by Ian McDonald
‘I’ve got the word for these,’ Ariel says and orders Beija Flor to run Lucas’s patch.
Bots force legs and blades through the widening gap.
‘Lucas …’ Ariel says.
‘I hacked fifteen thousand Type 33a combat bots …’ Lucas begins.
‘Those aren’t 33as,’ Dakota Kaur Mackenzie says. ‘Those are old Type Three basics from the initial assault at Twé.’
‘How many old type are left?’ Ariel asks.
‘This discussion for later,’ Nik Vrontsov shouts. ‘Everybody onboard now!’ As he closes the pod door, multiple-barrel guns unfold from the ship’s superstructure.
‘What the hell?’ Lucas says.
‘We stole it from Mackenzie Helium,’ Nik Vorontsov shouts. The dock is a clicking-clatter of racing stiletto-tip bot feet. ‘If they could shoot one of our ships to hell, we can shoot them back. Sorry, kid, if that brings back bad memories.’
‘I don’t have any memories of Twé,’ Lucasinho says.
‘I do,’ Luna says.
Five loud reports in quick succession.
‘One shot one bot,’ Nik Vorontsov says. ‘There’s a lot of delicate equipment in here. We can only shoot if we have a clear firing solution. Buckle in.’
‘How many are there?’ Ariel asks, fastening the harness of her acceleration chair.
‘More than five,’ Nik Vorontsov says. A rattle of shots, so fast they blur into one. Silence.
Launch sequence initiated, says Orel’s AI. Outlock opening.
‘They’re up there!’ a human voice interrupts on the common channel. ‘The surface is crawling with them.’
‘Get us some clear space!’ Nik Vorontsov bellows, strapped in between Luna and Lucasinho.
‘We have a new launch solution,’ says the VTO captain. ‘Stand by.’
The countdown appears on everyone’s lens. Nik Vorontsov takes Luna and Lucasinho’s hands.
‘It’s good to yell,’ he says and never finishes the sentence as Orel blasts off. The passenger pod roars with full-throated voices. Audible over the cacophony of shots and the thunder of rockets is the crack, crack, crack of the miniguns. The ship shakes, the seats shake, the air shakes, every cell in the passengers’ bodies shakes.
Lucas sees the fear and the pain on the faces of the people he loves. You fear it will end too soon and you will crash out of the sky, then you fear that it will end in an instant in a huge explosion. Last, you fear that it will not end at all.
Counting down to main engine shut off, Orel says. Standby for freefall in three, two, One.
It ends. Lucas feels his stomach lurch, his weight vanishes. Seeing the distress on Abena Asamoah’s face, Nik Vorontsov snaps free from his harness and drifts over to her with a vomit bag. In the silence after the retching and the mumbled apology, everyone clearly hears the sound of clicking coming from the bulkhead. Tip-tap, tip-tapping towards the ramp.
‘Fuck,’ Nik Vorontsov says. ‘They’re on the hull.’
‘How?’ Ariel asks.
‘They must have jumped while we were launching. They’re under the guns’ firing arc so we can’t hit them,’ Nik Vorontsov says.
‘Can they open the door?’ Lucasinho asks.
‘They could wreck enough systems that we can’t land safely.’
‘You mean crash,’ Luna Corta says.
‘I mean crash.’
‘How do we get rid of them?’ Alexia Corta asks.
‘Someone will have to go out there and take them out,’ Dakota Kaur Mackenzie says.
‘There are suits?’ Alexia asks.
‘There are two SE suits,’ Dakota Mackenzie says. ‘Isn’t it good someone checks these things?’ She unclips her harness, pushes herself up out of her seat towards the ceiling lock to the control centre. She slaps Rosario de Tsiolkovski softly on the back of the head as she flies past. ‘Come on, fighter. Two suits. Let’s see if you’ve still got the ghazi spirit in you.’
Sasuit. Surface Activity suit. A tight-fitting sealed pressure-skin with helmet and recycling life-support pack, designed to allow freedom of movement and environmental protection for up to forty-eight hours.
SE suit. Short Excursion suit. A stretch-fabric unitard, sufficiently tight to supplement the human skin’s natural pressure resistance and prevent liquid loss. White to reflect heat. Combined helmet-respirator glued to the suit, only as airtight as the suit-wearer is careful with the glue strips. Designed for no more than fifteen minutes activity in vacuum.
