In our last installment...

Kyte nodded. 'You ready to receive?'

'Yep. Just need your decoding sequence.'

Kyte quoted his half of the password - a complex combination of letters and numbers. The other half was stored in the technician's computer, which was set to receive the data as Kyte's neural implant transmitted it.

'OK, go.'

Kyte sent the mental signal, and swallowed his tea uneasily as the nauseating sensation began. Edmonds watched the screen avidly, his face given an eerie cast by the flickering blue glow. There was an almost inaudible beep from the computer as the transmission terminated. The computer began unscrambling.

'Right, let's see what we have here.' He punched some keys.

'What is it?'

'Give me a second.' He tapped on his keyboard. Suddenly, Kyte heard the breath catch in his throat. He stared at the screen.

'What is it?' Kyte tried to crane his neck, but couldn't reach.

'Oh shit.' The other breathed. He seemed to be having trouble believing what he was seeing. He blinked twice, very deliberately. 'Oh hell.' He met the other's eyes. 'Alan, we are in big trouble.'

The tech put down his cup on the car's dashboard, and killed the ignition as he handed the computer to Kyte, sitting in the rear seat. The datathief took the computer and, for the first time in his career, it suddenly occurred to him, took a look at what he had stolen.

It was a memo. A government memo. Kyte read it to himself, his disbelief mounting at every word.

Hawking's Dawn

by Ben Stevenson

Part Two of Three

CLASSIFIED COMMUNICATION

From: Unit Leader Daniel Sutherland, Special Artillery Unit, UFH

To: Senator Boris Williamson, Elestra Senate House, Borolis, Elestra.

Subj: Confirmation, Stage Eighteen.

Advise that Operation Purgatory, stage eighteen (18) commenced at 13:04 GST, Greenswood Mine, Kaynar System. Standard thermonuclear ordinance employed as ordered. Dissident uprising is no longer functional. Planetoid rendered unsuitable for habitation. Message Ends.'

Kyte gaped. There was more. Much more. As he scrolled through the data, he counted at least sixteen different reports on nuclear strikes at various rebel colonies around the fringes of UFH control. Included with each report was a forty-five minute, high-resolution video of the strike, from cameras mounted on the nose tips of the missiles themselves, as well as views from the orbiting destroyers that launched the salvos. These last were the worst. The two men watched the last few minutes of the Greenswood Mine strike with something approaching physical disgust. As the green ETA counter in the upper-left corner of the screen approached 00:00, the entire tiny planet seemed so shimmer in a vivid yellow fire. So many in number were the missiles launched that not one part of the tiny, unsuspecting world was spared as the terrible weapons blazed their atomic farewell across the terraformed landscape. It was butchery, plain and simple. And butchery employing the most vile and abhorrent technologies man had ever conceived. Technologies so damning they had been illegal in civilised society for time immemorial. And now, it seemed, the UFH were using them again.

And Alan Kyte, however unwillingly, held court submissable data evidence of the government's terrible crimes, in a tiny metal slug no bigger than an aspirin, lodged in the inner regions of his skull.

After watching the video, Edmonds and Kyte abandoned their tea and went straight back into the factory. After a few minutes searching the kitchen, they found a full bottle of Elestran Gin, and both gulped a generous measure, before getting down to business.

'This changes things.' It was an unnecessary statement. The gravity of the situation was obvious.

Kyte nodded his agreement. 'We need to get out of here. Fast.'

Edmonds grunted. 'They'll have every airport, starport and busport watched. Getting away from here is going to be impossible.'

'We can't just sit and wait for them to find us! We've got to get this evidence to Earth! We have to stop them nuking these planets.'

The technician looked at him. So that was how it was going to be. He had wondered which way his older partner would go. Self preservation only or justice for all? Well, now it seemed he had made up his mind. Edmonds wasn't so sure.

'What makes you think Earth isn't in on it?'

'A humanity-wide conspiracy? Never! The high court in Sol isn't that concerned about rebel factions - it's the problem of the outlying systems to deal with in their own way. That is, their own legal way.' His minds eye pictured the terrible planetary fire of Greenswood Mine once more and he shuddered. 'All those memos were addressed to Senators here on Elestra. This is being run by the Canayze Major senate, not the High Court.'

The other nodded. 'OK, so assuming you're right… how are we going to get to Earth? We can't get off Elestra. Hell! By now we probably can't even leave the test site!'

They were sat in almost complete darkness in the kitchen area of the factory. Edmonds' computer sat on the table beside them, running from its battery power. It cast its familiar eerie glow across the ranks of metal cooking implements hanging on racks around them. Other than that, the room was just shadow. Studying Kyte's face in the soft light, Edmonds saw a spark of hope flicker.

'Lutherites!' He snapped his fingers. 'They could help us!'

Edmonds scowled. 'The terrorists?'

'Terrorists? Hah! And what are they credited for? Blowing up a few weapons factories here and on Tennison? Government weapons factories? Why, for all we know, they might know as much as us! With solid evidence like this,' he tapped his head with a thin finger, 'we could offer them a very real reward for saving us!'

Edmonds nodded his agreement, though not as enthusiastically. 'I suppose that's our best chance. But…' he frowned, glanced at the computer, where a coloured ball screen saver danced and snaked around the screen, 'how do we know they haven't come to the same fate as all those poor bastards?'

'We can't be sure.' The datathief shrugged. 'But of all the factions, they're the ones the UFH are always begging for information about, putting up rewards and suchlike. It's my guess they're the only ones the UFH haven't got to. Surely you can contact them?'

The tech looked at his computer once more. His eyes glazed a little from the alcohol as he watched the dancing patterns. 'I could.' He answered eventually. 'They've been know to harbour criminals before. We still have your phone scrambler so I could access the GlobeNet without being traced.' He met Alan's eyes. 'I don't know how long it would take though.'

'Let's get at it then.' Kyte was unswayed. 'The longer we stay in one place, the more dangerous the whole situation gets.' He reached into his pocket and withdrew the flat metal shape. He placed it gently on the worksurface and slid it across to the scientist. Edmonds slipped the device into the side of the machine and fiddled about for a second, before placing the computer flat on the table again, and booting it up.

As Edmonds began to type in disjointed flurries of activity, Kyte's eyes slid back to the Gin bottle. Thermonukes… rebel factions… six hours ago he'd just been a datathief. Now? He pressed his mouth into a thin line. Now he was a fugitive, and better to stay a sober one.

He picked up the bottle and replaced it in his cabinet, before drawing up a small, comfy-looking wicker chair behind Edmonds to watch his progress and offer his advice. It was going to be one hell of a long night.

Edmonds shook him awake and he opened his eyes with a start.

'What?'

The tall scientist just pointed at his laptop. Kyte sat up in the chair and gazed at the screen.

A communications channel had been opened and Edmonds (under the guise of 'Anon') had been conversing with someone who called themselves 'Taurian'. The last line of the message was a request: Taurian: Send me a clip of this footage as proof and you have a deal.

Kyte's eyebrows went up. 'You found them?'

Edmonds nodded. 'Yeah, their Elestra liaison, anyway. The thing is we need to prove that we're genuine by sending part of your download.'

'Is that a problem?'

'It is if the UFH have a watcher on the GlobeNet. It would be extremely hard to track us individually with the phone scrambler in place, but as soon as we start uploading large chunks of recognisable data, they can have a fix on us in anywhere from a hour to ten seconds.'

'Shit.' Alan looked at the screen. The cursor blinked questioningly. 'Do we have any choice?'

'Sure we do. But this is far and away our best chance.'

'So send it.'

Mark clacked on the keyboard briefly, telling Taurian to stand by, then made the necessary preparations. 'I'll send the bit we saw of Greenswood Mine.' His voice had acquired a sombre tone. He pressed a few keys and a progress bar began to work its way across the screen. When it was done there was a pause as the other viewed the data. The response was short and to the point: Taurian: Meet me at Angels Bar in Central Dempa, ASAP.

