by Ian McDonald
‘Not that way you won’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘VTO Moonship Skopa just landed at East Insularum. They’re cutting off your retreat.’
Again, long silence.
‘Help me, Finn.’
‘What was that?’
‘Help me.’
‘I can do that, Bryce. I can get you back to Kingscourt in a blink. But it may not be up to your usual standards of comfort and style.’
‘Just tell me the fuck where to go!’
True fear in the big man’s voice. Finn Warne smiles inside his helmet. He summons co-ordinates on his suit hub and throws them through the hull to Bryce.
‘Here you go.’
‘A BALTRAN station.’
‘It’s fast and it’s sure. And we have history with BALTRAN capsules.’
Finn Warne grips hard as the rover changes course at speed.
‘I hold you responsible for this embarrassment,’ Bryce says.
Thirty-four deaths. Good people, staunch people, gutted, dismembered, disembowelled; limbs and organs and blood sprayed across Palus Putridinis. And you call it an embarrassment.
The horns of Huygens BALTRAN rise from the horizon. Enjoy your ride, fat man. I said I’d get you back to Kingscourt, but I lied. Two blinks, three blinks. Maybe more. You’ve never travelled BALTRAN before, so make the most of the experience. Tumble in your own vomit and piss and shit. I will watch you launch, then I will cycle into the rover and drink your fucking personalised vodka to thirty-four staunch jackaroos all the way to Hadley.
I’m looking forward to the inaugural meeting of the Ex-First Blades Club.
Beauty to Jiang Ying Yue is the actinic flicker of landing thrusters over the Bradley Massif. Lights moving against higher lights. Since girlhood, Jiang Ying Yue has loved spaceships. When she first went on to the surface her class stumbled and lurched, trying to find a way of moving in the heavy rookie shell-suits, but she had jumped. Jumped and reached for the lights in the sky. Shell-suit actuators were powerful but never enough to push her right off her world to the place where the ships flew. Since that day she has been trapped, pinned to her tiny moon, looking up.
Orel is a glitter of beacons and warning lights, then it catches the sun and Jiang Ying Yue sees the moonship whole. She recognises an executive transport module in the cargo gantry. She has learned every ship, crew member, module and configuration in the Vorontsov fleet. She resents that the Vorontsovs should command such beauty. They are coarse-souled, heavy, loud; to them their ships are engineering, navigation, orbits and payloads. To her they are angels.
Then the engine burns and dust billows over her.
She walks through the dust towards the image on her HUD. The ramp is lowered, the lock opens and she cycles through. Airblades scythe dust from her suit, revealing stripe by stripe the bright battle colours of Taiyang. Jiang Ying Yue opens her helmet and tastes the pepper spice of moondust. Beyond the lock the Suns await.
Corporate Conflict Resolution Officer Jiang, her familiar announces. She is not a Sun, she cannot wear the hexagrams of the clan. She does not need the tags her familiar adds to the gathered Suns: like Vorontsov ship design, she has learned the corporate hierarchy of Taiyang.
‘So Bryce Mackenzie fled like a weeping child,’ Zhiyuan says.
‘By BALTRAN,’ Ying Yue says. The suits suppress smirks, imagining Bryce Mackenzie bouncing like a handball inside a BALTRAN can.
‘Our losses?’ asks Amanda Sun. The Taiyang board sits in a semi-circle of minimal, elegant chrome and faux-leather chairs. Jiang Ying Yue is very conscious that she is standing, in battle armour, leaving dusty footprints on the grey carpet.
‘Heavier than I would have liked.’ Her familiar sends lists and charts to the hovering hexagrams. ‘The greater part of these is robotic, but we have human casualties.’
‘Messy,’ Sun Gian-yin says.
‘Our models did not predict that the Australians would fight in the face of overwhelming odds.’
‘I’ve never known a Mackenzie to back down from a fight,’ Lady Sun says. A staffer pours a glass thimble of gin; she takes a decorous sip.
‘And what do your models predict for these Australians?’ Zhiyuan asks.
‘We are shipping in resources to maintain the siege until we gain control over Hadley’s life-support systems. At that point resistance will collapse very quickly. In the meantime, any counter-attacks by Mackenzie jackaroos will be swiftly and efficiently suppressed.’
