Luna: New Moon

ELEVEN

Meridian loves a wedding and there is no wedding bigger than the marriage of Lucasinho Corta and Denny Mackenzie. The Eagle of the Moon has donated his private gardens for the ceremony: the trees have been dressed with bows and biolights and twinkling stars. The bergamots and kumquats and dwarf oranges have been sprayed silver. Paper lanterns are strung between the branches. The path will be strewn with rose petals. AKA has donated a hundred white doves for a spectacular, wing-clapping release. They’ve been engineered to die within twenty-four hours. The vermin laws are strict.

The contracts will be signed in the Orange Pavilion. Behind the happy boy and boy a squadron of aerialists will perform a winged ballet high in Antares Hub, weaving ideograms in the air with streamers attached to their ankles. The Eagle of the Moon has made small grants available for the residents of Antares Hub to decorate their neighbourhoods. Banners hang from balconies, streamers festoon the crosswalks and the bridges drip strings of Diwali biolights. Balloons in the shape of manhua bats and butterflies and ducks navigate the hub’s airspace. Space rental on those balconies with the best views has hit six hundred bitsies. The finest vantages on the bridges and catwalks were tagged and bagged long before. Exclusive image rights have been signed to Gupshup after a ferocious auction: the access agreement is stern: media drones must keep a respectful distance and no direct interviews with either oko will be entertained.

The four hundred guests will be waited upon by twenty catering staff and eighty servers. Cultural and religious diets will be accommodated, and all manner of dietary intolerances. There will be meat. A joke is running around that Lucasinho made the wedding cake, in his signature style. Not true: the Ker Wa bakery has the longest established tradition of oko cakes and moon cakes. Kent Narasimha from the Full Moon bar of the Meridian Holiday Inn has created a celebratory cocktail: the Blushing Boy. It involves a designer one-shot gin, foams, cubes of jelly that dissolve and send spirals of colour and flavour up through the gin and flakes of gold foil. Virgin cocktails and herbal waters for non-alcohol drinkers.

The security screening started a week ago. LDC, Corta and Mackenzie security have liaised on an unprecedented level. The gardens of Jonathon Kayode are being scanned down to the level of dust-motes and dead skin-flakes.

Three days to the wedding of the the year! What will the boys wear? Here are spreads of Lucasinho Corta’s latest looks. The preppy colloquium boy. His moon-run party tweed and tan pants. His two weeks as a fashion icon, when everyone pulled on suit-liners and drew on them with marker pens. His grandmother’s eightieth party; his grandmother’s memorial, so sad, so soon. His return to the fashion flashlight: who does his make-up? So very defining of this season. Heads up, boys! You’re all going to be wearing this look. Denny Mackenzie: oh who cares? When was a Mackenzie ever fashionable? But who will design the wedding suits. We simply can’t leave it to the familiars. Design AIs we’re loving include Loyale, San Damiano, Boy de la Boy, Bruce and Bragg, Cenerentola. Who will get the contract? And the cosmetics …

Two days to the wedding of the year! What makes the Dragons so much better than any of us: class. The Cortas have shown sheer class throughout the matrimonial process. It’s less than a month since the terrible attack on Ariel Corta, but not only is she as mobile as ever on her bot legs, she arranged the nikah from her hospital bed! And only two weeks ago, the whole moon was rocked and saddened by the news of the death of Adriana Corta. But what better way for the Cortas to show their courage than chin up, dress up, glam up: the wedding of the year! Class tells.

One day to the wedding of the year. The sure social signifier of the now is: are you on the guest list, or aren’t you? No one’s telling, but Gupshup has called in a few debts, dealt out a few threats, lavished kisses and micro-kittens and we can exclusively tell you who’s on the guest list! And who’s not! Prepare to be shocked …

The day of the wedding of the year. It starts with a small row; the celebrity spotters with berths booked on the best viewing stations versus the blimp bats and butterflies and beasts of good omen. At the prearranged time, the residents of Antares Hub all flick their banners over their balcony rails and let them slowly unroll into a tapestry of blessings and wedding charms. Security takes up positions as the guest elevators arrive. Invitations are scanned, guests directed to the reception and given their special Full Moon bar bespoke Blushing Boys. Jonathon Kayode and Adrian Mackenzie are delightful hosts. Drone cameras flit and jockey at the prescribed range, battling for celebrity close-ups. Half an hour before the signing, the guests are guided to the Orange Pavilion. Choreography is subtle and tight, the seating plan rigorously enforced. Wedding ushers sends fountains of rose petals into the air. Twenty minutes: the families arrive. Duncan Mackenzie and okos Anastasia and Apollinaire Vorontsov. His daughter, Tara, her okos; their rambunctious sons and daughters. Bryce Mackenzie, lumbering with determination on two sticks, accompanied by a dozen of his adoptees. Hadley Mackenzie, poised and very handsome. Robert Mackenzie is unable to leave Crucible and sends his apologies and congratulations to the happy couple, with all best hopes for a peaceful settlement between the great houses of Mackenzie and Corta. He is represented by Jade Sun-Mackenzie.

The Cortas: Rafa and Lousika, Robson and Luna. Lucas alone. Ariel and her new escolta, who takes a place among the family to flurries of murmurs through the guests. Carlinhos, filling his suit well. Wagner and oko Analiese Mackenzie, looking nervous, and his pack mates; thirty of them in dark colours, a wedding party in themselves, adding a spice of danger to the silver and ribbons of the wedding garden.

They take their seats, a small ensemble performs Blooming Flowers and Full Moon Night.

Now all that is necessary for the wedding of the year is the groom and groom.

A man should undress from the bottom, Lucasinho has heard, so to dress he should reverse the order. The shirt, fresh from the printer. Silver cuff links. Gold is trashy. The necktie is dove grey with a Seikai-ha pattern, tied in an elaborate five-strand Eldredge knot Jinji showed Lucasinho and which he has practised every day for an hour. Underwear: spider silk. Why are all clothes not made from this? Because no one would ever do anything else than adore the feel. Socks also, mid-calf. No visible ankle: a terrible sin. Now the pants. Lucasinho dithered for days before deciding on Boy de la Boy. He turned down five designs. The fabric is grey, a shade darker than the tie, with a ghost of a floral damask pattern. Pants: no turn-ups, sharply creased, two pleats. Two pleats is on trend for now. Two of everything is on trend: for the jacket, two buttons at the front, two buttons at the cuff, cut away at the front. Four centimetre lapels starting high. Buttonhole for a buttonhole. A pocket square; folded into two triangular peaks. The square in-line fold has been old for a lune. Matching stingy-brim fedora, two-centimetre silk band and bow, which Lucasinho will carry, not wear. He doesn’t want it to interfere with his hair.