The connection closed. Kyte looked at his wristwatch. It was three in the morning, local time. 'Are bars in Dempa open at this time in the morning?'

Edmonds snorted. 'Are you kidding? Three a.m. local time is about midday in Galactic Standard Time. All the morning shipments are arriving and the pilots need somewhere to unwind. We'd better head off right now. Chances are they're on to us.'

That got Kyte moving. 'I'll drive - you've been working all night.'

They left the factory at speed and almost leapt into the silent, cold Dariessa. Above, it was a cloudless sky and starlight was the only illumination - Elestra had no moon. Kyte pressed his thumb key to the ignition pad.

'Shit!'

'What?'

'It's cutting out again.' Swearing his tried again. The engine whined faintly, but otherwise remained still. He went to try again.

'Wait!' Edmonds cautioned him with a hand on his arm. 'Shh!'

They sat in silence for a second, and both men heard it. 'Sirens!' Kyte surprised himself with the fear evident in his voice. He slammed his key down on the ignition with that much more force, but again to no avail. 'Dammit!'

'Put it in gear.' The steely edges of panic were beginning to creep into Edmonds' voice, too, and Kyte did as he asked before trying again. This time the car jolted forwards as he tried the ignition, but stalled again. Kyte paused, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He pumped the accelerator a few times, then shifted back down to neutral. He pressed the ignition again, and this time it fired. With an angry snarl, the hydrogen-powered machine roared into life, and in the next moment Kyte had shoved it in gear and ploughed through the back wall of the carport onto the weapons testing plain behind.

'Go straight across!' Edmonds instructed him. 'There's a motorway the other side which leads to the city tunnel.'

Kyte kept a quick pace as he arrowed out into the blackness. He squinted into the distance, looking for obstacles. Edmonds noticed and shook his head.

'Alan, I've seen this place in daylight. It's as flat as a calm sea. Punch it!'

Obligingly, Kyte floored the accelerator and the throbbing motor propelled them forwards faster yet. Behind them, the flashing lights of the Dempa PD could be seen converging on the factory. As yet, it was evident, they had no idea of the fugitives escape.

'At least they're only local law enforcement.' Kyte muttered, watching the lights recede in the distance.

'What's the difference?'

He shrugged. 'Police can't just blow you to hell on orders. You have to give them a reason.'

Edmonds shivered. 'Then lets not give them a reason.'

'We may have to. If they catch us, they'll detain us until the UFH take us away, if we try and out run them and exceed 150 kilometres an hour in an urban zone…' he glanced over. 'You know the law as well as me. They'll be allowed to disintegrate us, no questions asked.'

'That won't happen.' The gangly tech sounded more confident. 'Look, I can see the motorway. Once we're in the tunnel, we can drive straight to the centre of the city, underneath the suburbs. We'll be at the Angel Bar in under ten minutes!'

Kyte wasn't so sure. He drove his car through a wire fence and skidded onto the near-deserted motorway, and began to drive North. The tunnel was two kilometres away. Behind them, the lights were no longer visible. Was it really going to be this easy?

In the Angels Bar in the centre of the trade city Dempa, Jack Hunter, a.k.a. 'Taurian' sipped his alcohol free vodka and tonic and scanned the bar. He was dying for a cigarette, but for all his stubbornness, was not prepared to go to jail for the sake of one lousy drag in a public place.

Through the plate windows opposite, his ship, a slightly rusted, orange painted trader class called the Taurian Tiger could be seen in the greyish pre-dawn light, sat perched on a private landing pad. The Tiger had a habit of looking extremely unstable when it stood on its supports like this, but Hunter knew from experience that it would take something more than a strong gale to so much as move the craft's huge bulk any significant amount. He glanced at his watch and sighed, trying not to display his edginess to the other occupants of the bar. The two fugitives he waited for could at last be exactly what the Lutherites were after - some rock-hard evidence of what Thomas Luther had spent most of his lifetime trying to uncover. Hunter hoped they would make it. And that they wouldn't be long.

He eyed the last sour-tasting droplets in his glass, before knocking them back and turning to the barman. Obligingly, the droid refilled his glass and charged him the requisite amount. Hunter wished he could allow himself the real thing, for once, no more alcohol-free shit. Morosely, he went back to scanning the bar, and his eyes were drawn once more back to the windows. Only this time his view was blocked by a large articulated truck. SCANLON REFRIGERATE ENTERPRISES, the legend along the side proclaimed. The old trader eyed the machine and idly wondered what 'refrigerate enterprises' meant. Why did no-one speak goddamn English anymore? It was all tech and corporate speak. He scowled at nothing in particular and took a gulp of his drink. The truck pulled off, leaving Hunter with a clear view of the airfield once more. The floodlit tarmac glowed an eerie dull grey across its expanse. Perfectly flat and manufactured softer and more malleable than road tarmac, but also more springy, so that the dents and impressions left by the considerable weight of taxiing ships gradually smoothed themselves out with time. He couldn't see the runway from here, which most of the craft - including the Tiger - used for takeoff and landings, but knew it was probably as busy as ever. He hoped his two passengers wouldn't have company when they arrived - force takeoffs from places like this were inevitably risky. He shrugged to himself. He would see. Jack Hunter was not unaccustomed to risk, and he'd lived this long hadn't he?

He finished his new drink in three swallows and turned back to the barman. 'Another.' He grated through yellowed teeth. 'And put the real stuff in this time.'

The metallic navy blue Dariessa rocketed out of the Dempa South Entry Tunnel like a shot from a gun. The rise out into the open caused the suspension to rear up almost fully on the car as Kyte applied the brakes to slow the vehicles hurtling journey. As they approached a bank of congested traffic, the pair looked around them nervously.

'Nothing unusual yet.' Kyte craned his neck to scan the road either side, and the junction ahead.

'That could be good, or very bad.' Edmonds mused. His mood had darkened considerably during the drive through the tunnel. Given the circumstances, Kyte reasoned, it was understandable. He knew what he meant, though. The absence of their former pursuers probably indicated that the local authorities had lost the trail. It might however, mean that they had transferred jurisdiction to someone else… someone who wasn't so open about apprehending them. Kyte agreed. That would be very bad.

Following the sluggish snake of cars, they began to turn at the junction to head towards the starport. That was when Edmonds spotted something amiss.

'Shit.' The word was spoken so quietly it was barely audible over the purr of the engine.

'What?'

'There's a guy in a phone booth on the corner.'

'I see him. So?'

'He's wearing sunglasses.'

Kyte frowned, risked a second darting glance out of the corner of his eyes. The tracksuited man in question was indeed wearing sunglasses as he stood on the glass-walled booth speaking on the telephone. Over his dark, loose tracksuit, the man had on a black denim jacket. He was facing vaguely in their direction but the datathief couldn't see his eyes, and so couldn't be sure whether he was looking at them or not.

'It's dark. Why is he wearing sunglasses?'

'Exactly.' Edmonds was grim-faced. 'Give me your flash grenade.'

The traffic ahead had slowed to a standstill and Kyte applied the handbrake. As he brought his arm up, he reached into his pocket and passed the tiny egg-shaped device to his partner.

'Don't go acting on anything until we're sure.' He warned from the corner of his mouth.

'Do you want to take the risk?' All too late Kyte realised the cause of the change in his friends demeanour. He was beginning to crack under the strain.

'Mark, just stay calm. We don't want to waste the grenade and we can't go around flash-stunning innocent people. At best it'll draw attention to ourselves.'

Edmonds looked at him. His face suddenly seemed shinier (sweat?) and his eyes bulged a little.

'So what do we do?' He almost demanded. 'Just sit here like a couple of practise targets?'

