In 2045, Toru Tapper, a struggling guide in Sweden’s frozen wilderness, dreams of escaping his troubled past and striking it rich in space. When a daring opportunity leads him to pilot a captured deep-space fighter, he ventures into the asteroid belt, risking it all for a shot at unimaginable wealth. But the frontier is perilous—pirates, powerful factions, and secrets from Toru’s past threaten to derail his mission. As alliances shift and danger mounts, Toru must navigate the treacherous edge of space in an attempt to become the first successful miner of asteroids—a Rock Hopper.
In 2045, Toru Tapper, a struggling guide in Sweden’s frozen wilderness, dreams of escaping his troubled past and striking it rich in space. When a daring opportunity leads him to pilot a captured deep-space fighter, he ventures into the asteroid belt, risking it all for a shot at unimaginable wealth. But the frontier is perilous—pirates, powerful factions, and secrets from Toru’s past threaten to derail his mission. As alliances shift and danger mounts, Toru must navigate the treacherous edge of space in an attempt to become the first successful miner of asteroids—a Rock Hopper.
“It’s a wolf. We’re done for”, the man whispers. He puts down the binoculars and turns to his wildlife guide Toru, eyes wide with fear. Toru takes a good look at the middle-aged British tourist. The expensive new arctic outfit, more suitable for an expedition to the North Pole. This is just a short tour to the wilderness outside Jukkasjärvi, in the north of the Swedish Lapland. The ridiculous fur hat, almost falling off all the time. Everything in the wrong size, making the man look like a kid dressed in a thousand dollars worth of hand-me-downs. Toru holds out his hand and the man gives him the binoculars with a shaking hand. It’s indeed a wolf, making its way through the deep snow, in their direction.
He gives back the binoculars and replies in a normal voice. “It’s a lone male. Eight hundred meters. We’re downwind of the wolf’s path. We’ll be fine”.
The tourist panics even more. “Shh, it’ll hear us. We must hide”.
Toru sighs. “Look. Make some noise, talk, sing, and a normal wolf will go another way”.
The man is not convinced. “How do you know it’s normal?”.
Toru summons all his patience. “What I mean is that the wolf seems to be out on a long walk, and it’s not very interested in us. It’s not a mother with pups, and we have no dog that it will see as a threat. It doesn’t look wounded or upset. Now, if you’d like to become wolf lunch, make sure to hide and stay quiet. When he finds you sneaking up on him, he will for sure lose his shit”.
The tourist nods and talks in a loud theatrical voice. “Okay. We will stay here. We’re friendly. And have no dogs.”.
Toru shakes his head and walks towards the campfire. He starts packing the food and reindeer hide into the passenger sled and turns to his customer. “So, are you ready to go back to the hotel?”.
The tourist looks at the snowmobile that pulls the sled. “Why don’t you have an electric snowmobile like all the other tour guides?”.
Toru puts his hands on his hips and looks down while he takes a slow breath. This is not the first time he has heard this question. He looks up and smiles. “A couple of reasons. First, you wanted the cheapest guide. I’m the cheapest guide because I didn’t spend all my money on buying an expensive self-driving piece-of-shit electric snowmobile. Second, I live in a cabin without electricity, so there’s no way for me to charge an electric snowmobile”.
The Brit tips his nose up in the air. “Hmph. I thought Sweden was a civilized country. Now it’s polluting vehicles and cave-man living”.
Toru blinks. “Yeah, well, I guess our golden years are behind us. Let’s get going”.
The man shakes his head. “I won’t go anywhere with that polluting machine. I want another guide with a proper vehicle”.
His guide looks up in the air for a moment before answering. “Look, I’m going that way anyway, so there’s no extra pollution. I don’t know how long you’d have to wait, if I call for another guide”.
The tourist quickly shakes his head. “Call another guide. I don’t care how long I have to wait”.
Toru turns around and walks away while picking up his radio. “Dispatch, this is Toru. I have a customer that wants to change guide. You have my coordinates”.
After some radio static, a female voice answers. “Again, Toru? I’m thankful for the business you keep handing over to us, but seriously…”.
He cuts her off. “I know. Can you just do me this favor? Thanks”.
She responds. “Okay, Toru. Tell your customer—our customer—to wait one hour”.
He puts the radio away and returns to the tourist. “You’ll have to stay here for a least an hour. Do you want me to stay here with you? I can put more wood on the campfire to keep you warm”.
The man wrinkles his nose. “Campfires increase the carbon footprint. I’ll just wait in the passenger sled”.
Toru nods and starts to decouple the sled from the snowmobile. The sled looks like a small cockpit made of plastic. It will probably keep his customer warm and safe enough. He gives the man a side eye while working. “By the way, how did you travel all the way from the UK?”.
