Free Abyss Deep by Ian Douglas

Joy. We were still deep in the initial rampant lust phase of our relationship, but I could see it moving beyond sex and pleasant companionship to something more permanent. Maybe.
    If I could just shake off Paula’s ghost, and put her to rest at last.
    The waitress returned with our drinks—­a Cosmic Dehibitor for Joy, a Metafuel Thruster for me. I paid her by linking through to the restaurant’s e-­pay AI, and included a generous tip for her. She thanked me, then took our orders for dinner. Meat from Earthside has to be shipped up-­El and is expensive, but there are some locally nanufactured proteins indistinguishable from nature. Real cow meat from the Amazon prairies is just for status; the stuff built up molecule by molecule really can’t be distinguished from the real thing. We both ordered local cultures, mine in the form of lobster tail, hers looking and tasting like steak.
    â€œSo what’s the news?” I asked when we were alone again.
    â€œWar, of course. At least there’s serious talk of war. The Commonwealth is blaming the CAC for hijacking that mining station . . . and for trying to drop an asteroid into the ocean. That’s an act of war in anyone’s manual.”
    I shook my head. “I have trouble believing that the CAC government would be openly behind something like that. Some extremist Islamic sect, maybe . . . or a rogue paramilitary group operating in the shadows. But the ­people, the ruling council in Dushanbe, they aren’t crazy.”
    â€œThey are neo-­Ludd,” Joy pointed out. “Or strongly supportive of the movement. And a tidal wave in the Pacific wouldn’t touch them.”
    â€œNo, but the outraged survivors of the rest of the world would.”
    â€œTrue. But maybe they didn’t count on you figuring out where those tangos hailed from.”
    A shrill squeal sounded from overhead and we both looked up. A ­couple had managed to propel themselves clear of the hydrosphere and had landed in the nearly invisible netting surrounding the water in case of just such an eventuality. Laughing, naked and glistening wet, they half-­scrambled and half-­flew across the netting toward the sphere’s zero-­gravity poles to re-­enter the water. I half expected some of the flying spray to reach us . . . but subtly directed air jets were in place to whisk away any stray flying droplets and keep the diners below from getting rained on. The illusion of dining in a rain forest did have reasonable limits, after all.
    â€œI don’t buy it,” I told her, as the squeals died away again. “Those men had to know that someone would pull a DNA analysis on them if they were killed or captured.”
    â€œMaybe they just didn’t count on the U.S. Marines coming in and spoiling their party,” she said. “Either they would have their demands met . . . or they would all be incinerated on impact. Either way, no DNA left to sample.”
    â€œI suppose.”
    But I wasn’t convinced.
    The terrorists who’d seized Capricorn Zeta had clearly had a neo-­Ludd agenda. Their demands had been that all asteroid mining be stopped—­not only in Earth orbit, which was a song they’d been singing for a long time, but out in trans-­lunar space as well.
    They needed high-­tech help. The Chinese were out, because if something had gone wrong and the asteroid had come down anywhere in the Pacific, the tidal waves would have washed them away. The CACs had the ideology, yeah, and they were far inland, but why use their own ­people in the attack, inviting military retaliation? It seemed likelier to me that those Central Asians we’d captured had been mercenaries, hirelings being used by someone else, possibly with an eye to calling attention to Dushanbe and away from the real masterminds.
    Who would profit, I wondered, from having asteroid mining stopped? Or from having a