Kyte opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment, the man nodded briskly down the phone, and stepped out of the booth. He reached into his jacket and began walking across the road ahead.

'Shit, shit, shit!' The panic was coming through loud and clear in the technician's voice now, and Kyte saw the grenade being rolled around in agitation in Edmonds' huge hand.

'He's just crossing the road!' Fear, as Kyte was finding out, is contagious, and the statement was nearly shouted. The reply he received was little more than an angry hiss:

'Then why doesn't he use the crossing like the others?'

Kyte looked. It was true. Eight or so other pedestrians had avoided the lines of traffic by walking a little way up the road and passing through the so-called 'pelican field'. The man in the glasses, however, was walking much closer. And his hand was still in his jacket.

Suddenly he stopped and turned towards them. That was too much for Edmonds. Kyte heard the click as he primed the device, and threw his arm up to protect his eyes as the big scientist hurled the grenade out of the open window and onto the hard road surface. It detonated on impact with a blazing, searing flash designed to disable optic nerve cells, and there were immediate screams from nearby drivers and pedestrians as their world suddenly plunged into blindness. The tracksuited man was similarly affected - his cheap glasses offered no protection from the flash and he threw up his arm far too late. Edmonds dropped his hand away from his face and looked. The man staggered briefly, withdrawing his hand from his jacket… to reveal the glint of cold metal in the moonlight.

'Christ!' Edmonds turned and shoved Kyte as hard as he could. The datathief, who had opened his car door almost immediately after the flash, toppled out of the Dariessa and onto the concrete. He made to follow, preferring to jump left out of Kyte's door than get out on the same side as their would-be assassin. He glanced round once more in time to see the gun being pointed vaguely in their direction, its owner guessing the aim from the image burned into his vision-robbed mind. He screamed.

The gun was a gauss pistol. As the stunned assassin squeezed the trigger in what he hoped was the direction of the car, a small but highly explosive projectile streaked out at near-sonic speed, crossing the space between gunman and target in under a second. The slug connected devastatingly with the metal roof support of the Dariessa, blowing out the windows and jetting searing flame throughout the interior of the car. The steering column was ripped clear from its mounting, and flew, as a spinning hulk of jagged metal, out of the driver door where Kyte struggled to sit up on the tarmac.

The column whipped through the air, cutting a deep gash along his arm where, out of instinct, he raised it to defend his head from the explosion. The force of the impact slammed the datathief back down onto the kerb, cracking his head sharply on the concrete and causing flashing stars to swim briefly in his vision. He moaned in pain and looked up.

The car was gutted. The roof was no more than a twisted sheet of fibreglass, resting lightly on what remained of the fibreglass body. Within the wreckage, Edmonds' body burned.

Kyte squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Tears crept out from between his eyelids and, still groggy, he blinked them away. Now was not the time. He was still in danger. Shakily, he got to his knees. The assassin was backing away blindly, stepping up the kerb on the other side of the road and making his escape around the junction. Behind the gridlock of flash-stunned traffic, new vehicles had arrived at the scene and were honking their horns impatiently. It wouldn't be long before the situation began to attract real attention, and Kyte knew he had to get out of there fast. Also, he had no idea how long flash grenade effects lasted. He had some idea it was around ten minutes… but that wasn't very long, and sooner or later the dark-eyed assassin would want to verify his kill, which meant he'd be coming back.

Gasping his pain as he clutched his severed arm, Alan staggered to his feet. His vision swam, and his exhausted mind threatened to black out completely. But that would mean certain death, and both mind and body seemed to know it. Almost of their own volition, Kyte's legs stumbled into the darkened alleyway behind him, and he lurched uncertainly through onto a road running parallel. There were many concerned faces here, obviously having heard the commotion - and explosion - on the tunnel exit road, but his half-dead, bleeding appearance seemed to evoke no sympathy. His eyes scanned the road. A taxi rank stood a little way off, and he started off towards it.

He picked the first cab he reached and tumbled into the back seat. The driver looked at him through the protective glass shield. He glanced up and down, and then shook his head.

'Uh uh, good buddy. I don't need your kind of trouble.' He smiled apologetically and motioned towards the door.

'Angels Bar, at the starport.' Kyte grated from a dry throat, ignoring him. He could feel himself slowly beginning to slip out of consciousness, and it was becoming quite an effort to stay coherent.

'Hey, did you hear me pal? Out!'

Kyte released his grip on his arm for a second to reach into his - now tattered - jacket pocket, and retrieved his credcard. He pressed a series of digits with his thumbnail, and sliced the plastic strip through the taxi's pay slot. A very large sum flashed up on the credit register. The taxi driver gaped. Datathieves were very well paid for their time, and Kyte reasoned he wouldn't much need the money where he was going. All the transaction needed was Kyte's confirming thumbprint. He gripped his arm again, shot the cabbie a questioning look.

'Angels Bar?' He looked uncertain.

'Yeah. Quickly.'

The driver frowned briefly. This guy really did look like trouble. He glanced back at the payment readout, and licked his lips ever-so briefly.

'Gotcha.' He pulled out into the mostly unoccupied road, and sped off.

Sat in the back, the motions of the taxi were an unending agony for Kyte's wounded arm. He tore a strip from his shirt and began to wind it tightly around the flesh just below the shoulder.

The cabbie glanced back as he drove and tutted. 'You bleeding all over my back seat, man?'

'You can buy a new one.' The datathief growled in response. He shook his head groggily as he pulled the tourniquet tight, and his vision swam from the pain. He looked up ahead. They were coming towards the city centre proper. Dempa starport was visible as a turnoff a little way along the road they were on, and Kyte at last allowed himself to hope. If only Hunter was still there…

The old Trader had had enough of waiting. Somehow he had managed to get himself quite drunk, and had ordered a shot of detoxifier about ten minutes ago, which had left him with a nasty, niggling headache behind his temples. He was grumpy. He had got the supplies the Lutherites had ordered, and he should be well on his way by now. It was risky for someone like Hunter to stay in one place for a long time, and he had been hanging around this bar now for far too long. He stood up to leave, and settled the tab with the mechanoid bar steward. With a quick glance around the quiet bar, he strode for the glass doors and out into the cold morning air. It was the work of moments to cross the tarmac roadway to the Taurian Tiger, and very soon Hunter had climbed the embarkation ramp and was sitting at the pilots console.

He flipped open a comm channel.

'Dempa control this is the Taurian Tiger requesting unway slot for takeoff.'

There was a crackle of fuzz from the comm unit. Outside, a faint screech of tyres could be heard. Hunter tapped the comm irritably. Now this was on the blink.

'Copy that Taurian Tiger, you have a slot immediately. Proceed to runway.'

'Hah!' His luck was in after all. He began to close the embarkation ramp and spool up his engines. He glanced at the forward and side viewscreens to check his taxiing path was clear… and froze.

A cab was pulling away to his left with a squeal of hot rubber, and left standing outside the Angels Bar was the sorriest looking specimen Hunter had ever seen. Obviously wounded and close to oblivion, the ragged figure began to stumble towards the bar entrance. The old man's mind began to race. Obviously this one was no pilot… he glanced at the taxi path. He had maybe two minutes to spare? He thought of Thomas Luther. He thought of the brief video clip those fugitives had sent him.

'Shit!' he snarled ill-temperedly, and thumped his fist down on the ramp control. There was an ominous creak as the motors winding the ramp up suddenly reversed, and Hunter dashed as quickly as his old legs would allow out towards the bar.

Kyte couldn't see properly. He supposed it was loss of blood. His vision extended to the glass-walled front of the Angels Bar, which right now was the only thing that existed in Alan's mind. He couldn't really remember why he had to be there… only that it was very important.

What was that noise? Kyte stopped, swaying. It sounded like someone shouting, but it was out of focus, like vision could be out of focus, but with sound. He concentrated, not knowing why he did so.

