KIMLON'S STORY

For the moment LightStar did not seem to be in any danger. Sitting as they were in the middle of nowhere their scanners had picked up no signs of any other ships in their area of space.

After the pod had retracted Harris decided it was time to see Raftos and ask him some pertinent questions. Packet stayed in the communications room compiling the data they had gathered. Harris left and went in search of Raftos.

After twenty minutes Harris wished he had waited for Packet. Tramping up and down the connecting tubes, in and out of storage units and conditioning plants, Harris was completely lost. There seemed to be no logic behind the way the passages were laid out. After opening one hatch he found himself in part of the power coil rings. Trying to stop himself from screaming out loud Harris went down another passage and opened another hatch, the ship was not so very big he thought. The hatch opened onto a large accommodation chamber, this room had gravity and a table in the centre. Sitting at the table were five people, they all looked up as Harris entered, one of them was Kimlon.

"If you're here." said Kimlon. " You must be lost."

" I'm lost." said Harris " I had a feeling I was going to be wandering around these passages for ever. I normally have a vary good sense of direction."

" The power rings upset your direction balance." said Kimlon. " Have some tea."

Kimlon poured a hot liquid into what passed for a proper cup, it was Zilon a very pleasant sweet tea like drink made from Terfomoss. One of the other people at the table passed Harris a plate with a proper looking piece's of cake on it.

Harris looked round at the others sitting at the table. Kimlon apologised and introduced the other people, Meyat, Keso, Freerom, Craso. Kimlon then pointed up at the wall where there were a series of bunks, he introduced three more people, Truman, Ottom and Predling who he had seen before.

Kimlon explained that even a ship as small as LightStar needed a crew bigger than four, there were in fact fifteen people on board, the Captain, Raftos, the pilot, Mickleton Jones, scanning and communications Packet Looms, Harris himself and the rest were made up of crew members from Raftos's ship the Monitor. Kimlon explained that all the crew from the Monitor except himself and Raftos were Timmeron.

Harris had heard of the Timmeron but had never met any before. The Tremos system and been destroyed when there sun exploded, the entire population took off into space and simply made it their home. They now account for sixty percent of all crews in all space ships now flying and they very seldom give any trouble, unlike the Foyd.

Harris ask Kimlon how well he knew Raftos. Kimlon said that he had been with Raftos since the early days and knew him better than anybody. Harris decided to take a chance, he somehow trusted Kimlon. Harris took a sip of the sweet tea, put the cup down then ask if Kimlon knew why Raftos was going to the place where Aganoon had been destroyed. It was the last place to look for a new planet, a million ships had passed through that part of sector five, if there were any useful planets with in a billion miles of where Aganoon had been it would have been found along time before now.

Kimlon tapped the table for quite some time, the silence in the room was almost audible. Harris had the feeling everyone else was listening very carefully as they had not been given any answers themselves. Timmerons do not ask questions.

" Raftos is a curious fellow." started Kimlon. " We did not know about the LightStar. We had been flying about in sector five for some years looking for the allusive Aganoon two. As you know since the end of the war more and more federation systems have been sending out survey fleets on the same mission. We however had an advantage over everyone else we knew it existed. You see we had been there."

Harris stopped chewing the peace of cake he had just put into his mouth. He swallowed the cake took a sip of tea before exclaiming.

" There is another Aganoon. You know where it is."

" Unfortunately." said Kimlon. " We do not know where it is. Raftos and the crew with the Monitor were on Aganoon when the rumours about an evil weapon began. People could not believe the stories about such a thing. When confirmation came and that the machine was a virtual planet destroyer and Aganoon was its target, hasty evacuation plans were made.

Aganoon was a nutral planet and had tryed to stay out of the conflict going on in the eastern sector of the empire. Suddenly everyting changed the Aganoon spy's had found sonthing out, what it was we were never told but they realised that there very planet was in imminent danger.

Every available ship on or near Aganoon was pressed into service. Including Raftos and his ship the Monitor. The other Aganoon is in fact the old planet of the Aganons, the place where their civilisation had begun, long ago before they out grew the old planet and moved on to what we all knew as Aganoon. The old Aganoon was small but it was the only place close enough for a mass evacuation, time by this stage was running out.

