Space Odyssey: Spectre-Chapter 480: Digging up Information

Jace opened his eyes and grunted through the metal muzzle that was covering the lower half of his face. The solid metal box around him was dented in many places. But up in the corner of one part of the box, light was pouring through and the almost invisible gasses were escaping out the hole. He could tell when he activated his electrical vision. He could see the gas because the amount of faint electricity in the cloud was different from stagnant recycled air.

He could not see past the metal boxes walls because the material they were made of seemed to absorb or block electricity. Either way he could not see past them so he did not know what was going on. But the ship was oddly quiet. He may not know exactly what is going on. But his cell being damaged and there not being a commotion was not a good sign.

Jace stayed in his position deciding whether or not it would be worth it to break out to see what was going on. After a few minutes he decided it would be worth it. If it wasn’t he could always just climb back into his cell.

He started by removing the cuffs that were on his hands. To do that all he needed to do was get the magnetic lock to release. It was actually a mechanic and magnetic lock combination. But the magnetic part was the more complex portion. For him it was still fairly simple all he had to do was channel power into the cuffs as opposed to taking it. He also had to do the correct amount.

Which he easily achieved by slowly raising the amount of electricity going to his handcuffs until he heard the distinctive click. Once he heard that noise he just slammed the cuffs against the ground and another click had them falling off his wrists. They were horribly designed with clearly his powers in mind but with only knowing a few things he could do.

Once they were off he was able to easily slip out of the complex web of chains and then moved over to the gap in the cell. He jumped up and grabbed onto one of the jagged edges and looked out the cell. There were plenty of injured people around as well as some medical personnel. But it looked like they had all fallen unconscious.

The gas from Jace’s cell had knocked all of them out. The only reason he was not out like a light was because he probably developed an immunity thanks to the nanobots. In the midst of whatever disaster occurred it looks like they forgot about the gas that would leak out of his cell and were caught off guard.

He leaned up and pulled open the hole until it was big enough to climb through and then jumped down. Once he was down he looked around until he found the controls for his cell. He then shut the valve for the gas and stopped it from filtering in.

Then he looked to see what went wrong. Something like this would have had a basic safety system in place to prevent something like what happened from happening. But it would seem systems were all damaged due to a sudden power surge. Some of the programs went down and then start up procedures were not correctly observed when the power came back on.

Once he was done he walked to the hangar door and opened it. Finding a flurry of activity in the hall. Thankfully it looked like the hangar’s safety systems had activated even if it did not manage to notify the bridge of the contaminated hangar.

He watched the bustling hall for a moment before leisurely walking past some medical officers that were running past him. He glanced at them for only a moment before he arrived at a giant digital map that was clearly malfunctioning. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

He tapped it and it blinked wildly before completely turning off. He frowned and pulled out a panel and tapped a few buttons before closing it and the panel lit up again without blinking in and out this time.

He looked at the map and found himself before tracing a path to an area he could relax comfortably where he would not be in the way. The ship captain’s lounge seemed like the perfect place. He did not have one of those on any of his ships because he saw them as unnecessary wastes of space. Why would he have one of those when he could have a tactical center or an armory instead.

Jace nodded and began walking to his destination. Humming a tune he had not thought of in awhile. He did not know quite what he was feeling at the moment. He knows he should be angry. But why? Because of a bad memory forcefully resurfaced?

So should he walk around angrily looking to blame someone? There was nothing he could do about it.

What he could do was channel that excess energy into something constructive. Hence the necessity for a peaceful and out of the way location. Which was how he found himself in the captain’s lounge. Just as he thought there was a desk and computer system in the corner of the room. He was going to just use a tablet or datapad. But this would be better.

Jace started pulling up information on his arrest. Ranging from who triggered it to who provided information or evidence to support the claims. It only took a few minutes to find the initial source of the arrest.

A young Ola politician with everything to prove was the source. He was being backed by a few other politicians and government officials. After a few moments he figured out that they had investments in hover tech vehicle manufactures.

If Jace ended up going to prison or being charged he could lose his right to ownership over hovertech. Which would make it cheaper for people to manufacture hovertech based vehicles and would be a giant profit for those who have invested in it. At the end of the day this was just about greed.

He took a moment and browsed through the charges. While most of them were spot on there were a few that were not his nor did he take any part in. He started a file and highlighted those crimes.

Then he started investigating the board of people that would be deciding whether or not to charge him. They were a board of both government, military, and an Orius from MILD. The majority of which were part of the government branch in order to be as impartial as possible.

It did not take him long to start finding dirt on them. But as he was doing that the lights in the room and probably throughout the entire ship began flashing as an announcement ran throughout the ship’s intercom system.

"All units please be aware, the prisoner, Jace Hex, has escaped. A search of the entire ship has commenced. Please cooperate with the MPs who are coming around to search the ship." The announcement then ended. It would seem they finally noticed he left his cell and probably would soon realize that he turned off the gas for them. Although he was surprised the shipborne AI had not tracked him down already.

There was supposed to be one aboard the ship. But either it was malfunctioning or it was intentionally not cooperating. Either way he was grateful he had some time to really get his teeth into his investigation.

Surprisingly the corruption he found on the council that would be deciding his fate were more of a list of dirt. Like what he might use for blackmail. He saved it because it might be fun to go over later.

As he looked at the information he scrounged up a few more tidbits of information. Like how the government was split between leaving him alone and charging him. It would seem like he gained an abnormal amount of popularity among the entire Victorium in a short amount of time.

Looking a bit closer he found that after the merger between the Vexical Empire and the Victorium someone went out and researched the empire. Accidently discovering that Jace was being raised up as a hero. Which was not a foreign concept to the Victorium. But it was something that earned him a closer look which is when they discovered he had a hand in putting down the Elder Council’s Insurgency.

The door to the captains’ lounge slid open and he watched as an accer with a scar covering half of his beaked face. "I doubt he is in here but-" He stopped dead in his tracks and stopped speaking when he spotted Jace.

Following in behind him was the scarred mar’talic from when he was first taken prisoner. "Figures..." He grunted out.

"Hey!" Jace waved his hand as he saved the information he found and sent it to their destination. He should be allowed to prepare a defense. So he would use that information then.

"Jace Hex, please follow me to the brig." The scarred mar’talic sighed.

Jace nodded and stood up out of the seat. "Sure thing."