'Kid! Hey kid!'

The voice came from behind him. He turned, and saw a misty, wavering silhouette. Behind, all was orange. Orange and rusted. The figure grew bigger, while behind the orange expanded out and out until he could see nothing else, just the dark figure approaching him like some yawning chasm in the endless wall of rust and decay…

'Taurian?' He mumbled.

Hunter heard that clear enough and knew he had his man - one of them at least. But no sooner had his recognition registered than the desperate fugitive toppled forwards, his legs buckling. Hunter jerked forwards and caught him. Cursing, he dragged the limp, unconscious form back to his ship. The ramp closed, and the Taurian Tiger's decaying bulk began to ease along the rampway towards the takeoff area.

Inside the Angels Bar, in a private function room at the back, a man watched the trader ship's progress as it seated itself at the end of the long runway. He watched as the airfoil wings extended, and the primary boosters fired. He watched as the heavy craft accelerated steadily along the strip of grey metal and, with a grace that defied its bulky apparel, lifted off into Elestra's cool morning atmosphere. The orange dot drifted upwards into the cloudless sky, and finally, when the flash of the secondary boosters reached the stranger's eyes and the faint dot that was Jack Hunter's ship disappeared into the outer atmosphere, he nodded grimly to himself, and picked up the telephone.

Three - Dark Haven

Floating on the edge of the Canayze Major system, slowly orbiting the yellow star like some odd-shaped asteroid, the Canayze-Altair jump gate lazily turned on its axis. It was a hexagonal ring, some kilometre and a half in diameter: an unmanned, computer controlled craft. At two of the opposing sides, the light-speckled hull of the ring widened out to almost three times the width of the rest of the construct, and the laser searchlamps attached to these primary sections picked out and centred upon the approaching Tiger at a range of more than two thousand kilometres.

Swivelling his chair to face the forwards viewscreen as the gate approached, Hunter asked:

'How much do you know about space travel, kid?'

The young man shrugged. 'I've travelled to Sol and a few nearby systems on passenger liners.'

'Ah! So you don't know how a jump gate works?'

Kyte, tending to his bandage, smiled slightly. 'I'm a datathief, not an astrophysicist.'

'Neither am I.' The old man replied a little testily. 'But I am a pilot. And when you get to Dark Haven chances are you'll be trained as one, too, so listen up.

'A jump gate connects two points in space using a tunnel through space-time, allowing whatever enters at one side to emerge at the other instantaneously, no matter the distance. That's all I know about the mechanics of the thing - like you said, we aren't astrophysicists - other than this: the tunnel is twisted.'

'Twisted?' Kyte was confused. 'How can it be twisted?'

'How the blazes do I know? Do want to hear this or don't you?'

Kyte rolled his eyes. 'I'm sorry, please go on.'

Hunter grunted, then settled down. 'Whether or not you believe it, sonny, the tunnel is twisted, and so we have to twist when we enter it. If we don't the craft will sustain massive amounts of damage, and most likely will exit the other side in pieces. That's why the jump-gate up there is slowly rotating, see? That means that if we enter the gate at as near to exactly five hundred kilometres an hour as possible, and match our roll with the gate construct itself, we stand the best chance of survival.'

'I see.' Kyte had leaned forwards in his seat to get a better view of the floating hole. 'Do they all turn at the same rate?'

The trader shook his head as he tapped away on his pilots controls, bringing the Tiger down in speed. 'No, they're all different from each other. In fact, even considering one individual gate, its rate of rotation - called its radsec - will change from time to time. This one is quite bad. They have to continually test the tunnel and adjust the radsec accordingly.'

As he spoke, the gate suddenly slowed and stopped rotating - or appeared to, for Kyte noticed that the stars behind had begun rotating, and deduced that the Tiger had matched the gate's radsec. Hunter confirmed this with a nod.

'The computer does it automatically as we approach. It's an old computer so its not as exact as some of the newer, expensive ships like the cruise liners you've been on. As a result, the journey might get a bit rough - as we exit the gate in Altair you'll probably feel nauseous.'

'Great, I've spent the last two days feeling nauseous already.'

At a velocity of five hundred kilometres an hour - probably the slowest any spacecraft gets in actual flight - the Taurian Tiger slipped through the jump gate and into nothingness.

For Kyte, the experience was far less spectacular than he had expected. It seemed as if they simply passed through the ring and nothing had happened… except the stars became fuzzy and, upon coming back into focus, they were in different positions and configurations altogether. And, of course, as promised, there was the nausea.

'Ugh.' Kyte held his stomach and swallowed the saliva his mouth had suddenly started producing by the bucketful. 'I see what you mean.'

Hunter grinned. 'You never get used to it, no matter how many times you go through.'

He spun the nose of the craft around and set another course. 'The next gate leads straight to the Hawking system itself. It's quite remote and no-one but us Lutherites use it anymore. It's also quite stable, and has a radsec of about one-point-one that stays pretty much the same. We'll be there in about twenty minutes.'

Kyte nodded. He was suddenly very tired, but… he felt like he knew nothing of what was to come.

'Will I meet… Mr. Luther himself?'

'Tom?' Hunter raised his eyebrows. 'Almost certainly. He makes an effort with any new arrivals, and once I tell him what you've got in that head of yours, you'll probably be a guest of honour.'

'What's he like?'

'He's… different. You look at him and you can almost feel the pain he's been through.'

'What pain?'

'His planet was the victim of a UFH nuclear strike about ten years ago. He managed to survive, but he's lost all his hair and his teeth in the fallout. He's only about thirty, but the years have been cruel. We harbour around eight thousand outcasts and fugitives on Dark Haven. Not criminals, you understand, more those we managed to rescue from planets suffering similar fates as Luther's. They all love him. He's wise beyond his years - hell, he's wise beyond mine!'

'Sounds like quite a saint.'

Hunter snorted. 'Pity I can't say the same about his sister.'

'Why?'

The old man just cast him a sidelong glance. 'You'll see.'

They passed through the Altair system without event, and very soon the geometric form of the next jump gate began to materialise on the ship's viewscreen. Kyte looked at it and remembered the nauseating sensation he had felt before. He pulled a face.

Hunter saw it and chuckled dryly. 'I shouldn't worry. This one isn't as bad. It's quite tolerant of inaccuracies.'

He was right. As the passed through the centre of the gunmetal grey mass, Kyte experienced nothing more than a mild queasiness that was no worse than the sensation of uploading his implant data. He sighed. 'So here we are?'

'Here we are.' The trader replied, adding: 'But I've got to validate our presence, otherwise Haven will start to get nervous.'

He tapped a few keys on his control board, and the ship slowly turned on its axis until it faced the gate they had just exited. A small crosshair superimposed itself on the viewscreen and Hunter tracked it to one of the large primary sections and punched a button. 'Tight beam comm-link.' He grated to his companion by way of explanation. 'The jump rings are normally unmanned, but we've hollowed a little of this one out and we now station sentries aboard to watch any activity in or out of the system.' He leaned over his console a little and clicked on a microphone.

'Sentry One this is Jack Hunter of the Taurian Tiger. Authorisation code is "foxfire", I repeat, "foxfire".'

There was the brief hiss of static, before: 'Copy that, Jack. You're cleared.'

'James!' Hunter laughed. 'They got you doing this again?'

'Yeah!' The other replied. 'Same old shitty job for me. Anything happening?'

'Well, I've got a passenger aboard who I think might be the answer to Tom Luther's prayers.'

'Yeah? You want me to send him a comm?'

The trader grinned a winked grin. 'Why not? Tantalise him a bit. Gotta go, Jim.'

'Sure thing. See you back at the Haven. Out.'

