The Island of Hope (15 page)

15.

T
he tiny flyer whizzed over Stellar's steely surface. It had left the city and the mountain tops far behind and was now approaching the neat grid of countless launching sites.

Simeon couldn't wait. Finally the little craft slowed down and dove toward the squat terminal building. The four segments of a round hatch parted, letting the flyer in. The airlock began filling with air. Finally the internal hatch clanged open. The flyer's hood went up.

Yanna and Simeon jumped out of the cab onto the concrete.

"Have you entered the return code?" Simeon asked.

Yanna nodded and took him by the hand.

They stepped into a corridor that opened up before them.

Simeon felt her body tremble.

The hangar was submerged in near darkness. Clusters of powerful lamps overhead struggled to disperse the gloom. Blue and red lights flashed along the perimeter of the launch pad.

Genesis
lay on her belly. Two miles of perfect black armor that didn't reflect light: even the close flashes of signal lights disappeared in the depths of her armor plates.

Simeon stepped forward. The ship's dormant power was giving them the shivers.

Servomotors howled. The frontal part of the ship just under the control room came down, forming a ramp. A light glowed inside, inviting them to enter.

Without saying a word, they entered the elevator. A slight jolt; then the cabin rushed upwards. A panel on the wall flashed with the deck numbers.

15
. The elevator hissed to a halt.

"Authorization confirmed," a voice said overhead. "Welcome to control room."

The elevator door opened.

Simeon and Yanna stood in the heart of
Genesis
.

A hemispherical hall was packed with control panels, screens, computer consoles and other electronics. Simeon counted fifteen main posts and five auxiliary ones. All seats were empty; the instrument boards in front of them flashed their lights, inviting crew members to take their places.

"But how on earth are we going to-?" Yanna stopped mid-word.

Simeon suppressed a knowing smile.

One of the seats by the central console swung around.

"Easy!" Andor said. His head was unscrewed open. Dozens of cables snaked from it, disappearing inside the console. His one hand was plugged into a connector, the fingers of the other lay on the keyboard. "Welcome aboard!"

Yanna giggled. "You should see yourself!"

Andor shrugged: the only gesture he could manage.

Simeon sank into the seat next to him. "Did it work?"

"It did indeed. I've set the ship's processor to speech mode. We've had a heart-to-heart, so now I'm her interpreter. Temporarily, of course," he added.

Simeon nodded. "Yanna, your seat is the sixth to the right of mine," he commanded. "The navigation console. You have forty seconds."

"Okay," she took the seat and studied the terminal. "What's the course?"

"We're leaving Stellar using the ion thruster. The course... whatever. Find a bright star and steer toward it. Hyperdrive safety range: three AUs."

"Andor?"

"System testing completed. Auto pilot on."

"Fine." Yanna's fingers lay on the keyboard.

* * *

Less than ten minutes remained of the hour Simeon had asked Vorontsov for. The hangar's dome shook, falling apart into ten segments.
Genesis'
belly glowed crimson.

"Lift-off," Andor said.

"Six feet! Fifteen!" Yanna's voice rang with excitement.

"Forty-five!"

A black silhouette rose above the gray surface of Stellar, surrounded with crimson flames: a powerful space beast shaking the planet as it forced its way out, growling.

"A hundred and twenty feet. We're entering the range of the space defense batteries."

"The engines are synchronized. Space defense systems show no activity."

Simeon's finger lingered over a key. "Have you sent the fax?" he asked Andor.

"I have."

"Then we've seen enough of this place."

The stern of
Genesis
flashed, flooding Stellar with a dazzling blue light.

A second later it blended with the abyss, becoming just another tiny star in the sky.

* * *

As Jedian headed for the Admiral's quarters, he was in an excellent mood. He'd managed to locate the planet where Simeon had been born. It was a modest planetoid in the God-forsaken system Epsilon-32, once known for its uranium mines. At the beginning of the first Galactic war an assault squad of the Earth Alliance had destroyed the mines, but fortunately the archived copies of their computer files had survived. They contained the colonists' DNA codes. Looking Simeon's parents up wouldn't be so difficult after all.

