The Narkina 5 prison escape was an uprising in the Narkina 5 Imperial Prison Complex that took place in 5 BBY. The escape, orchestrated by Cassian Jeron Andor—going by "Keef Girgo"—and Kino Loy, resulted in the successful escape of several of the inmates at the prison. Loy himself faltered at the end of the escape, as he was unable to swim in the waters surrounding the prison. Following the break-out, Andor fled from authorities alongside Ruescott Melshi.
The prison complex on Narkina 5 was a large factory and prison facility employing Imperial convicts as labor workers. Prison staff boasted about the minimum security employed on the complex grounds, a testament to the effectiveness of its unique enforcement method: the tunqstoid steel-lined floors, which, when activated, would deliver a severely painful or lethal shock to anyone stepping on them. Prison guards were sheltered by wearing special protective boots, while prisoners were forced to remain barefoot at all times. Nevertheless, a combination of prisoners being separated in small, close-knit seven man work groups and incentives such as flavor in the meals of the most productive team ensured that they remained compliant with staff instructions and competitive against each other, conditions hardly favorable for an uprising or insurrection.
Ulaf is carried away by his table mates
Following the implementation of the Public Order Resentencing Directive by the Imperial Senate in 5 BBY as a consequence of the Aldhani heist, conditions in the prison changed dramatically. While staff previously treated prisoners with ignorance, in a strict "live and let live" attitude (prisoners remained in the work and cell rings and staff remained in their command areas hardly interacting with each other), they now increasingly began to implement harsher punishments for the slightest mishaps. Additionally, instead of releasing prisoners who had finished their sentence, they instead transferred them to another facility, essentially recycling workers to increase imperial productivity even more. Tensions began to rise as all prisoners saw their sentence doubled due to the PORD, and culminated with two incidents. The first was the death of a beloved Unit 5-2-D inmate, Ulaf, who suffered a massive stroke mere days before his release from the facility due his old age combined with exhaustion and overworking.
The second was the accidental readmission of a Level 4 inmate to Level 2 of the same facility after "finishing his sentence", which resulted in word about the con spreading out to the level and staff terminating his entire unit. The doctor who was called in following their termination was also sent to revive Ulaf the following day, and resorted to euthanizing the elderly patient and revealing the "recycling" system to his fellow prisoner Cassian Jeron Andor and unit manager Kino Loy. With the prisoners on Level 2 dead, Loy and Andor were the only prisoners in the facility privy to the new procedures, and upon returning to their dormitories they disclosed the fact to their prisonmates. Word spread out of an underground escape movement Andor was a member of and one by one all of the prisoners of the unit joined it to form an escape plan, which they were to implement the following day, when a replacement for their dead unit mate was expected to arrive.
The day following Ulaf's death new prison-wide procedures were announced: prisoners from different shifts were now prohibited from interacting with or speaking to each other. This unexpected development prevented the 5-2 day shift from informing the night shift about their escape plan. Nevertheless, during the entire work day, members of the original escape movement intensified their efforts to sever their floor's power connection by cutting through a pipe behind their work ring toilet with a makeshift knife. The rest of the inmates secretly withheld power tools and small parts from their work inventories during the course of their shift to use as weapons during the escape attempt. By the time the new prisoner was sent through Cassian Andor had managed to sever the power supply by completely dislodging the pipe, and every table had collected raid supplies; the plan was ready to begin.
Xaul and Ham stage a fight
As usual, guards performed a routine check of the work room through their observation deck, but the elevation of the command floor relative to the work area prevented them from noticing the hydraulic fluid leaking through the damaged pipe. As such they began the inmate introduction protocol by opening the seal between the command and work sectors and lowering the elevator to transfer the new prisoner. As the elevator began its descent, prisoners Xaul and Ham staged a brawl, distracting the two armed sentries monitoring the lift and allowing Andor to lodge a screwdriver tool between the elevator and the wall, stopping it in midair. Startled, the escorting the new inmate attempted to zap him with his Zap rod but Birnok jumped on the elevator and caused it to dip to the side; the new inmate exploited this to grab the zap rod and stun his escort with it. One of the sentries responded by shooting and killing both the new inmate and Birnok, at which point the shift workers revealed their hidden weapons and started throwing them against him and his partner.
Injured by the projectiles, the sentries opened fire at the crowd, killing multiple inmates including Xaul, but faced fierce opposition by the rest of the room and had to request an immediate activation of the workroom floor's tunqstoid by the level control room. Frightened, the prisoners jumped on their tables to avoid the lethal shock, becoming easy targets for the sentries' rifles. The damaged power pipe however prevented the tunqstoid from collecting enough power and the power conduits instead shortcircuited, plunging the room into darkness. Andor exploited the distraction by knocking out one of the sentries and using his weapon to shoot the other. Upon realizing that the shock had failed and the sentries were down, the prisoners rushed to the elevator and stormed the level control room, killing the in the process. Arming themselves with zap rods and DH-17 blaster rifles by the control room armory, they rushed to liberate the rest of the level 5 work rooms while manager Loy and Andor headed over to the Level 8 command room, taking out another nine guards and collecting their weapons. By the time Loy and Andor had reached the top of the cylinder using a service staircase, the entirety of Level 5 was under the prisoners' control.
Level 8 staff including the intake warden hide in a maintenance closet
Upon realizing that all hope for Level 5 was lost, the Prison commander ordered his staff to deliver a level-wide tunqstoid shock, executing all prisoners and guards still there. Before the level could be isolated though, Andor and Loy reached the command room and detained the unarmed command staff, shooting one of the technicians and forcing the other to deactivate the conductive floors in the entire prison. They also demanded that he cut the power supply, but the technician informed them that control of the hydroelectric generators was restricted to the prison commander. Under threat of being shot, he reluctantly closed the dams surrounding the facility, severing the hydroelectric power supply and opening all doors and seals in the cylinder. Kino Loy then used the PA system to broadcast a message across the entire prison. He revealed the nature of the sentence recycling program and urged the prisoners to rise and take the prison by standing united, helping each other and fighting back against the Imperials. He and Andor then left the command room to search for a way out.
Following Loy's broadcast, site-wide riots crippled the prison facility as workers collectively abandoned their posts and rushed their captors. Having lost their main weapon against them and vastly outnumbered, the remaining guards gathered in a supply closet armed only with their zap rods and refused to fight back. Eventually, escapees from all around the facility gathered in three prison barge landing bays on Level 8, from where they jumped into the water and swam to the nearest shore. Loy, who didn't know how to swim, was forced to remain in the bay as he watched his fellow inmates escape. Andor briefly waited with Loy in bewilderment before he was pushed off by other escaping prisoners.
By nightfall, aerial reinforcements had arrived on site and the first prisoners, including Andor and Ruescott Melshi, had reached the shore. Air patrols were carried out by TIE Reapers across the region but did little to prevent the pair from reaching a transport and slipping through the patrols and escaping the planet.
The Narkina 5 prison escape first appeared in the tenth episode of the 2022 Disney+ television series Andor's first season, "One Way Out." It was first mentioned in the ninth episode prior, "Nobody's Listening!."
After writers Tony Gilroy, Beau Willimon and Dan Gilroy decided that the prison's floor would be electrified, they realized that would require the guards to wear rubber boots. Because of this, an early story iteration made stealing the boots essential for the prisoners to escape. Tony Gilroy said that the key to the escape scene was when the kid jumped onto the railing and broke it, which was the hook to him to get involved.