CHASING LIGHT STAR

After some discussion about the small planet being a jump gate, Harris pointed out that it still did not put them any closer the old Aganoon, as they still had no clue to the direction or distance the jump had been made from it. Harris said that he thought there must be some clue in the file he was carrying, it contained all the information he could gather about sector five. Some where in it must be the clue they needed, the Admiral must have known what the clue was or why would he have ask Harris to bring that one particular file, in person all the way across the galaxy.

Raftos quite rightly pointed out that if the Admiral did know what the clue was why had he not simply told them, instead of leaving it buried in the file. It was a good point. Mick thought that perhaps there were people at Central Control the Admiral could not trust. A spy he had not yet found, the loss of the other ships might not have been an accident. All things were possible but there was still one thing that still puzzled Harris, how had the Admiral come to know about the existence of his own personal file.

Mick thought they should take a closer look at the Admirals daughter, what link she had with the Aganoon planet. Mick had a feeling she had somehow worked out where she wanted to go in that second LightStar and it had something to do with the Old Aganoon. Mick remembered a reference the Admirals daughter made in a conversation she had with him at the very start of the project. Mick had not paid much attention to it at the time, the early days were full of optimism, getting the project to work was enough. No one had given a thought where to go in it. Mick recalled Rachael saying that she had been looking at old legends about the first Aganoon for some years and that she now had the answer to the key. This particular conversation stuck in Mick's memory because she went on to spell the word key, q u i e e.

Harris said that quiee spelt that way was not key as it unlock, it was the ancient Aganon word for location. Harris thought if the Admirals daughter had known something she would have probably made some reference to it in her personal logs which Harris thought he could probably access. Harris ask Packet if they still had contact with central via the communications satellite link, Packet confirmed they had.

Harris realised now why the Admiral had given him Rachael's real name, her official files in central records would be under that name. Harris started to access central records and the personal log files, Harris rank in archives allowed him access personnel files. Harris cleared his computer and logged onto central records via the communication satellite chain.

As Harris typed in his security code he was somewhat surprised to find his access had been upgraded to top grade alpha, there was nothing at central he could not access. This information about his security upgrade Harris decided to keep to himself for the moment, the numbers on the screen would have meant nothing to those watching.

Harris quickly found Rachael's file and read something of her background, the most interesting thing he found was that she had studied Ancient history at the Terrizon Academy and her final theses paper was on the myths of ancient civilisation's in particular Aganoon. Harris moved on to access the files at the Terrizon University, he wanted to see a copy of her thesis on the subject of the ancient Aganoon.

When Harris found Rachael's file at the university, the one containing her thesis, Harris could not help but laugh out loud.

"What's so funny." ask Raftos.

It was a while before Harris could stop laughing enough to answer. It turned out to be one of those very strange coincidences, Rachael's thesis on myths of ancient civilisation's had been given a unique universal library file Number by the Terrizon Academy. That file number just happened to be JHPDF888. The same number Harris's had chosen by chance as the number for his personal file. The Admiral never did know about Harris's personal file on sector five. The Admiral must have meant that Harris was to bring his daughters file about Aganoon, he would know its number and also known that Harris had high enough clearance to simply retrieve the file without having to go through the usual channels and arouse suspicions about it. The Admiral it would seem did not know who to trust, he must be suspicious of someone in Central, the file number by itself would not mean anything to anyone except an archivist or librarian. It was just pure chance that Harris had selected the same number for his personal file on sector five.

" So the key to finding Aganoon is in the file." said Mick.

" It looks like there must be something in there ." said Harris.

Harris download the file and started to read it. He warned everyone that it would take quite a time to read the file, so most wondered off. Only Packet stayed suggesting they each take part of the file to look at. This they did.

Harris started reading the document, it was a general description about the early periods of the four oldest civilisation's in the known galaxy. The four were all well known, the Kerzons, Planights, Alphans and the Aganoons. Harris went to the section on the Aganoons. Apparently Rachael had actually been on an archaeological expedition to an old abandoned Aganon Star colony out in the fifth sector. This was unusual as the Star Academy, keepers of the Histories of Aganoon, were very reluctant to share their knowledge with outsiders. Even Harris had never had much luck getting information out of the Star Academy before they were destroyed. So how had Rachael managed it. Harris had a sudden hunch and logged his computer back into to Central Commands main frame personnel files. With his new alpha code ranking Harris had no difficulty finding out what he had wanted to know. The Admiral had been married to an Aganoon, a woman named Aserring Meaaio, presumed dead, she was on Aganoon when the planet was destroyed, the Admiral had probably heard the rumours about an evacuation and was still holding a small hope his wife was still alive. That was why the Admiral was doing everything he could for Raftos. This was personal and close.

