Jet woke feeling like he was sleeping on a cloud.

  He rolled over and sighed, and his wing bumped into the bed. Slowly one yellow eye peeled open and he let his blurry vision focus; the time hovered in the air to his left, where Keeri had put it last night.

  Seven AM. Past time to get up and figure out how to get to the starport. Shit, he was going to be late if he didn’t hurry!

  He roused himself from the floor. He’d been sleeping on the carpet — a thousand times more comfortable than the concrete bench the slavers had given him, and to him even more comfortable than the rubber-lined starliner floor he’d slept on during the last week or so of travel.

  He’d tried the bed at first, but it was far too soft. He couldn’t get comfortable and hated how it sagged and creaked under his weight, plus it was just short enough that he couldn’t stretch his legs out, so he’d given up on that.

  He wasn’t a weak human needing all that cushioning, after all.

  Keeri was not visibly present, which relieved Jet. Yes she was hot. Yes she was interesting, smart, and could be funny. But she was still fake… and he just didn’t want to get too attached. He needed her help constantly right now and she knew it, so he was trying to spend as much time without her as possible.

  Jet stood with his joints popping and his back cracking, and stretched four different ways. Since he’d stopped daily manual labor he’d become stiff as an old man, and everything hurt. He was healing, he knew; he’d been healing for the last week and was still healing after decades of physical abuse and untreated pain. He was only in his twenties but the life of a slave had aged him by decades.

  Once he was limber enough to move, he admired the room again. A real hotel room! The luxury that surrounded him impressed him though it would be considered plain and dull to the average Ganic citizen.

  How fortune had smiled upon him! It frankly made him nervous. The Ancestors had suddenly lifted the curse that had weighed so heavily upon him all of his life… but what did they expect in return? Nothing was ever given without expectation of payment. He would have to think about this. If he did not please them, he knew they would land him with a much worse fate than the one he’d escaped.

  He pulled on the new suit, put on the cuffs and rings and ornaments, and grinned at himself in the room’s floor-length mirror. He looked amazing.

  The controls for the suit hovered around somewhere over his right shoulder. With a glance (he was getting much better at controlling the UI) he made it come forward so he could see it, and changed the general color of the suit to a rich deep blue a few shades lighter than his scales. He made the jewelry all shift to gold-toned. He was so impressed by the effect that he took a holo of himself.

  First self-holo. ‘This is me,’ he thought, looking at the recording. ‘Jet on his first day of work, more or less. This is where I start.’

  But where would he end up? What holos would he be taking in a year, ten, fifty?

  He filed the holo away and searched the room one last time for anything he might have left. He had very little so there was nothing.

  Exiting the hotel room he headed down the lift to the street, and out into the strange wet-stone smelling cool air of Matrodonosian’s crater. There was a faint sound of thunder, and to his astonishment a tiny patter of rain fell. He looked up. The crater was so huge it had formed a few little layers of cloud in the top and it was actually raining!

  He watched the other pedestrians shudder and cringe at the moisture in the air, and it finally occurred to Jet that the water falling from this atmosphere was probably contaminated with the Ancestors knew what. He got out of the drizzle before he thought about calling a taxi for the first time.

  Stumped, he called Keeri instead.

  She stepped out from behind him looking just as sharp as he did; his personal assistant for the day. She was even carrying a little tablet folder with a shiny gold stylus.

  ‘Good morning, boss! Are we thinking about how to get to the Starport?’

  “Yes we are, and we need a taxi.”

  ‘Good move. Calling one now. And since I know you hate the standard type, I’m taking the liberty of calling one of the Covered cars. Planet-yokels tend to like them better.’

  “You’re starting to get flippant.”

  ‘You wouldn’t want me any other way.’ She looked up, and moments later a nicer, larger, and slower version of the ubiquitous taxi settled into the causeway before him. It opened its door and a polite voice announced, ‘Welcome to Jade Skies Transport. You are headed to the Main Port this morning, sir?’

  “This is expensive, isn’t it,” he said accusingly to Keeri.

  ‘It’s only a few deion more. Come on, sunshine, lets go!’ Her hologram got into the sedan ahead of him.