‘Show me.’

Jinji shows Lucas himself through the hotel room cameras. He turns, preens, pouts.

‘I am so freakin’ hot.’

Before the hair, the make-up. Lucasinho tucks a towel into his collar, sits at a table and lets Jinji close in on his face. The cosmetic pack is also a bespoke commission from Coterie. Lucasinho enjoys the rhythm of the ritual; the layers of application, the refining and blending, the fine touch and nuance. He blinks his kohled eyes.

‘Oh yeah.’

Next, at the same table, his hair. Lucasinho carefully builds up the quiff, reinforcing it with back combing and strategic applications of spray, mousse, gel, hair-concrete. He shakes his head. His hair moves like a living thing.

‘I’d marry me.’

Last thing. One by one he inserts his pierces. Jinji gives him one last look at himself, then Lucasinho Corta takes a deep breath and leaves the Antares Home Inn.

The waiting moto opens to accept Lucasinho Corta. A command from Jinji sends it whirring away into the traffic on Hang Yin Plaza. The hotel is centrally located, an elevator ride from the Eagle’s Eyrie. Nothing left to chance. The people on the plaza glance, double-take, recognise. Some nod or wave. Lucasinho straightens his tie and looks up. The hub is a waterfall of coloured banners; manhua-balloons wallow and nudge each other. The bridges are fuzzy with humanity, he can hear their voices echoing down the great well of Antares Hub.

Up there is the wedding of the year. Across the plaza from the front door of the Home Inn is an AKA commissary, an up-market affair for recreational cooks. Lucasinho steps out into the street and walks towards it. The traffic detours around him, ripples of self-organisation running from the plaza out along the five prospekts. Trays of bright vegetables in the window, a prominent meat locker with hanging lacquered ducks and poultry sausage; fish and frogs on ice; at the back of the store, freezers and bins of beans and lentils, bouquets of salad under a freshening mist. Two middle-aged women sit at the counter, rolling and lolling together with a secret shared laughter. They wear adinkra familiars in the Asamoah manner: the goose of Sankara, the asterisk of Ananse Ntontan.

Their laughter stops when Lucasinho enters the shop.

‘I’m Lucas Corta Junior,’ he announces. They know who he is. The society channels have been filled with nothing but his face for a week. They look afraid. He sets his fedora on the counter. Lucas takes the metal spike from his left ear and sets it beside the hat. ‘Please show this to Abena Maanu Asamoah. She’ll know what it means. I claim the protection of the Golden Stool.’

We’re Earth and moon, Lucas Corta thinks. Bryce Mackenzie a gravid planet, I a small svelte satellite. Lucas takes pleasure in the analogy. Another pleasure; this is the same hotel from which Lucasinho absconded. Two small smiles. That will be the extent of the pleasure in this meeting.

Bryce Mackenzie stamps his way to the sofa, stick, foot, other stick, foot, like some antiquated quadruped mining machine. Lucas can hardly watch. How can the man bear himself? How can his many amors and adoptees bear him?

‘Drink?’

Bryce Mackenzie grunts as he lowers himself to the sofa.

‘I’ll take that as a no. Do you mind if I do? The staff from the Holiday Inn are on hourly contracts and, well, you know me. I like to extract the maximum value from any situation. And these Blushing Boys really are rather good.’

‘Your levity is not appropriate,’ Bryce Mackenzie says. ‘Where is the boy?’

‘Lucasinho should be arriving in Twé even as we speak.’

The guests, the families; then the celebrant. The role was nothing more than witnessing the signatures on the nikahs, but Jonathon Kayode had brought the full magnificence of the Eagle of the Moon to the role. When Ariel has suggested he celebrate, he had feigned surprise, even coyness. No no, I couldn’t possibly, well, oh all right then.

Jonathon Kayode had arrayed himself in formal agbada, adorned with golden regalia he had commissioned for the occasion. ‘Is he wearing built-up shoes?’ Rafa whispered to Lucas. Once noticed, it shaded everything. Without the elevator shoes, the Eagle would have been a head shorter than the couple he was marrying. Rafa caught his own joke. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his mouth, but Rafa quaked with suppressed laughter.

‘Stop that,’ Lucas hissed. ‘I have to get up there and hand him over.’ The infection was irresistible. Lucas swallowed a tight giggle and discreetly wiped tears from his eyes. The orchestra stuck up The Blooming of Rainy Night Flowers. Bryce Mackenzie rose and took his position by the Orange Pavilion. Every head turned. Denny Mackenzie walked the rose petal path. His walk was clumsy, self-conscious, half-hearted. He had no idea what to do with his hands. Bryce Mackenzie beamed. Jonathon Kayode opened his arms like a summoning priest.

‘Show time,’ Rafa whispered to his brother. Then every Corta familiar whispered simultaneously call from Lucasinho.

Within thirty seconds Gupshup had sent the news around the moon. Lucasinho Corta: runaway groom.

‘You’ve been in touch with your son?’ Bryce Mackenzie asks.

‘I haven’t heard from him.’

‘Pleased to hear that. I was under the impression that this was something you had knocked up between you.’

‘You’re being ridiculous.’

Bryce Mackenzie shakes his head, a tic of annoyance.

‘The question now is how do we repair the damage?’

‘There’s damage?’

Another tic: a flare of the nostrils, an audible breath.

‘Damage to the image of my family, the reputation of Mackenzie Metals; our compensation for the suit Gupshup will bring against us.’

‘The drinks bill must be pretty high too,’ Lucas says. He has met Bryce Mackenzie twice, both times social occasions, never in business, but Lucas has worked out the man’s trick, his malandragem. Physical intimidation, not by muscle, but by mass. Bryce Mackenzie dominates a room as if by gravity; a trip, a fall will break you. I know how the trick is done, Lucas thinks. But you are the Earth and I am the moon. He feels lightheaded with potential. Everything is clear, clear as never before.

‘Flippant,’ Bryce Mackenzie says. He is sweating, big sweaty man.

‘Neither your family nor mine are intimidated by threats of litigation. What’s your proposal?’

‘The wedding is re-staged. We’ll split the costs. Can you give me a guarantee that your son will actually be there?’

‘I offer no guarantee,’ Lucas says. ‘I can’t speak for my son.’

