Sci fi story about mega corps. And first contact, romance and doomsday all rolled together. I wrote this story some years ago. I posted this on SOL with positive feedback I'd like to post here where more Sci Fi fans may view it.
The rock in space was not quite a sphere, being far too tiny a bit of cosmic debris to have sufficient gravity to round off its ragged corners. One side was rough -- like a ragged mountain top that was broken off at the peak and hurled into space by an all-powerful hand. Slowly the Scout Ship edged closer, braking with forward jets. Was this it, at last -- the missing asteroid?
Lurton Zimbardo and his pirates threaten Mars with destruction from outer space and he makes good on his threat. Next he puts Earth in his sights. He operates from deep within the asteroid belt; his headquarters housed in a massive asteroid fashioned into a spacecraft by aliens from ages past. It is invisible to detection.
Space is huge and governments control as much of the space around and between their systems as they can, but there are still a very small parts of space not claimed by any government. Very few people are born on the ships travelling between the stars, and even fewer are born in the unclaimed areas of space, but that one thousandth of one percent who are so born are called Space Born and have some very odd citizenship rights and duties.
Joe had helped launch the first Space Platform--that initial rung in man's ladder to the stars. But the enemies who had ruthlessly tried to destroy the space station before it left Earth were still at work. They were plotting to stop Joe's mission!