Location:
South Katorga Labor Camp
Planet Volgograd, Omega-52 System
90°S 0°W
Lieutenant Commander Robert Thacker was staring out the window of his office. Outside was ice and snow as far as the eye could see. Staring at the cold desolation only reminded him how far he had fallen, yet he stared just the same. Formerly a pilot in one the Coalition's most elite combat squadrons, he had enthusiastically carried the revolution to the Coalition's enemies. He had been (and remained) one of the Coalition's most fiercely loyal soldiers, but he had annoyed the Commissariat one time too many. That they were annoyed with him rather than angry was evident in his assignment as South Katorga's warden. Soldiers who angered their superiors, if they weren't shot outright, were sent to the labor camps as laborers not administrators. That gave him some degree of hope, though he wouldn't put it past the Commissariat to let him languish in this frozen hell forever.
His thoughts were interrupted by a ping from his computer terminal. He walked over to his desk and activated the terminal. The day's messages had been received, decoded, and scanned by prison security, and then routed to his terminal. There were four messages. One was from the GULag, or Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies, and was a response to his report on mine output and other administrative minutiae. He set it aside for later review in detail. The next two were personal messages from friends still serving in space. Thanks to operational security, both messages were censored nearly to the point of being unreadable. He drafted replies to both, secure in the knowledge that his messages would be equally unreadable once security was finished with them. The final message was one he had been waiting on for some time. He had been sending transfer requests to the Commissariat regularly, hoping to be allowed to return to a combat squadron. Three times he had made the request, and three times he had been denied, but he refused to give up, though it may cost him his life.
Before opening the message, he opened the drawer on his desk and withdrew a bottle of good vodka, a glass, and an old-fashioned revolver. He poured himself some of the vodka, and swallowed it quickly. Once the burning sensation passed, he opened the cylinder on the revolver and checked to make sure it was still loaded with a single round. He spun the cylinder, then flicked his wrist, closing the cylinder and lining a random chamber up with the barrel. He had done this each time he received a denial of his transfer request. Thus far, every time he had gotten an empty chamber, though it was a matter of time before the pistol actually went off. One way or the other, he would not be at South Katorga forever.
![[Image: pyBjInU.png]](https://i.imgur.com/pyBjInU.png)