Tristan (Tristan book 1) (Draft 1)

Chapter 01

Tristan received a shock and opened his eyes. He couldn't figure out where he was, or remember how he got here — where ever here was. By the time he noticed that he was floating in some sort of liquid, and that his lungs were full of that same liquid, the tube was drained.

With the liquid gone, he found himself on hands and knees, retching and coughing until his lungs were clear. He remained like that even once it was done, still trying to work out how he'd gotten here. He remembered being put in the tube now, a mission he'd been hired for had gone bad. The target had known he was coming.

Someone banged on the tube and he looked up. Human, he noted, not the same one who had put him in here, female.

"Stand up, fur ball," she said.

For a moment he debated staying as he was, but he didn't have anything to gain that way, so he stood and noticed two heavily armed guards behind her, human and males. She pressed a button he couldn't see and the tube was filled with a cloying mist. He didn't bother holding his breath, he remembered where he was now.

He was on the Sayatoga Prison ship, inside a cryo tube. The mist was a sterilizer, standard procedure. It made him choke but he breathed in deeply. When the mist cleared She put a uniform in a drawer and slid it inside his tube.

"Put this on," she told him.

He looked at it, in its sterile plastic bag, and then at the fur on his arms. The living organism that had kept him in suspended animation might have been killed by the mist, but his fur was still wet. He looked at her and decided it wasn't worth asking for a dryer, they wouldn't allow a prisoner that kind of luxury. Instead he shook his fur as dry as he could.

The sudden motion made the guards raise their weapons, but she told them to stand down. When he was as dry as he could get himself he sliced the plastic bag open with a claw and put on the purple uniform identifying him as one of the inmates. He would have to work on getting cleaned properly later.

That done, the front of the tube unsealed itself and opened. She motioned for him to step forward. The guards moved back to stay out of his reach as he exited the cryo tube. He stopped moving at the bottom of the steps leading from it. She pointed a scanner at him. It was attached to a Tolera two hundred, Tristan determined from the glimpse he got, and made a note to try and get one when he had the chance.

"You will follow me," she ordered, once she was satisfied with the result it gave her, "you will stay exactly five steps behind me. If you try to shorten the distance you will be shot, is that understood?"

Tristan studied the guards, they were armed with modified Pisteron three. He doubted the modification was to make them less lethal. If they shot him, he was dead. He still considered those to be overkill. He looked back at the human female and nodded.

She started walking. He let her take two steps to put the distance between them at five and then followed her, matching the rhythm as well as the length of her stride. The two guards stayed seven steps behind him. They were afraid of him.

During the walk Tristan looked around, noting where everything was: terminals, com system, access panels, but he was primarily looking for a clock. When he saw one he read the date. Someone was responsible for stealing a little over three years of his life. He would have to see to it.

She led him to a storage room. She had him enter, followed by the guards, who stayed against the wall, joining the twenty other guards, all armed with Pisteton three. Tristan looked around. He counted twenty nine other inmates, twenty seven were human. The other two non humans weren't of his species, he wasn't surprised, there were few non-humans, so for two of the same species to run into each other by accident was almost unheard of.