Night Sky Mine

In Night Sky Mine, Scott weaves a complex future society, rich in political and economic detail, that contours the life of young Ista Kelly, the only survivor of a pirate raid on an asteroid mine. Ista is now a teenager, hip and computerwise. In fact, Ista spends a lot of her time in cyberspace, where AI programs reproduce themselves like rabbits and chickens and cats and sometimes like dinosaurs and mythical monsters. Scott has taken the cyberpunk subgenre of SF to another stage in Night Sky Mine, to a universe of cyberspace rich in self-replicating programs in danger of evolving out of human control.
This is the story of Ista's quest for her true identity in a future where you cannot live without an official identity. She must leave the security of her home on a trading ship and return in secret to the isolated mine where she was discovered as a baby. There she encounters and must overcome a menace hidden by the huge interstellar Night Sky Mining Corporation.