With a swift movement Hunter spun the craft back around and locked in a course. The rear thrusters fired explosively, and the battered old craft started the last leg of its journey.

Kyte yawned and raised a questioning eyebrow at his companion. What now? His expression queried.

'Time for sleep. It'll be a clear twelve hours before we reach orbit - the gate was built a long way from Hawking all that time ago.'

The datathief nodded and arranged himself more comfortably in his flight couch. He closed his eyes and, almost immediately, fell asleep.

Hunter smiled as he watched the young man drift away, his breathing becoming shallow and regular, and lit up a cigarette.

Son, he thought, dragging deeply, you have no idea how much you can do for us. He settled back in his couch with his roll-up and gazed at the stars. The Tiger sped on.

Kyte awoke what seemed like seconds later, with Hunter persistently shaking him. He sat up groggily and yawned.

'Christ, Alan, you sleep like the dead.' Kyte smiled a little. It was the first time the old trader had called him anything other than 'Kid', and he was glad. He hadn't much liked the idea of being treated like a junior around the old man. He looked out of the viewscreen, and saw nothing but empty space.

'Aren't we there yet?' He frowned at the display. There was something.. odd.

'Yeah!' Hunter chuckled. 'We're in orbit. Can't you see it?'

'No!' Kyte glanced at him, checking for sarcasm.

'Well then. I guess the name Dark Haven fits pretty well doesn't it? Look at the bottom of the screen.'

Kyte did so, and immediately gasped. A large portion of the bottom of the screen displayed nothing at all. Literally nothing. No stars, just blackness. That was what was odd.

'I see it!' He nodded. 'It's almost invisible!'

'Yes it is.' Hunter was stood up by his control console. 'And we're very close - almost ready for re-entry. We've just got to wait for Solus City to appear on the horizon.'

'Solus City?' Kyte felt strong enough to join the other where he stood gazing at the viewscreen.

'Our settlement. Not a very big one, but visible from space, for all that. It's the only feature of Dark Haven's surface, and certainly the only light in the entire system, other than the sparkle of Hawking itself, of course.'

Kyte nodded. He had learnt as early as twelve that black holes weren't truly lightless. Various atomic reactions at the event horizon caused the outer shell to shimmer with an aurora of light. He wondered if he could see Hawking itself from here, but right then Hunter stabbed a finger out to point at the viewscreen.

'There! Can you see it?'

Gradually appearing, a faint yellow glow was becoming apparent ahead. A tiny patch of luminescence on what must be a huge horizon from this close gradually took on form and definition as individual centres of light became apparent within the diffuse shimmer caused by Dark Haven's atmosphere.

'It's beautiful.' Kyte breathed, and sensed Hunter grin with pride beside him.

'It is that. It gets prettier the closer we go, too. And we're going all the way.'

He calmly reached down and held his finger to a clear panel on his control board. There was a faint beep, followed by the rumble of the Tiger's thrusters as the computer adjusted course for re-entry. The trader glanced over at his passenger.

'I know you've been in that couch practically since we took off, but you might consider getting back in my young friend. What atmosphere Dark Haven has is pretty thick and viscous thanks to the cold. I've never known such a bumpy ride in.'

The datathief nodded his assent and returned to his seat. The lights of Solus City were approaching slowly but steadily, leading Kyte to deduce that they were travelling at quite some speed. This was confirmed as soon as they hit the ionosphere.

The craft bucked wildly, seeming almost to skim off the atmosphere like a flat stone on water. A flash of orange fire blazed out from underneath the craft, where the heat-proof tiling came under superheated bombardment from the resisting air molecules. The thrusters compensated hard, and the old ship seemed to nose-dive towards the planet as the reference point of Solus's glow crept quickly up to the top of the screen. They levelled out, and the turbulence began. Hunter shouted something that sounded like 'Hold on!' over the noise, but it was lost amongst the roaring and screaming of tortured metal. Kyte didn't need to be told, anyhow. Firmly strapped in, he was clinging to the armrests of the seat for dear life as the ship plummeted towards the black, lifeless surface.

Below, on the surface itself, three miles out from the city, a lookout raised high-powered binoculars to her eyes as she zoomed in on the fiery streak above. Yes, this was a ship. No meteor made a wake like that. She leant over to her comms unit and pressed 'send'.

'This is Terri. Tell Tom that his guest is arriving, over.'

'Copy that, Terri. Is your replacement there yet?'

She glanced out of her heavily frosted window at the black terrain outside. A small vehicle, illuminated by its own headlamps, was making its way across the flat plains between the outpost and Solus.

'Indeed he is. Looks like I'll be there for the big reception after all.'

'OK, see you here. Out.'

The Taurian Tiger finally pulled out of its dive and into aerial flight under the lift of its newly extended wings as it neared the shining settlement. Under the guidance of air traffic control, Hunter expertly banked the ship around for a runway approach, and landed with a smoothness and grace that surprised Kyte after the buffeting he had just endured. As he unstrapped himself from his couch, Hunter disengaged the main engines and taxied to a nearby bay, before pulling the craft to a standstill as the floor below drew them down into the spaceport proper, and got up.

'Well,' he said, pressing his finger down on a button, 'here we are.'

There was a hiss from the rear of the ship as the embarkation ramp began its hydraulically controlled descent to the deck below, and Kyte stood up. He suddenly realised he was incredibly nervous. The experiences of the last day or so had taken their toll on his system and, despite his marathon twelve-hour sleep, he still felt somewhat strained. How would these rebels receive him? Would they believe his story? What if they couldn't decode the data in his implants?

Hunter had moved to the back of the ship, ready to disembark, and, seeing that Kyte hadn't followed, shot him an impatient look. He opened his mouth to speak, but then, seeing the other's stricken expression, his eyes softened.

'It will be okay. You're with me.'

The datathief nodded. He thought about his life back on Elestra, all that he had left behind. He thought about Tony 'Mack' McLeod, Nathan Alden, and especially Mark Edmonds. He though about his apartment on Winchester 8-11, about his blue Dariessa - now so much mangled metal and fibreglass. He sighed wistfully. It had all gone, and now seemed so far away. Physically, of course, it was, but that wasn't it.

He shook his head as if to cast of his malaise. Time for the here and now. He steeled himself, took a breath, and stepped down the ramp…

…and into a completely deserted shuttle bay. Hunter was right behind him and pointed over his shoulder to a nondescript door cut into the metal of the bulkhead.

'They're waiting for you through there.'

He nodded and went through. Beyond was a fairly small, sparsely cluttered room, populated with four or five people. Empty racks lined the walls, and a few metal trolleys were strewn along the sides of the chamber. He glanced at the faces before him, and immediately picked out a young woman his own age. She was blonde, slim, and attractive. She smiled under his brief scrutiny and he had to steel himself to prevent from blushing. He turned his attention to the tall, dark haired woman standing in front of the rest.

'Mr. Kyte?' She inquired with a smile, and offered her hand. They shook. 'I'm Katherine Luther. I'm Tom's sister. He's a little tied up at the moment and asked my to receive you. He sends his apologies.'

Kyte shook his head. 'Not at all. I didn't really expect a reception.'

'Really?' Her eyes glanced behind him at Hunter, accusingly? 'Jack here seems to think you'll be quite important to us.'

Alan shrugged. 'Even so…'

'Well,' she cut in, smiling with perfect teeth (too perfect, Kyte thought, fake like her brother?) 'I'd better introduce you to the team.'

She cast a slender arm out to the end of the line, where a small, mousey-haired young man nodded his greeting. 'This is Saul Humphrey. He's our top pilot. Next,' her finger moved to indicate the woman he had noticed before, 'this is Terri Herschel, the chief medic.' She smiled again, shifting her eyes from looking at his wounded arm. Katherine then indicated the man to her immediate left. He was older looking, about mid-forties. He was pale, drawn and his grey hair was patchy on his head. 'John Carver. Chief scientist and computer specialist, and finally, Jane Santiago, a psychiatrist.' The last was a short, dumpy woman with a shock of jet-black hair. She had the friendliest eyes Kyte had ever seen. But then, to be a shrink, she would probably have to.