‘Denny Mackenzie is not to be underestimated,’ Zhiyuan says. ‘He resisted all attempts to oust him from Bairro Alto.’
‘Tell me, has my great-grandson acquitted himself well?’ Lady Sun asks.
‘He commanded a bot squad and fought with great valour and bravery. He personally challenged Finn Warne and forced him to flee.’
‘Finn Warne, who has subsequently defected to Mackenzie Metals,’ Amanda Sun says. ‘With first-hand knowledge of our set-up and tactics.’
‘We have not experienced any significant deviation from our model,’ Ying Yue says. ‘We expect Hadley to capitulate within seventy-two hours.’
‘Stuck in this box for seventy-two hours?’ Lady Sun hisses.
‘We anticipate surrender long before then,’ Ying Yue says. ‘After all, it is just a transfer of management. The Mackenzies understand business.’ She pauses: images on her lens, words in her ear. ‘Excuse me. There has been a development.’ As her helmet closes, Jiang Ying Yue says to the seated board members, ‘Denny Mackenzie has come out to fight.’
There is still a memory of old dust on the air. Denny Mackenzie swipes a casual finger across a door frame. He feels the familiar prickle, the burned, spicy perfume. A soft grey smear on his fingertip. Lady Luna’s deadliest weapon: moondust.
His father had done the same, when he entered this room at the very top of the pyramid to wake Hadley after decades of sleep; turn the mirrors to the sun, kindle the fire in the city’s heart. He had tasted the dust.
The women stand around a tactical display: a projection shared across the lenses of everyone in the control centre. Process flows and smelter data have been replaced by a detailed schematic of the Palus Putridinis. Denny pores over the map.
‘Shit.’
‘The Suns have contracted the entire VTO moonship fleet,’ Apollonaire Mackenzie says.
‘The space-lift capacity is staggering,’ says Anastasia Mackenzie, co-widow of Duncan Mackenzie.
‘I thought the Vorontsovs were our mates,’ Denny says. ‘I had this idea that we were going into the asteroid business together?’
‘A contract is a contract,’ says a young, dark-skinned woman, hair piled high on her head in an elaborate, joyful ziggurat: Hadley’s pyramid inverted. ‘We’ve never been known to turn down a paying job.’
Denny Mackenzie raises an eyebrow.
‘Now you, I don’t know.’
‘Irina Efua Vorontsova-Asamoah,’ the young woman said. ‘I’m to be oko to Kimmi-Leigh Mackenzie.’
‘And your qualification to be here?’ Denny asks.
‘Her qualification is that she is the nearest thing we have to an expert on VTO,’ Apollonaire says. ‘And potential hostage. No offence, Irina.’
Irina inclines her head: none taken.
Denny studies the map again. The Suns have the numbers and the positions and more arrive every moment by moonship and BALTRAN capsule.
‘How long can they stay out there?’
‘As long as they want,’ says Katarina Mackenzie, Denny’s sister.
‘Until they crack our life support,’ says Magda Mackenzie, his keji-niece through Anastasia and his half-brother Yuri.
‘And how long will that take?’
‘Our models run at somewhere under seventy-two hours,’ says Anastasia Mackenzie.
‘Fuck!’ Denny punches the
display, punches illusion. Where there had been unity and purpose in the control room is now a crackle of fear. ‘We go out there and try to duke it out …’
‘They tear us apart,’ says Deontia Mackenzie. Her mother Tara, Meridian’s leading fashionista, had died in Ironfall.
‘They’ve been testing our cyberdefences,’ Irina Vorontsova-Asamoah says. ‘We’re fending them off. Hadley’s operating system is riddled with Trojan horses. Some of them have been there since the city was built. There’s ancient code in there; like fifty years old …’ Irina stops. No one in the control room moves. Everyone looks at everyone else. Everyone has had the same idea at the same instant. Everyone except Irina.
‘Trojan horses,’ Denny says. ‘Trojan fucking horses!’
‘Remember Ironfall,’ his mother says and the mantra runs around the tactical table. Remember Ironfall.
‘We’ll need a distraction,’ Anastasia says. ‘As soon as they see what we’re doing, they’ll go after the array.’
Denny grins gold and spreads his arms wide.
