It's the Nomad way

It's a rare thing to find a female miner, the job is physically demanding and the rewards aren't that great. Yet for some reason your mom thought that mining was the life for her...and not just any mining, the sort of mining where drilling too deeply might get you sucked into the vacum of space.

Sure the paid was great in the beginning, but the living conditions were indecent, there was no separation between men and women, the air purifiers might takes a year to get replaced, and there was no walking off the job for a woman if the boss decided to get handsy.

By the time the mining disputes broke out your mom wasn't just another miner, she was a leader, and a real spitfire at that. You never learned who your father was, you mother might not of even known, and if your mother knew who he was she never thought him important enough to tell you. Your mom had bigger problems to contend with, namely keeping a few hundred guys alive after earth abandoned them for refusing to mine unless their refineries and living habitats were properly supplied for their maintenance needs.

At first the workers stayed and made the best with what they had thinking that negations would take place, but no negotiators came, and neither did the food shipments. Other miners started asking you mom to make the hard decisions, and she made them. Once she realized that they'd been left to die she made the decision to cut the tethers on the mining facility. It had been flown into the asteroid belt, and it could be flown around the asteroids too. She met with various other facilities and learned about the joint struggles they were facing.

She lead a rebellion of a sort, not the violent kind, but the kind that laughs in the face of fate. She managed to pull together a few other facilities and pool their resources, she practically created the grow light hydroponics needed to turn the vegetables that one kitchen had been keeping for "fresh flavor" into a sustainable food source for the small fleet of mining facilities that followed her. And then she turned the refineries into fabrication plants for new ships and equipment.

Your mother didn't approve of piracy, but she acknowledged it's value among the belt. Instead she preferred to keep her followers as miners and found ways to harvest everything they needed from the rocks and ice chunks that floated between Mars and Jupiter. She had dealings with many other "admirals" in the belt, and became highly respected as a neutral leader who never shot first, but destroyed anyone who shot at her, which she actually did a few times.

The people who followed her turned into a tribe, and because women were scarce she made sure they were respected, children also we treated with the greatest care and you received your fair share of love from these rough and dirty people. Many who simply wanted to live rallied behind and beside your mom until she was truly an admiral among the belt.

When news about war on earth reached you mother she was unmoved. But when news of people being dropped onto Mars and left to die reached her she moved. You remember more than one trip transporting asteroids that were mostly ice to the people of Mars. At first it baffled you that your mother would give something so precious as water to people she never met, but after your second trip you were old enough to understand why she did.

Your mother and your people had also been abandoned in space, to not help would make you mother no different than the people who had abandoned her. And your mother hated the government of Earth for leaving people to die.

Your mother was a clan leader, she was loved, respected, and even feared. You are her child and you always knew you are expected to follow in her footsteps and take charge when she passed. But you still weren't ready for the day she died. It wasn't a battle glorious, it wasn't a rescue mission noble, it was a freak mining accident and she was gone. There wasn't even a funeral, just the news she was gone and all eyes looking to you for guidance.