Harris went back with new interest to Rachael's archaeology report on Aganoon. The main part of the paper was based around an old document Rachael had found, she had identified this very old hand written document as one of the most ancient documents the Aganoons had. It seems she had come across the document by chance in a sale of ancient artefact's in Vleedon a trading market where goods both legal and illegal are traded. She had obtained this ancient document for quite a small price because it was written in the old Aganon which few people could read. Rachael however did know someone who could read it, her mother. At the end of her graduate theses Rachael had put a scanned image of the original document along with a translation of the text. Harris read the translation, it was good but not perfect. The document was called Terra Sent Tare, meaning map of the star. This is where the thesis ended. There was no mention in it of what Rachael had thought the document was about or why she had talked about a key with the old Aganoon spelling. Harris needed more information.

Harris went back to Central Control and their main data banks. Now he wanted the personal diary of the Admirals daughter. The Admiral must have known he might need this kind of information as only his hew alpha security would allow him access to personal diaries.

The diary was easy to find but much harder to read. Rachael spilled out heart to this diary, there were reams and reams of data, some quite personal. Harris skipped to the time when the LightStar project was started and did a search for Terra Sent Tare. Luck was with Harris, it was there. Rachael had done her research and well and found that ancient Aganon form of writing was written in interlaced numeric, which meant consecutive lines do not follow each other. She also realised that there were secondary meanings to groups of words. The ancient Aganons would have known this well but it was far from common knowledge now. Rachael had extracted from the ancient document the secondary meaning which indicated groups of star codes, these she had interpreted as a position somewhere in sector five.

Unfortunately Rachael had not put this position in her diary. Harris printed the star codes and gave them to Packet asking if he could translate them into a position. Packet looked at them and thought he might just be able to although there was only the bare bones of a location in the codes, it would take time.

As Packet Started playing with the numbers Harris went back to the old document Rachael had gleaned the numbers from. Harris was sure that if Rachael had taken LightStar Two anywhere it would be to the place she had worked out from this old document.

Harris had come across scans of this document before but had always questioned its authenticity, he had never been able to get its origins further back than a Star Knight called Kin Ho No, from whom many faked documents seemed to appear. Rachael had however pushed the date back some time before Kin Ho No, this put the document in a new light. What Rachael had not realised however was that the document she had found was not an original but a copy of an old copy found on Petra Nine. The copy Rachael had worked from was not complete, it had the last verse missing. The original document was of a type Harris knew from his own research into Aganon culture, a Stankz, one of the earliest form of prayer used by the Star Knights. It was written in a very particular form. Although the document was written in one long paragraph it was read as five verses and each verse had five lines with five words in each line. Rachael's copy only had twenty lines therefore any hidden information she had found would not be complete.

Harris knew he had a copy of the original full prayer in his own personal file, the one he had brought with him, the prayer was still in the original Aganon which he could translate for himself. That however would have to wait, Packet had come up with a co-ordinate in sector five from the numbers Harris had given him from Rachael's diary.

Raftos again assembled the crew around the wooden table and Harris explained what he had found in Rachael's diaries. When Harris had finished here was a long silence.

" I don't see we have any choice but to go and find out if LightStar Two is there." said Raftos.

" It seems as if that is an unwritten part of our mission." said Mick. " And I don't know about any one else but I'm bloody curious about those first ships."

" We must realise there won't be any one alive if we do find it." said Raftos. " If something disastrous had not happened they would have jumped back to base. It has also been too long. They did not have air or food supplies for any where near this length of time."

" If the ship is where you think it is." said Kimlon.

" That is why we must go." said Harris." If it is there, then the full poem does hold the key. It may lead us to the Old Aganoon."

Everyone agreed they make the jump. They would jump just close enough to scan the area where they thought the LightStar was, after that they would jump into the exact position. Harris and Packet went to the communications room, Raftos and Mick went to the switch room and Kimlon went to supervise the rest of the crew.

