Breakfast on XC-1733 was probably the only time Miranda Oslow's whole crew were face-to-face the entire workday. Her rockjumper, the Independent Mariner, wasn't a huge vessel but working alone at their control stations a crew could chew through three rocks and never see each other in the flesh except at business meetings. There were, of course, the meetings every three days where she gave them their assignments and checked on their progress, but Miranda liked to be able to keep an eye on her people when they weren't talking from behind the mask of ship's roboticist, ship's geologist, ship's chemist.
She rested in the ship's mess, tethered to the orange-painted wall and looking over reports. Asteroid mining was a profitable profession, as long as one kept a close eye on the process. The storage bins set into the room's walls were full of samples, data, and top-rate equipment that attested to the success of Miranda's operation. Around her her ship rumbled softly and occasionally gave a dim metallic thump as the air cyclers opened or closed a valve somewhere. The food processor whirled busily on one of the walls as it ground nutrient blocks into an edible paste. The coffee percolator hissed quietly just below it. Below all of it was the constant hum and shudder of the mining equipment, buried deep in XC-1733, biting away at the asteroid's heart like a great toothed mouth.
No one else was around. Only the captain, Miranda, was awake. She looked up at the orange walls beside her, tilting her torso a little because her neck and shoulder didn't work so well any more. Faint scarring ran across her forehead and cheek, disappearing at the scalp into short salt-and-pepper hair and at the neck into the collar of a practical green jumpsuit. The accident had happened many years ago, robbing her of some mobility in her right side, most of the vision in her right eye, and her sense of smell. Odd, that last one, but the surgeon had explained how the debris, shooting out of a malfunctioning drill unit, had crushed the nerve plate leading from her nose to her brain. She'd almost completely lost the taste of things, but considering the aromas of asteroid mining, Miranda counted it a blessing in disguise.
The loss of mobility, though, was not so easy to accept. Luckily the zero-G environment of her home made it possible for Miranda to avoid enforced retirement. Running her own ship meant she could modify some of the systems to accept one-handed input, add devices to help her move around... a thousand little changes that let her stay in the Belt.
Miranda reached out and delicately laid her left palm on the wall. She felt the purring of the mining equipment. A tender smile twitched at her lips as she slowly, gently stroked the metal. Then a dull clunk from the sleeping quarters made her snatch her hand back and wipe her face clean.
Stacy and Massimo were the first to emerge from their sleeping bags. Miranda guessed that they must not have been up late last night. She made a mental note that they'd progressed to actually sleeping together, instead of the muffled grunts and gasps she'd grown to be able to ignore. Their relationship would need watching. Too many unpredictable elements.
The food processor gurgled mightily and spat out beige paste into a baggie. Miranda snagged the baggie and tore off the cap with her teeth, sucking on a plastic tube embedded into the bag's side. Another gurgle and a second bag filled, which Miranda plucked and pushed towards Stacy.
“No thanks,” Stacy mumbled, nudging the bag at Massimo. “NutraFud isn't my favorite.”
Massimo watched the bag rotate gently towards him. “Or mine. It's like sucking on window sealant. We got anything else?”
Miranda shook her head, perusing a data readout on the latest extraction. Massimo was a good kid, been with her for some years now, but he was still such a child. “What're you complaining about, it's got all the vitamins, carbs and proteins you need. Eat. We got some weird readings in the last batch, looks like XC might have more lead than we thought. May even be some silver ore in there.”
“Lemme see that.” Massimo pushed into the mess and drifted over her head, peering at the readout. He rolled his eyes. “Damn. Barely any chance of silver at all. Not with ore values like that. Ughh...” Grunting, he stretched, narrowly missing the bulkhead. “So. Only NutraFud? Not even bacon strips? Jesus...”
“We got coffee. Caffeine'll wake you up.”
“Yeah yeah... You don't have to suffer through the flavor of this stuff like the rest of us do.” Massimo grumbled. “I've seen the financial printouts, Boss. We can afford bacon strips.”
“It's not real bacon. It just feels and tastes like it. It's the same substance in a different form. Why do you care? Just eat your damn breakfast.” She scowled at him and went back to her reports.
“Aye-aye, Bosslady.” Saluting with the bag, Massimo uncapped it and began to eat. He made a face and Miranda snorted.
