Taking SPACE

JAIL?

"Ah nothing." Steven flicked his hand at the screen, then his eyes grew even wider and he quickly put his hand over his face. "Close Tab."

"Steven?" Stephanie asked worriedly.

The one tab Steven had been working on had closed when he told it to, and he now quickly brought up a new one and began to click at it.

"What happened Steven?" Daniel insisted.

Steven had tracked the message to its receiving location and found out who the real owner of the mobile factory was and some stuff about that owner, but he dared not to tell the others about it, because messing with the target of that magnitude could really end up with them all dead. So he instead said, "It's nothing really. I just..." He took a deep breath. "I hacked a private camera and saw things I'd rather not have. Let's just leave it at that." Which was indeed true, just not the way he made it sound.

"Oh." Daniel said; his face turning a little red.

"On a better note the message receiver is indeed sending out a ship with two occupants in it to go check on the lab factory. I hacked it and I now have its planned flight path to send out Michael's drones to cut it off at a convenient ambush location."

"Wow good job Steven!" Stephanie exclaimed.

"I still can't figure how you're so awesome at this," Daniel told him. "I hack my games all the time but that's basically just using programs other people made. I can't imagine what it takes to do what you do."

Steven smiled. "Actually Daniel if I were to be completely honest that's about what I do too. Hackers make programs and I download them dissect them and recompile them with my own programs."

Daniel looked confused. "Wow really? Well how come I can't find these programs?"

"Well just think of it like this, there is an entire galaxy of bored thirteen-year-olds out there and they spend hours trying to hack random things. They post their findings online and eventually find their way into a giant group of underground hackers that share information. Once you're in your in. You just never got in."

"Oh, I see. I never liked posting online." Daniel crinkled his eyebrows. "I still don't see how these programs you are talking about can actually enable you to hack everything like you seem to be able to. How do a bunch of kids make programs that can get into impossibly secure places?"

"Well the cycle I was talking about doesn't stop there you see these thirteen-year-olds grow up to be security designers because everyone knows to stop a hacker you have to think like a hacker and to think like a hacker you need to really be a hacker. So if you're smart you hire a hacker. But these hackers in their off time out of boredom and out of habit write hacking programs. If you look closely you can see the vicious cycle."

"Sounds more like job security then a vicious cycle." Catherine commented.

"Yeah guess you're right. Anyway, the end result is really the only way to stop a hacker is to catch him or her in the act by tracing. However thanks to my Gravitaic fold frequency gateway and the placing of a few secret relay points by main star ways it is completely utterly impossible to track me. Which in turn makes me the best hacker in the entire galaxy."

"Ha, sounds like I'm not the only one with a big head." Daniel teased.

"No, mine is a proven fact yours is pompous windbag. Or rather wind head." Steven stated wryly as he flicked an image over to Michael.

Michael looked at the image, then put it up on the view screen for the others to see. "Looks like the drone will reach the ideal ambush location in ten minutes, and the ship will be there in another twenty."