It was calculated that four trips could be made to the old planet by each of the ships, the Monitor being faster than anything else could just manage eight. The old planet however was in a very secret location and very few knew of its position or even of its existence, the few that did were the men of an old priesthood, of what were known generally as the Star Knights. The location of the old Aganoon was not marked on any star map. The Aganons did not want its whereabouts to be known, if Aganoon was destroyed the last thing they wanted was the new weapon to be turned on their last place of refuge.

To get to the new planet each ship took on board a Star Knight who acted a navigator. They gave instructions by a series of dead reckoning headings. Not something you should try in space. They did not use star maps or instruments and they were always right on the button. At the end of the operation they wiped all records from all the ships navigation logs then disappeared themselves. The evacuation was not reported widely reported, we could not save everyone." Kimlon paused.

" The Monitor was the last ship out, we knew there was not time for that last trip but you can't leave people can you. As we left the planet we were caught by the vanguard of a battle fleet. They were small ships we could have taken out ourselves under normal circumstances but all our armament and guns had been removed to make more room for passengers, we were jammed to overflowing with passengers. They damaged one of our engines but we made it away."

All this was news to Harris, who along with everyone else had thought the entire population of Aganoon had been wiped out. The only reference Harris had ever heard about another Aganoon had been in a very old script written in Arolloan that he had read when putting some old texts in the file he had been compiling about sector five, the file no one had yet mentioned. At the time he had ignored the reference as one of the many legends handed down and corrupted over time.

Kimlon continued his story. " The Star Knight on board the Monitor wiped our navigation files and left in his own shuttle simply to disappear. The rescue fleet was mainly passenger and cargo ships who after the rescue headed for the nearest place to hide, the dark zone.

The dark zone in sector five was known by most space ship captains and was not a particularly good place to go but it was the only place available. It is a cloudy gaseous area, the only good thing is that scanning detectors do not work very well, unless somebody close and looking.

Kimlon paused again remembering a painful episode, the Monitor was the last ship to enter the dark zone. By the time they arrived hell had broken loose. It seemed that part of the battle fleet protecting the new wepon had entered the dark zone and were destroying anything they found. It seems they thought the ships were a battle feet from Aganoon waiting to ambush the weapon. The fact that none of the ships were armed or fighting back made no difference, it was just a massacre. The Monitor flew straight into the middle of it. As they had not replaced any of their weapons, they simply had to run, it was only their speed and being so light that we were able to get away.

After that Raftos did what he could to help the rebel alliance until the end of the war."

Kimlon pored some more tea for himself and Harris.

" After the war." Continued Kimlon. " Raftos wanted to find the Old Aganoon. You see in the first wave of evacuees Raftos had his wife and children on board the Monitor, they were left on Old Aganoon for safety to be picked up on the last trip. In the confusion during the final attack Raftos could not find them. Although we had no location for the Old Aganoon we had done the trip nine times and enough for Raftos to remember the instructions, Raftos knew he could find the way back to the Old Aganoon.

The war was over so there was no reason for the Aganons to hide any longer, we did not think they would try to avoid being found.

Raftos retraced the flight path. The Old Aganoon was not there. The one consolation was that we did not find any debris, the planet had not been destroyed by the new weapon. We did not know at thet time that the wepon itself had been destroyed by the explosion of Aganoon. The area in fact was so empty it was almost absurd, it was almost too empty. There was nothing we could do, Raftos started going down hill. He was a wanted man, his family were gone, he felt he had no place any more. Then we met Mickleton Jones."

Harris was fascinated by this story, as was the rest of the crew sitting or laying around, which was slightly odd Harris thought because they must have lived through it. Then Harris realised that like any crew they went through the battles but were never party to the why and how of events. Harris also realised he had eaten half the cake that was on the table, it was greed but did taste better then the rations he had been having.

" That meeting changed everything. " Continued Kimlon. " We knew the Aganons must have done something to hide their world but what they had done we did not know. Here was something that might provide the answer. There were risks Mickleton told us about the first two ships that had disappeared, he said however he also knew how to reduce the risk, but at that point Raftos did not care."

