Dad doesn’t say anything which is the worst. It means he’s too angry and needs time to calm down. The only other time I’ve seen this was when Hiro nicknamed the Zero-AI mining robots ‘Clyde’s, “because they’re big and dumb as well.” Mama cried when she heard that, and Dad told Hiro to ‘be quiet’ in a very stern voice and didn’t speak to him for a week. Hiro pretended he didn’t care, but he did. I know he did. During Sunday dinner, he asked if he could say something before the meal.

“I insulted my older brother who is kind, works hard and is always there for me. I’m sorry Clyde.”

Dad cried this time. He thought no-one noticed, but I did, and Mama nodded her head when Dad whispered to her he was so proud of us all. That was Hiro’s pattern, action now, regrets later. So far, we’ve been regretting the shooting for three weeks.

Three major corporations on Earth govern the space mining trade. Verdansk & Karimov from Russia, China’s Teng Dey and Ore Corp housed in Space City, the former NASA complex in Houston, USA. Other nations send up their own mining crews, but it’s always under license from one of the Big Three who pretty much do as they like because if anyone complains, even governments, they suddenly find themselves short of natural resources almost impossible to get on Earth anymore.

The Big Three didn’t always get along so well. The early days of space mining erupted into a cold war and because they were each returning much needed natural resources back to heavily dependent governments hastily gathered armies got involved as well. Squabbles escalated into the first space war that no-one talked about, but it still claimed over a million lives during the eighteen months it was fought.

It stopped when the Big Three realized the younger corporations and smaller countries were waiting in the wings to step in and finish them off when they were depleted from fighting. A truce was called, and the first space war ended without anyone on Earth noticing it happened. Prompted by the mining corporations the United Nations formed a new group to keep the peace. The United Space Faring Nations were well armed, well-staffed and well equipped and they’ve been hunting us since the robbery at the Ore Corp station.

USFN ships are deterrents. Huge, scary guard dogs that patrolled mining operations and routes. We’d scrapped a lot of heists because the USFN were nearby. They rarely did more than chase you off but if you tried anything within reach of them you’d lose your ship and your freedom. 

For years, the corporations grumbled about pilfering. Small groups of leftovers from the first space war and anyone dumb enough to risk shooting themselves into orbit in the hope of finding a derelict that could be recovered enough to survive and make a living mining claims or stealing them like we did. Dad fought in the space war, and Mama left Earth looking for something else, they both found the same blasted out freighter and shared shuttles and resources along the way to get it back up and running. A couple of years later Clyde happened.

Running from the USFN was normal for me, it’s what I grew up on, but usually they were dogs barking on a chain, the trick was to get out of reach as fast as possible, and you’d be okay. This time, they were off the leash.

We’d tried all the old tricks, dusted off the classics and even made a few up on the fly. All the ore we’d stolen was lost and not only from the recent raid, our backup inventory was gone, lost in an attempt to distract the USFN ships who merely blasted by it dumping a marker to find it later and not worrying if it got taken in the meantime. They wanted one thing. Us.

I got it, I really did. Someone had died, and Hiro was going to have to answer for that, but the news feeds were screaming about tumbling stock prices and an epidemic of piracy making space unsafe for further exploration and putting the global economy at risk. Dad said he smelt a rat as we floated among a debris field, nearly all systems powered down. Actually, he said,

“Uh smuh uh raa.”

His voice was distorted from the survival suit he was wearing. Old school manual environment and pressure controls with two huge oxygen tanks on the back. Mama held her fingers to her lips, or where her lips would have been to get him to shush.

Floating free worked for a couple of days but eventually some smart patrol captain caught on and began firing into the debris field, and we just about made it out the other side with barely enough head start to make a run for it again. Until now.