With a slight push from her knees Stacy tumbled farther into the mess, twisting in air to align herself with Miranda's orientation after the boss gave her a baleful look. Privately Stacy thought that Boss Oslow was an old-fashioned prude, and her insistence on outmoded etiquette one of her most annoying quirks. There wasn't any down, so why bother having everyone point the same way? Thoughts, or ones like them, had gnawed at Stacy's mind ever since she came to work this mine. She'd been in the Belt for only a week or so when she'd heard Miranda was hiring a new astrogeologist, and, ignoring the rumors that the battered old woman was a hellish employer, had sent her resume. On reflection, she should have listened to the rumors.
Stacy fitted a plastic bag into the percolator and pushed the sweeten button three times. At least Miranda Oslow always made sure there was enough coffee. She was fond of saying that the whole Belt's real fuel was caffeine, not solar.
She was probably right, said Stacy to herself as she watched the coffee bag fill. She felt something brush her arm and turned to see a bag of beige paste in the air beside her. Miranda raised her eyebrows, one a little crooked, and gave her a meaningful look. With a sigh Stacy caught it up and began to eat.
Boss Oslow, Stacy had mused many times, must have lived on Dirt when she was young to have hangups like that. She'd told Massimo the theory and he'd just shrugged. Boss had never told any of them about her past, and if they'd had asked she'd just say it was irrelevant and give them more shifts, since they obviously had too much free time. If it weren't for the pay, Stacy would have left last lunar cycle.
Miranda's mine was the most profitable one in a day's flight from Point Foxtrot because she knew how to manage her people. She kept them productive by nipping any problems she saw brewing in the bud, and dealing swiftly with the ones she missed. Miranda rarely missed any problems. Her rock ran tight and clean.
The success of her operation was also due in no small part to the personal mods she had made on the standard machinery every miner ran. It had been decades since she'd started working with the machines, and she'd never had a formal education, but experience gave her real skill. Everything mechanical in her ship had been tinkered with, modified, optimized for her use. She'd gotten the Mariner from Eddie in their separation. Before that the ship had been given to them when they'd gotten their legal union papers, and it had been named Gold Dream. By the time they'd parted she'd left so much of her signature all over the ship that he didn't want it anymore. He said she'd made it into a horrible shrine to the accident. If she stopped to think about it, it was that kind of thing that Eddie grew to hate. About the time she'd put the cable runners in the access tubes, Eddie started complaining about her whole attitude.
“You're letting the damn accident change everything about you”, he'd said, “Putting up the cables wasn't necessary; you can haul around on the rungs just fine and you know it.”
Miranda had ignored him silently clipped herself into the harness she'd put together and hooked the cord sewn onto its shoulders into the cable runner. She couldn't stand it anymore when people talked uselessly when there were always so many more things they could be doing. She didn't want to fight, but Eddie had kept talking while she'd worked.
“Left arm isn't hurt that bad. This is just plain nuts, Mira. Why do you have to be changing everything like this? At first I thought it was just pride, showing how you could still get on, but it's almost like you're embracing it...”
She growled and twisted around to look at him, since she couldn't look over her shoulder very well anymore. “Shuttup, Eddie! I can make any mods I need to so I can get back to normal efficiency! You should be happy I figured this stuff out. Means we won't be losing any money.” Grabbing a cable floating in the tube with her right hand, she tugged hard and shot along the runner.
She heard Eddie yelling after her, “But you don't need to! I can take care of you! The kids can! Mira! MIRA!”
Miranda didn't look back.
That had been fifteen years ago. Miranda had been working the Belt for nearly thirty years now, and in that time she'd chewed up all kinds of rocks. There had been all sizes, all compositions. Everything from copper to water had been shipped out of the Belt in boxes with the stylized green M of her company, minerals and metals bound for the Inner System falling down the gravity well, water and frozen CO2 and O2 sent out by mag-cannon to be picked up by transports headed for the research colonies on the Giants. She was known and respected in the Belt. She refused to even contemplate what else she could desire.
A cough from across the mess made Miranda's eyes snap up at Stacy. “You getting' sick, girl?” she asked.
Stacy shook her head and coughed some more. 'No, just... coffee went down the wrong way.”
“Hmf. Okay.” Miranda watched warily for a minute while Stacy recovered. Could never be too careful about germs on a ship. Stacy squirmed inside but refused to give the old woman anything to complain about. Massimo decided to break the silence.
“Hey, um, Bosslady, while I was working the late shift something came in on the transport.”