‘Are you his father or not?’

‘As I said, I can’t speak for Lucasinho. But I stand by his decision with all my heart,’ Lucas says. ‘For me, I say, fuck you, Bryce Mackenzie.’

A third tic: a chewing in of the top lip. Those others had been irritation. This is fury.

‘Fine.’ Bryce’s blades enter from the lobby and help the man from the sofa, steady him on his stick and surprisingly neat feet. He stalks past Lucas, click by click. There is a third pleasure, Lucas realises, a small, mean but very sweet one, in discommoding Bryce Mackenzie.

At the door, Bryce turns, one finger raised, his stick dangling from its wrist-loop. ‘Oh yes. One final thing.’ Bryce takes a step forward and slaps Lucas across the face. There is little weight in the blow; Lucas reels from the shock, the daring, the implication. ‘Name your seconds and your zashitnik if you are to be represented. Time and location to be decided by the court. The Mackenzies will have blood for this.’

One by one the familiars of the Kotoko appear around Abena Maanu Asamoah. Her breath catches. She is more awestruck than she thought. The adinkras glow in her lens, every second a new one appears. She is ringed by shining aphorisms. Abena prepared her room respectfully. The board’s members may be the people you meet in the tunnels, in the tubefarms, on the streets and in the compounds, but the Kotoko is more than its individuals. It’s continuity and change, lineage and diversity, abusua and corporation. Anyone may consult the Kotoko; the implied question is, why do you need to? Abena has tidied away her few things, folded up the furniture, set biolights, black, red and white in a triangle on the floor and put herself at the centre of them. She’s showered.

Last to appear is the Sunsum, the familiar of the Omahene. Abena shivers. She has summoned powerful forces.

‘Abena,’ says Adofo Mensa Asamoah. The familiars speak with the voices of their clients. ‘How are you? Greetings from the Golden Stool.’

‘Yaa Doku Nana,’ Abena says.

‘Oh you’ve tidied, lovely,’ says Akosua Dedei from Farside.

‘Nice touch with the lights,’ says Kofi Anto from Twé.

‘So, what do you need to ask us?’ says Kwamina Manu from Mampong. The hidden question.

‘I made a promise,’ Abena says, her fingers unconsciously twisting the chain of her Gye Nyame necklace. ‘And now I’ve had to honour it, but I don’t know if I had the right to promise anything.’

‘This is about Lucasinho Corta,’ says the familiar that Abena knows is Lousika Asamoah.

‘Yes. I know we owe the Cortas for Kojo on the moon-run, but what if the Mackenzies turn on us like they turned on the Cortas?’

‘He asked for sanctuary,’ Abla Kande from Cyrillus agrarium says.

‘But was it mine to offer?’

‘What would the moon think of us if we failed to honour our promises?’ Adofo Mensa says. Voices whisper in chorus around the ring of familiars: Fawodhodie ene obre na enam. Independence comes with responsibilities.

‘But the MacKenzies, I mean, we’re not the biggest family, or the richest or the most powerful …’

‘Let me tell you a little history,’ says Omahene Adofo. ‘That’s true. AKA is not the richest or the oldest of the Five Dragons. We’re not exporters; we don’t keep the lights burning up there like the Cortas, or Earth’s tech industries fed like the Mackenzies. We’re not industrialists or IT giants. When we came to the moon we didn’t have political backing like the Suns or wealth like the Mackenzies or access to launch facilities like the Vorontsovs. We weren’t Asians or Westerns; we were Ghanaians. Ghanaians going to the moon! Such presumption! That’s for the white people and Chinese. But Efua Mensah had an idea, and saw an opportunity and worked and fought and argued her way all the way up to the moon. Do you know what she saw?’

‘You may become rich by shovelling the dirt, but you will become rich by selling the shovel,’ Abena says. Every child learns the proverb as soon as they’re socketed, lensed and linked for a familiar. She’s always thought it dull and worthy, old people’s wisdom. Storekeepers and greengrocers; not glamorous like the Cortas and the Mackenzies with their handsome dusters or the Vorontsovs with their exquisite toys.

‘We bought our independence dear,’ Adofo Mensa says. Her familiar is made from the Siamese Crocodiles and Ese Ne Tekrema, the adinkras of unity and interdependence ‘We don’t surrender it. We will not be bullied by the Mackenzies.’

‘By anyone,’ Kwamina Manu adds.

‘Are you answered?’ Omahene Adofu asks.

Abena dips her head and purses her fingers in the accepted lunar way. One by one the familiars of the Kotoko wink out. Last to shine is Lousika Kande Asamoah-Corta.

‘You’re not, are you?’

‘What?’

‘Answered.’

‘I am, I’m just not …’

‘Reassured?’

‘I think I put the family in danger.’

‘How many people are there on the moon?’

‘What? About a million and a half.’

‘One point seven million. That seems a lot but it’s not big enough that we don’t have to worry about the gene pool.’

‘Inbreeding, accumulating mutations, genetic drift. Background radiation. I did this in school.’

‘And each of us has a differed mechanism for dealing with it. We refined the abusua system and all those regulations about who can’t have sex with you. You’re a, what?’

‘Bretuo. Aseni, Oyoko, and of course my own abusua.’

‘The Suns intermarry everyone and anyone, half the moon is a Sun; the Cortas have their weird madrinha system, but they’re all ways to keep the gene pool open and clean. The Mackenzies, they’re different. They keep the family close and tight, they have a fear of polluting the gene line, about diluting their identity. They intermarry among themselves and backcross: where do think all those freckles come from? But it’s risky – very risky, so they have to make sure they breed true. They hire us to engineer the gene line. We’ve been doing it for thirty years. It’s our secret, but it’s the reason we’re safe from the Mackenzies. The fear of the two-headed baby.’

Abena whispers a prayer to Jesus.

‘The Asamoahs keep everyone’s secrets. But look out for Lucasinho, Abena. The Mackenzies won’t daren’t touch us, but they hold long grudges and long knives.’

Zabbaleen carefully pick up and take away the dead doves that litter the gardens of Jonathon Kayode. The release had been timed; the cages sprang open, the birds beat upwards in an applause of wings and whisked out over the heads of the departing guests. Ariel picks her careful, purring path through the rotting rose petals. She doesn’t trust her bot legs on the slippery slime. She shares her mother’s distaste for living matter. Organic turns so nasty so fast.