Just as they were about to make the first of the jumps Harris received another signal in Aganon script. Harris and Packet decided this time to reply, only this time also in Aganon script to try to find out who was sending the messages. Harris would tell the Admiral that they were about to start the search for LightStar Two. This would be the last signal they would be able to send for they were now heading deep into sector five, beyond the reach of the communication satellites.

Raftos joined Harris and Packet in the communications room as they were scanning the area where they were going to jump next. The signs were not good. The area was filled with debris, small moons, asteroids, stellar rubbish of all kinds. If LightStar Two had jumped into the middle of all that debris without scanning the area first it was no wonder they did not come back. Trying to set their own ship inside there without hitting anything was going to be a very delicate task. The scanners were showing no sign of any other ship but that was not surprising, you could hide a battle fleet in such a debris field without seeing it. They decided to make two jumps rather than one, their first move would be just inside the edge of the debris field, then one to the place then near to where they thought the other ship could be. They made the next jump.

They were now effectively hidden in the debris field. It would be almost impossible for anyone to find them. Their ship left no vapor trail to follow, no iron track and the identification transponder all ships have to carry had been turned off even before they had set out. They were well and truly alone. Raftos decided another sex hour rest period would do everybody good, so everyone went to night shift mode. Harris went back to his bunk and got onto it with some relief.

Suddenly a hand appeared at the side of Harries bunk. Harris looked at it, it was holding two bars of Hershey. Harris looked over the side of his bunk. It was Mick, Mick just winked as Harris took the bars, Mick then disappeared. I had been a long day.

Harris lay on his bunk looking up at the bulkhead overhead, ideally he pressed the Vidiocom button and watched he screen flicker on. As expected there was nothing except static, there were no signals this deep into sector five, he lazily twiddled the switch up to maximum. Suddenly there was a dot in the middle of the screen. Harris blinked his eyes, now there was nothing. Harris put it down to gamma rays passing through his eyeball. Curiosity however made him continue looking at the screen. A few moments later there was another dot and he did not imagine that. Harris waited for what seemed a long time. It happened again. Harris rolled over on his bunk and pressed the intercom button.

"Packet meet me in communications now." said Harris. " We're being scanned."

Harris and Packet sat in the dimly lit communications module watching the screens. There was a pulse on one of the screens.

"That's it." said Harris." Did you lock its location."

" Yes." replayed Packet. " Looks like a remote satellite. Lock this location and ask for its ID on the next ping."

Harris took the co-ordinates and put a narrow beam transmit on the target. Then sent the standard identity request signal. If it was friendly it would say who it was. If it wasn't it would lie or not reply. A data stream came back and flashed up on the small screen Harris read out the information.

" Its a class Centaur Drone, Code ID TEV1564 HLO759, using type 11CD scanning. Well that's straight forward and lets ask for its under code to see if its lying."

The signal Harris was getting from the satellite came from a transponder that all craft had to carry. If you were detected and did not have a transponder signal you were automatically considered hostile and destroyed. The under code is part of that signal only the military have access to and it is a built in code that identifies any registered craft satellite or ground station. This under code cannot be altered. If the under code and the transmitted ID do not match the object is automatically considered hostile and destroyed. This is a great incentive to register and not mess with the codes.

The signal came back and matched. Harris looked up the ID number with the register of satellites they had in their database.

"It appears." said Harris. " It is an old mining remote sent out to the Segma system, launched it says, over two hundred fifty years ago from Trillion to scan in the asteroids of Segma three. It was reported lost, which is hardly surprising it's a long way from home, mind you two hundred and fifty years is a long time, its a wonder its still working."

"They don't build satellites like they used to." said Packet. "At least its harmless."

"I'd sleep better if it was turned off." said Harris.

"You cant do that unless you know the codes." said Packet.

"You forget." said Harris. "I know rather allot of codes."

Harris fed a stream of numbers into the terminal in front of him and transmitted to the satellite. The scanning stopped.

"You're a useful guy to have a round." said Packet." If it was hostile could it be started again."

"You have to know my code to activate it again, but round here nobody would be surprised if a satellite stopped working." said Harris. "Now lets get some of that rest period."

When he got back to his bunk Harris switched the now silent Vidiocom off and went to sleep,