Jet sat on the ground outside the noodle place and slurped up their ‘Carnivore Special’ from a huge bowl. It was the best thing he’d ever eaten in his life. That was another thing that put Kor’s tales to a lie; he’d told Jet that all the food in space was horrible and fake.

  He didn’t even care that people walked past him like he was a rock in a river, or a bag of trash. They didn’t look at him and didn’t care, and he didn’t care about them. Nor did he care that the street was filthy or that his leg still hurt a little from the slaughterdog fight. He was having a great time, and he wished he could share it with Vorka.

  That made him grim. Old Vorka… he lowered the bowl and stared into thin air as he thought. By now the old man knew what had happened. By now he was busy with his workday, thinking about Jet. He knew the old man would be smiling.

  Jet had never gotten to ask Vorka how he’d become a slave. He’d always wanted to. “If I come back the world old man,” Jet said quietly to himself, “I will find you.”

  Sal stepped out of the shop and came to stand by his property. “Ah, that was good,” he said with appreciation.

  Jet hurried and finished the last gulp, standing and tossing the bowl toward the nearest garbage bin. It sucked the bowl up as it got close and even as the bowl was going in, Jet saw it shrink to almost nothing as it sparkled into atoms. He couldn’t help staring. He’d heard of such modern conveniences of course, but hadn’t really seen them in action. He wondered what else you could throw into a garbage bin…

  “First thing’s first, Jet,” said Sal. “I need to be able to communicate with you, and you need a proper ID. I’m going to be giving you a lot of responsibility, sending you on missions and trips. You’ll have to be able to act independently. That means a Stelnet Account.”

  The surge of excitement that roared through his chest made his heart leap. He tried not to show it too much, but Sal could guess. The human chuckled.

  “Never had an Account?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Come on, then.”

  The human led his enormous slave through crowds of otherworldly travelers, merchants, mercenaries, independent contractors, prospectors, and probably pirates.

  Ship’s crews were easy to spot: they tended to walk together in gangs, each distinctly marked by some unofficial and sometimes official uniform — the way they dressed, moved, walked, spoke was the same. You could tell who had lived far too close for far too long.

  Then there were the Bruskers. The first time Jet saw them he almost stopped to stare.

  A gang of feral halfbreeds, skinny and too bronze of skin for space dwellers, half-human and half-heranom. They were dressed toe to chin in black — a skintight suit that looked for all the world like leather. Strange. Primitive and yet advanced, in an alien way.

  They were the only known crossbreeding of human and heranom to have proven fertile and to have become a stable population. But because they were halfbreeds, they were welcome neither among the humans nor among the heranom.

  Sal noticed his stare. “Never seen Bruskers before? They’re everywhere here. Banta Sector is their favorite haunt. That and the Free Trade Zone of course.”

  Jet hesitated, then decided to test the limits of his new Master’s goodwill. Sal had told him he could speak up if he wanted to… “Sir, is it true that Bruskers have never set foot on a planet since their race began?”

  Sal watched the Bruskers in the crowd as they passed them by. “Well, yes and no. Yes, most Bruskers have never set foot on a planet. They live their whole life in space, from birth to death. But there’s always an exception to the rule — there’s two or three entire Clans of Bruskers that have permanently settled on a planet.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Rantanav…”

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  Even Jet had heard of Rantanav. He raised his brows. It was a rebel world, constantly at war with the Alliance of Worlds. Just the name Rantanav was synonymous with terrorism. “I didn’t know the Rantanav were Brusker.”

  “They were, and they started the rebellion against the Alliance,” Sal informed him. “Then there’s Clan Brusker itself, which lives on Orreal. They abandoned space three hundred years ago, to the last man. And I think… oh,” he laughed a his forgetfulness. “Who can forget that one! Clan Lartha!”

  “Kumbis Lartha?”

  “See, even a slave from Banta has heard of the Lartha! Yes. Kumbis Lartha used to be a Clan of the Brusker Nation, but they left the Nation to take control of Matrodonosian and become the biggest smuggler port in the galaxy.”

  “So basically Bruskers which leave deep space all go rogue.”

  Sal chuckled. “I guess you could say that. Although I hear Clan Brusker runs a number of large and respectable businesses on Orreal and would take umbrage at that remark.”