Jonathon Kayode receives her in his apartment, overlooking the garden. Ribbons and silvered fruit still adorn the citrus trees, food scraps litter the lawns. The bots are diligent but four hundred guests shed a load of party.

‘Well, this is a mess,’ Jonathon Kayode says, greeting Ariel.

‘We hire people to clear up our messes,’ Ariel says.

‘I didn’t get the opportunity to mention it at the “event”, but it’s wonderful to see you so mobile. That lower hemline suits you. I’ve been around a few places. The wedding of the year flops but the groom’s aunt sets a fashion trend. How is the boy?’

‘The Asamoahs have given him sanctuary.’

‘You always were close, Cortas and Asamoahs.’

‘I want you to stop this Jonathon.’

Jonathon Kayode shakes his head, touches a finger to his forehead.

‘Ariel, you know as well as I …’

‘If the LDC wants a thing to happen or not happen, the LDC finds a way.’

They sit on either side of a low table. A bot brings two Blushing Boys.

‘You know, I really got a taste for these,’ the Eagle says. Ariel does not have the taste this afternoon. The Eagle takes a sip. He is a noisy drinker.

‘It’s two years since the Court of Clavius settled by combat,’ Ariel says.

‘Not quite.’ Jonathon Kayode sets his glass down. ‘Alayoum versus Filmus.’

‘It would never have gone to blades. I knew that. Malandragem. It’s how I win. And the two cases are different. That was a divorce case. This is an old-fashioned calling-out, a trial of honour.’

‘Bryce Mackenzie did rather get the drop on your brother.’

‘You can call it off Jonathon,’ Ariel says.

‘Are you sure you don’t want anything to drink?’ The Eagle of the Moon says, lifting his glass. Over its rim his eyes catch Ariel’s. His glance darts to the rear of the apartment; once, twice, three times. Ariel’s eyes widen.

‘It’s still a little too early for me, Jonathon.’ It had been a standard joke among the court and legal circles that Adrian MacKenzie had the Eagle of the Moon trussed up like a piece of exhibition shibari. No joke.

They want blood, he mouths. ‘Who’s representing Lucas?’

‘Carlinhos.’

Jonathon Kayode’s mouth opens in shock. Your oko didn’t tell you that the blood they want is the heart blood.

‘They nominated Hadley Mackenzie as zashitnik. We had to match status.’

She won’t let the Eagle of the Moon look away. You can stop all this, save two young men.

‘Jonathon?’

‘I can’t help you, Ariel. I am not the law.’

‘I seem to be making a habit of this, but fuck you.’ Ariel wills her legs to stand her upright. She lifts her clutch bag. She raises her courtroom voice to hit the back wall of the drawing room. ‘And fuck you too, Adrian. I hope my brother cuts yours to pieces.’

He’s gone back to Boa Vista for the fight. I couldn’t do that, Ariel thinks. Even in the deep dark, when she felt opened and reached into and violated, when she feared her fine legs would never carry her again, when she saw the knife every time she closed her eyes, she refused to let her mother carry her back to Boa Vista. You see the knife too, Carlinhos. Every time. It’s behind me, it’s ahead of you. I would be paralysed with fear.

He lies on his belly on a table in the Nossa Senhora da Rocha Pavilion. Spray from the Oxum waterfall gathers and drips from the lip of the dome. A masseur works his body, fingers deep in the muscle fibres. Carlinhos moans, little cries that sound like sex. It repulses Ariel: another touching your body so intimately. Another has touched her body, more intimately than massage, or sex.

Carlinhos turns his head to one side, grins at his sister.

‘Ola.’

‘My silver tongue let me down this time, Carlo.’

Carlinhos’s face twitches sad. He grimaces to another deep working by the masseur. You are magnificent, Ariel thinks, and I think of knives slicing that perfect skin and I am filled with cold horror.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ Carlinhos says.

‘I can try … No I can’t do anything. I’ve reached the end of words. They will have their duel.’

‘I know.’

Ariel kisses the back of her brother’s neck.

‘Kill him, Carlo. Kill him slowly and painfully. Kill him in front of their eyes so they can see every last thing they hoped to do to our family bleed out in front of them. Kill him for me.’

‘Can I come? Can I?’

‘No!’ Rafa thunders. Robson trots at his father’s heel.

‘I want to support Carlinhos.’

‘No,’ Rafa says again.

‘Why not? You’re going. Everyone is going.’

Rafa turns to Robson.

‘It’s not handball. It’s not a game. It’s not a thing you support. We’re going because Carlinhos does not fight alone. I don’t want to go. I don’t want him to go. But I will go. And you will not.’

Robson shuffles, frowns.

‘Then I want to see him now.’

Rafa sighs in exasperation.

‘Okay.’

The gym is the least used of Boa Vista’s chambers. Bots have cleared years of dust, slowly warmed it from the chill of the eternal deep rock. Carlinhos has hung ceramic bells on ribbons from the ceiling. Seven bells. In a pair of fighting trunks he feints and dodges, cuts and pivots across the floor.

‘Irmão.’

Carlinhos comes panting to the rail. He sets the knife on the ledge, rests his chin on his folded arms.

‘Hey, Robson.’

‘Tio.’

‘Did you ring any?’ Rafa nods at the hanging bells.

‘I never ring any bells,’ Carlinhos says. A movement, so fast and unexpected Carlinhos has no answer to it. Robson presses the tip of the knife to the soft skin under Carlinhos’s right ear.

‘Robson …’

‘Hadley Mackenzie taught me, if you take a man’s knife, you must use it against him. Never let go of the knife.’

Carlinhos is liquid action; he ducks away from the knife point and in the same flow of movement twists Robson’s wrist firmly enough to teach pain. Carlinhos scoops up the dropped knife.

‘Thank you, Robson. I’ll watch for that.’

All the bells chime, a gentle tintinnabulation. Another small quake.

Carlinhos comes out of the bathroom, eyes wide.

‘There’s a whirlpool in there. I didn’t even have a whirlpool in Boa Vista.’

‘It’s the least I can do, Carlo.’

Lucas’s preparation of Camp Carlinhos has been unusually difficult. The wedding fiasco still taints the social atmosphere. Should news of a duel between enemy Dragons leak, even the threat of litigation from Cortas and Mackenzies would not stay the gossip networks. Handsome boys fighting in not many clothes. Even better than handsome boys marrying. The exclusive apartment on Orion hub was hired through shell companies; the printer designs commissioned through another and the masseurs, physiotherapists, psychologists, cooks, dietitians, knife-smiths, discreet security hired anonymously through agency AIs. A training room has been built and Mariano Gabriel Demaria brought secretly from Queen of the South and set up in the adjoining apartment. Last of all, Carlinhos’s fighting knives, of lunar steel, have been carried from João de Deus and installed in the dojo.

