Appearing in 1st story
Featured Characters:
- Lem Jukes
- Concepción
- Mazer Rackham
- Victor Delgado
Supporting Characters:
- Mono
- Ukko Jukes
- Wit O'Toole
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
- Marco (Death)
- Lizbet
- Imala
- Fareed
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Unidentified reality
- Kuiper Belt
- Earth
- Earth Orbit
- Moon
- Corporate Headquarters of Juke Limited
- Offices of the Lunar Trade Department
- Moon
- New Zealand
- South Auckland
- Papakura Military Camp
- South Auckland
- Earth Orbit
Items:
Vehicles:
- Corporate Mining Vessel
- El Cavador
- Workshop
- Vanguard
- Formic mothership
Synopsis for 1st story
On an A-Class Corporate Mining Vessel owned by Juke Limited, Lem Jukes picks up a Spanish signal. Lem Jukes discusses the signal at a table meeting. He learns the signal comes from a mining vessel, El Cavador, owned by a family from Venezuela. Since the vessel is small and Lem needs to fill their quota, Lem decides to knock El Cavador off of its dig site.
The scene changes to El Cavador hovering near an asteroid. Miners, connected to the El Cavador by tubes for oxygen, stand on the asteroid. One miner asks his cousin Marco how much iron he thinks the asteroid holds. Marco tells his cousin to worry about setting his charges. On the ship, the wheelchair-bound Concepción tells Marco to keep the chatter to a minimum and to triple-check the explosives. Marco tells Concepción they are almost ready to detonate and they just need Victor to finish fixing the nets.
Down in a workshop, Victor works on fixing part of the nets while Mono asks him questions. Victor needs a new piece of metal to finish the job, and so he takes a cookie sheet from the kitchen. With the nets up, Marco detonates the first explosion and Concepción tells Marco that everyone is on board except him. Marco prepares to set off the next detonation, but he stops when he notices a shadow. The corporate vessel from Juke Limited bumps into the El Cavador, sending Marco to crash into El Cavador. Lem Jukes calls El Cavador and tells them "this site is better equipped for those properly equipped for the job."
The crew of El Cavador pull Marco back in and find that he has broken his neck. Marco's mother, Lizbet, cries over her dead son's body. Four hours later, Concepción contacts Lem Jukes and tells him that the collision resulted in the death of a man. Lem throws down the receiver out of frustration when Concepción compares him to his father.
In a Juke Limited convention at its Corporate Headquarters on the moon, Ukko Jukes presents the latest step in improving their operational efficiencies and the world's first space mining droid, the Vanguard. Imala and Fareed, two auditors from the Lunar Trade Department, discuss the financial issues Juke Limited. Imala says Juke Limited laundered eighty billion dollars during the previous year, but Fareed decides to ignore the issue because Juke Limited was just too big to take on.
At a military camp in New Zealand, Lieutenant Mazer Rackham meets Captain Wit O'Toole to joint his elite team of allied special forces. The captain says they should begin training immediately and pulls out a gun and fires it at Mazer's shoulder. Mazer wakes up in a room wearing device on his head. Two guards watch over him while, using a television screen, Captain Wit O'Toole tells Mazer that if he gets captured, then he would likely also get tortured. He tells Mazer that the device on his head can inflict pain and ask Mazer the name of his first pet. Mazer refuses to give the information, even after an hour of torture, but the captain says he failed the test because nobody gets into his unit unless if they break out of the room by overpowering the guards.
Six weeks later, the El Cavador has moved far beyond the Kuiper belt to a remote rock where they will not be bothered by any more corporate ships. Concepción tells Victor she is getting something on the holo that is moving near the speed of light, decelerating, and heading straight for the El Cavador.