Katherine shrugged apologetically. 'Of course there are many more top people in Solus whom you'll eventually get to meet, but we really didn't know what to expect, so these are our guess at the people you'll be interacting with most.'

Kyte smiled at each of them in turn, and noted their curious, even eager expressions. Hunter's cryptic message, sent via the gate sentry, had certainly acted as the tantaliser the old devil had intended. Obviously, though, they awaited the arrival of their mentor and chief.

And with that, he arrived. Behind his reception committee, a door slid noisily aside, and Thomas Luther himself, founder and leader of the Lutherites, came through.

Kyte's first sighting of the man had a profound effect on him.

Standing at around five and a half feet tall, he was small - even shrunken looking. As Hunter had described, he was completely bald, and his teeth when he smiled had the metallic blue sheen of the new super-strength polymers on the market. But there was so much Hunter hadn't mentioned - such as the sickly pallor of the man's skin, the pronounced limp as he approached, the painful rasp of each of his wheezed inhalations. All in all he looked… ravaged.

Kyte was caught off guard and his jaw almost dropped in shock. Recovering as quickly as he could, he attempted what he hoped was a friendly smile and proffered his hand.

Luther nodded, a knowing expression on his pale, sunken features, and shook.

'Don't worry, Mr. Kyte, I'm used to seeing horror in people's eyes.'

Kyte opened his mouth to protest, but the other held up a restraining hand.

'It's all right. I know how my appearance seems. Unlike my sister, here, I allow my pride sway over my vanity, and have refused cosmetic treatment in order that I might remember what the UFH did to me. If I ever begin to doubt my cause, or wonder if its all worthwhile, I need only look in the mirror and the fires of hatred are rekindled.' He smiled warmly. 'You showed distress, Mr. Kyte, but tried to hide it for the sake of my feelings. These two actions are the highest compliments you could have paid me, and I am grateful.' And now his expression was a wicked grin as he added: 'Plus I think it shows a certain strength of character that you've spent so much time in the company of our grumpy friend here,' he nodded at Hunter, standing at the rear, 'and can still manage a smile or two.'

There was a smattering of laughter from those assembled.

'Watch it, Tom.' Hunter growled, but good-naturedly for all that, 'You think you're in bad shape now? Wait 'til I get my hands on you.'

'What an old man like yourself?' Luther laughed, and his twinkling eyes moved to Kyte. 'Come, my outpost commander tells me you could solve a lot of problems around here. Won't you accompany me to the conference room?'

The group shuffled out of the tiny storeroom and along a maze of brightly lit, white-painted corridors, before finally arriving at an ornate double-door arrangement.

'Don't be put off by the size of the place, we usually use it to house most of the various committee members during planning talks. Since there's only a few of us we'll all sit around the centre table, yes?'

Luther glanced questioningly about, and the others nodded in agreement. The doors swung open at a palm-print command from the rebel leader, and they entered the room.

It was, indeed, huge. Rising up at least two hundred metres above the polished marble floor, the roof sloped inwards dramatically to a clear dome opening onto the dark, star-spotted sky above. Ahead and either side of the semicircular table in the centre of the room, tiered seating blocks ascended to each of the curved, silvery walls of the chamber. Their footsteps echoed as most of the eight made their way across to the table, and seated themselves.

Hunter, however, remained standing, and began fiddling with his laptop, which he had brought with him from the Tiger. As they sat facing the door they had entered by, a large screen slid slowly down from the ceiling, and flashed briefly as the trader connected his computer up.

'Well,' the old man grated. 'I'm sure you're all wondering exactly what the fuss is about, since I've deliberately kept you all in the dark.'

There were nods and murmurs. Stealing a glance at Katherine Luther, Kyte noticed she was stony-faced, clearly in disapproval.

'I'm sure you all remember the strike on Greenswood mine two months ago. Indeed, we were there to assist with the evacuation of what precious few survivors there were.'

The group indicated their agreement once more. There were more looks of puzzlement now. Kyte caught himself looking at Terri Herschel, the pretty young medic, and forced himself to concentrate.

Hunter stood in front of the gathering now, inside the curve of the table, his back to the screen. 'We saw Greenswood Mine after the strike.' He waved a remote controller in his hand as he met each of their eyes in turn. 'We know what Greenswood Mine looked like before the strike.' And now his face turned sad, doleful even. He's a showman and a half. Kyte thought wryly. 'Now,' Hunter intoned, 'see what it looked like during.'

He pressed down on his control and the giant screen behind blazed into life to show the video clip Edmonds had transmitted, of the last few seconds of life on the tiny outlying colony. The shimmering cloak of yellow fire which seemed to envelope the entire planet at a stroke. The burning, boiling clouds visible even this far up in orbit as the last flickers of life on the mainly innocent planetoid below were permanently extinguished.

There were gasps of horror, outrage, shock. Much the same emotions as Kyte had felt that first time he had watched the video. Strangely, though, now he only felt a sort of detached pity for the survivors. After all, living through a nuclear holocaust is arguably worse than dying in the strike proper.

Hunter was facing the assembled few, his back to the giant screen. 'And there's more. Much more. Inside this young man's head are copies of electronic memo's ordering and confirming similar strikes, plus, I am told, full video footage of all military action from numerous different viewpoints. In short, ladies and gentlemen, court-submissable evidence of what each of us here knows is going on behind the High Council's back.'

Following Hunter's introduction, the meeting went on for a further half-hour, with Kyte explaining as best he could how the data was stored in his implants, and outlining the problems of extracting it. Since they only had one half of the decryption code, and the other half had gone up in flames - along with a decoded copy of the data itself - in Edmonds' laptop, it was going to be no mean feat getting access to the information once more. At this John Carver spoke up. As a computer specialist in his own right, his knowledge of cryptography was vast. He explained that since they already had a piece of the unencrypted data, the remaining code could be guessed at using the short video clip as a 'template' for the decryption routines.

And so the meeting continued. All present were excited about the possibilities, and all mindful of the obstacles in their way. As time dragged on, though, it saw Kyte becoming less and less comfortable. Hunter had instructed his ship's medicomp to examine his arm, which it had done, but the Tiger's medical files were limited, and it was unable to completely repair the damage. Now, some thirteen hours after the painkiller was first administered, its effects were wearing off. He gritted his teeth, not wanting to disrupt the obviously important meeting, but the top of his arm where the tourniquet was now wrapped loosely was beginning to throb angrily, sending sharp lances of pain throughout his body, causing stars to burst across his vision. He blinked rapidly and was shocked to discover rivulets of sweat running into his eyes from his perspiring forehead. He grimaced in pain, and grunted, however quietly.

The others heard, though, and immediately turned their concerned attentions to him. Terri Herschel was the first up. 'Order me a stretcher quickly!'

She ran around the table, and Kyte felt her cool hands soothing on his brow as he reclined, eyes half-closed, on the chair. 'Hurts.' He managed with no small effort. He saw her nod and reach into her pocket. A second later there was the faint hiss of a microneedle, and a tiny pinprick of feeling on his neck. And that was the last he remembered…

…before awaking with a start! He sat bolt upright and panted uncontrollably, glancing around him in panic. He was surrounded by sterile white walls either side, and lay on a raised, soft couch in the centre of the oval room.

A door immediately hissed open and one end, and Herschel ran through.

'Okay! Calm down! It's all right!' She reached him and gently but insistently pushed him back down onto his back. He stared upwards, and looked at her face hovering over him. He had been nightmaring, for sure, and who could blame him. But now… he felt safe.

