21/2 stars 
 Not bad, but I wasn't particularly well entertained while reading. 
 This is not my kind of story, let that be said from the get go. I don't particularly like stories that has a lot of exposition - especially not when it isn't better handled. To me the exposition was done clumsily and most of it was really not needed for the story. Particularly a very short discussion of American foreign politics seemed out of place - it wasn't new in any way, it didn't move the story along and it didn't develop the characters. 
 This is very much a story about tech, and if I were to tell you what the story was about, I would be left fending for an answer. (view spoiler)[Dan our protagonist is remote-operating a robot in obit - building a space station (or something like that). The chinese tries to steal the platform and they defend the platform from attack. End of story. I might of course have missed something - but I think that was what was going on. We also learned a bit about his training. But that was only interesting from a pure technical point of view. (hide spoiler)] To me Dan wasn't a particularly likeable or even interesting character. Good at his job but rather arrogant. He never does anything interesting other than goof around a bit. 
 Overall it felt like a very old fashion story. It is the first story I ever read from Analog, and I hope for the magazine's sake that this wasn't the best story they put out last year. I am sorry to say that I am disappointed.