‘This is the bedroom.’

‘I can walk right round this bed.’

Carlinhos collapses back on to the bed and folds his arms behind his head. His glee is bright. Lucas’s mouth tightens.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry. This. I should never have asked …’

‘You didn’t ask. I offered.’

‘But, if I hadn’t held out on Lucasinho …’

‘Ariel came to see me in Boa Vista. Do you know what she said? That she was sorry she couldn’t stop it. And you’re sorry because you think you’re the cause of it. Luca, I always knew this would come. I printed out my first knife, and I looked at it and I saw this. Not Hadley MacKenzie, but a fight where the family would depend on me.’

It’s a forgiving.

‘Hadley Mackenzie is fit and very fast.’

‘I’m fitter.’

‘Carlinhos …’

Lucas looks at his brother, sprawled on the bed, happy on real cotton. In twenty-four hours you could be dead. How can you bear that? How can you bear to waste an instant to anything that is trivial? Perhaps that’s the fighter’s wisdom; the trivia, the immediate physicality of high thread-count imported cotton, the felt things are the vital ones.

‘What?’

‘You’re faster.’

Wagner picks up the knives, instinctively finds the balance. He looks at the things in his hands. He’s just past full dark and his focus and concentration are at their most intense. He could spend hours obsessing of the line of the edge, the metallurgy.

‘You do that too comfortably,’ Carlinhos says.

‘Scary things.’ Wagner sets them back in the case. ‘I’ll be there. I don’t want to be, but I will.’

‘I don’t want to be either.’

Brothers hug. Carlinhos had offered a room in the apartment but Wagner has called on the pack. The Packhouse is a cold and dim place when the Earth is dark. He came up from Theophilus the night before and slept fitfully in the pack bed, tiny and spread across as much space as he could, but still one man; troubled by recurring dreams of standing naked in the middle of the Ocean of Storms. Analiese doesn’t believe his story about going up to Meridian on family business but she can find no obvious lie to get purchase on.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ Wagner asks. Carlinhos’s laugh startles him.

‘All the others, they all say how sorry they are, how guilty they feel. Not one has asked if they can do anything for me.’

‘What can I do for you?’

‘I should like very much to eat some meat,’ Carlinhos says. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

‘Meat.’

‘You can eat that?’

‘Not usually in this aspect, but for you, irmão …’

Sombra locates a churrasceria, vainly expensive. It boasts rare-breed pork and gin-massaged, music-soothed beef from dwarf Kuroge Washu cattle. Glass-fronted meat safes display the hanging carcases, small as pets. The prices are vertiginous. Carlinhos and Wagner take a booth and they talk and dip their wafers of exquisite beef into the sauces but most of the time they keep companionable silence together, as close men do, and find they have communicated everything.

Run with me, he said.

Marina and Carlinhos drop on to the back of the Long Run. In five breaths they have matched the rhythm of the ritual. Marina is not afraid to sing this time. There is only one Long Run. It hasn’t stopped, day or night, since she last dropped out of it. Then her heart, her blood, her muscles tune to the unity.

Yes, I will, yes, she said. Marina had come to Carlinhos’s call expecting sex, hoping for something else. Something to take them out of this apartment that stank of the close presence of death. Carlinhos wanted to go home and run. João de Deus was only an hour away on the fast train. She and Carlinhos travelled in their Long Run kit. They drew admiring smiles and glances. They are handsome together. You know who they are? Oh, really? Marina’s kit was smaller and tighter than she had ever dared before; her body paint more aggressive. I’m tighter and more aggressive, she thought. She had retrieved the green tassels of Ogun from vacuum storage and wore them with pride.

Marina kicks forward to the head of the run. Carlinhos laughs and comes up on her shoulder. Restless blade, Ogun’s knife cuts out-of-doors. Restless blade. Ogun’s knife goes for the kill. Then time, self, consciousness vanish.

They fall on to the train home, sweet and sweaty, fall into the seats as the train accelerates on to Equatorial One, fall together. Marina curls up against Carlinhos. He is so good, he brings out her inner cat. She loves the otherness of men; they are as unknowable as animals. She loves them as things different from and marvellous to her self.

‘Will you come?’ Carlinhos mumbles.

She has been expecting and dreading this question so her answered is prepared.

‘I will, yes. But …’

‘You won’t look.’

‘Carlinhos, I’m sorry. I can’t see you get hurt.’

‘I won’t die.’

Ten minutes to Meridian.

‘Carlo.’ This is the first time Marina has ever called Carlinhos by his most intimate name; his family-and-amors name. ‘I’m going to leave the moon.’

He says, ‘I understand,’ but Marina feels Carlinhos’s body tighten against hers.

‘I’ve got the money and my mum will be all right and your family has been wonderful to me, but I can’t stay. I’m scared every day. Every single day, all the time. I’m afraid all the time. That’s not a way to live. I have to leave, Carlinhos.’

Passengers are already rising and collecting their children, luggage, friends in anticipation of arrival. On the pressurised side of the platform Marina and Carlinhos kiss. She stands on tiptoe. Train travellers smile.

‘I’ll be there,’ Marina says. They go to their separate apartments and in the morning Carlinhos walks out to fight.

The bots finish dusting the courtroom moments before the combatants arrive. It hasn’t been used in a decade. The air has been scrubbed; no taint, real or imagined, of old blood. The courtroom feels cold though it has been brought up to skin-temperature. It is small and very beautiful, panelled and floored in wood. Its heart is the fighting ring, a five-metre sprung floor, good for dancing or fighting. Witness docks and judges’ benches are narrow galleries around the ring. Adversaries and judges sit close enough to be hit by arterial spray. This is the morality of the combat court: violence touches everyone.

In the Mackenzie dock; Duncan Mackenzie, Bryce Mackenzie. He can barely fit in the narrow gallery. Again in lieu of Robert Mackenzie, Jade Sun-Mackenzie, mother of the zashitnik. In the Corta dock, Rafa, Lucas, Wagner and Ariel Mackenzie. With Ariel, her escolta, Marina Calzaghe. Ariel defeated a last-minute subpoena attempt by the Mackenzies’ legal team to compel Lucasinho, Robson and Luna to attend. Judges Remy, El-Ashmawi and Mishra preside, none of whom have ever worked with Ariel Corta.

