Taking SPACE

THE UNEXPECTED

Michael lay tossing and turning in his bed when his door open and a black shadow appeared in the doorway.

He jumped to his feet as the droid stepped into the room.

"Sir."

He took a deep breath of relief. "Yes Alf what is it? Why do you wake me at such an hour?"

"I believe I've made a grave miscalculation. You and your family must come to the bridge immediately." The droid deployed a dimensional door and it opened to the bridge.

Michael stepped through to the bridge and the droid weaved him into his seat. A few seconds later the dimensional door opened again and Catherine with Daniel walked in. Catherine was wearing a nightshirt and Daniel had just pulled on pants without bothering to put on a shirt. Or maybe he just didn't have time to put one on if the droid pushing them was any indication.

Steven was the next one to come in his hair all a mess and his eyes droopy.

"What's going on Alf?" Daniel asked.

"Just wait for Stephanie gets here it's better if I don't have to tell you twice." One of the droids answered.

They waited for another three minutes before Stephanie finally came through the dimensional door. She was fully dressed and the droid she came with was missing an arm.

"Still beaten up on poor defenseless training bots I see." Daniel teased.

Stephanie glared at him she was obviously not happy about being woken up this late at night.

Alf's lion form appeared on the main view screen. "I'm sorry for waking you all up but I believe time is of the essence."

"What's wrong?" Michael asked.

"When we were discussing taking the president and vice president I gave you my best calculation of what would happen afterwards. I told you that it would enable us to get at the real sources of the crime war."

"Which it did we got Cox. Sadly we had to kill him to do it but we got him." Daniel said.

"No he was just one player of the game. And as it turns out my speculations were gravely erred."

"What do you mean?" Michael asked.

"It's best if I show you."

Alf disappeared and was replaced with some type of news report.

A woman was standing in front of a picture of a powerless starway ring. "All the star ways in your sector are down! Every way out of the sector has been blockaded. We are demanding the lionhearted give themselves up to face justice and have placed a 40 billion bounty on their heads. Anyone having any information on their whereabouts will be wirelessly wired 1 million if they send the information to the contact information scrolling along the bottom of the screen."

The short message begin to repeat again and Alf let them watch it one more time before he turned it off.

"Wow man someone's peed!" Daniel mused.

"This message is being played over every network and that 'Someone' is the newly formed collaboration consisting of four out of six of the leading authorities in the sectors surrounding this sector. And from my observation I believe the other two authorities will join them by morning."

Daniels face drained of color.

"Their combined fleets have already entered the sector and are scouring the outer reaches as we speak."