"No response to signals. The crew are probably dead," assumed the first pilot. "Look at its drive. The photon reflectors must have been out of use for at least a hundred years!"
"Possible. A decoy?"
"A rather clumsy one, then. We can smash the ship to smithereens at the slightest hint of aggressive behavior."
The strange ship rotated slowly. An enormous shell hole, until then concealed by the photon reflector, entered the field of view of the multiplexers.
"So! Imagine the impact."
"Clause forty-six of the space service regulations. We must explore it and plant a radio beacon to mark it as property of the Confederation. All paperwork and whatever else we can find will be transmitted to Stellar's archives," senior watch officer summed up. "Send in the assault group. I'm curious to see what's there."
* * *
Sergei Snegov, commander of the assault group, liked this kind of assignment. He was a poet at heart, and the opportunity to leave the ship unaccompanied by frenzied gunfire did not occur very often.
Their small assault raider soared over its launching pad.
“Fasten your belts,” the pilot mumbled, flipping switches. He didn't even look their way. “We're off!"
The black bulk of the strange ship was growing on the 3-D monitors. Now they could see that this used to be a deadly combat spaceship of the type that had been discontinued about fifty years ago. "An LX light assault raider," Sergei identified it, "but it must have received one hell of a blow."
“Look!” Ryzhov’s voice rang with respect. “It must have battled to its death.”
The armor plates of the newcomer’s hull were fused and ripped by laser charges. Part of its hull structures had been ripped out, the laser rays slicing through them like nichrome through plastic. The ship had been cut lengthways, revealing a sectional view of its battle compartments complete with consoles, deformed operator seats and the empty eye-sockets of broken monitors. Now that they had approached the ship it became clear why the on-board computer hadn't been able to ID it. This was a strange hybrid: an LX with some totally unsuitable modules thrown in; it also had an archaic photon sail although the visible hyperdrive compartments seemed to be undamaged.
“Pull up by the shell-hole,” Sergei told the pilot. “We’re going in.”
Without a word, his group left their seats as one man.
The commander was the first to touch the strange ship’s hull. The motion detectors didn’t react. His pulse gun’s barrel pointed down the hole. The floodlights sliced through the pitch darkness. Sergei dove in.
“Looks like a meteorite impact,” his gloved hand brushed the fused edge, ”a laser would’ve done a nicer job.”
“There's power in the circuits!” the computer technician reported; he had already managed to hook his machine up to a cable.
They were standing in a long bending corridor that traced the internal intervals from each other.. Sergei forced one of them aside. The pilot room. The floodlight brushed across the dark screen of a telescope and stopped, discovering three seats circling the console; an unmoving figure of an android frozen in one of them.
“Nothing. There's no power here.”
They went out into the corridor. The commandos opened the compartments’ doors one after the other.
“This must be some kind of warehouse,” Gordon finally said. “There're enough supplies here for the next two hundred years!”
They kept walking along the curving corridor. Sergei had the impression that they were walking through history itself: an abandoned spaceship, the android’s figure at the control console, compartments filled up with tinned food – all that admittedly seemed eerie and mysterious.
Would they ever be able to find out what had happened to the crew?
The next door opened by itself. Sergei whipped out his gun.
"Here's the power source," Hawley said, entering the room after him.
Two lonely green lights flickered next to two hemispheres of cryogenic hypersleep capsules. Sergei cautiously stepped forward and froze, struck by the sight.
Safe under the capsules' transparent lids and floating in the mist of cryo gas inside lay a young man and a girl.
* * *
Two spacecraft, which had for some time drifted together, slowly undocked. The gap between them widened, filling with stars, while the hoses of connection tunnels were being pulled back into the gaping holes of cargo airlocks; finally they slid shut, too. One side of the cruiser was illuminated by the flashes of directional thrusters; slowly the ship began to turn. Then the cruise engines kicked in, pulling the ship away from the small dark disc which, rotating uncontrollably, continued its drift in the depths of space. It was impossible to foresee the little makeshift craft's future. Twice had it served its purpose and was now ultimately abandoned by people.
Captain Hans Frauenberg watched the little craft's flashing beacon until it disappeared amidst the many stars.
"That's life for you," he sighed philosophically, instantly forgetting the abandoned fragment of the past. He had too many pressing problems to tackle, preventing him from paying close attention to the incident.
The space cruiser Io continued on its combat patrolling mission of their sector of space.
The computer tech was toiling in the testing lab; he made a face as he disconnected all the probes from the android's open cranium. That proved to be too complicated a task for the onboard equipment; after five hours' worth of fruitless attempts to make the robot function he saw that his efforts were useless. "I can't make neither head nor tail of it," he said honestly to his junior partner who was apathetically tinkering with an integral breech-block of an automatic turret. "I've never seen anything like it," he slammed the robot's head in disappointment. "Here, look," Hawley was positively unable to shut up, "the ROM port looks normal, but just try to access the files! The wiring is funny, too. Nothing inside him but lasers and crystals."
"What about power?"