There was light in the Admiral's rooms. Jedian crossed the reception and stopped in the doorway of Vorontsov's private office.

Nobody in sight. That was weird. Fifteen minutes ago he'd spoken to his grandfather and told him he was coming.

Jedian pushed the door open and froze.

Admiral Vorontsov sat at his desk. A few loose pages lay in front of him — a fax, judging by the handwritten message.

But that wasn't what Jedian noticed first. The admiral's head was cocked unnaturally to one side as if he'd fallen asleep in an awkward pose. But was it possible to sleep with open eyes?

Jedian was panic-stricken. Stealthily, as if afraid of scaring Vorontsov, he approached his desk. The life support system next to it was flashing emergency lights. One look at it was enough to realize that the admiral had just had a fit.

Jedian's legs gave under him. He grasped at the desk, very nearly sweeping the pages off it. Jedian glanced over the lines. The handwriting was somewhat similar to his.

'We all had to go mad before we died
,' he read a random line. His blood ran cold as he realized what these pages were.

'But I remember. I still remember Mom's carefree laughter and the kind eyes of my Dad. The warm purple ocean of my native planet. I remember the feeling of boundless peace and happiness that only children have. The world was lying at my feet, so huge, astonishing and warm. It was mine. But all our dreams were trampled underfoot, mixed with ashes; frozen in a vacuum
.'

'No wonder the old man had a fit
,' Jedian thought, unable to take his eyes away from the handwritten lines.

'I'm neither a prosecutor nor a pacifist. I'm a professional soldier, an assassin legalized by the state, pulled by the force of circumstances out of the vicious circle of death and thrown away into a great icy nothing to die slowly, thinking
.'

That was Andrei Vorontsov's diary.

Automatically Jedian's hand reached for the cables that snaked from the life support system to the admiral's chair. His fingers trembled as he pulled the wires out. Vorontsov's head jerked. The peaking graphs on monitor screens flattened.

Jedian stole a furtive look around and plugged the cables back in.

Life had come full circle.

EPILOGUE

A gargantuan structure drifted through deep space far from the busy galactic thoroughfares.
Starborne Citadel
.

Twenty planets had joined forces building it. When the conflict between Earth and the Colonies had broken out a hundred years ago, the colonists had no hope of winning the impending war. So they built
Citadel
that could serve them as a refuge in case their native planets were occupied.

The first Galactic war had plunged the inhabited areas of space into chaos. After the first crushing defeats, the Free Colonies' Alliance had disbanded under the strikes of the squadrons of the Earth Alliance.

Those were dark times for our civilization. Lawlessness and crime reigned in space. Hundreds of battles broke out, multiple planet alliances were created and then broken, piracy ruled, while entire planetary systems fell into decay.

Citadel
's crew had no illusions about the future. There were some reasonable men among its senior officers, and after the first defeats suffered by the colonies, when the chaos was only just setting in, they steered their behemoth station toward an uninhabited and unexplored part of the Universe.

These were courageous people who launched themselves into the unknown, hoping to escape the insanity and find a new planet for their priceless cargo.

The crew had a vast experience in deep space settlement. They fashioned their station after the old colonists' transports, putting the whole experience of the happy colonies of the past to good use.

Citadel
had disappeared without a trace. A few space crews claimed they'd seen it, but little by little it had become a legend. The governments of some planets occasionally tried to find the vagabond station, but without success.

The puzzle had a simple but tragic answer, and the place to look for it was in the archives of the now-destroyed Earth Alliance.

* * *

The pilot room of
Genesis
was unlit.

A thirty-foot frontal monitor created the impression of a window facing an abyss.

Holding her breath, Yanna watched an impossible object zooming in on the 3-D display.

From a distance it looked like a planetoid encircled with several dark, ominous rings. But the closer they approached, the more chilling details came into view.

In the center of the surreal structure lay the twenty-five-mile long sphere of
Citadel
. The dark rings proved to be masses of misshapen spaceships: forty miles of metal debris circling the station.