Kimlon smiled as he remembered the event when they met Mickleton Jones.

Raftos and Kimlon were getting drunk in a gaming house on one of the Moons of Tron.

The gaming house was an unsavoury place called Sennor Core. It was a kind of gambling and brothel station located on the back side of the fifth moon of Tron. Tron was a muddy mining planet where they extract Scolomone, a mineral used in the hulls of most space ships. The miners have money and not much to do, so alot of these pleasure stations had set up near there.

Raftos and Kimlon were an alcove getting gradually drunk and watching the gambling tables when a commotion started at one of the tables in the centre of the room. Raftos and Kimlon were attracted to the commotion, they were naturally attracted to any kind of trouble. They got up and went to find out what was happening. Usually the fuss is about some burly miner who had lost all his money and accuses the dealer of cheating, something that has become particularly difficult since the invention of the game Stroon Sevens, the favourite gambling card game in these places.

Raftos and Kimlon were both on the large size easily pushed there way through the gathering crowd around the table where the fuss was coming from. Much to the surprise of both of them it was not a burly miner accusing the house of robbing him, quite the reverse.

The centre of attention was a rather scruffy youth with dirty cloths, a wild mop of untidy unwashed hair, wearing cracked taped together spectacles. The young man as sitting very quietly looking across the table at a very dapper gentleman standing on the other side the table, this man was shouting and getting very angary. The young man was very calm, it was almost as if he did not realise he was the one being shouted at.

Raftos could not see what the fuss was about until he got closer and saw that the young man had in front of him a huge pile of credit chips, nearly all of them gold, there were millions there. The man shouting and accusing the young man of every kind of cheating imaginable must be, Raftos guessed, the owner of the establishment. Raftos thought this because the only people in the place who were clean worked there and secondly the owner probably could not pay out the winnings. It was unusual however for anyone to be able to win that amount of money in a place like this.

Raftos was curious, a cheat would have been spotted long before he built up that amount of money and as was just said, it was almost impossible to cheat at Stroon Sevens for either a punter or the house. The young man simply stated that he had not been cheating and that he would like to cash in his chips.

The owner made a signal and was joined by three very large men, well dressed but obviously ex storm troopers. As these men arrived the crowed around the table gradually disappeared into the furthest corners of the room, not wanting to be involved but curious as to the outcome. Time for you to go, said the owner. The youth looked up, he still was not showing any signs of worry, this slightly unnerved the owner. The owner, still staring at the youth, told his guards to throw the youth out. One of the guards slowly drew a weapon from a holster fixed inside his jacket. None of the guards had paid any attention to Raftos and Kimlon who were now standing behind the young man.

With a well practised move Raftos had already pulled his weapon and it was now resting just over the left shoulder of the youth. The youth must have heard the hum as the weapon charged for it was almost touching his left ear, but he did not move or look up. The trooper who had pulled his weapon had been looking at the youth but then noticed the weapon pointing at him over the youths shoulder. The trooper looked up and saw Raftos's smiling face.

The trooper slowly put his weapon down on the table.

"What's the matter." shouted the owner.

The three troupers said nothing, they all knew something the owner obviously did not. None of them recognised Raftos, they had never seen him before, what they did recognise was the weapon and knew what sort of person would carry it.

By now Kimlon had drawn his weapon and was covering Raftos's back.

The advantage of being a gun runner is that you get to have the pick of some of the latest weaponry. The ex storm troopers knew a disrupter when they saw one and knew what it could do, they also had some fear of the sort of person who would carry such a thing casually round under their coat.

As the troopers stood motionless the owner suddenly realised that the situation had changed, a silence blanketed everything, all eyes were on the few remaining figures standing at the table.