"Looks okay. He's got a built-in mini-reactor," Hawley unplugged the last cable. "You wait," he threatened, winding the cables, "once we're back to the base, I'll look into you more closely."
* * *
An hour later captain Frauenberg entered the medical station of the ship.
"Well, Vladimir, what's new?" he asked, stopping next to two transparent spherical capsules filled with saline solution. The young bodies of the two rescued astronauts floated inside, wound with wires and covered with sensors. "What's your verdict?"
"The girl's in a bad way, sir," the doctor on duty sighed, "but the guy might make it."
The captain frowned. "Do you think they'll both survive?"
"Difficult to say. It would be better to take them both to Stellar."
"You wish! No one's gonna relieve us from patrol duty," he scratched his chin. "But you're right there. Our equipment just won't cut it. A hundred years in suspended animation isn't something we can handle. I'll see if I can contact the base."
"I'd like you to take this, sir, and transmit it to Stellar," Vladimir handed the captain a memory crystal. "It's an encrypted recording of the young man's brain activity. He's coming round, so some memories seem to be resurfacing. In Jedian's labs they work on similar problems. Besides, this file might help us to find out whether they're moles someone's trying to plant on us."
"You're right," the captain agreed again. "To tell you the truth, I've thought about that too. Would be a good idea to find out who they are before they wake up," he put the crystal into his uniform pocket and headed for the exit. "Keep me posted," he repeated, then left.
* * *
Just before he came round, Simeon felt fear. Something scary was stirring in the black void of his slumber, an ominous shadow against the backdrop of his awakening consciousness.
He groaned.
Vladimir swung around. Dozens of sensors on the data display panel immediately reacted to the weak signal, their lights flashing, the monitor screens displaying his body activity in a series o
f peaking graphs.
Simeon's eyelids quivered, opening. He found himself inside a small closed space. His body was covered in a sticky warm goo. There was a pungent smell of ozone and medications. A milky mist enveloped him, revealing numerous wires and tubes that reached inside his body.
That was just what he'd been subconsciously afraid of his entire life. His awakened mind was immediately consumed by a materialized nightmare from the past: he was inside a machine! His muscles strained, his eyes widened; he bent and shuddered while trying, in vain, to escape the grip that pinned him down.
The sensors beeped anxiously. The graphs on the monitors shot up, registering an impulse of vital activity. Vladimir dropped whatever he was doing and came over to check on the boy.
Simeon didn't yet understand what he was doing: almost all of his reactions being subconscious. He stiffened in another attempt to free himself, when the bearded face of a man loomed in through the mist that filled the chamber of the machine that had captured him!
The young man's body slumped down to the rigid plastic of the life support couch; he couldn't take his eyes from the vague contours of a human figure.
Having assessed his patient's condition, Vladimir ran his hand over the computer's keyboard. A few injectors dug into Simeon's body, causing the graphs on the monitors to calm down.
Exhausted, Simeon shut his eyes, but his fading consciousness resisted, focused on one thought: 'A man. People. I'm back!'
10.
"The mind boggles," Jedian Lange turned off the monitor and sprang back to his feet. Psychoanalysis and neurosurgery were his calling, but today, for the first time in his life, he regretted not having become a clerk or a mechanic.
"I need an audience with the Commander!" he demanded into the intercom. "ASAP. It's about his family."
Somewhere in the depths of Stellar's cybernetic brain lurked the microprocessor of the admiral's private secretary. Ten to fifteen seconds later — a considerable amount of time for a machine — the loudspeaker resounded with a melodious female voice, "Your appointment is for eleven thirty."
Jedian cast a glance at the timer. Eleven twenty five. The old man still appreciated his grandnephew. He replaced the memory crystal in his desk drawer, peeled off his lab coat and hurried out of the private office down the labyrinth of underground communications of the Confederation Fleet HQ.
Admiral Vorontsov was waiting for him in his office. He was one hundred sixty-one years old, and only his private doctors knew whether there still remained any of his own organs inside his body. Most likely, most of them had already been replaced with cloned ones. The founder of Fort Stellar, the creator of the Tri-Solar Confederation's military doctrine was sitting in a rigid diagnostic chair.
"Jed, my boy, what's up?"
Jedian lowered his head in respectful greeting, "Sir."
"Stop that. Nobody can hear us. Help yourself to some booze. I can see you're nervous."
"And for a very good reason, grandfather." Jedian gulped and offered the old man a 3-D photo of a computer image. "Is this face familiar to you?"
No man living in the habitable part of the Universe had ever seen or could even imagine something like that: the lips of the fabled admiral notorious for his disregard for human emotion suddenly trembled. Tears welled up his eyes.
"Andrei."
"Grandfather, are you sure?"
"Where is he?! Is he alive?!" the admiral shouted, but immediately pulled himself together. "It can't be. You must have found his body or an archived pic. That's cruel," he reproached him.
"Not at all. This photo is a computer model of the memories of a young man they found a week ago in a cryogenic chamber of a battered spaceship dating from the First Galactic war. He was born and grew up on the spaceships' cemetery located where the battle unfolded — during which Andrei Vorontsov was supposed to have died. The young man's memory is dominated by this image. This is his father's face!"
