep on. So far it looked like she would be having the place to herself. That was nice. She’d had a roommate at the last camp she’d been in, and it was not an experience that she wanted to repeat. ‘Good news!’ one of the Præsidium soldiers said as he unlocked the door to the cell for Summer to go into. ‘Gulag is generous, and give you day off from working! Tomorrow you start work in steel mill. Rest up!’ the soldier said with a rude grin. Summer said nothing, and trotted inside the cell. Watching as the guards locked it back up. It seemed that they had been hoping for some kind of response from her, but when she did not give one, they merely walked away from her with a shrug, and went on about their business. Summer glanced around the cell; it was incredibly barren, with the exception of the wooden bunk and a toilet. She went up to it and pressed down on the flushing trigger. Much to her surprise, the toilet was in working condition. That was nice. All of the other cells in the other labour camps she had been in had had toilets, but this was the first one that had actually worked. Summer trotted back over to the wooden bunk and sat down on it. She had to wonder how she looked. Her forest green mane was nothing but tangled knots, and her canary yellow coat was stained with dirt and now closer to a piss yellow. Not that it mattered, because pretty much every prisoner was going to be as dirty as she was. Each labour camp had bathing facilities for the prisoners, though they were rarely allowed to use them more than once a month, or when some important member of the communist party came to visit the camp to inspect the workers. That was the only time they were actually given soap, and the only time that the guards turned on the hot water. Even if given the opportunity to shower. Summer wouldn’t. It had to have been mid-November by now. She had made the mistake of showering in November once, never again. She’d almost frozen to death after doing it. The brutal Cossack winter was soon to be on them once more, at this point she was just glad that her prison stripes were enough to keep her somewhat warm. ‘Psst!’ Summer glanced around. Where had that noise come from? ‘Psst!’ the noise came again. Where the hell was that coming from!? ‘Hey! You there!’ Summer jumped slightly, someone was around her. ‘Who’s there?’ she asked, continuing to glance around trying to find who was talking to her. ‘Who I am isn’t important. What is important is you, and who you are. You’re a unicorn!’ the voice said again. ‘Well, good to know you have eyes!’ Summer said as she scowled at the faceless voice. The mysterious voice was clearly male, deep, but not like that of a Cossack. The accent wasn’t particularly clear either, but whoever it was belonged here just as much as she did, not at all. ‘Equestrian?’ the voice asked. ‘Yes...’ Summer said with annoyance. To be fair, unicorns did exist in small pockets around the world now that Equestria had become globalised. Still, most of the world’s unicorns did still reside in Equestria. ‘Where are you?’ ‘I’m in the cell above you! There’s a small hole in the floor that I can see you through’, the voice said simply. Summer looked up, sure enough; there was a hole in the ceiling that someone in the cell above could look through and see everything, but unfortunately for Summer. She couldn’t see anything of who she was talking to. Summer let out a frown of annoyance as she continued to listen to the voice. ‘You’re new, that’s good! Where do they have you assigned to work?’ the voice asked her. ‘Steel mill’, Summer said simply. The forced labour camps in the Præsidium produced a number of materials for the state. Most of them mined coal or uranium or any hundreds of other useful materials. Apparently, Nagadan had the fortune of being a coal mine. Since they mined coal, then that coal could be used to create steel, and with steel the Præsidium could make pretty much anything. ‘Ah! Good! Good! I’ve been waiting almost a year to get lucky and have someone down there be assigned to the steel mill! Listen very closely, because what I am about to tell you is incredibly important’, the voice said simply before Summer interrupted. ‘Hold on! Why should I even be talking to you anyway!? For all I know, you’re another guard looking for a reason to put the smack down on me!’ Summer said with a growl in her voice. ‘Who are you?’ The voice was quiet for a moment before answering. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you my real name. You can call me TANTALUS, that’s my code name. I am a Special Executor of the Office of the Prime Minister of the Equestrian Republic’. Summer frowned. Special Executor? They were basically someone who had been entrusted with authority to carry out a special task for the Republic and the Prime Minister itself. What was one doing here? The likelihood of a gulag guard knowing what a Special Executor was had to have been pretty low. So Summer figured that she’d go along with this... for now. ‘Okay... TANTALUS? What is it that you want?’ ‘You’re not the only Equestrian here in Nagadan’, TANTALUS said plainly. ‘There’s another one here. Been here for a very, very long time, earth pony, goes by the name of Sprocket. He’s been awful quiet lately... and he’s gotten to be pretty good friends with Viktor Karkov... they’re up to something, and I want to know what it is... problem is, I work in the coal mines, and Sprocket and Karkov work in the steel mill. So...’ ‘So you need someone else to find out for you?’ Summer said, finishing his thought for him. ‘’Yes! Exactly!’ TANTALUS said with hushed excitement in his voice. ‘What makes you think I’m interested?’ Summer asked, raising an eyebrow at the voice coming from the hole in the ceiling. ‘Talk to Viktor Karkov and to Sprocket. If they’re planning what I think they’re planning... you will be very interested. Trust me when I say that’, TANTALUS said simply. Summer frowned and thought it over for a moment. The name Sprocket was very familiar to her for some reason. Then it hit her. ‘Hold on. Sprocket? You don’t mean...’ ‘Like I said, he’s been here a very, VERY long time’, TANTALUS said, reaffirming his point. ‘All right, fine. I’ll do it, I’ll talk to them and figure out what they’re planning’, Summer said, offering a small shrug. After all, what did she have to lose? It wasn’t like talking was against the law or anything. And what could the guards possibly do to her? Lock her in a gulag? ‘’Good! Good! Let me know what you find out!’ TANTALUS said before his voice faded away. Summer nodded, and went over to the small wooden bunk. Tomorrow was going to be a very interesting day. That, she knew for certain.