This was his first chance to study her properly, and he didn't pass it up. Her face was oval shaped, framed by her light blonde hair where it now dangled down a short way towards him by virtue of her position over him. Upright, he remembered, it was a little longer than shoulder length. She had startling green eyes, a small, pretty mouth and a small dimple in the centre of her chin. When she smiled, as she was doing now, her eyes seemed to sparkle with a life of her own. She was quite short compared to Kyte, slim, but sensual in her movements. All in all, Kyte reflected, after the two days he had just had, she was a hell of sight for sore eyes. Thinking about that, he smiled a little. Noticing the change in his expression she looked at him suspiciously, with the tiniest raising of her left eyebrow, but then her face cleared and she smiled back.

'Better?' He didn't know whether she was referring to his state of mind since she had entered the room, or his injury. Either way, his answer was truthful:

'Much, thank you.' He stared at her eyes. So green.

She returned his gaze, and again the look of wondering passed across her face, before she stood upright and turned away. 'We've got some quite good equipment, salvaged and stolen, and I've patched up your arm as best I can. I couldn't shift the scar, though, we don't have the facilities.'

She turned back to him as he sat up, examining his wound, or what used to be a wound. 'Besides, it's not so bad a scar. It's got character.' He looked at her questioningly. 'Makes you look rugged!' She wrinkled her nose and grinned mischievously, before turning away again.

'John will want to see you now you're up and about.' She told him, much more businesslike. 'He's going to start work on your implants with his team of cryptographers.'

'How long will that take?'

She turned to face him and leant on the console behind. 'Could be days. But don't worry, we're not going to work you to death. The evening will be your own, and you can relax all you want. I've seen the quarters they've given you - they're better than mine!'

Kyte smiled, and asked: 'What do you do here in the evenings?' There was more to the question than immediately obvious, and the expression on the medic's face indicated she suspected this was the case. She shrugged innocently.

'A few of the colonists run a 3V channel which is sometimes quite entertaining, they've got a massive collection of old films from somewhere which they play from time to time. There's a bar near the centre of the city.' She paused, appearing to consider something, and then continued: 'There is something you really ought to see while you're here, and it's happening this evening. If you come here after Carver's done with you, I'll take you to see it.' Her tone of voice was light, insignificant sounding, but Kyte hadn't missed the faint touch of colour that had come to her cheeks. His heart jumped a little and he was careful to answer in the same fashion.

'Well, if it's got to be seen, and I have no plans for tonight…' He couldn't help, however, the smile that came, unbidden, to his features.

Kyte's afternoon with Carver was nothing particularly new or suprising to the datathief, mainly because the wiry cryptographer was only asking him to do things he did practically every day as part of his job. The process of transmitting the data from his implant was, as always painless, if a little unsettling, and his half of the decryption code was as easily recalled as ever, leaving Kyte little else to do but watch the gaunt-looking man battle with the remaining encryption, and answer his occasional questions.

An hour or so before they were due to finish for the day, Kyte had a question of his own.

'Terri Herschel.' Kyte broached the subject in the only way he could thing of - blurting it out.

'Mmm?' Carver was staring at his readouts, only half-listening.

'Is she… taken?'

At last he had the little scientist's full attention. He grinned and glanced over. 'Oh? You've only been here five minutes and you're after our women!' He laughed, but grew serious almost immediately. 'She used to have… someone. Her husband. They were married for a year.'

'What happened?'

'He was captured sabotaging a nuclear arms factory on Denui. He bit down on his cyanide capsule straight away so they couldn't torture our location out of him.' He shook his patchy, grey-haired head. 'He was a good lad.' He brightened a little. 'Still, that was a while ago now, and, well, young Terri hasn't seemed to notice any of the polite attentions various other young men around here have paid her. But, if she's giving you signals?' he cocked his head enquiringly on one side.

'I don't know.' Kyte frowned shook his head. 'She's invited me out tonight to see something "I have to see while I'm here", apparently, but whether she's just being polite…'

Carver was smiling. He obviously knew what the "something" was. 'Maybe, maybe not. Myself, I say give it a shot. A man who makes no mistakes in life makes nothing else besides.'

Kyte nodded and smiled his gratitude.

'I will give you a word of warning though - young Terri married into the name Herschel. Before that… she was Terri Hunter!'

The datathief widened his eyes in alarm. 'She's Jack Hunter's daughter?'

'The very same.' Now the grin was joking. 'She hasn't quite inherited old Jack's grumpiness, but there's certainly a fiery side to her. Still, at least you've already won the father's approval eh?'

'I have?'

Carver whistled and rolled his eyes. 'Praise for anyone is scarce coming from Jack Hunter, but he seems to have taken a shine to you.'

Kyte wondered at that. Hunter had seemed constantly irritable and impatient throughout the journey here, and he had assumed the old man would be glad to get shot of him. But apparently not. Ah well, they would soon see. Maybe his opinion would change when he found out Kyte was making a play for his daughter.

Seeing that the datathief had become lost in his thoughts, Carver smirked good-naturedly and returned to his console. Oh, he'd seen how Terri Hershel had looked at this newcomer. Yes, he'd seen…

'Tom, about what the council discussed…'

Painfully, the shrunken form of Thomas Luther turned to face his sister. 'Katherine, I know what you're going to say, and the answer is no. I've told you before, the council is there to allow a varied base of opinion out of which only carefully considered action will come. I have never overridden the council and never will - even if it was my right to do so, which it is not.'

'Of course it is your right!' Katherine hissed in reply. They were stood in one of the many mazed corridors of Solus's upper levels, on their way down from the conference room. 'If it weren't for you, everyone here would be dead, or eking out some miserable existence living on contaminated food grown from radioactive soil!'

'Nevertheless,' he cut her short angrily, 'that does not make them my slaves. I fight for their freedom as well as my own, and I'm not about to sacrifice my ideals to please you and your scheming lover, sister.'

Katherine was furious. She puffed herself up, her eyes glaring their fury at the tiny man before her. 'Karl is NOT scheming! He wants what is best for us all!'

Luther wearied of the conversation, they had argued this point many times before. Wheezing, he turned away and continued his limping progress along the empty corridor. 'Karl Smith wants what's best for himself. He always has. Don't tell me he's a champion of the people. What? After him and his gang of... of... renegades torched the Wandering Star?'

'That was a mistake!' She yelled furiously, walking quickly to catch up, 'He didn't know there were people aboard!'

'Aye, and if he's that stupid I certainly shouldn't take his advice. What? A man who launches a deep space attack on a luxury passenger liner, never once thinking to consider there might be passengers aboard? Hardly the diplomatic intellect of Jon Dracus is he?'

Katherine was calmer now, at least. She could see her brother would not be swayed. 'And where is Jonathan Dracus now eh?' She asked coldly. 'For all his glorious ideals. For all his compassion and leadership. As soon as he was gone, what did we have left? The United Front of Humanity.' The last was a sneer. 'Or have you forgotten how you became the cripple you are now? At the hands of the UFH's post-Dracus political agendas, at that.'

Luther stopped again, and turned his moist, pale eyes upwards to meet his siblings. 'And would Karl be a better leader then? Once he has his way?'

'What do you mean?'

Luther snorted derisively. 'Well you can be sure that if we do what he wants, what he advises, and so use our new evidence to destroy the UFH and rise to power in its place, he will not stand back and let a doddering, weak-minded cripple like myself rule humanity. He'll want it all for himself! The man's ambitious, Katherine. And he's not to be trusted. I pity you that you can't see it for yourself. Alas, he's got you exactly where he wants you.' He shook his head sadly.

At this, Katherine had heard too much. With tears shimmering in her eyes, she turned from him and stalked off.