On average, moonship ballistic flights last fifteen minutes. If a problem can’t be solved in the lifespan of a SE suit, it won’t be.
The service lock is so small Rosario and Dakota must curl around each other like twins in a womb.
‘Tether tether tether,’ Captain Xenia says as she seals the EVA lock.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Dakota Mackenzie says on the suit channel. Rosario clips her weapon to her, herself to the carabiner inside the lock. An axe and three flares, to battle combat bots that can unfold into a hundred knives.
The lock opens. Rosario pulls herself on to the hull. Immediately she is disoriented. Head down, the sun-belt a band of black so profound the silver moon could have been cut in two. She cries out, grips hard: fear of falling. No, the moon is not down, nor is it above her, there is no up or down, there is only motion. Yes, she is falling, everything is falling. She checks the carabiner again: it would be all too easy for an over-aggressive move to launch her away from the moonship.
Mare Tranquilitatis races beneath her. Her stomach lurches.
Fourteen minutes.
The SE suit HUD is rudimentary but carries enough detail to locate the enemy: two bots on the opposite side of the hull, among the fuel tanks. Orel is a free-fall climbing frame; struts and construction beams make easy handholds to climb. Not climbing; climbing implies gravity against which to climb; this is another form of movement. Clambering. Rosario clambers across the surface of the moonship. The tether reels out behind her.
‘You need to move,’ Captain Xenia interrupts. ‘We’re down a fuel pump already.’
No need for the HUD now. The enemy is in sight, two bots sawing at a fuel line. Moonships and bicycles wear their engineering on the outside. Rosario pulls a flare, Dakota readies the axe.
‘How do we do this?’ Rosario asks. The question answers itself as the bots register threat. Synthetic muscles flex, artificial sinews tighten, the carapace splits into sections and realigns for action. A bot strikes, Rosario bats away the killing thrust, jerks the arm and snaps the joints. Spraying lubricant hazes her visor but she has no time to clear it. She twists the cap of the flare; the chemicals mix and ignite. She jabs it into the sensor array. The bot reels, throws arms between its many many eyes and the flare. The flare gutters, oxidiser spent, and flickers out. The bot uncoils in a leap. A needle leg grazes Rosario’s belly and lays open the thin skin of her SE suit. A free hand reaches for a grip to swing around for the killing lunge. And the axe, flying true with all Dakota Kaur Mackenzie’s strength behind it, takes the bot full in the core and sends it spinning into orbit.
‘Shit,’ Rosario says, feeling the precision slash across her suit-skin. ‘Shit, I’m bleeding. Shit shit shit shit shit.’
‘Never mind that,’ Dakota says. ‘That was the axe. We have one bot, and two flares.’
The second bot, as if reaching this same conclusion, extricates itself from the moonship’s engineering. It is like a vile hatching, long limbs extricating, pulling free, reaching for purchase. Rosario sets her jaw against the pain. Fuck, this hurts. Hurt hurts hurts hurts. How long can the human body survive in vacuum? Her helmet seal is good but with the pressure skin ruptured her body is effectively naked. She wears a belt of free-floating blood droplets, smearing against the white of her suit as she moves.
She has seconds before the second bot is ready to
strike.
Rosario throws a flare to Dakota.
‘When I say, stab it in the fucking face.’
‘What are you …’
War in freefall is the territory of unanswered questions. Rosario throws herself headlong at the bot. She ignites the flare, twists past the unfurling blades as the bot locates her through the glare and heat and stops herself hard, painfully against a heat-exchange panel.
‘Now!’
Dakota Kaur Mackenzie attacks with fire and fury. She is fast, almost as fast as the bot, dodging, parrying with the flare, always coming back with the flare stabbing at the machine’s round, glittering eyes.
In the glare and the blindness, Rosario unhooks her tether and clips it through one of the bot’s knee joints. The bot kicks out, Rosario tumbles away, head over heels, one hand in a death-grip on a landing gear strut. Orel arcs high over the diggings and revetments of Twé, almost at the apex of its ballistic flight.
