Gallowglass, by S.J. Morden

Simon is brilliant at showing fundamentally decent people in fundamentally awful situations with pretty realistic physics. The situation in this case is the sheer Darwinism of asteroid claim jumping. There’s an asteroid out there with enough mineral wealth to solve all the Earth’s problems. Unsurprisingly, no one who wants it really cares how they get it. The point is also made that really the amount of wealth on the rock is immaterial; there’s already enough wealth down here to solve all the Earth’s problems, and the fact is that all the wealth locked up in the rock is going to go to people who have no intention of spending it usefully, so frankly, why bother? There’s nothing quite as exciting as the car chase on Mars that we got with One Way and No Way, but it’s still gripping.