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Tristan attracted stares as he walked back to the motel. This one was in a smaller city, one less used to aliens. He would have preferred a large population center, but until he knew where the fabricator had gone he didn't want to move too far from its point of origin.

He'd covered himself with a jacket to hide the most distinctive feature of his fur. He could have covered most of his head, but that would have attracted as much attention, and he wanted to be able to hear someone following him. As it was, this was the fourth circuit he walked around the neighborhood and there was no indication that Baran's men had followed them.

He didn't want to deal with them until he'd destroyed the fabricator, that was the priority.

He entered the single room they were staying in. Alex was at the desk, coercing his way into the security company that handled the Telrize Complex. He closed the door quietly, although he didn't need to bother, when Alex was this focused nothing short of shaking him would draw his attention.

Tristan didn't like that aspect, it left the human vulnerable. He'd tried to change it, to get the human to remain aware of his surroundings when he coerced systems, but it had become clear that he'd had a choice to make. He could have a master coercer working for him who was extremely focused, or one that was aware of his surroundings but whose work was slow and sub-par.

Tristan didn't keep anything that was sub-par, so he'd learned to accept this aspect to the human and made sure coercing was kept to situations that minimized Alex's exposure.

Alex said something, his voice low. He'd asked a question, by the tone, but Tristan hadn't made it out. It wasn't for him so it didn't matter. Unlike with the earpiece he used to have, his implant picked up bone vibration in his skull, so he no longer had to speak in a conversational tone. Tristan had even caught him subvocalizing a few times, although Alex hadn't been aware of it when asked afterward.

Tristan took a nutrient bar out of his pack and sat down to wait. Until Alex was done, there was nothing else to do.

He watched his human enter commands as he spoke, his hands moving fast to guide him through the system. He knew the motions, Tristan was an expert programmer so he had done something similar multiple times before, but the speed at which Alex could move through it to find the ideal place to add or remove code was astonishing. He could use the system's voice, its words and intonation as a map through it.

Until Alex, Tristan had scoffed at the idea of having a conversation with a system he needed to break into. They were artificial intelligence so he had believed there was nothing he could learn by doing that. Now he wondered how much more efficient he might have been if he'd taken the time to learn how to coerce.

He'd gotten Alex to explain exactly what he did, and what he perceived, and he'd reached the conclusion that it was a lot like how he read people, having learned ample psychology to identify behaviors and ticks and gain insight into his target through them.

He could learn to do that. It probably wouldn't even take him long. He was a fast learner and he had a strong programming base already. If he wanted to, he could get rid of Alex.

Maybe if he'd made this realization early in their partnership he would have. But he'd spent all these years shaping him, honing the human's edge to a lethal level. To get rid of him now would turn all that time into a waste, not to mention the time he would also have to spend now to bring himself up to the human's level.

He would have to sacrifice research time for that. Yes, learning a new skill was a joy in and of itself, but it didn't match dissecting a new invention to figure out its limitations.

Tristan found himself smiling. They did make a good pair. He could take apart and rebuild anything physical and Alex could get any computer or information system to do his bidding. The only thing left were people and both of them could cut them down when needed. Or if they needed to use them Tristan could handle it. Alex had picked up tricks, but he couldn't maintain anything resembling a proper mask for any length of time.

He remained there watching him work, then headed for a shower. He no longer got annoyed at how long coercing could take. He'd known, even back then that Alex was faster then he was, but to stand around and wait had been hard. Tristan preferred doing, he didn't feel the passage of time quite as acutely then, but now he used the time more productively. He'd run a few security sweeps of the area. Once he was done with the shower he'd do research, neither things he could have done on his own.

* * * * *

It was an hour after his shower that Alex grew silent. Without even thinking about it, Tristan reached into a pack to pull a bottle and handed it to him. Alex grabbed it without looking and drained it in one long swallow.

"Okay, so we missed them by a month, the good news is that based on how they're dressed, they aren't mercs."

Tristan didn't comment. He'd already mentioned what they would be, but this was how Alex worked. He went through everything; over ever angles of the problem. There was very little he missed when it came to analyzing a problem. Tristan respected that.

"I also didn't find any indication a fabricator has been sold on the black market or that someone is looking to sell one, so it's still local."

