The rest of dinner; apparently it was dinner-time, here in Nazi-Space-Prison; went fairly calmly for Jason. He got to try dozens of alien dishes; discovering that something called 'Slab' was surprisingly good... and also made from mass-harvested and crushed bugs. Most of them, his tastebuds didn't know what to do with; and Charis warned him Slab wouldn't have any actual nutritional value for him; they were blended with 'orange and red' nutrient powder, but only a handful would do anything other than pass right through his system without providing any calories whatsoever; the process of digesting them and turning them into a useless sludge would even lose him calories from everything but the powder mixed in.
Out of that handful, most tasted horrible; the only one that didn't was a sort of stick-vegetable, orange with tiny purple blotches along its length and a more solid purple interior that taste faintly like.... barbeque beef jerky. After he had tried a bit of everything, he asked for a few more of the 'Huory' sticks, bid goodbye to the father and son drug kingpins... who apparently still got along well enough to sit together... and decided to explore the 'common' area.
After a few moments, Charis would start following him; and he glanced back at her, frowning. Was she security? Keeping an eye on him? He probably wouldn't dress security in a bikini top and an alien skirt-like outfit with bare feet, but this was a strange prison to begin with.
He walked out towards the 'ocean', carefully feeling for how far he could walk; only to be surprised at the feeling of actual sand beneath his feet... and then, a few steps later, the rush of cold water over his plastic shoes. He blinked, chewing on one of the Huory sticks; and glanced back to see the barefoot Marrick girl standing back, looking at the water with... was that concern?
"Something wrong with the water? Should I not be stepping into it?"
She jerked her gaze from the fake beach back to Jason. "Ahh, no, sir. I'm from a desert world, and lived underground most of my life. I know its all fake, and perfectly safe, but I've never been around large bodies of water, and prefer not to actually touch them."
Jason looked down at the sand, and the slow movement of the waves. "Then... why work up here?" I'm sure you can get a job somewhere away from the water."
"Oh." She looked at the ground. "If I upset you, I apologize." She started to back away.
Jason took a step closer, raising a hand to stop her. "Hold up. Not upset. Curious."
She blinked. "Well... I work here because of the opportunity. It isn't just nicer than a normal tier one prison, but..." She smiled. "I get to meet men like you. Tier zeroes."
"Well, I suppose. But prisoners."
She laughed. "As if they are prisoners for that long. A hundred years for someone who lives over six hundred might be quite a bit, but your dinner companion was head of an interstellar drug cartel. Thousands of his employees are doing life sentences in hard labor, or were executed. Sure, you're supposedly in for life. But you'll probably be out, soon. And if I'm your friend..." She stepped closer; stopping before reaching the water, but looking up at Jason with a smile, reaching out, aiming to put a hand on his chest.
"Or lover.... then I might be out with you... and in a much better position."
Jason sighed; and side-stepped her before she could actually touch him; she almost stumbled in the stand before catching herself. She was pretty enough. It was frankly strange that all of these people looked so... similar in terms of body shape. "Sorry, sweetheart, but I don't think you want to try that with me. You'd be better off with one of the other inmates."
He looked around.. and spotted his door, back to his own personal cell... and started walking. He needed to do a bit more research.
Charis started walking, rapidly catching up, keeping pace. "I've actually been assigned to you. I don't have to do anything else, of course... I'm not a tier three, though they can get you one if you ask... but I am supposed to serve you during meal-times, clean your cell, that sort of thing. Each of the inmates here has one of us."
He stopped at the door. "...That's.... fine. I'm assuming the next meal is the morning one? You can serve me then." He stepped through. The six-eyed woman stopped there, as Jason walked down the hall. "May I.... come with you?"
Jason waved back at her. "Not today. Maybe some other time." After a fairly short, brisk walk down the hallway, ignoring the disappointed look of the alien girl back in the communal area, he was back inside his own personal little slice of prison. Though, there was something different; a decent-sized silver case laying on the golden... grass? On the soft golden lawn, just outside his door.
So. His personal effects? More of them? Tools? Time to see what he was allowed to have here.
This place... for some people, it would be a perfect retirement home. If he'd been offered this as a prison back in the day, he would have taken it in a heartbeat rather than go on the run. Even if the whole thing was..... intensely creepy.
***
"You gave him back the drive?"
The administrator, resplendent in his solid green robes with bronze trim, glared at the similarly attired, virtually identical companion from the observation deck. The two men were surrounded by holographs depicting the different chambers of the prison, and each of the prisoners had his own dedicated watcher, a Tier-2 employee, much like the common tier-1 and tier-2 people serving food, guarding and maintaining the station.
"I thought you told me we hadn't been able to copy it yet!?"