Raftos looked at the owner saying that he thought he owed the young man something. Very slowly the owner reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, very slowly he pulled out an oblong peace of plastic, he tossed it onto the table. The three dimensional lettering on the plastic glinted in the reflected light above the table. A million credit unit. Raftos told the youth to pick it up, the young lad started to protest that he had won more that that, but Raftos put this right hand around the youths neck and gripped his throat so tight it hurt, the youth stopped talking. Pick it up growled Raftos, the young lad obeyed. Raftos knew it was not the full amount but it was enough to heart the owner and probably all he could pay. Without letting go of the youths neck Raftos pulled the youth out of his seat. Raftos and Kimlon then made for the exit. Knowing the old troopers would not follow they slipped into the darkness of the streets outside.

Safe in a bar four blocks away Raftos sat down with the young stranger to find out why he was facing down so much danger and how he had managed to cheat the card tables. The youth turned out to be Mickleton Jones.

It seems Mick had not realised that he was in any danger he simply thought the management should pay him what he had won. It seems he had not been cheating at all, simply calculating the odds using a system a five dimensional mathematical streaming system he had developed for the navigation of the LightStar.

Raftos took interest, not of the mathematical detail which was way beyond him, but of the lads reference to the LightStar. Raftos had heard fragments of gossip about a project called LightStar but had never been able to find out what it was. Here was somebody who was just throwing the name in casually at the end of a sentence.

Over the course of dinner which the youth ate as if he had not eaten in days Raftos heard the curious story of Mickleton Jones. How he had invented this revolutionary type of space ship, been given billions by central command to build it, then been kicked out by the very management that was supposed to be building the machine for him.

It seems that during construction of the ship Mickleton Jones had started to get worried about the speed everyone was pushing the project and tried to warn everyone about the need for several years of delay so he could work out the navigation system for the machine. But there was a war on so no one would listen to him.

Mickleton went over the heads of the men controlling the project to the Admiral commander. The commander however did not know what he was talking about and reported directly back to the people running the project. The managers resented him going over their heads so kicked him off the project, they thought they had got everything they needed from him and that now he had finally gone crazy.

After that Mick drifted into the fringe worlds just keeping alive by gambling and continuing with his work on the navigation calculations. He was not too good at looking after himself but kept going as he wanted the LightStar to be a success.

Raftos wondered why the lad had suddenly gone for the big pot at the gambling tables when he had obviously been playing and winning quietly for some years. Mick told him that he had heard about the disasters with the first two LightStars. Although he had been kicked out of the project he still had a couple of friends working there who kept him informed about what was going on. Now he wanted alot of money to get back and buy the last remaining ship as he had now finished his calculations for the navigation system. He thought he could make the last ship work.

Raftos knew even with all the money in the universe Mick was unlikely ever to get the ship again. It was so secret few people knew it existed and those that did would deny it after the disasters.

In a strange way it was a lucky meeting for Mick. Raftos was probably the only person in the Western sector of the galaxy who could help the lad get the third machine, even a secret machine, from under the very noses of Central Command.

Taking over the base had been quite easy for Raftos and his men as Mick knew the layout of the base and still had secret access codes to all the command computers. It was also a dead project, nobody was expecting any kind of attack on the base. Getting out would be another matter but Raftos was gambling that Mick could in fact make the LightStar fly. If he could this would be the biggest coup of Raftos's life. Now that was attractive to Raftos.

Raftos never did tell Central Command about Mickleton Jones so they were still puzzled as to why and how Raftos could get the LightStar to work when they had failed. It seemed that the people remaining at Central Command had forgotten about Mickleton Jones, he had never been in the military so did not have a record file to indicate his importance to the project. Those scientists who had known him were all laying dead somewhere across the galaxy in LightStar two.

" The rest you already know." said Kimlon finishing the story.

Harris sat for a while thinking about the story Kimlon had just told. Kimlon was telling the truth Harris was sure of that. It put Raftos in a new light, the real reason for the mission was simple and straight forward, he was looking for his family.

Harris wondered why Raftos would think he would have any more success with LightStar than with his own ship. Harris was doubtful if it held any real advantage except it could cover alot more ground very quickly, Harris could understand why Raftos would want to try. The more Harris understood about the crew the more he realised that the only person who did not have good reason to be on the ship was himself, yet Raftos, Mick and the Admiral, seemed to think his position was important to the mission. What keys was he holding that he knew nothing about.