The tourist responds without any deeper reflection. ”Well, let’s see. First a flight from Heathrow to Arlanda, Stockholm. And then I took a domestic flight from Arlanda to Kiruna airport. Pretty convenient, actually”.
Toru chuckles. “I bet”.
After leaving his customer by the dying campfire, Toru heads home to his cabin on his snowmobile. The ride is smooth on the prepared snowmobile trail, but he decides to take a shortcut through the woods. This is against the law, which is why he enjoys it so much. He goes full throttle, making the machine claw through the deep snow with the white powder spraying his grinning face. Suddenly the front of the snowmobile falls through the ice when crossing a creek covered in snow. The world slows down as he is catapulted forward toward a tree. Toru waves his arms in panic, trying to change his trajectory, but to no avail. His back hits the tree. Then his face hits the ground, and of course the finale: Snow falling down from the branches buries him. Like a damned cartoon. He’d be laughing, if it weren’t for having all the air knocked out of his lungs.
Stillness. Nothing for a while, until finally a gasp for air. Alive. Very much alive judging by all parts of the body screaming in pain. Slowly, Toru crawls out from under the tree and out on the snowmobile trail. He rolls over on his back and blinks as the last rays of sunlight hit his eyes. The smoke of his breath forms a pillar up into the pink evening sky. Then darkness.
When Toru wakes up, the vast night sky hangs above him. The clean air and the absence of light pollution in the Swedish wilderness make the stars vibrate with confidence, and the shimmering green curtains of the Northern Lights flap in the windless emptiness. He takes in the mind-blowing view of the universe, just like when he was a kid. He should be up there, not down here on Earth, toiling away, looking for scraps to survive. His mind begins to drift. The cold in the ground has started to crawl through his thick parkas, into his bones, paralyzing his body. He closes his eyes and listens to the whispering icy wind. Then his last thought. What is that sharp white light?
Rock Hopper is a new and exciting space thriller from author Kenneth Ocklund featuring pirates and a daring and desperate operation to capture a resource-rich asteroid and transport it to a U.S. Navy spaceport orbiting Earth to mine it for its valuable metals. When access to a super-advanced spacecraft practically falls in his lap, the aimless son of a war hero killed in action after the Satellite Wars between the U.S. and Russia hatches a plan to provide such an asteroid to the Navy for a multi-trillion-dollar payday. However, his recent friendship with Becka, the captain of a space privateering operation, puts a target on his back by her traitorous former second-in-command, Blitz.
Toru is the son of a renowned war hero (and secret developer of an advanced triple-threat space fighter - atmosphere, near, and deep space – for the Russians), Tomas Tanner. Access to the Manta Ray’s capabilities was limited to its creator and pilot by a DNA match, so the fighter has been hangared and basically forgotten in a remote Earthside spaceport in Sweden’s far Lapland region: an unusable doorstop. However, with one touch from Toru, the ship responds. Toru, raised by his uncle, had made his quiet, lackluster way through life as a cheap guide into Lapland for budget-minded foreign tourists, drifting and aimless since his father’s death when he was still a teenager. The connection to the Manta Ray also extends to the father he still grieves, and the opportunity to make something of this life using the spaceship to accomplish something no one else has been able to do galvanizes him. I enjoyed that despite this teenage trauma, for most of the book, Toru is upbeat, rarely succumbing to despair even when things look hopeless and the situation gets dire.
Heading up intersecting storylines are Becka, the captain of the Ching Shih and her pirate crew, and Vanja, Turo’s childhood friend, now the commander of the American-leased naval spaceport in Sweden. When Blitz, Becka’s second-in-command, leaves her for dead during an incursion, she and her remaining loyal crew members shift sides to become privateers with letters of marque, looking for revenge against the traitorous Blitz. Vanja enables her old friend and former sweetheart in his venture by granting him access to the Manta Ray and setting him up with the commander of the orbiting spaceport where he first encounters Becka. Toru is an engaging innocent in many ways, and while Becka is wily and experienced, she’s still someone you hope will come out on top. There is an immediate attraction between the two that is fun; however, Vanja is still carrying a torch for her former sweetheart.
The story progresses swiftly, with the multiple storylines impacting each other in surprising and dangerous ways. Toru’s asteroid mission is fraught with peril, and he endures many tense situations. His partnership with the ship’s AI “Ray” to creatively solve problems was compelling reading, and the assistance of the mining robot, Baxter, another figure from Toru’s childhood, proves fortuitous yet bittersweet. Although the story comes to a close, there are still some loose ends left hanging, such as the romantic triangle and the whereabouts of Captain Becka’s nemesis, Blitz. While there’s no mention of a sequel, I certainly hope for more adventures featuring these characters.
I recommend ROCK HOPPER to readers of science fiction and space adventures.