  He sighed and followed. She was right; he liked it better. It rankled him somehow to know that from now on he’d be calling limousines.

  Keeri handled all the details, for his sake talking to the robotic limo out loud. She directed it to the correct Pier in the Main Port (which was enormous) having already contacted Master Sal for the address on her own initiative.

  Jet thought about that as they flew over the sprawling space city, frowning. He made a decision. “Keeri.”

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  “From now on you don’t contact anyone on my behalf. I sign off on everything. You got that?”

  She looked surprised. ‘Of course, sir. I apologize, I thought—’

  “I know. You’re just being efficient. But I’ve been a slave since I was a kid. I want as much control over my life now as I can get. And I’m not taking orders from an Artificium, I’m sorry.”

  She gave him a forbearing look. ‘I completely understand, sir. Preferences saved. From now on, all activity on this account will be passed by you. I warn you though, that means certain things will be delayed—’

  “I don’t care. I want to see it before it gets charged to me or sent to anyone under my name.”

  ‘Absolutely, sir.’ She grew meekly quiet. She could sense when he wanted a little breathing room.

  Jet watched the city through the windows in silence. It was impressive — the scale of this place. Millions of people, trillions of deion in business and transactions, built on a dead world that had been colonized thousands of years ago, from what he’d heard. Keeri had told him a bit about it the night before over dinner.

  The Heranom, not the humans, had first discovered this planetoid back before humanity had even figured out how to leave their solar system. Of course once the humans had arrived they’d pretty much taken over… they did that with everything.

  He considered asking Keeri to continue her history of Matrodonosian, but decided against it. Later. Right now he wanted to be autonomous for just a few minutes.

  The Main Port was in its own small crater, connected to the city crater by a massive tunnel that had been bored through the solid stone cliff between them. That tunnel was reached by an enormous, ancient gate in the Heranom Imperial style; built back before humans had conquered anything.

  Pieces, hints of the ancient Heranom Empire were everywhere… the crumbling ruins of a Temple on the crater slope… a doorway here, a gate there, a tunnel, an ancient stone-carved sign in strange runes, almost worn away by time. He knew the Heranom had been in space long before Humans. He wondered how the humans had taken everything over.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Heranom were still around of course, but they could hardly be called an Empire anymore. Most of them stayed on Gald, their homeworld, and didn’t leave.

  The limo sedan flew through the connecting tunnel to the Main Port just as the sun rose. When they emerged into the Port Crater, the red light of the dwarf star hit them and spilled over everything like liquid copper. It made it all beautiful.

  The sun was huge on the eastern horizon, a broad curve of vivid crimson. It never rose more than a handsbreadth; that great, red arc just rotated around the horizon until it got to the west, then it went down again. He’d heard that the side of the planet actually facing the sun was too hot even for crater cities.

  They landed at the head of the Pier where he was to meet Sal, and as Jet stepped out of the sedan he looked up. The enormous crater dome soared overhead, cast golden in the slanting light, the trash of centuries frozen to its surface glittering like red gold sparks. Above that thousands of ships hung on great vertical dock piers like fruit from trees, or drifted here and there docking or leaving. Above that space was full of moving stars, all of the traffic of three hundred worlds coming here to make shady deals. Matrodonosian was dirty but glorious.

  “There you are!”

  Jet turned to see his Master headed his way looking cheery.

  “Well, look at you! Now that’s a transformation. I’m impressed, Jet.” Sal walked all the way around him, looking him over. “I’m going to have to dress up a little to match!” he joked.

  Jet felt a touch abashed. Sal himself wore a more understated suit, no particular jewels or ornaments except his ever-present cryscomputer ear cuff and his plain ID ring. He wore a nice suit of course, but it was simple.

  “Sorry, sir. I’ll—”

  Sal laughed and slapped him on the back. “Oh, no. I expected you to go a little crazier actually. You’re fine. Good choice for the suit; it’s modular right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No problem then. You can dial it back for more formal meetings and pull out the stops for the richer customers. It’s actually perfect. Dress it up or dress it down. I like it. Good taste. Now come on; we don’t want to keep the good Captain waiting.”

