Tristan (Tristan book 1) (Draft 1)

Chapter 02

Tristan walked the corridors, again looking for something specific. With the kill switch out of him he could go wherever he wanted, but he couldn't simply walk into one of the restricted zones. Someone would notice him and alert the guards. What he needed was a way to move about that was out of sight. That was what maintenance conduits were for, unfortunately the only ones he had been able to locate at this point were in heavily populated areas of the ship.

The map on his data pad didn't show the conduits, but he had spent long enough crawling through them in his youth to know the kind of space needed for the access. That void between structures did show up on the map and the next possibility was further along in this corridor.

He walked by the room where he judged the access was, based on the map. He surreptitiously examined the lock, there were too many people at the moment for him to do anything more. The lock was a first generation Creyton. A cub without training could bypass such a lock. The room behind it couldn't contain anything of value.

He turned at the first intersection and leaned against the wall, keeping his eyes on his data pad. To anyone walking by he looked like he was studying the map when instead he was focusing on his hearing. His father had trained him not to depend on any one sense. His hearing was keen enough he could navigate a dark room with minimal problems. He used it to determine how far everyone was from the door he needed.

It took a few minutes for the pedestrians to thin out enough that he had a small window of time during which he could do the first test of the lock. He walked to the door, the corridor was empty, but he could hear a small group coming from the next intersection. As he got close to the door he reached out and pressed the 'open' button. To his surprise the door opened. He slipped in and closed the door just as the group turned the corner.

He looked around, he was in someone's living quarters. Someone who was rather stupid for leaving the door unlocked. The place was small but comfortably furnished: a bed, dresser, a cushioned chair with a small table and a desk in the far corner. A door led to the shower room.

He went through the occupant's belongings, female, based on the under garments he found. She didn't have anything of interest to him, other than her shower. He checked it and discovered that it used water.

He wasn't really surprised. Every prison establishment was paid a yearly amount to take care of their prisoners. With said prisoners in cryo, they could divert those funds to more luxurious concerns.

The shower did lack a dryer. Humans didn't have enough fur on their bodies to make those useful, so he took out all the towels he could find before undressing and turning on the shower. He kept the water cool. He'd grown up bathing in lakes and under waterfalls, he didn't like hot water.

He took a long shower, letting the water wash away the dead fur that still clung to him. The fluid in the cryo tube wasn't made to deal with fur, it was too thick to allow what he shed to float away from his body. The shower also let him clean the stink of the sterilizer off his body.

A few moments after he turned the shower off he heard the door to the room open and one person enter. As soon as the door closed he left the shower room and walked to her, naked and dripping. She didn't have time to register surprise at his presence that he had snapped her neck.

He locked the door, figuring it was what she would do if she didn't want to be disturbed. Then he went back to the shower room and dried himself. He had a towel left when he was done and used it to dry the water he dripped over the floor. When that was done and he was dressed he knelt next to the dead female. He rummaged through her clothing, looking for her data pad; everyone used one. At first glance it looked to be a Tolera two hundred like his, but the writing on the back indicated it was a four twenty. It must have come out while he was in cryo.