“Probably more NutraPuke,” muttered Stacy, earning her a warning glance from Massimo.
“What, was it those new drillbits? They shouldn't be here till next week. The shipping confirmation said so.” Miranda paged through her documents, brows knitted, searching for the file in question.
“No, no... it was something else.” Massimo pushed off and rose towards the storage bins. He flipped one open and fished out a tiny package wrapped in anti-static plastic. “Here.” It fell through the air towards Miranda, and she managed to catch it.
Miranda turned the package over in her hands, wondering what it was. Carefully she opened it and was soon greeted with the intertwined DNA and nanotube logo of NanoGen Inc. She looked up at Massimo suspiciously.
“What the hell is this?”
“I don't know. It came from an Eduardo Oslow. Relative, maybe.” At Miranda's icy stare, he shrugged. “Hey, I just signed for it. I gotta get to work. Hope it's a nice surprise, Bosslady.” He smiled soothingly, spun, and disappeared up an access tube.
Stacy sucked down the rest of her coffee. “Gotta go too.” In a moment she too slipped away down a tube.
Miranda was left staring at the box. Every couple minutes she reached out, picked it up, turned it over once or twice, then put it back down. After a while she looked up at Mariner's bulkhead and proclaimed, “This is stupid.”
Fishing a multitool from a pocket of her jumpsuit, she slit the box's covering and pulled the container inside out onto the table. A card fell out after it. Curious, she lifted it and realized it was a gift note. The words 'FROM: Eduardo Oslow' were printed on one side. There was more writing on the reverse:
“Miranda,
I would say happy birthday but you probably don't want me to. You are the only person I ever knew who would ignore her own birthdays so hard she forgot them. Anyway. Me and the kids were thinking of you. I know you're never going to leave the Belt, and I don't think we'll ever come to see you. Even someone as thickheaded as me can learn, you said, and after the ninth time you refused us docking schedule time, well... We got the picture. I got the picture.
I guess what I mean is, I grieve that I won't be able to hand you this with my own two hands, but it's okay. I've accepted it. I hope you will accept this, then.
Forever yours,
Eddie”

Miranda's hands trembled slightly as she opened the box. She told herself it was nothing, just the usual nerve damage. Inside the box was a small manual and what looked like a piece of white translucent cloth the size of her palm, cradled in protective film and cushioned by foam blocks. Miranda caught her breath, staring in disbelief. She fumbled for the control pad attached to her belt and pushed the button that would summon Massimo from his supervisory station, watching the mining bots.
“Bosslady, what the hell were you thinking, calling me when – Oh, my god.” Massimo caught sight of the box in Miranda's hands and froze. He kept drifting until his head nearly knocked into a supply bin. He ducked just in the nick of time and the motion set him somersaulting. Swearing, he righted himself and pushed close, careful not to breathe on the little translucent square.
“That's... that's a surgical Patch. That's, like, a quarter's profits, right there.” Massimo swallowed. “What's it do? Did it say? Is it... Jesus, it can't be something cosmetic. Can it?”
Miranda just shook her head dumbly. “I don't know.”
Smacking his forehead, Massimo groaned. “Well, READ the specs...” He nodded at the manual.
Holding the box carefully between her arm and chest, Miranda flipped open the manual. The Patch was a regenerator, capable of repairing long-damaded muscle, epithelial, and nerve cells.
Nerve cells.
Miranda looked up to see Massimo regarding her speculatively. “So,” he began, “Someone found the money and the want to send you something to heal your...” He stopped short at the look on his boss's face. She looked open and bruised. It was so unfamiliar it scared him.
“I'll, um, I'll get back to... In case there's trouble...” Massimo pushed over to the access tube, throwing one last look over his shoulder. “You know, Bosslady, someone thinks enough of you to send something like that, then, well...”
“Get back to work,” Miranda snarled. “This is NOT something you have ANY right to talk about!”
“Yes'm.” He left.
“No right... it's all my... Damnit, Eddie. Why d'you always have to make things so much more important than they are?” she asked of the empty room. Mariner rumbled gently into the silence.
Miranda closed the box and unfastened herself from the wall. Slowly she made her way to her room and shut the door, locked it with her personal passcode. She tethered herself to her sleeping cocoon and held the box in white-knuckled hands for a while. Then she methodically read through the manual twice. She put it down, reached for a computer console, and dictated commands to Mariner's computer.  Finally she plucked the Patch from its nest and, shaking only a little, pressed it onto the back of her neck and zipped herself into her cocoon.