‘Am I not the moon’s number one distraction?’ His call goes out through the pyroxene corridors and grey olivine halls of Hadley. I need thirty staunch jackaroos. Fighters, gunners. Suicide mission. Airlock five. Who’s with me?
The women smile as they bend to their tasks.
‘We need to hit hard,’ Deontia Mackenzie says. ‘We get one go at this.’
Magda Mackenzie scans the display, frowning, then zooms it and touches a finger to a glowing blue dot.
‘Orel, just arrived from the Palace of Eternal Light. That’s an executive transport pod.’
‘They brought the board to watch their golden boy march in triumph through London Court,’ Apollonaire says,
‘Ey!’ Denny shouts. ‘I’m your fucking Golden Boy and don’t forget it.’
‘Don’t get killed, Denny,’ Magda Mackenzie says.
‘You do your bit right, I may not even need to kill anyone,’ Denny says.
‘I don’t understand …’ Irina Vorontsova-Asamoah says.
‘Tell me, Vorontsov, what’s the Mackenzie motto?’ Denny calls from the door. His fingers grip the dusty frame.
‘Mackenzies repay three times,’ Irina says.
‘Uh uh.’ Denny shakes his head. He beams a savage, golden grin.
‘Seize your fallen enemy’s weapon,’ chorus the women of Hadley. ‘And use it against them.’
‘In. In. In. In. In.’ Denny Mackenzie slaps each volunteer on the back as they pass into the main lock. ‘You. In. You. Suit up. You …’ His finger freezes, pointing. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘I defected, or didn’t you hear?’ Finn Warne is not imposing by lunar standards but the crowd edges away from him, leaving him in social vacuum.
‘Why the fuck should I let you fight for Mackenzie Metals?’
‘Because I’m the only one ever had you, Denny Mackenzie. In Schmidt crater, in that stupid gold suit. You didn’t know me, I was just another jackaroo. But I got you, Jack of Blades. Left you for dead. Took a Corta to save you.’
The silent crowd waits. Denny Mackenzie jerks a thumb towards the lock.
‘Get in. Suit up.’
As Finn Warne passes, Denny stops him with a hand on the shoulder and a whisper.
‘You thought you had me back at Schmidt when you jumped my jackaroos and left me for dead. Got to tell you, mate, Denny Mackenzie doesn’t die that easy, even if it took a Corta to save him. Understand that. And I’ve got a shiny new gold suit.’
The new suit is shell armour, the lacquer job still phenolic and pungent in the confined space of the suit room.
‘Can’t move in these fucking things,’ Denny swears as the panels clamshell and seal around him. The haptic rig moves in to read his body and he feels the servos activate. The suit is power and protection but the price is speed and manoeuvrability. In the way of the knife, speed is life. Move fast, move clever, turn on a blade-tip and gut your enemy.
The shell-suit comes to life around him. A woman in space-orc armour snaps firearms from the rack and hands one to each suited fighter. Her tag reads Sonia Ngata, she is a veteran of Mackenzie Metals’ assault to break the siege of Twé by the machines of the Lunar Mandate Authority.
‘What’s this?’ Denny Mackenzie says. He holds the weapon as if it is a turd.
‘Gauss rifle,’ Sonia Ngata says. ‘Put a slug clean through a bot from two kilometres.’
‘I’ve fought those things,’ Finn Warne says. ‘The Suns have made some improvements since Twé. You don’t want to see how quick they can cover two kilometres. You’ve got two shots, then they’re on you.’
‘Just give me a fucking blade,’ Denny Mackenzie mutters, turning the gauss rifle over in his gauntleted hands. Sonia Ngata steps forward, slaps a release on the barrel. A bayonet snaps out. A twist and she hands the blade to Denny.
‘Nice,’ he says. ‘Two would be nicer. Okay.’ His squad fall in before him. Thirty suits. Christ on crutches. ‘My friends, my dear friends. We are going to launch a diversionary attack on the Taiyang team trying to hard-hack our life-support systems. They will be defended by wushis and bots. We are outnumbered and outgunned. We shall probably die. Old men talk about death and glory and that is the oldest shittest lie there is. There is no glory in death. Death is the end of everything that is good. And I am leading you to your deaths. Our job is to buy time. And if that time is measured in lives, not seconds, then that is our mission. I don’t want any of you to die, so fight like fucking demons. Fight like life itself. That’s all I have to say. Thank you. You are the best of people. You are jackaroos, you are blades, yes, but every fucking one of you is a Mackenzie.’
