Chapter 2- Home Sweet Home

  After completing the sale to Andrew, Jett started collecting insurance on his destroyed ship. He made a deal with the insurance company, letting them keep twenty thousand credits as long as he kept Angie. Then, seeing how many bits Layla took out of the ship, he headed to the scrap yard and paid the man a thousand creds for as much scrap metal as his exosuit could hold.

  Layla found it quite fun and wanted to join in. She found a decimated escape pod and started dragging it behind her. The man at the scrapyard laughed, seeing the tiny dragon dragging something twenty times its size, one inch at a time.

  Jett eventually convinced Layla to leave it for a nice piece of rebar to chew on. With Angie in one arm and a box of sheet metal in the other hand, he took the sky elevator planet-side.

  As they stood in the elevator, Layla licked her lips, staring at Angie’s core.

  “No, Layla, Angie is a friend. Not food.” Layla tilted her head in confusion as she wondered how a ball of scrumptious metal could be a ‘friend.’

  The sky elevator had windows allowing Jett and Layla to periodically view glimpses of their descent. As they entered the atmosphere, he heard a distant roar, and Layla bounded to the window. In the distance, a golden dragon soared through the sky over the city.

  Layla let out a few high-pitched ‘yips,’ and Jett was grateful the giant dragon did not decide to play with the little void dragon. Instead, it disappeared off into the distance. Layla’s tail wagged as she watched the dragon, and she didn’t take her eyes off the window until they were on the ground.

  Once on the ground, the gate opened, and people made way as the dragonling bounded forward, leading the way despite having no idea where she was going. Periodically, she looked back, correcting when Jett made a turn. Jett and Layla took a train and then walked another two miles to a small one-story two-bedroom house.

  Despite spending almost all his time in space, he could never sell the home he grew up in. The house his mom left him after she passed from cancer.

  After particularly perilous scavenger trips, he would come home to recoup for a week or so. No one else came to visit.

  He opened the door, and Layla skipped in. She ran into the middle of the floor and spun in a circle, taking everything in. Jett smirked and set down his luggage. Layla waltzed up, bit a piece of sheet metal, and started gnawing on it in the middle of the floor.

  “Stay here. I’m going to shower, but I’ll be right back.”

  He headed upstairs, showered, found a clean set of clothes, and headed back downstairs. He found Layla on her back, tongue lolling as she looked up at him.

  “You are just a bundle of energy.”

  “Yip!”

  Jett heated up an instant meal he kept stocked in the house and turned on the house computer. He would hook Angie up and install a few programs while he looked for a used Corvette he could buy. He also wanted to buy a second processor for Angie.

  He looked over at Layla, curled under the desk at his feet. He was going to need all the help he could get to monitor her.

  The next day, he brought Angie back online. The house was bare bones, not much for her to interact with, but he had four small drones she could pilot while the new programs installed.

  One of the drones flew up next to him, and the speaker thrummed, “I think I should warn you that Layla has entered the neighbor’s yard.”

  “What? How did she get out…”

  He looked to the front door and saw a dragon-shaped hole in the wall. Jett sighed as he got up and ran out the door.

  Fifteen minutes of fun-filled dragon chasing later, he was back in the den scanning for ship sales. A ding at the door pulled him out of his shopping.

  “Oh, I wonder if that is the processing core.”

  He opened the door to find three men in black suits with matching shades.

  “Mr. Knight?”

  “Yes?”

  “We are here on behalf of the Earth Federation. May we come in?”

  Jett cursed internally. He should have let Angie answer the door, but he was worried Layla might eat the processor if he left it out.

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  “I’m not sure. Do I want to let you in?”

  The man pointedly looked at the hole in Jett’s house.

  “I think you do.”

  Jett walked back inside. “Sit wherever you like.”

  Layla’s head popped up from inside a chair, where she had dug her way through the seat into the floor before curling up for a nap.

  “Well, anywhere except there.”

  “We appreciate you meeting with us, Mr. Knight. I am Agent Jones. With me are Agent Brown and Agent Williams.”

  Jett nodded, “Nice to meet you.”

  Agent Jones leaned forward, at ease, sitting in a chair across from Jett. The other agents crossed their arms and leaned against the wall, but every time Layla twitched, the agents perked up like they might bolt out the door.

  “Mr. Knight, it is no surprise that having a dragon is a small burden. The federation has assessed your case and is offering you a free scholarship to the College of Draconic Arts. Lodging, food, a small stipend, and all your draconic care needs will be provided for you while you attend.”