Judge Remy calls the court to order. Judge El-Ashmawi reads the offence. Judge Mishra asks if any reconciliation or apology will be made. None, says Lucas Corta.

The formalities calm, the formalities order, the formalities distance you from what will happen in this wooden ring.

Seconds in. For the Mackenzies, Denny Mackenzie and Constant Duffus, deputy head of security. For the Cortas, Heitor Pereira and Mariano Gabriel Demaria. Each side presents the fighting knives to the judges. They inspect them minutely, though none knows about blades, and approve one from each case. Mariano Gabriel Demaria kisses the hilt as he lays the lunar steel knife in its cradle.

The combatants come up from their stables beneath the court. Both look up as they step into the court, then around as they size up the space and its limitations. Smaller than they thought. This will be close, fast and savage. Carlinhos wears cream trunks, Hadley grey. Both trunks contrast with their skins. They are digitally naked, without familiars. Jewellery is a weakness but Carlinhos wears a single green cord around his right ankle; the favour of São Jorge. Carlinhos’s seconds close around him.

Marina covers her face with her hands. She can’t look at Carlinhos, she must look at Carlinhos. He’s a boy, a big smiling boy who has wandered from one room to another not realising that behind him each door is locked, each room smaller than the one before it until he ends here, on the killing floor. She feels sick; a nausea of every bone and sinew. Carlinhos kneels, Heitor and Mariano huddled over him, and murmurs. Across the ring Hadley Mackenzie skips, bounces, sniffs, stares, a gyre of energy and intention. He will cut Carlinhos apart, Marina thinks. She has never known fear like this, not when Mama was diagnosed, not when the OTV rolled into its launch run at White Sands.

The Court summons the combatants to the bench. At two metres ten Carlinhos is taller than Hadley but heavier. The Mackenzie is wire and steel. Judge Remy addresses the fighters.

‘We would inform you that though this combat is entirely lawful, the Court of Clavius deplores this action. It is barbarous and unbecoming to your families and corporations. You may continue.’

Mariano Gabriel Demaria presents Carlinhos with his knife. He feels its weight, finds his grip, locates it balance and speed. He tries it for heft and punch, dancing its tip through the nine directions. Grip, firm but floating. Effort/no effort. To feint, to lunge, to pivot is not to cut. All effort is to cut. Live at the ultimate extension of each sense, feeling for the invisible bells hanging in the dark maze.

‘Seconds out.’

Heitor and Mariano retire to their ringside stall under the witness gallery. There are no rounds, there is no recovery or moments of advice in the corner in the court arena. You fight until there is a winner.

Carlinhos dips his head to his family. Slow fat tears roll down Marina Calzaghe’s face.

‘Approach.’

Carlinhos and Hadley meet in the centre of the ring, raise blades in salute.

‘Fight.’

The fighters drop into stance, weight balanced, arm raised. And they clash. Carlinhos pivots, trying to draw Hadley, put him out of phase but the Mackenzie is sharp and fast, so fast that Carlinhos loses tempo for an instant. Carlinhos recovers. Marina has never seen a knife fight. It is ugly and violating and harsh. There is nothing glorious about it; no skill of cut and thrust, parry and riposte, blade as attack and defence like the way of the sword. In the way of the knife the first contact will be the last. Any hit will be final. Slash, disarm, stab, immobilise. The speed is dizzying. Faster than thought. Hadley wears a skull grin on his face; his concentration is total. And he is faster, lighter, quicker. Feint, pivot, recover. She glances over at the other Cortas. Rafa’s eyes are closed. Ariel’s hands are over her mouth. Wagner is a mask of utter concentration. Lucas’s face is like a skull. The expressions are the same on the Mackenzie side of the ring.

She can’t look. She can’t look away.

No one can keep up this killing pace. She can see that Carlinhos’s balance is off. His reactions are a fraction slow. Sweat gleams on his skin. His eyes are hard, his face is closed. It’s a dance, a killing two-step. Tight, fast, blazing slashes and stabs: the knife hand, the tendons of the leg. High, low. Carlinhos feints, Hadley blocks with his blade, cuts a gash down Carlinhos’s bicep that rotates into a slash across his abdominals. Carlinhos is already dancing away from the blade, it draws a line of blood on his belly. He doesn’t notice. He is burning adrenaline, beyond pain, beyond anything except the unity of the fight. But the gash to the biceps is heavy. He’s losing blood. He’s losing control. He’s losing the duel. Carlinhos swivels and skips back, putting distance between himself and Hadley. Hadley moves to close the gap but in that instant Carlinhos shifts knife from right to left hand. It’s a surprise for an instant, but enough to force Hadley into retreat. Hadley shakes his head like he’s shaking out a crick from his neck and shifts the blade from right hand to left.

Bare feet slide in a slick of Carlinhos’s warm sweet blood.

Carlinhos sees all the ways that Hadley Mackenzie can come at him in the next attack, all of them simultaneously and in every one of them the knife opens the tendons of his hand, disarms him, tears his leg tendons and sends him down and guts him.

He dies here.

And then he sees the other way, that is not the way of the knife. The way of malandragem. Who brings Brazilian jiu jitsu to a knife fight? Carlinhos throws away his knife. It embeds in the wooden walls of the court, quivers. Hadley’s eyes follow it and in that instant Carlinhos steps inside his guard, blocks his swing with his hands and snaps his elbow joint.

The crack resounds around the court arena. The knife falls.

Carlinhos twists the broken arm behind Hadley’s back. The two men are as close as lovers. Carlinhos scoops up the dropped knife and in the same motion drives it into Hadley Mackenzie’s throat and out through the interior jugular.

The court is on its feet.

There is a look of mild surprise on Hadley’s face, then disappointment. Blood gushes from the hideous wound, his hands flap uselessly at death. Carlinhos lowers him to lie gurgling and flapping in the pooling blood.

Carlinhos roars. Throws back his shoulders, balls his fists, roars. He kicks the wood of the gallery, again and again, smashes a fist into the walls. Roars. He faces his family, shakes sweat from his hair and bellows his victory.

Marina hides her face in her hands. She can’t bear what she sees. This is Carlinhos. This always was Carlinhos.

Hadley is still now and there is a second voice in the courtroom; a long, keening wail, so uncanny and inhuman its source is not obvious until Jade Sun lunges for the rail. Duncan Mackenzie grabs her, holds her. She cries on, incoherent with loss and desolation. The Mackenzie seconds cover the body.