  With that, Sal led the way toward the Pier. They followed a stream of other pedestrians onto a moving walkway that ran down the center of it, standing still as it carried them past dock after dock, some loading or offloading cargoes using heavy equipment and hover barges.

  “This morning you get the privilege of meeting one of Makardian’s true treasures; our best ship Captain. I commandeered her a couple of years ago and now I commission her whenever I can. She happens to be free right now so we are in luck! She’s been working out of Matro for years, so she knows the area. In every way.” He chuckled at some inside knowledge as he watched the cargo loading on the pier with greed in his eyes. “Honestly, we’re a side-gig for her. We’re her day job.”

  “Day job?” Jet looked at the passing cargo loading as well. He was willing to bet money she was a pirate on the side. By the Ancestors, he was going to get a ride on a pirate ship…?

  Sal stepped off of the moving conveyance at Berth Tower Six, and they followed more foot traffic to the bank of lifts that headed up into the soaring dock pylon overhead. Jet clenched his wings tight against his back as he stepped onto the lift disk behind Sal, and he gripped the handrails hard. The lift took off but thankfully it had gravity compensation, so it didn’t leave his stomach behind too badly.

  The elevator paused on every level, and Sal got off on level four. He led Jet down a much smaller (but still reasonably huge) walkway suspended above the planet to an airlock where three crew members were sitting and waiting on the utility pedestals and receptacles which flanked the door. One was smoking a space cig. When they saw Sal coming they stood and faced them; the woman among them gave a sketchy salute and a lopsided smile.

  She was clearly Brusker; half-human, half-heranom, with the elongated oval ears and bridgeless nose of the Heranom, but with human coloring. She also had four, not five, fingers on both hands like a Heranom.

  She was dressed in a full ‘life skin,’ an expensive space suit built to be worn 24/7, comfortable enough to sleep in, self-cleaning and self-repairing. It was black and skin tight from chin to toes. Over that she wore a cropped ex-military Alliance surplus jacket, cargo pants, tool harnesses, and a pistol belt with a hefty looking ‘Brusker blaster’ on each hip.

  Her crew were dressed similarly. There was a certain roguishness to their appearance, a non-uniformity, a punk aesthetic, which somehow screamed ‘pirate’ to Jet. He also wondered at how young they were. The Captain couldn’t be much older than himself, her crew looked like teenagers.

  “Captain Talor!” Sal greeted the woman, gripping her forearms in an affectionate if formal-casual manner. She returned it.

  “Sal, good to see you again. Sorry your vacation had to be cut short.”

  “Oh, no. It’s fine. I admit I was enjoying the rest, but I met someone very interesting while I was there.” He turned to Jet. “Captain Lidas, meet Jet. Jet, this is Captain Lidas Talor of the Sanctuary Five. The best freebooter in Matro.”

  She laughed self-consciously. “First, I’m no freebooter. Pirates and Smugglers are two different animals, Mister Sal. I’m certainly no pirate and the Sanctuary is no battleship. And best? That’s a stretch. If I even get on the Lists, I’m at the bottom.”

  “She’s good,” Sal assured Jet with pride. “She handles the bulk of our exports, and her ship is fast. But nevermind all that; that’s above your pay grade.” He turned to the Captain. “Has Dan gotten with you?”

  “Yes, sir. He wants the Deshal situation taken care of immediately.” She clearly wanted to say more, but not in the open.

  “Right. Let’s go.”

  The airlock opened, and the three crew walked through, followed by Sal, and last by Jet.

  He’d been busy while they talked staring through the small dock windows at the ship they were about to board. It was huge… not as huge as some along the airway, but huge to him.

  It was bigger than a building, a stretch of dark gray stone-like stuff that didn’t look metal and didn’t look concrete. The ship was shaped differently than those down the pier; more organic somehow, smoother, with no obvious engines. Instead it had bulbs and protrusions he couldn’t identify. But what did he know about starships?

