Blair Sandburg hefted his pack over his shoulder as he watched the servants pick up the luggage. The human and Tellerian servants had packed up the Consort’s, Sandburg’s and Jim’s clothes for the trip to the Hunter’s Moon. They would be staying at the Hunting Resort that belonged to Lord Kelough, who had invited the Consort to join in his annual hunt. As guide to the Empress’ sentinel, Blair was also going since Jim would be taking the place of hunting dogs, extinct earth pets. Lord Keough also owned hunting sentinels, and trained them. The Consort was paying Lord Keough to train Jim for the first two weeks they would be there. Blair knew Jim was not looking forward to that. In fact, the sentinel was dreading it.

The door swished open to admit Jim. The tall sentinel was wearing his workout clothes, black shorts, and shirt, with tennis shoes. Around his neck was a gold metal collar with jaguars in relief, and a tag with the Imperial symbol hanging from the collar.

“Oh, good. You’re here.” Blair said handing his pack to one of the human servants. The servants then left the room taking the luggage with them. When the door closed behind the servants, Blair looked at his sentinel, “You need to get ready. The Consort is hoping to leave in an hour.”

Jim nodded and walked into the bathroom. Blair heard the shower start running. Sometime later, Jim stepped out of the room wearing a towel and headed to the chest that held his clothes. Jim dressed, and by the time he was done the Empress came into the room followed by her Consort. She smiled at Blair who smiled back.

“Are you ready?” The Consort asked,

“Yes.” Blair said.

“Good. The trip will take three days by shuttle.”

Blair and Jim followed the Consort and the Empress out of the room and headed for the shuttle bay.

In the shuttle bay one of the shuttles was prepped and ready. Four guards, and six servants awaited them near the platform. The two guards that had followed them stayed with the Empress. The Consort and the Empress exchanged their formal goodbyes having done the informal goodbye the night before, much to Jim’s embarrassment. Blair had been able to sleep in one of the other rooms, but Jim was just a pet. He slept on his mistress’ bed regardless of what the mistress was doing.

Once the Consort’s entourage was aboard the shuttle, the shuttle doors closed, and the sirens went off to warn people that the bay was depressurizing. The Empress and her guards watched safely behind a forcefield as the bay doors opened and the shuttle lifted off and headed out into space.

Inside the shuttle, the servants had settled the Consort’s stuff in his room, along with Jim’s stuff since as the pet Jim would sleep at the foot of the Consort’s bed. The Empress had changed her order of who could touch Jim, so that now the Consort, and the Empress’ children could pet Jim. The servants and slaves were still restricted from touching Jim, but it had been reinforced that it was not a punishment for the servants or for Jim.