by Ian McDonald
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 Process flows and smelter data have been replaced by a detailed schematic of the Palus Putridinis.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, s
he 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 to 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.
‘Control!’ Denny yells. ‘We’re fucked!’
He scissors the two blades and sends a bot’s sensor-head flying.
‘We have target lock, Denny,’ says a voice from the glowing summit of Hadley.
‘Irina?’
‘It is. Stand by.’
‘We’re dying here.’
Far out across the Palus Putridinis, an arc of mirrors suddenly blazes brighter than the sun. The clouds of battle-dust render the beam visible, almost solid. It sweeps downwards, and another section of the array catches it, throw it on to another, to another; to focus it on the furthest VTO moonship. In an instant the heat-exchange vanes glow red. There are seconds before failure, heat overload and the fuel tanks exploding.
‘You dancer!’ Denny Mackenzie shouts on the control channel.
The ship’s crew reach a decision. Thrusters kindle, the ship lifts, the main engine burns and in a few seconds Orel is lights in the sky. All across the Marsh of Decay VTO ships lift clear of the mirror array on knives of blue fire.
The mirrors blaze with light and beneath them, not a human or machine moves.
‘The executive module!’ Finn Warne yells. ‘They left the executive module! The entire board of Taiyang!’
‘So they did,’ Denny Mackenzie says. ‘So they did.’ As if every brain and AI on the battlefield has come to that realisation at the same instant, the frozen paralysis shatters. Wushis, bots, engineers, rovers explode into manic motion. Fighting machines vault through the air like heroes of sword-wielding legends. Rovers send up geysers of dark dust as they spin their wheels. Denny sees machines go down under those wheels, sees a frantic wushi try, fail to get clear. The body cartwheels high over the rover to smash into the molten heart of one of Hadley’s mirror-weapons. It’s a retreat to protect the board: a rout.
‘Take the heat off them,’ Denny says. The sudden darkness as the mirrors tilt away from the sun is so intense it is almost palpable. ‘Cool heads make smarter decisions. Get me a channel to Taiyang, will you?’
‘You’re in, Denny.’
The blades unfold from their final stand. Eighteen. Eighteen of the thirty who roared their allegiance in Airlock Four. They form a ragged line, suits scarred and slashed, antennae lopped, face plates cracked, leaks bubbled with grey emergency sealant. Sonia Ngata rests the butt of her gauss rifle on the regolith. Finn Warne stands at Denny’s shoulder.
‘Taiyang: this is Denny Mackenzie.’ He is broadcasting not just to the Taiyang board and army, but to his jackaroos, to the control room, to the whole of Hadley. ‘I’ll accept your surrender now.’
NINETEEN
‘Does she wear that all the time?’ Vidhya Rao asks. Luna sits at the end of the table, arms folded on the glass. Her chin rests on her arms. Her living eye glares at the economist. Her dead eye is beyond knowing.
‘All the time,’ Ariel says.
‘It’s tattooed,’ Luna says.
‘It’s not,’ Ariel says.
‘I might get it tattooed,’ Luna says with steel.
‘You will not,’ Ariel says but the victory is not assured.
‘I need to talk with you,’ Vidhya Rao says. ‘Professionally.’
‘Luna, would you like to hear this?’
Luna nods.
Vidhya Rao dips er head. The escape from Meridian and the wrath of the Suns tested the physical resources of an elderly, scholarly neutro. Small praise to the parsimonious gods of economists, e had blacked from gee-forces just before the first moonloop release. E had been unconscious the entire relay, tether to tether to tether, juggled around the moon until the final tether deposited er into the docking clamps of the Coriolis tower.
Seventy minutes is a dangerous time for a seventy-year-old to be unconscious. University crash teams extricated her from the capsule and took her to the faculty. As soon as e could move and speak, e requested a meeting with Ariel Corta. E was invited to Ariel’s crater-rim apartm
ent.
‘Congratulations on turning all of Meridian on its head,’ Ariel says. ‘My own exodus was disappointingly mundane by comparison. An early-morning wheel down Gargarin Prospekt.’
‘I had assistance,’ Vidhya Rao says. ‘A sub-AI on Taiyang’s backdoor into the Three August Ones using the persona of Lady Sun. It’s complicated.’
‘Three August Ones: like Fu Xi, Shennong and the Yellow Emperor?’ Luna asks, swinging her legs.
‘Like whatever they want to be,’ Vidhya Rao says. ‘I detest them. Their intelligence is so alien to ours that they can barely communicate. At best they seem eccentric; at worst deliberately obstructive. Imagine a friend who only talks in riddles, or anagrams, or quotations from a telenovela you don’t watch. Perhaps they are sincerely trying to communicate, perhaps it is all games only they understand.’
‘What did you ask them?’ Ariel asks.
‘To generate forecasts of the Lunar Bourse five, ten, fifteen and fifty years after it goes online.’
‘What did they show you?’ Luna asks. This is magic, bruxaria, wonder-stuff.
‘Fifty years from now there is no life on the moon,’ Vidhya Rao says. ‘Human, animal, vegetable. The moon is a dead world run by machines making money. The cities are empty, cold and open to vacuum.’
‘Me too?’ Luna chirps.
‘Everyone,’ Vidhya Rao begins. ‘Two years from now, the terrestrials introduce engineered plagues from Earth. We have no immunity, our phages are powerful but our medical facilities are overrun. This is plague upon plague upon plague. Ten years from now there are only a couple of hundred humans alive on the moon, nearside and farside. The systems are breaking down, the machines are failing, the people are ageing, there are no new children being born … Fifteen years from now…’
Luna’s eyes are wide, her lips wavering, her nostrils flared.
‘Enough,’ Ariel says. ‘You’re scaring her.’
‘The Three August Ones assign probabilities to their prophecies. If the LMA pursues the Lunar Bourse, the probability of the total extinction of human life on the moon within twenty years is eighty-nine per cent, within fifty years one hundred per cent.’
