Rifka’s schedule fell apart completely. She agreed with Erasmus. The safer place would be close to the interior of the asteroid. But, that meant moving. Moving meant she couldn’t do all the things on her schedule.

  She couldn’t check her radio telescopes. She couldn’t take her midmorning exercise. Afternoon class fell off the schedule. Studying? Reading? All taken off the schedule.

  They brought an autonomous wagon out, and set it up for Rifka to transfer her most important possessions. To start, it had some of her boxed underclothes and the loose miners’ overalls.

  She was packing another box of her things at 11:28, when she started having trouble breathing. She realized she was going to miss her time to run. Her body felt like fear. It had been a long time since she’s felt that. There were tears. She tried to stop them, but it didn’t seem like they would.

  She had to run. She had to. She suddenly felt if she didn’t run, she might die.

  “Rifka?” Erasmus asked.

  “I can’t. I can’t move to a new place to live. I’ve got to take classes and I didn’t plan, and what will we do if people come here? what if they’re violent? And the assembler? And the new eyes aren’t done and … my schedule. What if they blow everything up? Erasmus what can I do? I won’t have a schedule.”

  “This will be temporary my dear. You can take a break and run if you want. I know you have it scheduled. The strange ship is still docked.”

  “It’s been almost a day though. They could leave at any time. They might already have left. You don’t know. The light takes time to get here.”

  “Rifka, you are in distress. Calm yourself. Use the breathing exercises. Try to stay rational.”

  “I have the routine for a reason Ersamus. This reason. It helps. It helps so much. And now, I won’t have it. I’ll be in the new place and my stuff won’t be there and I need the routine.”

  “You can do it Rifka. Maybe a run will help.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The medical suite has anti-anxiety medication. We could try a different one this time.”

  “No. No, I don’t need to go back to that. See, I’m better already.” Rifka rubbed her face free of tears. “The therapy worked. We agreed it did. I’m fine.”

  “Go have a pleasant run. I’ll deploy some androids. We’ll get the important things packed up.”

  Rifka grabbed her running suit and changed. She would run to her new spot and back. That would let her do two things at once.

  Before she left, she linked up her display to the imaging system on her computer. She’d watch the strange ship. If it left the dock, she’d know what it was doing.

  Running felt wonderful. Rifka used bio-liminal engine to flash-sprint several times. She still loved flying. It helped work out the lingering anxiety. When she arrived at the abandoned supervisors’ station, she took stock of the conditions.

  The odd space was far from the edge of the asteroid, about halfway between the living facility and the primary low gravity mining.

  Rifka lived in one of the larger habitats that the company manger used when visiting. With Erasmus’ help, she had renovated it into her workshop and living space. But, there were originally over five hundred workers on site. They also would have lived in that section. But they worked all over, and in both central and decentralized jobs. Some worked as mining drone pilots, some at the surface-based ore smelting facilities, some at the metallurgical labs, and even large crews to manage the four space docks, including the dock near the living quarters—where Rifka first met Erasmus’ android—the ore processing dock, the supply dock, and the supply loading dock. Those were, for the most part, close to the surface.

  But not all the facilities had been built at the surface. Because Thor & Company had mines the burrowed deep into the rock, they didn’t want their mechanics and operators too far away from the mining if something went wrong. As the company dug deeper in, they built remote supervisor stations near the piloted mining equipment drones to keep a good signal, and to make it easier to access equipment.

  Rifka’s new home was going to be one of these stations. Erasmus had explained several advantages. She was deeper in the rock, and farther away from any attacks that might happen. This facility had been used for drone repair after the company had dug deeper, so it had some of the machine tools and fabrication equipment that Rifka liked to tinker with, and it had excellent wifi signal.

  She wandered through the space, examining the recently cleaned, but drab grey surfaces. The lighting was … fine. Not great for a laboratory or workshop, but Erasmus had managed to keep the lights from flickering. Erasmus had also removed most of the remote operator bays, just leaving one for a computer station. The rest of the furniture, like tables and chairs, he cleared out to fit Rifka’s things. The rooms would need painting if she stayed longer, but for now she just imagined how she would fill the new space.

  She’d intended to leave her larger weights behind, so her exercise routine wouldn’t be the same. Her bedroom here shifted to a separate a small space. However, small spaces didn’t bother Rifka. She also planned to bring all the cybernetics and medical installation equipment. The precision assembler would complete that project, so she meant to bring that as well.

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  What she really wanted was something that she hadn’t really thought about. It would be a security station. Technically, one of the rooms in her new space served that purpose in the past. She checked it, and there was only a desk and a couple of monitors connected to the network. This wasn’t enough.

