Dav woke up, his mouth cotton and sandy.

Sitting up, a haze seemed to engulf his mind, not unlike what one of those “challenge” drinks that often contained odd and potentially dangerous ingredients, often induced in him.

The thought of drinks made water come to his mind.

Reaching for the bottle of water he always kept near his bunk, his hand instead found a stack of what felt like very odd and pleasant cloth – the sensation, while pleasant, soon shocked him awake. He wasn’t in his quarters.

In fact, Dav was fairly sure he was being dragged into a weird medical room by some giant black man thing.

His eyes shot open, and he found himself in a big white room. He was sitting on what seemed to be a bed, no headrest or anything else besides a basic pillow. The room he was in was devoid of anything besides the bed and a small one-legged table-thing on which was a stack of what seemed to be clothes.

At which point Dav noticed he was naked - Which was weird, because he wasn’t hot, or cold, or anything really. It was like the room was conditioned to the absolute room temperature.

Dav couldn’t even feel where his skin ended and the air began.

Staring at his arms like that for a few seconds, Dav looked down and remembered his state of undress, and so he reached for the stack of “clothes”.

Apparently, the aliens or whatever had him locked in here had gotten their hands on the uniform he was wearing, and used it as a base design for whatever this was. The ‘suit’ was a one-piece affair, fortunately with separate underwear included. Not unlike a scuba-suit, it seemed to open from the back – in order to wear the suit, one would have to place their feet and hands in, and then pull their body inside.

As Dav wrangled the thing, he found the cloth shifting and moving as if to assist him with his efforts. In a few seconds, he was wearing the strange outfit, which then squeezed down on him before relaxing to a perfect, skin-tight fit.

“Yeah, that’s not freaky at all… At least my bulge isn’t showing.”

Always look on the bright side.

Dav took a few minutes to walk around, do some light exercise and practice some basic hand-to-hand from his days back in boot camp, mixing some bar-fight-foo for good measure. The suit flexed and flowed with every movement, as if it read his mind. Convenient and creepy in equal measure – and the workout confirmed to Dav that he wasn’t a kidney and a lung lighter, which was always a plus.

In fact, his body never felt better – even the cotton mouth went away on its own.

“This is extremely weird.”

As soon as Dav spoke those words, a quiet ‘whoosh’ snapped his attention to the wall opposite of the bed, as a door descended down to the floor. Out from the door, emerged a small hovering sphere, about a basketball’s size. Before Dav could even back up to the wall, it opened a slot in its front, then suddenly the High Admiral of the Terran Navy was standing in front of him.

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Spotting the full regalia and the golden eagle grasping the Home-world in its claws beneath nine stars, Dav reflexively snapped a hasty but sharp salute, fist over heart at full attention, before noticing the impossibility of the situation. As he did, the ‘High Admiral’ spoke.

“Greetings, Human. Your vessel’s database indicates this individual to be of high importance in your society, therefore I have borrowed this appearance. My name is not for you to know, but you may call me ‘Custodian’. You are a trespasser on this vessel. I have temporarily granted you guest privileges, so long as you obey the rules. To make it simple on your lesser mind, simply don’t touch anything; don’t eat anything not labeled as food, and try not to breathe on anything important. Follow me.”

Apparently the sphere believed itself to have the same authority as the one whose skin it was wearing, which rankled Dav despite his current traitor status – he had his soldier’s pride at the very least, dammit!

“Now listen here, you egotistical, floating piece of-“ which is as far as he got before he heard the distinct sound of a very large slide racking a very large round into the very large chamber, of a very large gun. The loud, crisp cracking sound belonged to two more of those armored black giants that formed a perimeter around the ‘Custodian’ sphere-thing.

Those were now pointing two arms each at him, each with a barrel strapped to its forearm.

Those were, at the very least, 20mm ballistic cannons – which was more than enough to turn an unarmored human, or a lightly armored vehicle, into many, many small pieces.

The ‘Admiral’ didn’t even break its stride – “Follow - Now.”

Dav decided to co-operate, for the now being.

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As they walked, the ‘Custodian’ remained silent, the holographic projection of the High admiral striding directly in front of it with crisp and precise movements. Dav had, after a few moments, noticed the slightly transparent nature of the highest ranking officer in the Terran navy. He was, of course, a hologram.

However, Dav never saw a holo this good before – maybe the stuff the one percent had was better than he knew, but no way such high fidelity could be squeezed into such a small frame as that sphere, leaving room for both propulsion, computation and power.

No matter what, it would surely fetch a nice price if he could get it to some bigshot corporation dealing with this kind of stuff.

The thought of money reminded Dav of his vessel, and the extremely valuable and dangerous nature of the cargo on board.

“Hey, uh… Custodian! What about the ship I came in on? Is it still fine?”

The sphere stopped, turned to the right alongside the hologram, then a doorway opened in the wall of the corridor they were walking down.

“In here, human – we will speak of your vessel and its cargo at length soon.”

So they knew about the reactor – not good.

Dav felt cold sweat running down his back despite the suit – While valuable, the reactor was essentially a very inefficient bomb, and he’d brought it (unintentionally) on board an alien vessel. Not the best attempt at 1st contact.

“Uh, I can explain that.”

“I do not require your explanation, Human. Come and sit – I believe that this is how your species holds conversations of high importance.”

As the hologram said that, the room they entered – a wide affair that could house at least a hundred men, changed. A table and two chairs made from some sort of silvery metal rose from the metallic white floor, while some sort of arm contraption descended from an invisible hole in the ceiling and placed a glass of water and a disturbingly familiar white bar on the table.

Dav groaned.

“You’ve got to be kidding me – really?”

Even after being abducted by gods-damned aliens with an attitude problem, he could not escape military rations.

“Is there a problem, Human?” the hologram turned towards him.

“No, no, it’s just that it’s been a… difficult couple of days for me.”

The Custodian simply bobbed, the hologram nodding, and gestured for Dav to sit down with it.

“I see. Now sit down – we have much to discuss.”