‘The case is satisfied,’ Judge Mishra shouts over the roaring and the keening. ‘The Court is dismissed.’

Heitor Pereira and Mariano Gabriel Demaria try to escort Carlinhos down to the under court. He shakes them off and crosses the fighting floor to bellow in front of the Mackenzies. His body drips with sweat-smeared blood. He jabs an accusing finger at Jade Sun, at Bryce Mackenzie.

Marina is dying.

‘Seconds, control your zashitnik!’ Judge Al-Ashmawi shouts. Heitor and Mariano seize Carlinhos, one on each shoulder, and fight him to the gate. Jade Sun spits. Spit flies far on the moon. The gobbet of saliva strikes Carlinhos on the shoulder. He turns, kicks a spray of blood from the floor at her. Blood rains in her face, speckles the Mackenzies.

‘Get him out of here!’ Rafa yells.

Marina has already fled the court arena. She presses the back of her head against the wall, hoping that its solidity and cool will press down the pulses of nausea. Escoltas rush past her to escort the Cortas to their waiting transport; a glass partition separates the Corta side of the corridor from the Mackenzie. Their blades huddle around the Mackenzie court party but Marina can see Duncan Mackenzie wipe blood from his mother-in-law’s face.

‘Oh Carlinhos,’ she whispers. ‘I could have loved you.’

The first Corta Hélio extractor goes dark within ten minutes of Carlinhos Corta’s victory in the Court of Clavius. Thirty seconds later, the second goes offline. Within three minutes the entire North Imbrium samba-line has gone dark.

In the passenger pod of VTO moonship Pustelga, Rafa, Lucas, Carlinhos and Heitor Pereira’s familiars light up. On the train back to Hypatia Junction, Sombra alerts Wagner Corta. In the moto to the Meridian apartment, Beijaflor and Hetty key in their clients.

Corta Hélio is under attack.

The hire of a VTO moonship is hefty even for a Dragon but Rafa knew that whatever the result on the killing floor of the Court of Clavius he would need to get the family to safety fast. By the time the ship drops on to the pad at João de Deus, West and East Imbrium and Central Serenity are all down.

‘We’ve just lost West Serenity,’ Heitor Pereira says as the ship lowers the pod on to the tractor. ‘I have South Serenity, I’ll link you in to it.’

Helmet feed appears on everyone’s lenses: a devastated samba-line. The camera pans across wreckage and scrap, metal and plastic shards strew far across the regolith; five extractors dead, a rover smashed open like a skull by falling construction beams.

‘Are you getting this?’ a woman’s voice shouts. Her familiar-tag identifies her as Kiné Mbaye: Mare Serenitatis. ‘They’re killing us.’ Behind her a flash in the sky, a blast of light. An entire structural truss spins towards the camera. The woman swears in French. The camera goes dead. The name tag turns white.

‘Carlinhos!’ Rafa shakes his brother. After the explosive rage and madness of the court-arena Carlinhos collapsed into catatonia. His seconds wrestled him down to the zashitnik stables where a medical bot patched up his abdominals, his biceps and shot him full of tranquiliser. His seconds showered off the blood, shoved him into street clothes, bundled him on to the Pustelga. ‘What’s happening?’

Carlinhos tries to focus on his brother’s face.

‘We’ve lost the entire South Serenity samba-line,’ Heitor Pereira says. His face is grey. Airlocks link and equalise, the passengers enter the elevator lobby. ‘Thirty lives.’

‘Carlinhos! You’re the duster.’

‘Show me,’ Carlinhos says. He reviews Kiné Mbaye’s footage three times as the elevator arrives. ‘Stop all the samba-lines.’

‘What’s happening—’ Rafa begins but Lucas cuts him off.

‘I’ve given the order.’

‘It won’t hold them off for long. They’ll just recalculate the trajectories.’ Carlinhos looks at each of the faces in the elevator car in turn to see if any of them have worked it out. ‘They’re firing BALTRAN capsules at us. You can see one in the South Serenity report if you slow it right down, just before the impact. That flash, it’s not a flash, it’s a BALTRAN capsule impact.’

‘There’s nowhere we can hide,’ Rafa says.

‘This isn’t something you just make up on the spur of the moment,’ Lucas says. ‘You have to plot the locations of every single one of our extractors, book the capsules, target the launchers. They’ve had this planned for a long time.’

‘Who?’ Heitor Pereira asks. Lucas rounds on him.

‘Who do you think, you old fool?’

São Sebastião Quadra Kondakova Prospekt, the elevator says.

‘What can we do?’ Rafa says.

‘Outbid them,’ Lucas says. ‘No one beats General Money.’ He issues commands to Toquinho. There is a pause. There has never been a pause before.

Access to Corta Hélio accounts is temporarily unavailable, Toquinho says.

The elevator doors open.

‘Explain,’ Lucas says.

Our bank systems are under a denial of service attack, Toquinho says.

The elevator lobby rocks. All the lives on Kondakova Prospekt look up, the instinct of people who live in caves.

‘What we need right now,’ Rafa says. ‘A quake.’

‘Not a quake,’ Carlinhos says. ‘Shaped charges.’

One woman, one man, smartly dressed in the fashion of the moment, disembark from the 28 express and pass through the airlocks into Twé Station. They move through the press of passengers with poise and direction; they seem to have a clear destination through Twé’s notorious labyrinth. They are guided. At a public printer they pick up two pre-ordered plastic knives; notched and edged and keen to harm. This woman and man are assassins, hired to locate Lucasinho Corta and gut him. Their familiars lock on to Jinji. The boy is public and exposed. They track him through the tunnels and agraria, across high walkways over precipitous farm tubes; along the ramps that spiral up through the residential zones, every step closing the distance between them.

Lucasinho Corta has spent the morning in his room waiting for news from the Court of Clavius, shredded by guilt. His father has told him time and again that it’s not about the wedding. It’s about the slap. The calculated insult, the call to duel. This is between him and Bryce Mackenzie. The wedding was the pretext.

I’m coming, Lucasinho said.

You’re not, Lucas ordered.

I need to see, Lucasinho said.

No one needs to see, Lucas said. Stay in Twé. You’re safe in Twé. I’ll let you know.

Lucasinho tried to sit, tried to walk about, tried to play games, tried to scan the social networks, tried to bake something. He couldn’t settle. He couldn’t concentrate. He felt sick with dread. Then Jinji lit with a message from Lucas. Carlinhos won. Nothing more.