  Jett licked his lips, “What’s the catch?”

  “Well, you don’t really have a choice. As cute as she may be now, dragons, especially the space-faring kind that can grow up and rip apart battle cruisers for fun, can be a major asset or liability. The academy allows the federation to make sure new dragon riders learn the rules.”

  Jett cringed as he realized the Federation was now looking into him. He was probably in more than one database now.

  Agent Jones held out his hand. “It’s not all bad. It gives a space for you to learn and for Layla to grow. The family home is not the best place for a growing void dragon, and if you tried to keep up with her growing appetite, I can assure you that she will eat you into debt. Some of the bigger space dragons eat entire asteroids once a week.”

  Jett rubbed his hands together. “Ok, so I go to this academy and then what? What happens if I fail, or what happens if I graduate?”

  Agent Jones leaned back. “Let’s not focus on if you fail. If you graduate, you will have many offers of employment. The federation, the mutual defense force, research teams, or even salvaging companies would salivate at having a dragon rider. You could even start your own salvaging company AFTER.”

  Jett swallowed. “Right. Got it. So what is entailed in this college? I think I should know if failure comes with consequences I don’t want to focus on.”

  “Ah, it’s not that bad. A few classes on history, a few on law, and some time with experienced dragon riders on how to care for your companion. Most of the academy will be rich kids whose parents paved the way for their children to be dragon riders with money. It’s only the hopefuls that need to put in the extra work.”

  “Hopefuls?”

  “The college allows a few people to join as a way to ‘pad your resume.’ That way, if someone finds a spare egg and wants to get a top-tier rider, they can have someone already trained. Most don’t, but there are a few cases of the defense force or a company with too much money giving an egg in return for signing a hefty contract.”

  Jett looked at the floor, contemplating Agent Jone’s words. The academy sounded good. A place for Layla to grow for a few years, where he could learn more about what he needed to do to take care of her, and could continue looking for ships in the meantime. Unlike all the other kids growing up, he never had aspirations of being a dragon rider. Now though… He looked over at Layla, tongue bouncing as she watched him with a big grin.

  “Alright. I’ll do it.”

  “Good man! I have a ticket to the academy. Take it to the nearest space port, and they will get you there on the first ride.”

  “Spaceport, where is the academy?”

  “Low orbit. Need to be low enough for the sky dragons and high enough for the space dragons.”

  “Sky dragons? Space dragons?”

  “Don’t worry, kid, the academy will tell you everything you need to learn. The academy will reach out to the account you have been using for salvaging communications.”

  The corners of Jeff’s mouth pulled down as he thought about how much they already knew about him. He never had trouble with the federation or any of the other planetary governments, but he didn’t like how much attention he was attracting.

  “Perk up, the academy will be a cake walk.” Agent Jones and the other two agents headed out the door. As he left, Agent Jones added, “Just keep your head down, and none of the rich brats should bother you.”

  The next day, Jett sealed the hole Layla made and spent the day upgrading Angie. The core she was housed in was built for interfacing with a starship, but without the need to connect to dozens of systems, Jeff moved her to a smaller housing. The box was a one-foot by one-foot with a focus on upgrading. She could use up to ten processors, four times the processing memory, and enough memory sticks that he would never need to worry about how many programs he downloaded again.

  He shelled out for the memory and even bought a graphics unit so she could create high-resolution projections if she wanted, but left the processing memory and processors for later. He had seen a few videos of AI cores that were upgraded too fast. They tended to develop unpleasant personalities.

  He knew it would be a while before he bought a ship, so he wanted to get her ready to help him with college. He would house her in his room and give her a link to a small shoulder drone so she could help him record classes to study later. While Angie was going through final configurations and downloading a new host of programs, he started packing.

  Layla was already chewing through the sheet metal with gusto and starting to drool when she looked at Angie’s new housing core. Jett had to warn her three times not to eat Angie, and Layla was starting to make a game out of how close she could get before he caught her. He was fortunate that he had the bond and could sense her growing excitement as she was about to pounce, or Angie would be dragon baby food.

  On the morning of the third day of being home, he was packed and ready to go. He had a suitcase of clothes, a bag with the last two pieces of sheet metal to tide Layla over, and a backpack with six drones for college. Before heading out the door, he walked over to the cube.

  “Alright, Angie, time to wake up.”

  He pressed the power button and disconnected her from the home computer. The drone on his right shoulder whirred as Angie connected with it.

  “Time to head out to college.”