"Well, I was planning to drive the mobile station to some random police precinct and hand the whole mess over to them like I did with the survivors of the battleship," Michael said.
Catherine began to pick at her fingers. "I guess that works, but it sounds...sloppy."
"I know," Michael answered. "But like you said, I don't want to kill them if I don't have to, and we have no other way to deal with them."
A beep drew Stevens's attention to one of the small hologram screens he had brought up; he looked it over and took a deep breath. "If possible we need to think of one."
"Why?" Daniel asked.
"How come it's always you that asks why?" Steven quarried, as he passed the image he was looking at over to Michael.
"Because I'm curious and I'd like to know!" Daniel said.
Michael sent the picture to one of the view screens. "What exactly are we looking at Steven?"
"One of the bots from the spear-like weapon you injected into the chemistry lab is currently mapping the station's layout, this is not just a chemistry lab." He zoomed in on part of the ship's layout to some type of small mechanical factory. "I wouldn't know what this is producing except for the fact that the pirate ship we had had one of its end products."
No one knew what he meant until he flicked a picture of a black case that the small bot had taken, up beside the factory image.
"Assassination drones." Michael breathed.
"Yes they are building the entire things there including the miniature Dynovamators. This is no small time drug lab this is a full-blown black-market piece of work. You can't just drop something like this off at a police station. It would have serious consequences for them."
Daniel tapped his chin. "So, then we destroy it."
Steven shook his head. "There's at least one hundred souls living on that thing I doubt more than half of them have committed crimes worthy of incarceration much less execution. Besides I can easily convert that factory into a normal drone factory and it has the supplies to make at least forty of them. This is something we're going to need if we plan on doing exactly the type of stuff we are doing now."
"Whoa stop right there. It did feel good to take care of Cox, but I am not sure we should continue, much less seize control of a factory," Stephanie answered. "And while we might be able to drop the poor slaves off somewhere, I want nothing to do with dealing with hardened criminals that are obviously willing to enslave others. One wrong move and we could all end up dead."
"Well, I for one think we should continue," Catherine told her. "I don't know if you guys know, but three shootings happened last night. If I had to guess, I'd say Daniel is right about a crime war. I believe it's kind of our responsibility to try and stop it. But I also don't think it's right for us to be the judge and executor of these people, nor can we just drop them off at some random precinct. We need a definite way of punishment."
Stephanie let her hand drop and absentmindedly began to play with one of the command seats controls. The room filled with electric grinding noises as the seat rose a few inches in the air only to drop back down and rose again. After a few times of this Stephanie said, "Surprisingly I agree with you about trying to stop it, Catherine. But I haven't a clue what to do."
Steven sucked air and his eyes flashed wide open.
Everyone's attention swung to him and Michael worriedly asked, "What's wrong?"
"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."
Catherine studied the image. "If this actually works, we're going to have two prisoners rather soon, and soon after that whoever is on that mobile station will be our problem as well."
Michael nodded. "If we decide to go through with this we have to know what we're going to do with them. Steven you sure we can't just drop the whole thing off at a police station?"
Steven closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck as he thought about what he had just seen a few minutes ago. "No, absolutely not."
"Okay, I trust your judgment. In that case though we only have twenty minutes to come up with a way to deal with the people or we are going to have to let this assassination factory slash chemistry lab go."
"Just dump all the criminals into open space." Daniel suggested
"Daniel." Catherine scolded.
Daniel put up his hands. "Fine, fine. But I played enough games to know that these type of people just don't stop being bad or evil or whatever you want to call it. The reality is if you stick them in jail they just come out better criminals."
"With more connections." Steven added.
"Yeah, better criminals with better connections." Daniel agreed.
Stephanie rubbed her finger along her nose. "That's true. I wonder what the Lionhearted did with their criminals."
Daniel shrugged. "I haven't a clue, never mentioned it in any games I played. Mike?"
"I don't know neither." Michael responded.
"Maybe Alf knows." Catherine offered.
