Credit: Jamie Tufrey

Asa was already slipping into his pressure suit. "Mine either. I'm more of a 'Let me be the first to welcome our new robot bug-making Overlords' kind of guy. I get along with everybody."

"Except Jenkins."

"Now that's not fair. I get along with him fine." He sucked his teeth and shrugged. "I just don't like getting along with him. Not since he joined HUDFOR."

Holden checked the seals on Asa's suit. "He can be a little annoying."

"A little? The guy can't go two sentences without explaining how the Human Defence Force is the greatest thing to happen to people since the opposable thumb. You know where they've got their thumbs stuck, don't you? You ask me, they're gonna blow themselves up with those nukes long before anything comes through that gate thingy."

Holden took his suit from the cabinet. It was old and worn. Patches marked the places where the wear had become dangerous. Three trips back, Sheila made him promise to replace it, but suits were expensive. He'd used the money to buy himself a few more months with his ship, instead.

"It's just in case things go wrong, Asa." He stepped into his suit and adjusted the legs. "The future's a scary place."

"Always has been. You know, there's a reason we're born head first."

"I know." He'd heard it before.

"We're wired to look ahead."

"Yeah, I know. And we've only got two legs..."

"...so we don't get too comfortable standing in one place." Asa took his helmet off the rack. "So let's get moving." He dropped the helmet over his head and snapped it into place.

The surface held enough iron in the mix to give their magboots a decent grip. The asteroid was a chondrite with plenty of tasty oxides, better than they could have hoped for. Those were the key. That's where the platinum group metals were bound up. If the entire asteroid turned out to be as rich as the core samples, they could spend the next ten years just mining this one rock.

Holden set up the work lights and prepped the drill at a platinum-rich site. Asa was back on board the Aces, warming up the ore processor.

"I've got it," Asa's voice came over the radio. "We'll call it 'Asa Diamonds.' How's that?"

"Corny." Holden set the drill for an angle cut and draped electrostatic netting around the base. The tiny bit of gravity the asteroid provided wouldn't keep dust from flying off into space and Holden refused to waste even the tiniest scrap. "Besides, I was thinking of 'Jasmine's Hope.'"

"Oh, come on. There're a million rocks out here you can name for your kid. Heck, another ten years and she'll be out here staking her own."

"No way."

"Yeah, you're right. In ten years the bugmakers will probably be here and we'll all be slaves. Or dead. Or maybe dead slaves. It all seems kind of pointless when you think about it."

Holden backed the drill bit out and moved the drill for the next cut. "Jazz is not going to be a rock rat. Her math-ap tests were in high orbit. She'll be in engineering or something."

"What if she wants to be a rock rat?"

"Then I'll change her mind."

"Smooth. You know – damn!"

Holden shut the drill down and waited, but Asa stayed silent. "Asa? Ace?"

"One sec. Damn!"

"Is that a real 'damn' or one of your overblown 'rats' damns?"

"I think we've got company."

"You think."

"I mean someone's matching orbit with us, but I don't know who. You tell me. Is that a real 'damn' or what?"