And that is how Rosario Salgado O’Hanlon de Tsiolkovski wins.
‘Dakota, catch me!’
She launches herself towards the ghazi. Flying free. Flying untethered. If she misjudges, if Dakota mistimes her move, if the bot recovers too quickly from its disorientation, she flies into her own partial orbit. She won’t have to worry about the life-support limits of her ruined SE suit. Impacting East Tranquillity at two point seven-five kilometres per second will decide everything. She’ll be a crater. They might even name it after her.
And Dakota Kaur Mackenzie has her forearm tucked through Rosario’s belt. She’s worked it out. She hits the tether reel and flings the guttering flare at the bot as the winch snatches them away from a dismembering slash.
‘Xenia,’ Rosario shouts. ‘Spin the ship!’
‘We’re not at turnaround,’ Captain Xenia begins. Dakota shouts over her.
‘Do what she says! Three-sixty her!’
A pause. The bot scrambles towards them, blades held aloft like some many-armed deity of knives. Rosario hauls herself towards the lock, the latch, the carabiner at the other end of the tether.
‘Hold tight,’ Captain Xenia says. And the world wheels. Acceleration tears Rosario’s fingers from their grip. Dakota has her. Dakota has her. Moon stars sun spin around her. Don’t look. Don’t look, you’ll throw up in your helmet. She has to look. One glance over her shoulder is enough: the bot has lost its grip and is snapped by centripetal acceleration to the full extent of the tether. In a moment it will haul itself in. Orel tumbles across the lunar sky, a carnival of sputtering blue attitude jets. Rosario climbs up Dakota’s body to the edge of the airlock. She unsnaps the carabiner. It whips from her fingers. The bot flies free, following its own, helpless ballistic trajectory. They’ll name no craters after you, thing.
It’s all physics. It’s all momentum tether engineering.
‘Fuck off you old-school Type 3 bot,’ Rosario whispers. On comms she says, ‘Hostiles eliminated, Captain.’
‘Good work. Thank you,’ Captain Xenia says. ‘Now get in here.’
‘Good one, ghazi,’ Dakota Mackenzie says as the two women squeeze themselves into the lock. At that moment, in that place, those are the greatest words Rosario has ever heard. She knows the horror stories about vomiting inside a helmet in free fall. Are there any such legends about tears?
Gravity kicks, kicks again, attitude jets turning Orel into descent mode. Foetus-curled, bawling from strain and relief, smeared with a starburst of her own blood, Rosario Salgado O’Hanlon de Tsiolkovski falls towards the Sea of Fecundity.
Ariel sniffs at the administrative suites. She raises an eyebrow at the stale, windowless offices and looks askance at the refurbished boardroom. When she comes to Lucas’s eyeball-sanctum she can hide her disdain no longer.
‘Now I remember why I left this shit-hole.’
She whisks on, leaving a vaper trail to disperse slowly in the sluggish air conditioning.
‘Stone stone stone stone stone,’ Ariel complains as she descends the grand staircase to ground level.
‘Exit through the mouth,’ Alexia hints. Ariel rolls her eyes. On Oxala’s lip, Ariel stops, touches Alexia on the arm.
‘What is that?’
It takes Alexia a few peering moments to make out the object of Ariel’s interest. The accelerated-growth trees are in full leaf now, and the cupola half-glimpsed through the slow-stirring leaves is like an image from a dream. Old, perilous gods live here.
‘Take me there.’
Beija Flor could rez up a map of Boa Vista but Ariel enjoys setting small tasks, tests and traps in Alexia’s path. Iron Hand? Maybe to my brother, but Ariel Corta is not so easily swayed. As Alexia finds a path of stone flags winding through the bamboo, Ariel takes a long draw on her vaper. Marina killed an assassin with this vaper’s predecessor, stabbed him up through the jaw, drove the point out through the top of his skull. Jo Moonbeam strength. Strength enough to kill for love, strength enough to keep her through the dark time but not enough to stay. Since taking the Eyrie, Ariel’s thoughts have more and more gone to Marina. How do you find Earth? How does Earth find you? Does the light in the night sky fill you with longing, like a wolf? Do you look up and think of me?
What is your strength, Alexia who calls herself Mão de Ferro, and what in this world will break it? For something will.