"Ah, good idea." Steven turned his head slightly and addressed the open-air. "Alf what is Lionhearted protocol for dealing with prisoners?"
Nothing answered.
"You told him to shut himself off, Remember." Stephanie said.
As his sister told him this, he noticed quite a few red flashing indicators on the lower right of his command seat indicating that the factory had stopped and a few other components of the ship had ceased as well.
"Ah! You're right I did. Alf turn yourself back on."
Alf appeared on the view screen. "Sir?"
The indicators disappeared and Steven sighed in relief.
"Sir?" the Ai prompted again.
"Oh ya... What is Lionhearted protocol for dealing with prisoners?"
"That depends upon the infringement against the three Great Laws. There are many edicts pertaining to the discipline and punishment."
"I know that. I'm talking about the edicts that say stuff like life in banishment or so many years in banishment. Where exactly are they banished to?"
"To the prison worlds Sir."
Michael leaned forward "Prison worlds?"
"Yes, I can show you the information on them if you like."
"Yes, please do."
A new hologram screen appeared in front of Michael and he looked at it.
"Hum, interesting."
"Show us." Stephanie said.
Michael flicked at the screen and it appeared on one of the viewports.
A small ice planet orbiting another larger frozen planet played across the screen.
"Ow, that looks nasty!" Daniel said as he slightly shivered.
Stephanie nodded. "Yes it does. You sure don't want to be a criminal during the Lionhearted time."
Catherine looked confused. "That looks like more of a death sentence than a banishment."
Michael grinned. "Yes it looks like a rather chilly expedition. You all will be very surprised to find out what the surfaces of the planets look like."
Michael flicked at the screen again and two images of tropical paradises appeared on the giant view screen side-by-side.
"Oh, wow. They're not ice plants at all. They're both antediluvian planets!"
"What?" Daniel asked, completely confused.
Steven sighed. "Okay, when God created everything most inhabitable planets had water underneath their crusts and a layer of water so high in the atmosphere that it froze solid forming a perfect habitat. Water would seep out of the ground watering the plants and wildlife and the ice barrier around the planet would keep harmful UV rays out as well as keeping and regulating heat. However when Adam sinned it caused a colossal shift in the entire universe and that which was meant to last forever began to shift and head towards self-destruction. This shift was like a universe-wide graviton weapon distorting and changing everything but mostly gravity. As gravity shifted the weight on the crust of planets became different weakening them and eventually allowing the waters underneath them to rocket into the sky piercing and ripping apart their ice barrier bringing it down in a shower of ice and rain that floods the entire planet. Some planets have not gone through this process yet and they are called antediluvian planets."
"Cool."
Catherine picked at the edge of one of her finger with her teeth. "Yes, they are rather interesting and I have always wanted to visit one myself, but the last one in our galaxy went through its deluge stage eighty-seven years ago. It also means that neither of these planets look like this anymore."
"Actually these two images are live." Alf informed them.
"That's not possible."
"I assure you it is."
Catherine put down her hand. "You are not even connected to the StarNet. There's no possible way for these to be live."
"It is my duty to keep watch of these planets, and as such I have a direct link to them much like the technology you all refer to as pinhole."
Steven shot out of his seat. "You what?!"
"As I said Sir, I have direct link to them using an inferior but much like your own technology."
Steven brought up three screens and began to rapidly tap at them. "How come this is the first time I've heard of this?"
"All the inhabitants of both the male and female designated planets have reached the end of their life spans and ceased functioning many years ago. As such, there is nothing to inform you about."
Steven harrumphed and continued to incisively tap and click away.
Michael flipped through two new screens as he examined the information on the two planets. "I don't recognize these coordinates. In fact, they don't make any sense at all."
Catherine brought up a screen of her own. "Yeah, this doesn't work, and as I said, there's no antediluvian planets left in our galaxy."
Steven leaned back in his chair as he looked at a diagram of the ship showing a ten by ten-foot section of its interior dedicated to creating the data transfer from the live cameras on the two prison worlds and his mouth dropped open. "That's because they're not in this galaxy."