The lock rings to cheers, then helmets seal and the pressure monitors drop towards vacuum. Green lights turn red. The outlock opens and with a roar on the common channel, Denny Mackenzie’s gold armour leads the charge out on to the regolith.
Run, Jiang Ying Yue orders her suit. This waypoint. The battle armour answers with instant speed and power. Such superb engineering. With the suit’s autonomics in control, she can devote her full attention to the counter-attack. Thirty Mackenzie Metal blades, at full suit speed, charging the Taiyang engineering team working on the hack into Hadley’s main comms line. Logical. Obvious. Tactically naive. The Australians love bravado. Bravado does not win wars.
Her eyes flicker across her tactical array, identifying units. She shapes orders in her mind and her bots and wushis move to comply.
Intel is life. She zooms in on the raiding party. Her enemy is armed with Siege of Twé era shell-suits and gauss rifles. Knives of course. The Mackenzie and their knives. They are quick and determined but they have no discipline, no harmony: a loping band of brigands, battle-suits decorated in a carnival of colours and designs and patterns. Chaotic. They will fight as individuals, not a unit. Her HUD fastens on a golden shell-suit. Jiang Ying Yue allows herself a moment of surprise. Denny Mackenzie, the Golden Boy. They have sent their prince to fight. How quaint. She’ll punish them for that.
She fields a distress call from the engineers.
‘Hold position,’ she orders. ‘Reinforcements will be with you momentarily.’ A touch of her will and two squads of combat bots spring into the air and light their thrusters, arcing high over the black mirrors of the furnace array.
The Australians don’t stand a chance. Jiang Ying Yue relishes the thought of their defeat. She has always found them brash, arrogant people, fatally wedded to the delusion that the universe loves them.
Find Darius, she orders her suit. He flashes up on her display, running hard with Red Platoon towards the line of battle.
‘Darius, return to the executive module,’ Jiang Ying Yue orders. Let the boy see blood, Lady Sun had instructed her, but that is Denny Mackenzie at the head of a squad of hand-picked jackaroos.
‘I want t
o face Denny Mackenzie,’ Darius answers.
‘Denny Mackenzie will cut you apart.’
‘Denny Mackenzie hasn’t trained at the School of Seven Bells.’
‘Return to Orel. That’s an order.’
‘You don’t order me. I am CEO of Mackenzie Metals.’
Jiang Ying Yue sighs.
‘I am Corporate Conflict Resolution Officer and Field Commander with full executive authority and I can take control of your suit and make it run you back to the command module on the double.’
She hears Darius mutter coarse Mackenzie oaths. His icon on her HUD changes direction. Jiang Ying Yue sends a subtle navigation override to his suit, in case he should change his mind when he thinks he is out of line of her sight.
Yellow and Purple platoons, to my mark, she orders. Bots drop out of the sky around her and snatch up her pace. Only a few hundred metres now. Her skirmishers are already engaged.
‘All units engage,’ she calls on the common channel, draws her blades and leaps.
‘Above you!’
Denny Mackenzie wrenches the bayonet from the central processing core of the Taiyang battle bot and looks up. The bot drops, blades down.
‘Move the fuck, suit!’ he yells but the haptics have read his intention and send him rolling away. Landing jets sparkle, the tip of a blade flung out at the last instant scrapes a silver line across his gold shell. Denny steps inside the blade, seizes the bot’s arm and wrenches it from the carapace in spurts of black hydraulic fluid. The second blade scythes towards him and the bot’s head disintegrates. It goes to the regolith in a thrash of spindly limbs and spikes.
Space-orc-armoured Sonia Ngata lowers her gauss rifle and touches a finger to her helmet.
The warning shout had been Finn Warne’s.
Denny scoops up the bot blade. Two knives now. The way it should be.
Two blades, but they are down to twenty and still the bots come, wave after wave charging through the mirror field, dropping from above. The initial charge had taken them to within knife-tip of the Taiyang team working at the main comms cable; then the bots came bounding over the rovers. Blood on the regolith, much blood. They are surrounded, driven ever tighter. It will be back to back, then mate with mate, and then they will die.