  “I am going to put aside everything and write a new schedule. It will be like a vacation.” Rifka told the empty room. Technically, she’d never had a vacation, but the stories she read had “Summer vacation,” or “Winter break,” and people would travel to new places and swim. She’d seen shows and pictures of humans swimming. She reasoned that it must have felt like zero g, where one floated in water instead of space. Except a careless swimmer could drown, or get eaten by a whale.

  “Focus,” she said.

  “I am,” said Erasmus through her suit’s audio.

  “I was talking to myself.”

  “I know.”

  Rifka read her HUD, checking the position of Traveller. The ship hadn’t moved.

  “Erasmus, can you bring down wall-mounted monitors? I want to build a monitoring station here. A big one.”

  “We could. But, there is a better solution.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We can connect you to the network with the cybernetics you’ve been designing. They don’t have a dedicated cable, but if we use an NFMI—a near-field magnetic induction communication system—you can carry a cable to connect, and we’ll clip it magnetically to a port on your temple.”

  “Really? You’ll help let me finish? But, I don’t have eyes made yet.”

  “I’ve already made them from our specification. I used the precision fabricators in my hoard. I was going to give them to you as a surprise.”

  “Can we finish them in time?”

  “Faster than installing a room full of useless monitors.” Erasmus replied.

  Rifka’s face held an uncontrollable smile.

  “How’s packing?” Rifka asked.

  “My newest models seem quite nimble. But, I don’t dare pick up your equipment with them. Do you want me to send a transporter, or will you run back?”

  “I’ll run back.” Rifka’s legs burned slightly, but her heart rate had gone back to normal, and she felt like practicing wall running.

  Her return run had her reasoning out what she would do.

  She hopped onto a wall for six steps, pushed off, flipped to the other wall, and took another six steps, before grounding her feet and laying into a slower jog to cool down her heart rate. The exhilaration gave her some clarity.

  She might try to scare them off. The station already had flickering lights and dingy corridors. If the corporation was just sending a few special operators, she could lure them into the tunnels, and get them lost.

  Supposedly, people found abandoned mines spooky.But, the mines held no terrors for Rifka. Although LM-25 had tight places, mostly she felt the tunnels were harmless.

  She’d visited the zero-g mining operations, but they were much less interesting than she expected. She didn’t need to mine, because there were plenty of refined metals and other material on hand already. The end of a tunnel with some rocks wasn’t particularly interesting, let alone frightening.

  If she wanted to scare them, She’d have to work on something that could generate fear. Smoke? Mist?

  Rifka could fight them. She knew the fabricators could make weapons: swords, knives, guns and similar. Modern vacuum suits tended to be too tough for anything to effective cut, and almost impossible to manually puncture. Only chemicals too dangerous to handle at all could damage a vacc suit.

  Traps? There were plenty of dangerous mining equipment that could be repurposed, like drills, torches, and heavy machines. Explosives. She could improvise something. But, she didn’t like that idea. The thought of hurting people made her feel a little sick.

  She could just talk to the corporate agents. Corporations had interests, so they might be able to work out some sort of payment. She didn’t have much of anything, but that would be better than fighting, right? What did the corporation want?

  “Erasmus, what’s so valuable about this the Lonely Mountain?”

  “Obviously, I have my hoard here.”

  “So, Thor & Co. wants your hoard?”

  “Of course. My hoard is very valuable. And they probably would like their little rock back too.”

  “Would you … give them anything to them to leave us alone?”

  “Of course.” The Dragon’s voice took on a breathy smiling sound. “A quick death.”

  “Ah. That seems, uh, violent for you.”

  “Thor & Co. are not good humans. A company behaves like a sleepless dragon, constantly growing the hoard and jealously guarding secrets. My solution to their efforts to take back the Lonely Mountain was to make it as unprofitable as possible.”

  Rifka shivered a little. The debris field around the Lonely Mountain had enough mass to build a second mining station. Whatever had happened, the result ruined hundreds of space vessels.

  “This was years ago; maybe they changed?”

  “Human corporations don’t change. Nothing matters to them except money and ownership.”

  ‘Still,’ Rifka reasoned, ‘they might have changed. Erasmus has told me he did not talk to humans before me.’

  Rifka returned to her space, had a shower, changed into the auto-coveralls for safety, ate another nutrition bar, and packed away the equipment that the droids couldn’t move.

  Just as she moved her equipment in her new space, and connected her tablet to the network to check the mystery ship, her automated chime went off.

  “Rifka.” Erasmus’ voice projected through the tiny speaker. The image of the dragon looked awake, and Erasmus stirred.

  Rifka cancelled the chime and switched the system to watch the long-range imaging composite.

  Traveller smoothly drifted off the mooring with a quick pulse of its low temp maneuvering jets. It pirouetted in place and did a 0.3 second burn of its RDEs. It slid away from the structure, and arced its rectangular nose toward the LM-25. The engines burned blue and it accelerated toward them.

  “I see it.” Rifka said. “The ship is moving.”