The Island of Hope (11 page)

"Then why the fuck are you here?" another voice asked.

Simeon didn't know the speaker. He didn't know anybody of the crew except Vladimir. So, he remained immobile by the gangway, quite unaware of the fact that this last question had been asked by Sergei, commander of the assault group who had brought Yanna and himself on board the
Io
.

"I need to earn a few bucks and leg it. I’ve had this war up to here."

"Shut up, then."

"You don’t care, do you? You’re gonna croak anyway, today or in a month; but this is my last sortie!"

"Put a sock in it, will ya? Otherwise I’ll make sure you’re not going back to Stellar,” Sergei's voice rang with threat.

"All right, all right. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. You’re all psychos here. Actually, what did they send you here for? They say you used to be an officer on the Fifth Orbital Station. Is it true you used to be one of those who protect Stellar?"

"Sort of," Sergei answered gloomily. He paused and added, "This is something I don’t understand: what’s the point dying for money? You think it’s normal?"

"And what did you want me to do?" the other man spat out. "As a volunteer, I at least had a choice! You know, all my life I've been scared they’d send me to space infantry," he suddenly admitted.

"Okay, you smartass. Enough," Sergei said good-naturedly. "Back to work now."

They returned to their positions, judging by the resumed clanking of metal and clicking of spanners.

Simeon didn't move, shattered by what he’d just heard. This was a heavy blow indeed.

The world was at war again.

* * *

Thunderstruck, captain Frauenberg stared at the murky sphere of the radar. Five dots. A small enemy squadron. A nearby wormhole had just disgorged
Io
’s death sentence. Because to engage in combat with five cruisers would be certain death, but it didn’t look as if they had an alternative. Better to be killed in action than to rejoin Fort Stellar's penal battalions.

A few seconds didn’t change anything now. The attack was too sudden and too powerful.

Alarms wailed. The general warning system sprang to life. Its pleasant female voice echoed in hundreds of intercom loud speakers,

"Battle alert!"

"Take action stations."

"Five heavy enemy cruisers at a thousand miles in combat mode."

"Shit! You fucking-"

Simeon didn't understand the last word.

"This was supposed to be my last sortie!" the voice repeated hysterically, accompanied by the clanging of the readied pulse gun.

A powerful figure appeared in the module’s hatch. "And what are you doing here?" Spyte bellowed, noticing Simeon. "Haven't you heard what that bitch just said? We're toast! Time to leg it!"

He didn’t have the time to say all he wanted to. A tremendous blow hit the spacecraft.

The Io
shuddered.

Somewhere monitors exploded; the lights went out, replaced by the ominous red glow of emergency lamps under the ceiling; then the power supply was restored, and the deafened people saw the smoldering wiring fill corridors with thick smoke.

Simeon rushed back to the balcony, but
Io'
s main computer had already switched to combat mode. All hatches were simultaneously shut all over the ship.

* * *

Hans Frauenberg was perfectly aware that they had no chance of survival and that resistance could only prolong the agony.

The five heavy cruisers on the screens in the pilot room zoomed into view: the incorporeal dots transforming themselves into armored behemoths aglow with navigating lights.

"Come on, John, quit fucking around!" the captain snapped, slumping into his seat at the fire control console.

John Selkirk who was trying to bring the
Io
out of her uncontrollable spin didn't need reminding. Beyond all expectation, he managed to manipulate directional thrusters to vector the cruiser into a firing position.

The captain’s hands fluttered over the controls. The engines roared, operating the main calibers. Monitors flashed frantic successions of numbers.

Frauenberg pressed the
Fire
key.

The first volley breached the leader’s shields, sending cascades of debris into space. The raging beams of laser guns slashed at the giant until one of them hit the reactor unit.

The hyperdrive exploded in an impressive display, but even this successful hit couldn’t change anything for the
Io
. A simultaneous salvo of the four wingmen swept off her laser batteries, leaving fire-polished shell holes where the gun ports had been mounted.

The sirens wailed more urgently. The soft female voice sounded like a mockery while the crew was choking on the smoke filling the battered cruiser.

"Depressurization of modules five, seven, twenty and forty-seven. All unimpaired compartments are sealed. Losses of heavy armament – ninety percent. The main propulsion system is damaged and will be ejected. All equipment to switch to emergency mode."

Only two minutes had passed since the enemy squadron had been located by
Io
's radars.

Angry blue lights flashed along the perimeter of the launch deck. There was some activity around the launch pads of nine of the assault modules. The pads shuddered and began to rise, lifting the ships up to their respective launching silos.

Spyte rammed the sealed hatch with his shoulder. "You fucking piece of shit!” he screamed, kicking the thick steel. Having vented, he trudged back to the open hatch of the repaired ship.

Simeon still stood by the gangway. He felt as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. For the first time in many years he was desperate.

Still weak after reanimation, he now stood in the bowels of a strange spacecraft whose computer had separated him from both Yanna and Andor. He was unarmed and defeated.

"We're locked!" Spyte growled, walking past. The automatics has sealed the deck!"

He reeked of death.

The module’s hatch began to slide shut.

* * *

The re-activation only took a split second. It seemed to Andor that he’d only just sunk into oblivion on board their makeshift spacecraft. But the reading of the nuclear timer sobered up his machine brain. Ninety-three years had elapsed since he’d fed all his power to the batteries of the two cryogenic capsules.