The figure sitting at the chair, watching through the imagery as the three-eyed alien examined the contents of the box, turned away. "We tried copying it for hours. It has the best encryption I've ever seen by an insane degree. If we made it our life's work, and built an array of quantum computers, I doubt we could crack that drive. Would you like to know what our copies contain?"
The first man frowned. "I assume just more of the same encrypted nonsense."
The seated administrator laughed. "If only. They included a simple program... in one of our own programming languages, not whatever these aliens used... to erase all drives they came in contact with. It's spreading like a virus right through our servers now, and we had to cut off communications for an hour before we were sure we weren't about to start transmitting it throughout the Republic; we've got the security and comm systems isolated now, so that's no longer a concern. Either we have a traitor in an IT department, or that thing was loaded up with the most hostile, dangerous, anti-copying mechanism I ever heard of."
"....How advanced are these creatures?"
He lifted a six-fingered hand, raising a finger. "They fought, and killed, a class-four alien made from Neutronium. Which I doubt we could have killed." He raised a second finger. "He survived a descent from orbit that would have killed the hardiest member of our own species." A third. "That spherical hole was made by something more dangerous than Anti-matter." A fourth. "This drive has higher density and more sophistication than the best we've made in tens of thousands of years..."
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The other alien raised his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine. I get it. We're dealing with a species that didn't just retain Founder-level technology when they went their own way, but advanced at a dramatic pace."
He sighed. "At least they have a proper structure. The recordings indicate this 'Jason' was the owner of the whole mess, as is proper for a Tier-Zero individual, and all of the lesser, probably Tier-One, crew worked for him. Have we analyzed his genetics?"
A grimace. The six eyes focusing on the hologram. "Of course we analyzed his genetics. His skin is as hard as our lighter powered armor suits, but he was missing a hand when he arrived, so we got a tissue sample. And... have no idea what the results are. The database is gone. We'll have to start over from scratch, if we can find the samples."
"...That's ridiculous. No wonder he doesn't seem worried about our guards. Is he an escape risk? Do we need more guards?"
"No. I ordered a few molecular disrupter rifles brought up, just in case; his guards have what they need to take him down if they have to. I'll let him sort through his effects and get started before I interrupt to make him an offer. Watch him closely. If you can figure out how he unlocks that drive... if he does... I want every photon analyzed."
***
The toolkit was... impressive enough. And also absolutely packed full of bugs and spyware of one sort or another. Even the hammer appeared to be transmitting what force it was swung with.
Still. He had the drive; a slightly over 40mm across cylinder of cold blue steel, roughly half a meter long with a set of six... were they USB 5.0? Well, really they were an Ascension-specific connection... some sort of USB-like connectors on one end.
And of course, with a mildly radioactive power supply that would let it run at a low level for years without an outside power source. This... was essentially four of Ascension's CPU and hard drive stacks, mounted one atop the other, using a more compact, higher-density, design than the original. Only one was the original programming; the rest, an enormous database of information he might need to... well. Kill aliens, or repair equipment in the field.
It was difficult to contain his excitement about this one. It would be a long path from here, but this... meant he wasn't alone here, wherever he was.
He set the drive up on the table-top, alongside an assortment of other items from the case, conducting an inventory. A small pile of scrap parts from the tiny rocket sled they'd ridden out to meet the Emperor, including wires, capacitors, circuit boards, LED screens, even a few tiny electric motors. His classic Tenner; minus the bullets, of course, though... it actually seemed as if it had soaked up more power than it had before. From killing the Emperor, perhaps? Or the transit out here?
A neatly folded stack of robes, in black; he hadn't seen any of the locals wearing black robes, so it was likely due to the color of his own armor; as well as another jumpsuit in black like the one he wore.
And... alien tools. Hammers, pliers, screwdrivers, welders, clamps... just about everything he would need for some delicate electronics work, though in odd shapes and designed for different hands that would make gripping akward.
He sighed. This.... the start, at least... was going to suck. He slid his helmet on, drawing close to the table; and broke apart the electric motors, starting to carefully assemble what would look like a tiny mechanical claw; calmly burning out the bugs and observation equipment inside the tools themselves as he worked, but not hiding it from the cameras he was certain were inside the home; he even pulled the tiny positioning sensors from the hand tools, removed the transmitters, and repurposed them.
The table was an enormous mess, with bits of wire and circuit scattered about, when a soft knock came at the entrance of his... 'home'.
Jason glanced up. A man was standing at the entrance, with a power-armored guard wielding a very... strange... looking rifle behind him. The teal armor and the red shoulder pads were familiar now; this was the warden. The armor... looked familiar, from the heavy infantry in the combat scenes, though the rifle was unique. If it fired... it would essentially dissolve whatever it hit. And, of course, would be deactivated if he grabbed it from the man. So... extremely trusted and capable. And yet, a fellow prisoner. The other man, though...