He watched her go and sighed, his failing heart heavy. He loved his sister, as foolish as she was, and it pained him to see her hurt. He grimaced in something approaching anger. Maybe he should have overridden the council at least once. When they had made the decision to harbour Karl Smith and his criminals in the first place. Since that lot had arrived, something evil had manifested itself on Dark Haven. Something that, for all it was unseen, was gradually taking shape within the safety of Solus City. And the shape was that of mutiny.

When Kyte finally reached the medical bay, the lights were dimmed and the humming of the various machines muted. He spotted his 'date' locking up a lab over in the corner and announced his presence with a nervous clearing of the throat.

'Oh, hi!' She smiled, tapping a locking code into the door panel. 'You're just in time. Bear with me a second while I finish up here.' She deftly completed the codes and there was an answering whirr as the electronic systems slid into place.

'Don't people get ill at night then?' Kyte asked, glancing around at the dormant medical apparatus littering the room.

She came over. 'I'm not the only doctor, smart ass, and this isn't the only medical bay. This one's mostly for research anyway.'

'Really?' They left the bay together, and Hershel guided him left along a corridor. 'What do you research?'

'Radiation sickness, of course. Most of the people we rescue are heavy sufferers - the bombs the UFH have taken to using are by no means the cleanest nuclear devices ever built. Tom Luther himself is one of our worst-hit patients. It amazes me he's still alive.'

'Why isn't his sister as badly affected?' They had reached a lift, and Terri pressed the button to call it.

'Well, she was evacuated a lot earlier than Tom and so wasn't as exposed as him. Her teeth and hair are false though, in case you hadn't guessed.'

He nodded. He had suspected as much.

'So how come you're involved in all of this?' The lift arrived, and they got in. Herschel pressed the top button, marked 'Ob. Dome'. Slowly, the elevator began to move upwards.

'Mainly through my dad.' She shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye and grinned. 'Who I believe you've met.'

He grinned back. 'Yes. The mighty Jack Hunter. I found out this afternoon.'

She laughed, but then continued more seriously. 'Well, my mother was killed in a UFH strike not long after I was born. They didn't use nuclear ordinance that time - it was a while ago - but it broke my father's heart. He brought me up to see how cruel the UFH were,' she shrugged, 'and it went from there. I met my husband at a protest rally and then, when they began nuking rebel settlements all three of us fled here.' She paused. 'That was before, he died, of course. My husband, Connor.'

Kyte nodded his sympathy as an awkward silence descended. It was broken by the soft tone of the lift as it reached it's destination and the doors opened. They stepped out, into almost complete blackness. Tiny yellow lights studded along a supporting metal mesh illuminated what appeared to be a huge glass dome on the surface of the planet itself. Very little was visible outside the dome, and it was impossible to see where the ground ended and the sky began. Around the edge of the dome, which measured about twenty metres across, a perimeter fence guarded the glass walls, and a soft-looking plastic bench curved around.

'Wow.' Kyte shivered. Compared with the heated confines of Solus, the atmosphere here was approaching frigid.

'Sorry, it is a bit cold. You see the perimeter fence?'

He nodded.

'That's to stop you touching the glass. If you do, your hand will freeze straight onto the surface. It'll take hours to free you again, by which time you'll probably have lost most of your arm to frostbite.'

He raised his eyebrows. 'Nice. Homely.'

She laughed and took his arm. 'Come on, I've brought you up here to see the sunrise.'

'Sunrise?' He allowed himself to be guided to the bench. He was alarmed to note that he could see his breath pluming in front of his face as he exhaled.

'Well, sort of. The nearest we have to a sun. 'Black-hole-rise sounds stupid.'

They sat on the bench and Herschel pressed something on the side on the plastic seat. The lights above and around dimmed to nothingness, leaving the pair in almost utter darkness. Only the faint stars remained to afford them any semblance of vision

'Should be any second now.' She whispered. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek and suddenly felt dizzy. What am I doing here? He thought crazily. He glanced over to find her staring at him by the starlight. 'How did you find out about my dad anyway? I hope you weren't checking up on me!' Her voice was low, but she was smiling.

'Of course not. I just asked John Carver what he thought you had in store for me tonight.' He replied in the same hushed tones. The dark seemed to demand a reverent quiet.

'And…?'

'And he seemed to know, but wouldn't tell me. Then he told me you were fiery one, and that you took after your dad.'

'Oh really?' She had raised her eyebrows. 'Well I'll have to have a word with Mr. Carver!'

'Don't you dare! You'll get me in trouble.'

She smiled. 'Well, you've no need to worry. I'm as nice as pie with people I like.'

He had been looking out on the half-seen terrain ahead, but now he glanced back. 'Oh? And I fit in that category do I?'

She nodded almost imperceptibly and smiled thoughtfully. 'Yes. Yes you do.'

Kyte felt his heart pound for the second time in twenty-four hours. It seemed so loud that Terri must surely hear it, but apparently not, she had turned her gaze back out of the dome. He stole another glance and studied her profile in the faint shine. How could it be that two short days ago he was a happy, well-paid, law-abiding citizen, and now he was here, on this strangest of strange worlds, hunted by the all-seeing United Front of Humanity, sitting watching a black hole rise with this amazing woman? And, more to the point, how could it be that despite his supposed 'happiness' as an ordinary man, right now he wouldn't swap it all back for anything?

His thoughts were interrupted, then, as Terri suddenly squeezed harder on his arm. And in an awed gasp: 'There!' He saw her point, and squinted into the distance. A tiny speck of light had appeared, twinkling faintly. It's light was unlike that of the stars. It was more diffuse, for one, but also, it had an eerie alien quality. As he watched, unaware that he was holding his breath, the light grew into a tiny sliver of a crescent. Along its length the colours changed rapidly across the entire spectrum as it continued to rise, revealing more and more of what was evidently going to become a small but brilliantly shimmering disc. And Kyte noticed something else: the light being thrown from Hawking's event horizon was actually sufficient to light some of Dark Haven's surface. In the distance he spied glaciers, valleys, huge, craggy spires of dark ice rising into the air. Coils of heavy, liquid nitrogen mist seethed around the lower grounds, leaving wispy tendrils as it flowed through fields of spiked, frozen stalagmites and down sharply cut-off cliffs. To his right he saw a huge towering mound of rock and ice, leaning dangerously as it rose, giving it the aspect of some giant, frozen hunchback out there in the icy wastes. To his left, a ravine, gobsmacking in its magnitude, slashed into the terrain. The bottom was still shrouded in shadow, but Kyte could see a very faint red glow emanating from the bottom of the gorge, reminding him of what Hunter had said about the geothermal activity of the planet. And even as he took all of this in, Hawking had risen to its full glory. Extremely faint compared to even the dimmest of local 'suns', yet brighter than the combined light of the stars themselves, the phenomenon was a constantly changing, swirling, psychedelia of colour. Tiny bomb-bursts of reds, yellows, blues and whites shimmered across the surface, interacting, repelling, mixing and dispersing in a dizzy multichromic dance.

'You were right.' He whispered quietly. 'I really did have to see this.' His breath rose in a misty cloud in front of him and he shivered again, but continued to watch. Hypnotised, he almost didn't notice Terri Hershel curling up against him until her head rested lightly on his shoulder. Not taking his eyes from the spectacle in the heavens above, he raised his arm and allowed it to drop gently over her shoulders.

She nestled more surely up to him, and he felt the warmth of her body, the reassuring pressure on his newly-healed arm. He sighed.

Together, they watched Hawking's dawn.

And together, though each was unaware of the other doing it, they secretly smiled to themselves.

To Be Continued...

My name is Ben Stevenson and I am a student of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. I have been writing science fiction stories for many years now, mainly short stories, but I occasionally embark on a longer project. I enjoy writing stories which make use of my understanding of cosmology and astrophysics, and explore unusual ideas andconcepts. My e-mail address is ben.d.stevenson@ukgateway.net