Back in his workstation, Massimo noticed the message light blinking on his console. He idly opened the message, vaguely scanning its contents. Probably another innuendo-strewn mail from Stacy, and right now he was too preoccupied with Bosslady's situation to think about anything so mundane. A few lines in, though, he realized that the message was anything but. He read it again, then once more, disbelieving. When Stacy crashed into the room, hurtling almost out of control, he barely noticed.
“Shit! The crazy old harpy! Christ! What the hell is she doing? What are WE going to do?! ” Stacy flopped around, her uncoordinated movements making her bounce and collide with the room's walls. Her elbow banged on the corner of Massimo's control panel and she cried out in pain, curling up around the injury. Massimo looked up at her, bobbing about on the far wall, clutching her arm and cursing.
“Careful,” He said. “You'll hurt yourself.” Then he turned back to the message, read the last paragraph once more. So I'm giving you theMariner, Mass. I know you'll take good care of her. You and Stacy make a good run of it. She's a bit of a flake but she can do her job. Just don't let her get herself hurt out here, the idiotic newbie.
Throwing his head back, Massimo laughed, and when he got done laughing, he cried and reached out for Stacy.
“Crazy bitch...” Stacy was muttering. '”Completely batshit insane, leaving us... I mean. Leaving the Belt! God... she'll, like, die or something...”
“Shhh. Are you really complaining?” Massimo grinned down at her. He scrubbed his face on the arm of his jumpsuit. “Still. Bosslady, you've lost it.”
Stacy made her views on the subject clear with a well-chosen word.

A week later, outside the airlock, Massimo helped his Miranda check her cases once more. She was buzzing around in her spacesuit, opening and closing the cases, telling Massimo that he had to be sure she had it all. He knew they had packed everything, but she demanded they check again. Stacy floated in the tube entrance, hand on the bulkhead keeping her from drifting. “It's unbelievable,” she marveled.
Miranda gave her a sardonic grin over her shoulder. Her scars were gone, her body straight and strong. That morning Stacy had found her in the mess, eating a bag of NutraFud. A dozen empty bags were scattered around like a cluster of tiny meteoroids caught in some big rock's gravity well. Miranda was not in her harness, tied to the wall. Stacy had grabbed her usual coffee, and, at a loss as to what to say, had blurted out, “So how's breakfast?”
“Tastes like crap,” Miranda had responded. Then she had grinned, really grinned, and thrown the now-empty bag at her. Stacy ducked as the old woman flung herself into the air, and with impossible grace born from decades on the Belt, tucked and rolled over Stacy's head and shot into an access tube. Her had laughter echoed down into the mess as Stacy floated, dumbfounded.
Miranda pulled something from one of the cases and snapped it closed, then tossed the item at Stacy, who caught it. Unfolding it, she realized it was Miranda's harness. She blanched. Miranda laughed at her expression.
“Morbid, eh? But I don't want it anymore.” Straightening, she nodded to Massimo. “You take good care of this old rockjumper, you hear? Or else if I hear about it I'll come back and make you miserable.”
'I don't doubt it,” he replied fervently. “Even from Earth, I don't doubt you'll manage it.”
Miranda cackled. “Good! Now...” She gazed around the room, then drifted over to a control panel and placed her palm upon it. She leaned close and spoke in a soft, quiet voice, “You be good for him too, baby, ok? Stay here on the Belt and keep chewin' those rocks.” With a smile and a pat, she rose looked at her crew. Massimo looked taller, somehow. She could see he had heard and understood. Stacy looked just plain puzzled, but that would fix itself in time.
A new rumble from beyond the airlock announced the arrival of the transport. Brilliant white light slashed into the little room. Miranda zipped up her spacesuit and clicked the helmet on.
“Well, kids,” Miranda yelled, voice muffled by the helmet, “All good things must end. Don't run my business into the ground. And for god's sake, remember to get enough caffeine!” She turned and went into the airlock. Massimo closed it behind her as Stacy floated over to hover behind him, hand on the small of his back. They saw Miranda waving in the airlock, and then the outer door opened. The landing beacon lights of the transport made them turn their faces away, but not before they saw Miranda, eyes protected against the glare by her helmet, turn and jump off, gliding through the light into the transport.