Meanwhile...
Deep beneath the surface of an Earth ocean, at the base of a long extinct volcano, activity bustles. Altered construction equipment enhances what Mother Nature created. Within the volcano, things are much quieter.
The soft glow from a wall of monitors bathes a young woman seated at a cluttered terminus in a large cavernous room. Her fingers fly across a old key board, and bit by bit the glow recedes. The last monitor displays an array of text and numbers, all in a blur as the latest information is relayed.
From a faraway entrance, a small voice calls,
“Mistress?”
Without turning her head,“Come on in Tralu, You there's nothing in the lab to get you. Everything's locked away and sealed up tight.”
Silence answers her.
“Everything was taken care of, wasn't it.” A hint of anger now creeping into the voice.
“Y, yes Mistress, of course! I just came to announce that the remodeling out side has just started. All secondary labs have been secured, and that the all equipment inside is now shut down. Your lab is the last still up.”
The young woman reached under the terminus, flipping the first of a series of switches. A line of light marches out from her to the far entry.
“Come along, Tralu. I'm going to want a detailed report of the satellite labs.”
“Yes Mistress.” Tralu hurried to wards his master, knowing that the lights needed to be shut off soon. As he jogged in, she pulled a short stool out from behind her work area and placed it beside her seat.
“There you go, now you wont have to strain that voice of yours!” Tralu climbed atop the stool, and clutched the edge of the desk for balance. He reached into a small pack he wore on his back, smiling as she turned out the lights. Pulling out a sheaf of papers, he began a rundown of each external lab; how close they were to project completion, snags, a wide scope of details. All was in order.
“Excellent! My network is almost ready for its shutdown/reboot. By this time tomorrow I'll have the most advanced system the League of Villains, hell ALL of POOPtopia or WGARSia. Soon that Goodie two-shoes Grand Gargatuan will be mine! No longer will he escape my clutches! The Lea”
“Mistress,” Tralu cut of the well worn rant “the only thing left is this station.”
“Ah, yes, Then we should be about it shouldn't we?” Glancing at the screen,which was no longer a flurry of activity, then typing a short command. “That's it!”
A small window with the message 'Saving Settings. Prepare for Shutdown” popped up.
With 30 seconds left on the countdown, every monitor flared to life. Scenes of rockets shooting off, satellites exploding, and distant planets unfolded before her.
Tralu cried out, “Mistress I swear it was all prepared!”
“Its ok. The satellites are beyond repair, better this then come crashing down on us. The rockets are not even 1k, and I doubt there's anything to hit, space traffic being so light lately. Not sure why the cameras on a few of the satellites came on. Seems we have Mars, Saturn, some meteors, and Neptune's Moon Triton.”
As she gazed at that particular screen, a bright beacon appeared on the surface of the moon, then all the monitors went black.
“What was that! Tralu did you see it?”
“Yes Mistress, but I don't know. Triton is uninhabited.”
A cell phone on the now shutdown terminus rang. Gingerly Tralu answered it.
“Yes? Yes! Of course.” Covering the mouth piece, “Mistress, The Council Woman wants to speak to you.”
Gulping she took the phone.
“Arch-nemesis Goldenhair?” A hard voice questioned.
“Yes Madam Counselor.” She answered.
“I don't know what you did, but good work. Send me a report. This may over shadow that incident.” Click.
With that Goldenhair collapsed at her desk.

The Imperial Captain was sitting at his command chair when the AI Chimed in with the report.

"Sir, unknown electromagnetic fields have been detected on the hull, they are not being caused by the thermal discharge. We are being watched."

The captain sat straight up. "What's the dump status?"

"Eighty-five percent complete sir." It replied.

The captain slouched, worry forming for the first time in his gut. Until their heat sinks were fully empty the ship was helpless on the surface, supported by its anti-grav cells and surrounded by the melted slush of the surface of Triton.

Suddenly a blaring alarm sounded and the bridge was bathed in the red glow of combat lighting. "Emergency, code red." The AI said. "Vessel has jumped into orbit, its profile does not match any known warship designs." There was a pause, followed by. "Thermal spikes detected along vessel's hull; they are preparing to fire weapons sir."

"S***!" He roared. "How long 'till we can lift off?"

"Heat sinks are at 99% empty, dump is complete in 3..."

Spots of light formed along the unknown ship's sickly green knobby hull.

"2"

The captain clenched the arms of his seat.

"1"

Spikes of incandescent light began to fire down from the ship above.

"Break for high orbit, GO!" The captain shouted. The AI was already in motion, having anticipated the order. The corvette's engines roared to life and the ship screamed away from the surface of Triton while their LZ evporated into debris behind them.

"Sir, enemy ship is changing course, now on an intercept trajectory." The AI chimed in. The holographic display lit up, showing a 3-d view of the two ships, now far from Triton and coming close to Neptune.