"Can you expand upon it?" the admiral asked. "I want you to tell me everything you've found out, every little detail. But first answer this question: what happened to Andrei?"
Jedian braced himself. "Your son - my uncle is dead."
He disliked his grandfather for his cruel uncompromising attitude and was rather afraid of his angry outbursts. "He died eight years previous to his son's departure from the cemetery in a spacecraft built with all sorts of wrecks and debris. They failed to repair the hyperdrive, so they used photon thrust instead. The cruise control was set to the Galaxy's center."
"How did my son die?"
Jedian turned pale under his grandfather's icy stare that revealed the whole measure of his grief. He was a good psychologist and could see perfectly well the possible consequences of his answer.
"Andrei was shot by a robot," he uttered. "Judging by the memories scanned from my cousin's cortex, that was a PLENET class battle machine which was part of standard equipment of the Free Colonies' Fleet."
The admiral gritted his teeth. He could still remember everything as if it had happened yesterday; his memories nested in him, exhausting him, leaving behind only emptiness and suffering.
He had sent Andrei to his death.
* * *
"Sir, we've made it!" Alexander Vorontsov, the senior officer on the flag cruiser of the Colonies' Fleet, had slid the door closed behind him and glanced at the Commander's hunched back.
Their spaceship was maneuvering. The stars on the survey screen were performing a frenzied dance that only navigators can appreciate.
The commander turned round and gloomily looked at the officer. "What's there to be happy about?"
'The old fool!' Alexander thought in desperation, inconspicuously unclasping his holster. "Admiral, I've lost my son in this fight, but you seem to have lost your mind," he snapped. "Our duty is to fight on!"
The old admiral shuddered. He was crushed. The monstrosity of the battle and the mind-boggling number of casualties were beyond his comprehension. He had seen the explosion which had consumed millions of people – the horror of these figures was absolutely unimaginable – and he didn't want to see it through. He didn't want to lead more lunatics to bomb more planets in order to consolidate their sudden strategic success.
"There're people left there," he said slowly, "and also some machines. Our duty is to go back and rescue at least some of them. Not to engage in a new bloodbath."
"There's nobody left! Who do you expect to rescue from the area where even metal has evaporated?" the officer managed, trying not to scream. "All spacecraft whose force fields did hold have already re-established contact, and as for any functioning robots that might have survived the inferno, honestly, I don't give a fuck! I'm awaiting your orders!"
"You must be mad!"
"At least I'm not a coward and I'm not going to die!" Alexander raised his pulse handgun. "My son has given his life for the cause, and I'll avenge him! We're going to crush Earth now, while it's not too late, while they haven't received reinforcements!"
The Commander turned away from him, staring at the screens.
Alexander couldn't shoot a man in the back. "You're arrested," he had said icily. "I'm taking over command."
* * *
That had been so long ago. The first steps in his difficult rise to the rank of Commander. Actually, at that time he'd wholeheartedly believed in what he was doing.
Jedian stared in bewilderment at the Commander's lifeless face.
"Leave me," the Commander demanded, resurfacing from his reminiscing. "No, wait! Where's the young man at the moment?"
"His name is Simeon. He's on board the patrol cruiser Io blockading the most probable direction of the-"
Vorontsov turned pale. What was that? Fate, maybe? Or the belated retribution for having betrayed his own son?
"I see," he interrupted Jedian. "I want you to contact the base and tell their senior officer that I want Io to be withdrawn. Let them replace it by any other ship, at his own discretion."
He remained silent for a
while, as if he had lost all of his energy in those minutes. Suddenly Jedian realized how old the man sitting in front of him really was.
The Commander's face spasmed. "He must survive. I don't care if it's impossible!" the admiral's voice filled with authority. "By all means! You understand?"
Jedian nodded.
He lingered in the doorway. For so many years he'd been afraid of the man, prostrating before his rank and power. Now he just wanted to see this passionless face spasming again.
"The crystal containing the boy's memories is on the table," he said nonchalantly. "I suggest you check it, grandfather."
The door slid shut, leaving the Commander alone with his own memories and the lonely file on the table that kept drawing his stare. He feared this crystal disc more than death itself.
He knew that its contents were far worse than death for him.
11.
The crew of the patrol cruiser Io was not very numerous and had plenty of work to be done, which was why it was only Vladimir Yusupov, the onboard doctor, who was monitoring Simeon's awakening.
Simeon lay covered with a sheet, watching inconspicuously this strange man in white coveralls pacing the module and taking readings of all the numerous instruments.
Vladimir finished the check and returned to the table with a portable computer on it. As usual, he looked at his patients before sitting down. The girl's waxen body kept rotating slowly in the jets of saline solution, but the boy was lying with his eyes open, glaring at Vladimir's belt.
"At last!" Vladimir rearranged the holster with his trusty Viper. "I thought you'd sleep until we reached Stellar."
Simeon tried to say something, but could only heave a deep sigh.
The Island of Hope Page 10