"This is the Fifth fleet of the Earth Alliance, conspicuous by its disappearance," Andor said, pointing at the spine-chilling circle of the dead spacecraft.

"They tried to capture
Citadel
, didn't they?" Yanna asked, starting the ships' scanners. The floodlights of
Genesis
were not powerful enough to illuminate the entire grotesque structure, so it was only their computer's processor that could create a precise image of the object.

Andor scrutinized the appearing images. "The admiral of the Fifth fleet was not only ambitious, but also greedy. He knew that the Supreme Command would disapprove of his raid, but… victors can't be judged. The taking of the legendary
Starborne Citadel
could have become his hour of glory, not to mention the station's cost and the uniqueness of its onboard equipment. So, having received the information about its location, he decided to act at his own risk."

The scanning process completed, replacing the vague outline on the screen with a clear image.

"We should call Simeon!" Yanna exhaled. She'd seen her fair share of similar images while living on the Island, and now her imagination was reliving the past events. "That's just what we've been looking for for the last five years!"

Andor nodded and pressed the intercom key. "Simeon, we've come across an interesting object. You might want to have a look."

"Roger that. The raider is almost ready."

Yanna lay her hands on the keyboard. "Commence scanning," she entered the command.

The image of
Citadel
, captured by the on-board computer's memory, filled the screens.

"You see the basic model of an interstellar station," the computer's voice could be heard. "It's thirty-two miles long and twenty-eight miles wide. Its hull is made of a cermet alloy. The station has three internal launch pads, one hundred and twenty control desks, systems of both space defense and planetary attack. One thousand two hundred staff. There are five cryogenic rooms, a gene bank, some incubators for reproduction and a set of exploration equipment of an unknown type. There is no information as to the status of the cryogenic rooms."

The door rustled open behind Yanna. She pressed the pause key. The computer's voice stopped.

Simeon came over to her. "Everything okay?"

Yanna took him by the hand. "Have a look. I think I'll never get used to this."

Citadel
loomed close. Tremendous shell-holes gaped in its hull, the broken hull structures buried under the wreckage they'd collected on the way. Not a light, not a single sign of life — nothing but an expanse of motionless, crumpled metal.

An area encircled in red appeared on the screen.
Genesis
was approaching its edge.

"This is the safety zone," Andor explained. We can't be sure whether the station is as dead as it seems to be. The colonists fought to the last man. They destroyed the whole fleet," he pointed at the rings of debris orbiting
Citadel
. "So there's a high probability of encountering battle machines here, just like on the Island. Not to even mention the defense systems of
Citadel
itself."

"I see," Simeon came up to the screen, as if it could help him see something the others didn't. "Yanna, you're staying here. Ensure that
Genesis
is ready for any emergencies. You never know, we might have to beat a hasty retreat. Andor and I will try to enter the station."

"Why? What do you expect to find there?"

Simeon shrugged. "It's too early to speak about it. There's nothing worse than disappointment," he touched her cheek with his lips. "We already know how it feels, don’t we?"

* * *

An assault module stole toward
Citadel
.

"Two miles," Andor said, watching the radar screen in front of him. "No activity."

Simeon had taken the gunner's position, peering at the spaceships' fragments floating below.

The ring was not as homogeneous as it had seemed from a distance: the lumps of metal, only vaguely resembling manmade objects, drifted slowly but chaotically like gigantic molecules.

For the last five years they had seen the same everywhere, like a dreadful recurrent dream:
Genesis
had visited dozens of similar cemeteries. They hadn't found life on any of them.

"One mile. Looks like the defense systems are down."

Andor activated the directional thrusters and steered the ship toward a huge shell-hole in its hull.

Simeon sealed the visor of his pressure helmet and rose.

The shell-hole was approaching, like a black gaping mouth of a mythical monster.

"Five hundred feet."

A dull thump of a touch-down, then vacuum torches kicked in, sending cascades of sparks around as they welded their ship to
Citadel
.

"Yanna, can you hear us?"

"Roger. The picture is stable. Good luck!"

Simeon opened the hatch.

Starborne Citadel
took up all the visible space, stretching into infinity.

