by Ian McDonald
‘No. I don’t. I know what you’ve been forced to do by the LMA to get to Bryce Mackenzie. You’ve kicked it down the road but it will always be there. I can’t say that I won’t make a worse job of it than you. But I’ll be able to try. You never could, not with Lucasinho. You would always have been afraid for him. I have no children, no lovers, no ties. I’m made of iron.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Act for the people of the moon. We’re not an industrial outpost, we’re not an Earth colony.’
‘Ariel Corta, independence fighter.’
‘If I had my vaper, I’d blow smoke rings at you, brother. Here’s the deal. You take Lucasinho and whoever else you want home to Boa Vista. You build whatever kind of empire you want out there in the Mare Fecunditatis. I take the title, honours and responsibilities of the Eagle of the Moon. Straight swap.’
‘Is this legal?’
‘There’s no law against it,’ Ariel says. ‘This is the moon.’
‘Everything is negotiable,’ Lucas says. ‘One rider.’
‘Try me.’
‘Take Alexia.’
‘Your Mão de Ferro?’
‘You’ll need help. She knows the business. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
In the cramped, dusty pen under the killing floor of Court Five, Lucas Corta and Ariel Corta shake hands. They embrace briefly. Ariel moistens a wipe under the faucet and dabs clean the cut on Lucas’s cheek where the blade fragment grazed him. Blood has run down his neck, his chest, trickling to the waistband of his pants.
‘There ought to be a first aid kit down here,’ Ariel grumbles.
‘The kind of wounds you get here are not amenable to first aid,’ Lucas says. They look at each other. Faces crease. Choked mirth bubbles into giggles, into aching, breathless laughter. Malandragem. The flyest of fly moves. The Cortas are back. Lucas wipes his eyes.
‘Shall we keep them waiting a little longer?’
‘Oh, I think so,’ says the Eagle of the Moon.
TWENTY-SEVEN
These are the images from Corta versus Corta that will endure as long as the moon hangs in the sky.
Broken knives on cracked polished stone.
Judges on their feet, trying to shout over a courtroom in uproar.
A hovering sphere, half black, half silver, unfolding wings, drinking colour out of the air, becoming green Luna moth.
A nine-year-old girl wiping skull-paint from her face.
A father hugging his son to him, oblivious to everything else.
* * *
‘I recall saying that the next time you tried to pull a trick like that in my court, I would order the zashitniks to gut you.’ The counsel chamber is one of the hive of ancillary rooms and corridors beneath Court Five and as small, dusty and cramped as the fighters’ stable. Judge Rieko Nagai perches on the edge of the basin as Ariel Corta strips off her sweat-stained fighting garb and drops it into the de-printer. Ariel slips into the shower for thirty seconds of pre-programmed hot water.
‘I’d’ve taken them,’ Ariel shouts through the gush.
‘You broke your knife,’ Rieko says.
‘The ghazi would have taken them.’
‘She probably would.’
The drier buffets Ariel; she throws back her head, letting her dark hair fall out, runs her fingers through it, flounces it, fluffs it up to the hot air. Then into the robe extruding from the printer.
‘I also remember last time I gave you one of these.’
Judge Rieko takes a small bottle of ten-botanical gin from her purse.
‘Thank you, but I don’t any more,’ Ariel says. ‘You brought that to court, didn’t you?’
‘I knew you would pull some piece of gratuitous malandragem.’
‘And if I hadn’t?’
‘I’d’ve toasted your memory.’ Judge Rieko’s tone darkens. ‘The terrestrials are in panic. They’ve filed over five hundred writs already. Court of Clavius AIs are winnowing them out but you might want to keep that ghazi on a retainer.’
‘They can’t stop me. And they can’t count on the Vorontsovs’ space-artillery.’
‘They have fifteen thousand combat bots deployable in seconds.’
‘Do they?’ Ariel says with a sly smile.
One last thing, Lucas said as they prepared to go up on to the fighting floor and shake the moon in its orbit. You’ll need this.
Beija Flor logged a file transfer.
What is this?
The word for the terrestrials’ bots. I did a deal with Amanda Sun.
What does it do?
Whatever you want fifteen thousand combat bots to do.
Ariel said, as the roof slid open, throwing a lengthening box of light into the zashitnik pen, Your own private Ironfall.
‘You have those courtroom eyes again,’ Judge Rieko says. ‘You scare me when you look like that.’