  The airlock cycled them through quickly, one by one, scanning them for contaminates and giving them a quick bacteria sweep or whatever else it did. Then when Jet walked through the other side, through a shimmering blue glowing wall of cold plasma, he felt the difference in atmosphere. It hit his body; the air felt lighter, very cold, very artificial. He could feel the walkway below his feet sway with every step; it was retractable and flimsy. Even gravity was a bit weak. And outside, all around him separated by a thin membrane, was utter death — vacuum pressing around him. A hollow, hungry sort of feeling.

  He suddenly felt very uncomfortable wearing nothing but a business suit and understood why the whole crew wore lifeskins. It felt a little hard to breathe, but that was probably stress.

  Once he passed into the actual ship and stood in its main hallway, he felt a little better. But not much. The ship was small; cramped, the ceiling too low for him. He had to stoop.

  “So you saw Ekar Vaugn?” Lidas was asking Sal as Jet joined them.

  “Yah, just last night. Seems the Circles are keeping him busy.”

  She looked regretful. “Damn bastard. I’m still mad at him.”

  “He used to be part of your crew, didn’t he?”

  “He was my third in command, my technologist. Best one I ever had, and I’m still furious at him for getting a new job.”

  “Didn’t the Twin Circles basically steal him from you?”

  “They made him a job offer he couldn’t refuse.” She shrugged. “Long story. Has to do with a bungled mission.” Then she noticed the Bantan shifting uncomfortably, trying to keep his horns from hitting the light fixtures. “Sorry, Jet,” the Captain said, “I’ve got a spot set up for you in the upper hold. This way.”

  She led him down the broad main hall to a large central lift. Sal followed along. The three of them were elevated into another chamber above which had nice high fifteen foot ceilings and a good bit of space; it was a gray-painted cargo hold, industrial, scuffed and dented with use, but roomy enough.

  Most of the cargo bays were crammed full to the front with crates and cargo pods, but one had been left empty.

  “I apologize for the roughness of the accommodation,” Lidas told him, looking to the empty cargo bay. Inside a rectangular area separated by side-walls from the rest of the bay was a large cot, a large size folding table and chair, and an empty used cargo pod chest open and waiting for whatever luggage he felt like putting into it. There was even a nice new extra-sized blanket folded on the cot for him.

  Jet smiled and went to inspect the quarters. They’d installed a curtain screen that could close over the front of the bay, making it into a little room. He approved, and turned back to the Captain with a nod. “It’s very good. Thank you.”

  “Excellent. You’ll be comfortable here. Get settled in Jet, we’ve got a couple things to check off before we head out, but we’ll be departing within the hour. You’ll have stelnet for a couple of days I think before we leave the system…?” He glanced at the Captain.

  “A day or so, yah. We jump earlier than most. Don’t worry it’s safe.” Her smile wasn’t terribly reassuring.

  “You know you’re not supposed to leap to interstellar speeds before exiting a system…” he said it a little jokingly but he was clearly worried, and Jet had to wonder how well his Master really knew these ‘not pirates.’

  “We don’t use standard human-tech propulsion systems, Mister Salmela.” The Captain crossed her arms, using a patient tone. “This is a Brusker-built ship. It’s fine.”

  Sal winced a little, but had to nod and go with her. He was in her hands now.

  They left Jet there to his own devices and descended the lift; then he was alone in the little cargo bay with a whole lot of boxes and no windows.

  Keeri stepped out from behind him and smiled at him. ‘Exciting times! Heading out on your first small vessel trip! Mine too honestly.’

  “I guess I’ll do a little research,” Jet said thoughtfully as he tried out the folding chair and little table. They were comfortable enough, and just the right height for him, though the chair creaked a tiny bit.

  ‘Name the subject, and I’ll bring up everything you could possibly wish for. Remember we’ve got a little cash, and Sal’s removed most of the restrictions on your Account. You can do what you want.’ She winked.

  “What I need is education.” Jet laced his fingers together on the table before him. “Tell me about Matrodonisian smugglers. Especially Brusker ones.”

  Keeri just laughed, a little bit like a bad guy. ‘Oh, boy,’ she said with appreciation and sat opposite him at the table in her own holographic chair, grinning. ‘Where shall I begin.’ She cracked her knuckles with anticipation and opened her main Stelnet interface like a starmap dome filling the cargo bay.