Whoever said, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," never met Q. A birthday gift from his uncle Jake, the cyber canine is more than a companion to the young Kyle. Q is Kyle's best and only friend. And on the planet Kirawan where mining the time-travel mineral Imperium is all anyone does, having a companion like Q counts for just about everything, including saving Kyle from an alien assault from the hostile insectoid Kira intent on eradicating the human colonists from their planet!
2.5, only because of the dogs, and because of the dogs exclusively.
I'm sad to say this issue was pretty weak in all aspects, with some heavy borrowing from classic sci-fi (swamp worms, really?), and lots of 'subtle' hints from what I'm expecting to be the big twist of the story... and, yep, it's nothing new either, even if I'm actually reading this years after it was published, but still.
It doesn't help the main character is such an stereotypical teenager either.