The turning path ends at a pavilion; plinth, pillars, a dome. Water runs around the base of the plinth. Ariel climbs the steps. The air is fresh, made sweet by running water, the sunline is blue and the artificial wind rustles the bamboo. The canes screen the pavilion from the gaze of the orixas; it is an encircled, private place. Ariel walks the circle, stroking her fingers across the columns. Warm stone.
‘This is the place,’ Ariel declares. ‘I’ll need a desk, three chairs, one comfortable, the others not so. Beverages on demand. Can you arrange that?’
‘I have people on it now. Lucas has requested a private meeting.’
Ariel savours the moment.
‘Of course. Let him know where he can find me.’
Ariel hears his stick on the stones before she sees him emerge from the bamboo maze.
Human wreckage, meeting in the circle.
‘Our mother’s favourite place,’ Lucas says. ‘In the latter days she would come here to talk with Mãe de Santo Odunlade. Her confessor, Mamãe called her.’
‘Is there anything left of the Sisterhood?’ Ariel asks.
‘The madrinhas. The shrine in João. Legends,’ Lucas says. He leans into his cane. ‘Is that enough? I don’t know. I’m not a person of faith. This will be your office?’
‘Until I can move back to Meridian.’
‘There’s a thing I need to do first. Lucas, I can’t let you get away with it.’
Lucas smiles wryly, sags on his stick,
‘I thought this would come. I used to have dreams: burning, gasping for air. Drowning in molten metal. Horrific dreams.’
‘You did a horrific thing.’
‘I did it for Rafa, Carlinhos, our mother. You.’
‘Our debts are settled.’
‘They are now.’
‘You’ll retire gracefully,’ Ariel says. ‘Cultivate your garden. Become the two worlds’ greatest expert on bossa nova. Get into sports – you have your own handball team now. Learn politics, comment with insight and pungency. Raise your son.’
Ariel sees old pain tighten Lucas’s face.
‘It seems a light sentence.’
‘Is it?’ Ariel says. ‘Why did you want to see me, irmão?’
‘Why did you do it? Cortas don’t do politics. And here we are, a convocation of Eagles.’
‘Vidhya Rao showed me the future.’
For a moment Lucas can’t place the name.
‘The economist. Whitacre Goddard. Did er computers prophesy for you? What is it e calls them?’
‘The Three August Sages. No, e told me about a conversation e had with Wang Yongqing, Anselmo Reyes and Monique Bertin. E proposed er Lunar Bourse idea.’
‘I saw er present it.’
‘Were you there at the meeting where the terrestrials proposed funding it, on the basis that it needed no human input?’
‘What do you mean?’ Lucas shifts uncomfortably on his stick.
‘Vidhya Rao asked her computers to construct likely futures. They all foresaw a moon depopulated by disease. Plagues, Lucas. The terrestrials’ plan for us. A dark machine, grinding out value. I was the only one in a position to act. I had a clear path to the power to stop them.’
‘Use the codes.’
A command – and Beija Flor has laid them all out in plain vision, the options and powers of the Eagle of the Moon – and she could put every terrestrial to the blade.
‘We have to be better than them, Lucas.’
She will not commit another Ironfall.
‘They wouldn’t hesitate.’
She surveys the virtual array of commands, edicts and executive functions. There. The work of a thought.
‘I won’t do that, Lucas.’
‘So be it.’ He purses thumb and fingers in the Corta salutation. ‘I will retire, but not gracefully. I intend to be as irritating and vexatious as I can be. Someone needs to hold you to account, sister.’
‘Lucas.’
He turns on the top step.
‘That thing I told you about. The one I needed to do first. I just did it.’
At Leeuwenhoek a VTO track-queen plugs her suit into the diagnostic port of the broken-down freight hauler.
Out on the glass-fields south of Abul Wafa a glasser sends his maintenance bots scurrying out in search of cracks.
In the helium-fields of Mare Anguis a duster uncaps a vac-pen and scrawls Corta Hélio across the Mackenzie Helium logo.
In Meridian in the Seven Funk hotshop on Tereshkova Prospekt the star noodle-maker twirls and stretches and pulls the fine dough while the customers gossip about the shocks and surprises of Corta versus Corta.