In the few seconds that his memory was being tested and systems reset, his external scanners registered the reddish light of emergency lamps and the familiar vibrations of bulkheads.

Andor stood up, shattering the plastic capsule to smithereens and frightening the computer technician to near death.

"Shit!" Hawley recoiled.

He could not take his eyes off the gleaming figure of the android who had arisen from the transport capsule. The technician’s hand fumbled blindly about workbenches until it closed around the butt of a pulse gun.

In a smooth unperceivable motion, the android grabbed his wrist. "Sir, I would appreciate any information about two young people who were on board my spaceship," he said. "Please."

Hawley’s eyes bulged with pain. The gun banged down to the floor. "Medical module!" he croaked mechanically.

"Thank you, sir!" the android picked up the weapon, nodded to the speechless Hawley and left the lab.

* * *

The inside of the module was quiet and brightly lit.

"Damn it! Will this monitor function or what?" Sergei exclaimed, tinkering with some damaged wiring. The control panel sparked; the commando swore, shaking his hand in the air; the monitors
finally sprang to life, displaying the view of the launch deck.

The nine fighters had already risen toward the airlocks which began to open slowly.

"The cover modules are taking off," a voice said in the intercom when the last ship cleared the exit. "The enemy has started a mass attack using small spacecraft."

Clenching his teeth, Simeon was suiting up.

Yanna and Andor had stayed behind deep within the agonizing cruiser’s guts.

Spyte stared at him nonsensically, high on adrenalin, fingering the butt of his pulse gun. He sensed the approaching death which spread a strange paralyzing chill down in his stomach. He would have liked to scream, to drop to his knees, to do anything only to avoid the unavoidable.
'Oh, my God
,' he thought in despair, seeing in his mind’s eye the enemy spacecraft rushing toward the
Io
,
'why did it happen? What have I done to deserve it? I don't want to die!
' A strained wheeze escaped his throat.

Simeon turned to him. Spyte saw his drawn, gaunt face. The boy didn't say a word, but having met his eye, Spyte shrank back. This wasn’t the face of a twenty-year-old.

At that moment Simeon was overwhelmed by a bitter unaccountable fury. The world that he had not yet had time to know was already collapsing, crashing down about his ears, and that was really cruel.

"
Don’t forget that the world you’re so impatient to join has created the killing robots and this spheroid
," Andor’s words echoed in his feverish mind. He’d never thought it would be so hard to part with illusions and face the truth. Pointless. Too late. It hurt too much.

Sergei glanced up from the control panel at the crestfallen Simeon.

Nobody said a word. Silence hung in the cabin, interrupted by the beeping of controls.

"Listen," Spyte said hoarsely, knowing they had but minutes left to live, "just go. This isn’t your war." He placed his finger on the monitor, pointing at a large gateway at the end of the space port. "There's a hangar with planetary vehicles there," he hurried to explain, "the robots won't search the ship, they'll rip out the navigational crystal and leave."

Simeon peered into Spyte's eyes. He wouldn’t be able to explain what he felt at that moment. It was as if a stray ray of the sun had touched him, illuminating for a second his most secret dream; his heart sinking with joy, he tried to get a better look at his reverie, but the ray expired, leaving him in the dark which closed around him, comfortable like old clothes.

Spyte felt a spasm distort his face. "Don’t you understand! You should survive!" he shouted, losing control, and stepped back toward the turret. "Just go! We'll cover you!"

Simeon took a step. His mind was collapsing onto itself. He had to save Yanna. This world had given him nothing but another pointless war unleashed by man. Then why did he experience this strange bitter warmth? Who were they to him, these two men, frozen in anticipation of impending death, but still prepared to help him escape?

"I'll be back,
" he said unexpectedly for himself.

* * *

Andor looked around. A vacuum reigned in the corridor sealed with hermetic bulkheads, leaving open the entrance to a turret tower. Andor forced the unyielding hatch open and squeezed his way through.

The spherical room made of transparent armor alloy was pitch dark, but the android didn’t need light in order to see. A shell-hole gaped in the tower’s convex wall; the gunner's seat was empty. Control consoles were dead.

Andor switched over to scanning mode and soon found the source of the problem. A laser beam had sliced through the cupola , damaging the main power cable.

Having restored power, Andor eased his body into the seat. Now he had all he needed. The gun's radar revealed the panorama of bitter combat between nine assault modules and enemy fighters. The android’s plug-like fingers began to protract. He thrust his hand into a socket on the console, taking over the gun's processor.

It took him ten seconds to crack the
Io
's central processor and another fifteen seconds to hack its main programs.

Judging by the displayed scheme, Yanna was in the medical module, two decks above. Her life was, at the moment, out of danger. The module was protected by other compartments and had its own power supply.

Simeon's position was much worse. His signal was located at the launching deck and was mixed with two unidentified ones.

Andor switched his attention to the neighboring space.

Three assault raiders were approaching the
Io
under the cover of fighters. The cruisers fired one more volley then turned their sterns to the dying spaceship.

The Io
didn't interest them anymore. It was the assault groups’ turn.

The assault modules covering the
Io
had been destroyed.

The four enemy cruisers began to withdraw. They fired their hypersphere drives and disappeared from the screens. It took the android's photon processor ten seconds to analyze the situation. The raiders’ paths led toward the launching deck. More scanning revealed that they had ninety attack robots of unknown design on board. There were no people.