Simeon slowly moved along, clutching at the docking supports. Finally he reached the edge of the shell-hole. Andor followed him.

They forced their way past some heaped armor plates and found themselves in a spacious corridor leading deep inside the Station.

Their two flashlights sliced through the dark.

A battle had once raged here. Probably all those who'd survived the destruction of the space fleet had attempted to storm
Citadel
. Simeon walked along the corridor, looking into the compartments through the doorways smashed by explosions, but all he saw was some destroyed equipment, blown-up consoles, and the walls raked by lasers.

"We really should find the transport hub," he said." "Otherwise we'll be walking down these corridors till the end of time."

Andor nodded. He switched to scanning mode and quickly located the entrance to the station's transport system. "All circuits are dead," he said, pointing at the tunnel they needed.

Simeon stepped in, finding himself inside a large pipe. The wall's plastic lining had burst, exposing bundles of wiring. This was where the transport hub's electromagnets used to be. He pushed away from a wall, and again, trying to gain some speed and move faster.

Behind him, Andor repeated his actions. He continued to scan the area, transmitting the image to Simeon's tablet.

"Nine hundred feet a minute. I think that's enough."

Decks loomed in the dark and dashed past them. There was no electrical activity, only the gloom and the battered metal.

Finally the signs of destruction around them disappeared.

"They put up a long fight," Andor commented. "The colonists must have tried to defend the heart of the station to the last man."

Simeon didn't answer. He was sick and tired of all this madness. He knew of course that constant exploration of all those war wrecks could drive them insane. At any rate, it could result in a one-sided and incorrect attitude to the civilization.
'We must remember that people created lots of good and beautiful things, too,
' Simeon never stopped telling himself.

'Circumstance determines identity
.' The ancient postulate never left him alone, forcing him to ponder over it again and again. All human beings had the right to live, but would you really call that a life? Billions of children were born into wars, their souls perverted by propaganda, a low social status and many other unfavorable circumstances. Very few were able to survive them and develop normally.

"You're approaching a power source!" Yanna's voice interrupted his reflection. "Deck 75."

"Roger that," Simeon slowed down, using his pack's jets.

Andor kept going until he stopped at a closed deck hatch. "I'm going in first," he said.

A minute later they entered the circular corridor of Deck 75.

There was no destruction at all here. The walls were lined with white plastic that reflected their flashlights' beams.

"Cryogenic Room 1," Simeon read the inscription on a massive armored gateway.

Andor was trying to force the lock.

"The power source is located farther," Yanna suggested. "Connect yourself to any socket on the deck, and I'll be able to give you more info."

Andor found the distribution board, removed the facing panel and switched himself into the circuit.

"Let's see... It's nine hundred feet to the right along the corridor. Just a moment," Yanna paused. "Got it. According to the scheme, it's in Cryogenic Room 3."

Simeon hurried along the corridor almost at a run.

The indicator on the door to the Cryogenic Room 3 airlock flashed green: the first speck of light in the dead darkness of
Citadel
.

Without saying a word, Andor leaned over the code lock.

With a shudder, the heavy door slid aside.

Simeon hurried into the airlock chamber.

He counted seconds as the awoken compressors filled the chamber with air. Finally, the internal hatch began to open, then stopped halfway. Its gears screeched to a halt.

Simeon forced himself through the resulting opening. He found himself in the control room.

Several control panels lined a transparent wall, their strings of green lights filling him with joy and confusion.

A desk stood to one side of the room. The body of a man in a decayed onboard suit lay in a seat nearby. Long strands of gray hair framed his mummified face, its features withered and distorted. This was a very old man who had died a natural death.

A sheet of paper lay on the desk in front of him.

"
I entrust them to you
," Simeon read the inscription on the fragile yellowed piece of paper. His heart missed a bit.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he heard Yanna's voice in the earphones.

Simeon pushed the transparent door aside and walked into the cryogenic room. The place was so ancient it was spooky. The step that he had just taken was the most important in their life.

The level rows of cryogenic capsules lined the never-ending walls. Each was lit up from the inside. There were hundreds of them, and in every one lay a child.