Tristan tilted an ear in acknowledgment. That was something he hadn't considered, that after procuring it the gang would have sold it off for profit, not seeing the long-term profit of keeping it.

Instead of being annoyed at having missed that, he felt pride that Alex had thought of it.

"How did they get in?"

Alex brought up a view from outside the warehouse. "Basically the same way we did, but they used an access door on the north end of the building." The view showed a group of thirty waiting along the wall while one was unlocking the door.

There was something odd about how they looked. "Why are they fuzzy? I can just make them out."

"I had to reconstruct their presence from the artifacts left over by their coercionist. His program was nowhere as good as mine. I'm surprised no one noticed what was going on."

He entered a command and they were now inside the warehouse. "As you can expect they spread out. It doesn't look like they knew where they were going. My guess is that someone realized there were voids in the index and sold that information to a gang for quick money. I'd be surprised if a Gang's coercionist had the kind of knowledge to look at an index and work out the details. That requires knowledge of corporate methods," Alex explained.

Another change of scene and Tristan straightened. He watched as first two people, then all of them, came to something that was clearly a fabricator, although it was much larger than he'd expected. This was industrial size. Since it was dedicated, if it only contained the material needed to assemble the virus, there would be enough to cover a planet. They hadn't been kidding around with their desire to infect the entire universe.

The only thing that kept Tristan from outright panicking was the knowledge that after over thirty objective years, the organic materials contained in the fabricator would be unusable. These people couldn't accidentally make the virus and release it.

If they were able to work out what it had been designed to do, and went with that instead of reprogramming it to make drugs they would still have to acquire the materials.

"Any indication they acquired whatever they'll need to make the virus?"

"Unless you were able to get me a list of its component while I wasn't looking, I can't tell you that. What I can tell you is that there's been an increase in purchasing of base chemicals by half a dozen companies planet-wide. There's also been an increase in theft of the same chemicals, so the reasonable assumption is that the increase if buying them is to fill the void caused by the theft, except that the orders came first."

"Those companies are in league with the gang."

"Or gangs. Like I said they're spread around the planet, so it would be hard for just one gang to do this. But yes. They buy, then claim theft, the insurance pay them back for the loss and they pocket a profit from what the gangs paid them. There's also been a drop in prices of a few high-end drugs, which implies an increase in the supply."

"Or a drop in manufacturing cost. Either of which points to the fabricator having been converted from a virus maker to a drug maker."

"Can you work out who stole the chemicals?"

"No, at least not with anything resembling certainty. The Law systems are self-contained here. I mean they are paranoid about it. They won't even leave a connection open to off-planet Law offices."

Tristan smiled.

"What?"

"They have a history of having been victims of coercion attacks."

Alex narrowed his eyes. "You've been attacking them? Why?"

"No, not me. Over the last decade or so a lot of mercs and bounty hunters have wanted something they had." He found it amusing that Alex didn't seem to realize he'd been the one to set it off when he'd made his way into their system and taken the list of Tristan's old hideouts that had been compiled.

"But it was about you, wasn't it?"

Tristan nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me? I could have gotten in and erased whatever it was. What if they had gotten it?"

Tristan didn't immediately reply. How he'd felt at Alex's outburst had caught him off guard. It wasn't his usual pride at having shaped Alex into someone who would sacrifice anything for him.

No, what he'd felt was warmth. He'd been touched that Alex would have been willing to do that for him. He clamped down on the emotion and hardened his face.

"I'm not without my own skills. I can take care of this things myself."

"That's not what I meant. I just--"

"Remember your place, Alex," Tristan growled. "You do what I tell you, nothing else."

"Of course, but--"

"Do not question my decisions."

Alex searched his face. "I'm not I--" he shut up.

Good. Alex was a tool, nothing more. "But if you really need to know, you were busy being honed while this was happening."

Alex nodded. His eyes clouded over slightly, but he hadn't gotten sick at the memory of those massacres in a long time.

Tristan stood. He needed to distance himself from the human for a time. "See if you can trace which gang committed the theft. I'm going to go find some dealers to question about where the influx of drugs are coming."

He turned and walked out with the image of Alex's hurt expression staying with him. He realized he'd just told him to do something Alex had already said he couldn't. He'd slipped and Alex had caught it.

It didn't matter, how the human felt didn't matter. He was only a tool, a weapon for Tristan to use.