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The first chapter.

Homebase Orbital Station, Planet Phentralka, 0600 Hours

To put is simply, Phentralka is a dump. It's a gas giant, which happens to have something seriously radioactive in its atmo-composure, something that makes orbital colonies a really bad idea, unless you want your kids to have six fingers and three eyes.

Because of this, its a place where the Greart Empire of Humanity dumps all of the refuse that they can't reuse, including people like me.

What happens is this: ships from all over GEH controlled space come in and dump their load, so it's in the gravity well of Phentralka, but only so it doesn't drift away. All the trash is tagged with beacons that tell the workers what they need to check out, to see if theres anything worthwhile there for salvage. If there is, they extract it, then detag it. If there isn't, they go straight to the detagging.

This sort of work is shitty as hell, because first off, nothing's worse than working in space. You get awful cabin-fever from living on a station like we do, and then you get flushed out an airlock, with only a thin layer of plexiglass seperating your face from oblivion. I'll admit, I though EVA work was kind of nice at first, until you remember that evey movement is one that could accidently send you off into empty space. No one chooses this work willingly, when they could get jobs with much better pay that are easier planet-side. But most of us aren't paid, and most of us didn't choose it.

There's two groups at the Phentralka Station: the cons and the furs.

See, the GEH decided that places like Phentralka were a great place for convicts to serve a sentence: they basically already had prison like security because of the furs, and it was remote, out of the way, and terrible work.

So, there's us furs, and the criminals. Despite being in the same boat, we don't get along to well. Mostly we just ignore one another. But then, you have things like the fur and the human who got partnered up searching for salvage on an carrier, when, while they were making their way through this big stretch of partially blown-open corridor, the con just decides to boot the fur out into open space, where either you drift until your suit either runs out of oxygen or temp-fluids, or you get caught in Phentralka's gravitational pull, where you get juiced like a lime.

So, there you have it. Crappy, menial labor, hate crimes, and no hope. That's what the anthro children taken from earth had to look forward to.

I woke up, as always, with the soft, blue glow of Phentralka shining into my quarters. I peered around, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

It was a white, pristine room, that was pretty bare, with only my bed, a small kitchen, a smaller sofa, a coffee table, and the bathroom.

I was lucky to have the commodity of my own room, which I had won through good behavior. The human overseers of the Phentralka operation rewarded furs who behaved obediently and subserviently (in other words, their image of a fur) with commodities.

I dressed into my uniform, a blue, one-piece jumpsuit that was made of baggy nylon. It was the only thing I wore, other than two small accesories: my father's cross (which they had allowed me to take in), and a small, copper wristband, which had, engraved into it,

Valkir, Joseph; Worker #5470; Age 16; Expected Discharge Time: N/A

They gave out new ones every year because of aging, and if the discharge time changed. Most people's read N/A, and most stayed like that until the day they died, at which point, if it was a human, they'd send the body home, and if it was a fur...into the airlock!

After washing my face in the sink in the bathroom, I looked into the mirror.

Staring back at me was the tall, sixteen year old wolf who had survived the war, grief, love, heartbreak, prison, and now this. I remembered what had lead me to the shuttle that took me here...

"Well, son," the warden said, as they returned my meager possesions, "it really only boils down to two choices. You can go to a furs-only prison, where you'll be hangin' out with others of your kind, where they'll probably let you hold onto that cross of yours, where the conditions aren't great, but at least you're not having the shit beaten out of you every few days."

I swung the cross before my eyes, acting like I was ignoring him.

"Or," the warden said, "there's this new government program where you'll get actual work. Can't say it's great - zero-g salvage, from what I hear, but there's some people who make it out and have normal lives, furs too."

He stood up and walked behind me, placing his hands on the back of my chair, making my ears twitch.

"It boils down this, son," he said. "Do you want to have a safe place among your own kind for the rest of your life, or do you want to go somewhere where you'll have to work, but if you're as polite as I know you can be with those who treat you the way they should, then you might get a decent life after all? So...what's it going to be?"

I had known from the moment he told me about the second option...

In the bathroom, I inspected myself in the mirror. My red and black fur had somewhat lost its sheen from years of work, and only three showers a week (water on the Phentralka station was limited, so they only rarely gave out the commodity of bathing), but really, I wanted to see the eyes.

My green eyes were still bright and intelligent, two sparkling emeralds that years of labor had never, would never be able to dull. They were my father's eyes, I had been told.

I was interrupted by the sound of the intercom.

"Workers 1 through 6000 report to cafeteria for breakfast hour from 0630 through 0700 hours."

The cool female voice repeated the message twice more, before going silent. I made my way from my quarters out into the hall, which was dimly lit by fluorescent lights. It was lined with the doors to other quarters.

The cafeteria was quiet, because, as usual, no one was really sure if they would come back. Now, it's not what it sounds like - people usually come back - but, well, it's space work...and not everyone makes it. Sometimes, they'll forget to get their radiation-immunizination medicine beforehand, or they'll just slip...and be lost. Either way, it's not as dangerous as you might think, but a lot less safe than the general public is lead to believe.

After a quick breakfast, we all went to the prep room. There, we suited up, and then they sent us out the airlocks in groups of five.

The first few seconds in zero-g is always a little bit rough, as everything about you floats around, and there's always that chance of being sick in your suit, which, let me tell you, I've done once or twice, and it's awful.

Work started quickly. We had a big old satellite to dismantle, which we did, using plasma torches to melt through the metal like it was hot butter.

Parts of the satellite were usable, like the old plasma battery that could power a large city for about two weeks, and the sat's onboard Artificial Intelligence, which, it should be noted, good AIs are impossible to come by, so even the most damaged are still considered priceless. This one was in good condition, the only damage superficial.

There were other things too, things that the company controlling the Phentralka Station, IWM (Imperial Waste Management), wasn't actually looking for.

Over the years of salvage and repair, we had gotten quite familiar with the inner workings of many electronics, and, from spare parts, could remake some of the things. There were radios, telephones, internet to computers, and even, in rare cases, working televisions.

The officials of IWM knew about this, of course, often saw workers come back in laden with junk, but they didn't care all that much, especially since some benefited, such as when a moonshine still had been constructed. Unfortunately for them, that bit of machinery was destroyed after being discovered when some of the alcohol seeped back into the purification system it was pumping from, and, when the samplers realized what was going on, they were on the look out for something like that.

There's a lunch break after the morning shift, and then we went back out into the space walk. We had to eat everything with a pill that dulled the side effect of intense nausea when returning to the artifial gravity environment from space, or risk losing it in our suits.

By dinner, everyone was exhausted. Yet, this was just another day of menial labor, because, after years of doing it, we had gotten used to it, not questioning it at all. After all, this was just another day with the short end of the stick.

They turn off all the lights at nine, but that's okay, because if you want to read one of the bland mysteries they provide at the "library", it's easy to do by planet light.

When I woke up the next morning, I knew something was different. Knew it even before the long, sleek cruiser that was such an extreme shade of black that it seemed to absorb light glided past the window.

Things were about to change.