Tristan (Tristan book 1) (Draft 1)

Chapter 08

Tristan studied the comings and goings of the Luminex employees from the shadowed alley in front of the company building. They were mostly humans, with enough spattering of aliens he would be able to walk around the building, provided he could make his way through their security.

To get inside the building he would need a pass key and access to their system to insert himself within their employee list. Keys were only issued by the security department, from within the company building. He could infiltrate their computer system and add his current identity to their employee list, and then claim he'd lost his key, but he didn't want to risk it. They were aware he was after them and they would be watching for any intrusion. What he needed was to get access to someone who had access to the company.

That was why his Tolera was currently doing a search through the company's employees, looking for someone he might be able to use. Finding out who worked for them, without hacking the company itself had been simple. The company had to register its employees with multiple agencies for a variety of reasons, ensuring the fair treatment of its workers, processing their pay and managing their health system. None of those companies had security systems that impressed him.

Once he had that list he created a program to do a search on each of them, looking for specific character traits he could take advantage of. He already had three names and ways he could get them to do what he wanted, but his Tolera wasn't finished yet, Luminex had a lot of workers and he wanted to wait until it had gone through all of them. He wanted to find the perfect victim to help him.

* * * * *

Alexander walked in the bar and let the noise wash his worry away. For the last few days security had been increased for no apparent reason, and without warning. He'd gotten in trouble with his supervisor for logging in late that first day. Of course the man hadn't cared it had been due to the delay caused by the security check, so now Alex woke up earlier just to be certain of getting to his desk in time.

He looked around and smiled at the mixtures of shapes, sizes, and colours he saw in the other patrons. Jolani Six had a fairly large population of aliens compared to other planets, around one hundred thousands the last time he checked, comprised of maybe forty different races. Most of them worked as consultants for companies who did business with their species.

Alex walked to the counter and waved at the bar 'man'; his skin perfectly smooth, light grey and looked slightly oily; because of that, everyone called him Slick. He didn't have any hair, instead he had two tentacle like appendage draping down from the top of his head to the middle of his back. Most of the time they simply hung like that, but once in a while Slick would use one of them to move something aside if his hands were full. More than once Alex wondered what he might be like in bed.

"Your usual?" Slick asked.

"Please," Alex answered finding a space at the counter. He was the only human in the place, but no one paid him any attention. The first time he came in, he had gotten stares and cold shoulders. Aliens tended to be treated like second class citizens by most humans they worked with, so they didn't normally socialize outside of work. Even Slick had treated him coldly that time, and the subsequent ones too.

It took around two weeks of Alex coming to the bar every evening for the barman to finally ask why he bothered. Alex hadn't dare tell the truth, how watching aliens move around sent a sexual shiver down his spine. How all he wanted to do was run his hands down the barman's chest.

Instead he'd said that he wanted to get to know the other races better. Slick hadn't immediately warmed up to him after that, the barman kept observing him, waiting for him to do something that would give him a reason to throw him out, but Alex was always polite and friendly around the other customers. Over the following weeks they would talk a little each time he was at the counter and slowly they became friends. With Slick being friendly toward him the others started warming up too, and it wasn't long after that he was treated like he was one of them.