‘We need to grow up,’ Ariel says. ‘All of us. Rule of law, not rule of the blade.’ The printer is at work again.
‘That’s your first decree?’
‘My second.’ Ariel holds up the print-wet Pierre Balmain dress. ‘The fifties are back.’
* * *
The elevator seizes the moto and lifts it high above Gargarin Prospekt. Ariel takes her vaper from her purse and snaps it out to its full decadent length.
‘Do you mind?’
‘Yes,’ Lucas Corta says.
Ariel vapes up and cracks open the roof.
‘There.’
She leans back and exhales a ribbon of pale fumes.
‘That doesn’t help.’
The crowds outside the court show no signs of dispersing; numbers have doubled and redoubled in size and noise. Gargarin Prospekt is solid with bodies, wall to wall. Half of Meridian waits with questions, demands, concerns, fears, opinions for the new order that emerges from Court Five.
The Cortas and their retainers depart from the service entrance in a flotilla of chartered motos, and immediately take to the heights. Each vehicle follows a different route. Not to the Eyrie. The Eyrie is the first place the terrestrials will send their bots. Not even to the station: the gupshup channels’ bots are already swarming there. The transports will rendezvous at the VTO moonship dock, where Nik Vorontsov has Orel fuelled, crewed and ready to lift for Boa Vista.
The moto bearing the former and current Eagles of the Moon runs the high streets, ascending and descending, crossing and recrossing as soon as it senses gossip-drones closing in. Bossa nova and vaper fumes fill the bauble of titanium and carbon fibre. A sudden stop and turn and the moto drives on to the cargo deck of a cable car and swings out into two kilometres of sheer airspace.
LMA bots closing in, Beija Flor and Toquinho announce.
‘It’s time to give you this,’ Lucas Corta says as the moto reels through the glittering void.
Beija Flor lights up with a massive data transfer. Information, codes, privileges and accesses, every thing the Eagle of the Moon requires to administer, coming so fast Beija Flor sags under the torrent.
‘You’ve made me God,’ Ariel says. Vapour leaks from the corners of her mouth as she takes in the enormity of the powers she has been granted. ‘All that time I was in the White Hare, advising Jonathon Kayode, and he could do all this…’
‘The thing about God is that there can only be one,’ Lucas says. ‘It’s a failing of monotheism. Take this.’
A final transfer.
‘What does it do?’
‘Shuts anyone but you out of the executive powers.’
Ariel grimaces.
‘What’s keeping you?’ Lucas asks. He closes his eyes, breathes deep. Aguas do Marco.
‘It feels very final.’
‘It’s supposed to. Do it.’
Toquinho chimes a guitar chord and says, Executive authorisations erasing. Lucas calls up a visualisation and watches his powers dissolve in slow detonating puffballs of dying code. Elis Regina sings a plangent, melancholy soundtrack. Saudade.
‘How do you feel?’ Ariel asks.
‘Do you mean, am I like some kind of superhero who loses his powers? No. Not that. Not that at all.’ He does not tell his sister his feelings: he is filled with light and lightness like a New Year balloon. He could weep tears of release rich as pearls. He understands what it is to be blessed.
The cradle docks, the moto turns towards the Sixty-Third West upramp.
‘I regret that Jonathon Kayode died,’ Lucas says. ‘Adrian Mackenzie fought like the very devil. I think my abiding sin may be underestimating my enemies.’
The moto takes the freight elevator to the moonship dock. Orel stands gleaming under spotlights, a fantastic beast of fuel tanks, thruster nodes, struts and spars and comms dishes, solar and radiator panels nearly folded. An environment pod stands open, ramp lowered. Everyone is there: the ghazi, Ariel’s Bairro Alto zashitnik, Abena Maanu Asamoah. Madrinha Elis. The wolf. Luna. The Iron Hand. Lucasinho.
‘Get in get in!’ Nik Vorontsov, still rebelling against taste and fashion in his aggressively blue-collar shorts and T-shirt and dock boots comes down the ramp to escort Ariel and Lucas. ‘Standing around like a wedding photograph. We have a launch window!’
The inlock gate stirs. Orel’s dock is a massive airlock, the outlock overhead, opening to the surface; the inlock opening to the city. And the inlock is grinding open.
‘Bots!’ Nik Vorontsov yells. Dozens of them, swarming behind the slowly opening gate, blades unfolding and closing with a terrifying snicker-click.
‘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.