"Get us into the cloud banks!" The captain ordered. "We'll lose 'em in Neptune's atmosphere."

The twin ships entered the outer atmosphere of the gas giant, losing one another in the methane clouds. The captain glanced at the displays, each one showed nothing. "Where'd they go?" He asked no one in particular.

Suddenly a dark shape loomed ahead of the smaller ship: the ship from earlier, large enough to be a heavy cruiser by Imperial standards. The AI deftly maneuvered the corvette up and over the hull of the larger vessel, dodging the intermittent fire lancing from its dorsal AA batteries before breaking free from the planet's gravity and racing towards open space.

"The captain, still recovering from the shock, regarded the AI's holographic representation, the imperial logo, a silver phoenix embossed on a blood red shield with a gold border. "That was some fancy flying there, why didn't you do that back in the Redoant War?"

"Well, sir" The construct said. "Back then I was still factory-fresh, and now I've had the chance to learn from the best." It paused. "Incidentally, it may interest you to know that that ship is coming back, and if its speed is anything to go by, we've pissed it off." Indeed the holographic display showed the massive warship emerging from the sphere of Netptune and rapidly closing on their tiny ship.

"Aww, damn." Said the captain sarcastically. "And I was worried this wouldn't be a challenge." He called up some commands on his console, bracing against the intermittent flak explosions against his ship's shields as the alien ship opened fire again.

The AI chimed in, sounding worried. "Sir you aren't seriously going to attempt a hyper-jump inside a system, the sun's gravity will play havoc with our sensors, we won't know where we are or when to exit jump!"

"Yeah, well they won't be able to follow us, and it beats dying, don't it?" As if to punctuate his point a large shock rippled through the ship, followed by the wail of an alarm.

"Aft shield failure," The AI said mechanically. "hull breaches on subdecks 1a and 4c, one more direct hit on the stern and the reactor could be breached." Inflection, or some semblance of it, returned to the AI's voice. "Point taken sir, brace yourself." With a ripple of pseudo-motion the corvette vanished out of the path of an incoming particle beam-

-and emerged from jump-space inside Earth's atmosphere. Air molecules ignited as they were violently shoved aside to make room for the mass that had suddenly appeared in their midst. The captain pulled himself over the back of his chair -having been flung over the back of it by the force of the jump- and saw on the display that his ship had arrived in the middle of the POOP Armada.

"Oh of all the parking luck!" He shouted as the display went red, warning of multiple missile locks. "Activate-"

"-Point-defense systems and execute evasive maneuvers, already on it sir, hold on." The AI said.

The damaged corvette spun away through the massed airships, beams of light flaring from the minuscule DEFENDOR Cannons set at intervals along the hull, pursued by dozens of missiles, and trailing smoke and flame from its wounded aft end...

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, the huge anti-grav ship Princess of the Clouds floats through the sky.

The Princess is the largest and newest 'instant' configurable war-liner that the Triad Confederacy has. Currently she is configured for transporting happy vacationers that are touring the Confederacy.

Many of the passengers are concerned with what is happening on the other side of the world, since many are from that part of the world. But out of the thirteen thousand passengers, one is not even concerned in the slightest. Nor is he even from this planet.

Balthazar is sitting near the one nearly Olympic sized pool in the front of the ship just soaking up the sun that is filtering through the slightly visible kinetic shielding. He is in talking with someone else who is lounging and relaxing near the pool. He too is not from this planet, though he didn't have a reservation to even be on this ship. He just appeared out of thin air a while ago.

"...just went out from under me. Cursing my stupidity for going after it, I then land in the pool and..."

"It was a nice splash. Impressive."

"I would think so. Hurt though. "

"So, you want to stay?" Balthazar asks. "I can alter the computer to have you listed as a passenger, with a nice cabin even."

"It sounds nice, I'd li--"

The water appears to explode, as if a bomb went off in pool. Balthazar and the other man are pelted with water. In the wake, Steave and Thom Solo come sputtering to the surface.

Staring at them, Balthazar says, "Apparently I'm popular today."

Steave and Thom Solo upon seeing Balthazar start swimming towards him. As they are a few meters from the edge of the pool, a ball slowly rises unnaturally to the surface. They both stop.

Without warning, the man beside Balthazar leaps out of his seat and dives into the pool and grabs the ball at the same time. Seeing what happened, the two quickly swim the short distance, and try to take the ball away from him.

Still holding onto the ball, he yells, "My Precious!" And the three disappear.

And all the water.

Everybody else in the pool stayed, and suddenly found the bottom very hard and unyielding. Many broken bones and cracked skulls occur. One woman did crack -slightly- the bottom. She had just jumped off the diving board when the water left.

I don't think I have to guess where the went. Balthazar then takes a sip of his daiquiri and goes back to soaking up the sun.

[Where they went]