  His human led Jet through vast halls, some two and three stories tall, echoing with activity. They came eventually to a storefront filled with flashy holohaptic displays showing off the tiniest of wares: a single earring here, a ring there, an amulet that looked like a carved drop of gemstone.

  Each was a cryscomputer.

  In the back was a broad, tasteful counter manned by eager-looking salespersons. They all gave their attention to Sal as he caught their eyes and smiled.

  “Do you service slaves?” He asked.

  “With proof of ownership, sir,” said a dapper young man immediately.

  “Highlight the standard tier for us, will you?”

  “Immediately sir.”

  Sal turned and gestured to Jet. “Go pick something out.”

  Jet felt breathless as he turned to look at the store. To his vision, it appeared as if over half of the items on display went dark; only the cheaper items remained lit.

  But even a cheap cryscomputer was still just that… a window into freedom. A window that Jet had dreamed of all of his life but had never seen.

  He moved quickly into the store, scanning the items which were left. Jewelry, bracelets, tail rings, every kind of body adornment.

  One caught his eye immediately: an ivory fang earring. He smiled as he walked toward it to consider it.

  “Good choice,” he heard Sal say. “Now come here.”

  Obediently, Jet returned and sat in the chair they told him to — the big one at the end of the row.

  The humans had to step up onto stools to get high enough to comfortably work on his eyes. They put a ring-like helm over his head which covered his eyes, and told him to stare at the blue dot.

  With a flash, Jet felt something touch his eyeballs. Before he could blink it was over.

  He got up out of the chair a bit disoriented, blinking until his eyes watered.

  “Don’t rub them,” Sal ordered him as he raised his arm to do just that. Jet obeyed and put his arm down. “You just received corneal implants. They’ll be healed totally within four hours, but don’t rub them.”

  Then Sal took a box from the salesman, opened it, and drew out the fang earring. It looked big in the human’s hand, but when he gave it to Jet it looked maybe the size of a normal earring.

  “Put that on and tell me if it hooks up.”

  Jet touched the earring to his right earlobe, and it stuck. Immediately he gasped; his vision was suddenly invaded by glowing lines, circles, and bullseyes which swam around as if measuring the space around him until they settled into the center of his vision, and flashed into nonexistence.

  Then there appeared a single glowing sentence hanging in the air, in the human language, which said:

  ‘Welcome to Stelnet. Please speak your name.’

  “Jet Kurtora,” he said quietly.

  The words in the air turned into the iconic Stelnet symbol and flipped around, and scattered to the edges of his vision.

  There, all around him framing his vision, he saw icons appear. The date and time… a mail symbol… every sort of portal to information and communication that he could ever want. Jet grinned.

  “You got it, big guy?” Sal asked.

  “Yes, sir. I think so.”

  “You can set it up later. Let me make sure it works.” He glanced to the side, and in a second the mail icon in Jet’s vision shimmered and politely lifted a flag.

  He glanced at it, but nothing happened.

  “How do you… make it…” Jet grumbled as he frowned and stared at the mailbox.

  The young salesman chuckled. “He’s never used Stelnet before?”

  “First time,” Sal confirmed.

  “Use your will,” the young man said. “Actually you’re using your brain, but what you need to do is will it to open. Push it with your brain, basically.”

  Jet frowned, and willed it. Tried to force it. And then when he got a little mad, suddenly it worked.

  The mailbox let escape, like a bird, a message which unfolded like a paper floating in the air a few feet before him. It was Sal’s contact information.

  “Accept that, and save it to your contacts,” Sal told him.

  “Um… how?”

  “Talk to the cryscomputer,” the salesman suggested. “Until you do some tutorials on Stelnet basics, like how to control your HUD, just talk to it and tell it what to do.”

  “Computer, save the contact,” Jet ordered it out loud, not sure who or what he was actually speaking to, and to his surprise the paper flew up into a folder in the top left of his vision and settled there.

  “There,” Sal said with satisfaction. “Now we have communication. Now we can do business.” He snapped with delight, and gestured to the door. “Come on, Jet. We have a liner to catch.”

  “Another starliner, sir?”

  “Yes. We’re going home.”

  Jet followed, raising his brows. “Where is home, sir?”

  “You’ll see. But we’re going to make a stop or two along the way. Ever been to Matrodonosian?” Sal glanced back with a sly grin and was rewarded by a very surprised look on Jet’s face.