Slim, with taut skin stretched over a humanoid skeleton, pale, with six eyes that seemed... somehow strange. Most of the Marrick he'd seen had two vertical columns of three eyes each; this one, they were so close together as to almost form compound eyes, and he had an interesting ridge in the center of his face... almost like the spot where a third row of eyes would be.
He studied the man and his green robes, the bronze trim... this man seemed halfway between one of these Marrick and one of the 'Founders', the three-eyed race that supposedly ran the show, and was the first one wearing robes with any trim at all he'd seen; granted, the rest were all prisoners like himself. The man smiled at Jason. "Hello there. I'm Chaifkisth, administrator of this facility. You can call me Kisth. I understand that you, similarly, are named Jason Bennet, but usually go by Jason, or Eyeball, or... Titanslayer?"
Jason chuckled, and set his current project down; an interface cable to link the device he was building with the computer core; before rising to his feet, sliding the helmet off. "Jason works. So. The man in charge come to see the newest prisoner. Checking on how I feel about the place, or wanting to know what I'm building?"
Kisth shrugged. "A bit of both. We noticed that you turned down Charis. Is she not to your liking? Our profile from your stay at the hospital indicated that you found the Shield who worked your case attractive, so we found a woman with a similar appearance and name to be your server."
"Ahhh. A bit of a cultural split there. My people usually either go for casual, short-term encounters, or long-term relationships; I usually only go for the former when I'm on a vacation somewhere, relaxing... and right now, my mind is definitely set in 'possibly hostile territory' mode. She might have better luck after I've had a few weeks to relax."
He nodded; and set a small bowl filled with the 'Huory' sticks on the corner of the table. Jason's helmet gave a soft, almost subsonic beep from the table; it had immediately flagged another bug in the bowl; either inside the food, or the bowl itself. "Then take this in the meantime, as you seemed to enjoy them. I'll tell my people to leave Charis with you for now. However... you might not need to be here for weeks. And certainly not for life. I understand you're a businessman, yes?"
Jason nodded slowly, leaning back against the table. "My company, Eye-Tech, is... or was... one of the most valuable ones that existed back home. We dealt with a variety of cutting-edge technologies, and were the primary provider of arms and equipment for the military of my country. Which... I was one of the founders of. I take it that you're realized some of my tech, but not all, is better than yours, and would like to make a deal that involves me getting out, and you getting some upgrades."
Kisth smiled, and spread out his arms. "Exactly! Just as cunning as I expected. Does the concept appeal? Obviously, this will be a very comfortable place to stay until you make your choice, but I'm sure you'd rather be out there, seeing the galaxy, perhaps founding a new corporation here... though preferably not a new nation." The Marrick gave a low chuckle.
"Hmmm. Probably. How about this. I'm sure there's quite a few technologies from my side that will be earth-shatteringly useful here. Give me some more tools, and time to figure out what we have that would be most useful to you. I'll make a prototype, we can demonstrate it. If you're satisfied, I go free; and agree that the new company I found will sell exclusively to the Republic military for the first ten years."
The alien nodded. "Excellent proposal. Let me counter it. There are three key technologies we've observed that we would find incredibly useful. Whatever means you used to store many objects in a small space, letting a fighter store enough missiles to overwhelm a station. The incredible, impossible, encryption technology in that drive there. And whatever means you used to forge neutronium. If you can agree to give us one of the three, we'll let you go, and we can buy the others from you. Though..."
He glanced back at the guard with his red-trimmed armor, and leaned in close to Jason; tapping something in the trim of his robe. "The recordings show that you believed you were no longer aging. Is that true?"
Jason glanced at the guard, then at Kisth. Was that a recording device? No... more likely a jammer. "Yes. The technique that was used on me has been used before on others, and some of them are many thousands of years old. That, unfortunately, I can't replicate. It would require samples of a fruit, or its seeds, that have been left behind back home."
"Oh." He tapped the object at his neck once more. "Well, that's unfortunate. Still. Does that sound acceptable?"
"The Neutronium, unfortunately not, for similar reasons as to the other. A biological process. For the encryption and storage... yes. If you get me the supplies, and preferably a Fabricator if you want it fast, I can get a prototype put together to show you, and we'll be in business."
Jason frowned. There didn't seem to be a translation for the word 'Fabricator', or 'Fabber'. Which, really, was just a natural iteration of the printer and factory robots, which had led to the 3D-printer, and then, ultimately the Fabricator.
Kisth frowned. "That... the translator is trying to match up to something that isn't there. What is a Fabricator?"