Carlinhos won. Lucasinho feels light. He feels released. He feels elated. He has to tell someone, has to see someone. A familiar message won’t do. Abena meet me. He almost runs through the tunnels of Twé. The assassins flicker information between their familiars. The target is moving. So much simpler than having to hack apartment security. They’ll cut him off at Nkrumah Circle and take him there, in public. They imagine their channels are secure. There. Their hands close on their concealed knives. They move to bracket Lucasinho.

Danger, Jinji says. Danger, Lucasinho Corta! Lucasinho freezes, spins in the middle of Rawlings Plaza trying to see which of those hundreds of people wants to kill him. He sees the man step towards him, the hand on the knife. He’s close. He doesn’t see the woman behind him.

But the robot in the roof sees her. AKA AIs saw patterns in the arrival of these two passengers, the activity of the Kuffuor Street printer and the evolving events on the surface. They tasked a security bot, a clever spider that scuttled unseen through the cluttered ceilings of Twé’s crowded tunnels, tracking the assassins as they tracked Lucasinho Corta. The bot targets locks and attacks. It leaps on to the woman assassin’s neck and sinks a neurotoxin needle into her neck. Even as her lungs lock rigid the bot springs from her, somersaults over Lucasinho’s shoulder into the face of the male assassin. His hands never even make it to cover and protect before the thing is clinging to his face. AKA BTX toxin has been engineered to be fast and sure. The bodies drop on either side of Lucasinho Corta as the spider scuttles away into the under-architecture of Rawlings Plaza. AKA does not like to involve itself in the politics of the other Dragons but when it must the policy of the Golden Stool is to act quickly and decisively.

You’re safe now, Jinji says. Help will soon be here.

Wagner has developed an affection for the quiet pillar at the end of the platform in Hypatia Junction. It’s a place between worlds – the full world and the dark world; now it’s become a place between times: past and future. Every Dragon, even a half-Dragon like him, lives under the shadow of violence but he never saw a human die at the hand of another. He can still smell the blood. He always will. He imagines he reeks of it and that everyone on the train could smell it. Wagner knows the wolf in him, but in the court-arena he saw a thing inside Carlinhos beyond wolves, a thing Wagner does not know and which scares him because it has always lived there inside Carlinhos and he never saw it. It makes every moment and experience they’ve shared as brothers false.

When Dragons fight, where does the wolf stand?

Sombra lights: a call from Analiese.

‘Wagner, where are you?’

‘Hypatia.’

‘Wagner, go back to Meridian.’

‘What’s wrong, Ana?’

‘Go back to Meridian. Don’t come here. Don’t come home.’

The low urgency of her voice, her hushed pitch, the secrecy in her sibilants, all these rasp his concentration and stand the hairs up on Wagner’s arms and neck.

‘What is it, Ana?’

Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘They’re here. They’re waiting for you. Oh God they made me promise …’

‘Ana, who …’

‘The Mackenzies. They made me, they said you’re either family or you’re not. Don’t come back, Wagner. They want every Corta dead.’

‘Ana—’

‘I’m family. I’m all right. I’m all right, Wagner.’ He hears a fearful, stifled sob. ‘Go!’

I’ve lost the connection, Sombra says.

‘Get her back.’

I’m not able to do that, Wagner.

Families mill on the platforms. Children’s voices echo and the echoes encourage them to shout louder. Noodle cartons blow in the strange winds of the under croft, evading trash bots. Up there, Cortas and Mackenzies battle. Down in the station, people change trains for work, family, friends, love, pleasure. If they saw the man huddled against the pillar with his knees pulled in to his chest, would they ever imagine that he’s fighting for his life?

Analiese is back there. He doesn’t know what’s happened to her.

Go, she said.

Wagner gets up from his pillar and crosses the platform to the opposite track. Exile then, in the company of wolves.

Kondakova Prospekt trembles again. Dust dislodged from the high roof drops in sparkling clouds as soft as grace. The street comes to a standstill. The people look up first, then at each other.

Breaches at Santa Barbra and São Jorge main locks, each familiar relates to its client. Elevator security is compromised.

‘They’re coming through the roof,’ Rafa says.

Armed and hostile units at the main station.

‘Show me,’ Carlinhos orders. São Jorge shows him bodies in anti-stab body-armour disembarking from the train locks and forming up into squads on the platform. They wear crossed blades and taser holsters. A mundane invasion, on the 87 Limited. Passengers frown in confusion: is an episode of Hearts and Skulls being filmed? Train passengers and civilians are not legitimate targets. ‘How many?’

Fifty. Ten in the Santa Barbra lock and the São Jorge lock. Five each in the São Sebastião elevators. São Sebastião Quadra shakes to another blast. We’ve lost integrity on the emergency lock. My cameras are down.

The sunline flickers. The sunline never flickers. A terrible fearful moan washes up and down Kondakova Prospekt. The greatest fear is to be trapped in the dark, and the air leaking away. Enemy personnel in São Sebastião Quadra. Enemy personnel advancing on Kondakova and Tereshkova Prospekts.

‘They’ll slaughter us down here,’ Carlinhos says. ‘Heitor, I want two escoltas on Lucas and Rafa. Rafa …’

‘I need to be with my kids. They could be in Boa Vista …’

‘You can’t access the station from this side of the quadra. Take the perimeter tunnel and come out at West 12th. Use the Serova Prospekt entrance. Lucas.’

‘I’m sounding the general evacuation alarm.’

‘Good man. But you need to get out of here too.’

‘I stay with the family.’

‘You’re not the fighter here, Luca. They will cut you apart, man.’

‘They tried to kill Lucasinho, Carlo. They tried to kill my boy.’

‘You’re Corta Hélio now. Sorry Rafa. Save the company. You have a plan?’

‘I always have a plan.’

‘Go on go go.’

The skyline flashes. Seven short flashes, one long. General evacuation. The thing you fear worst; it just happened. Radiation, unconfined fire, depressurisation, roof-fall, breach. Invasion. Get safe, get to the refuges, get out. A thousand familiars on Kondakova Prospekt and on every level and prospekt and quadra of João de Deus echo the alarm. The quadra keeps a moment of shocked stillness then explodes into movement. Motos swerve and steer their passengers to the nearest muster point. Pedestrians breaks into runs; fliers swoop down to the safety points shown to them by the familiars. Shops, cafés, bars, clubs empty. Panicked drunks stare at the sky as if it is falling. School teachers gather their classes and hurry their weeping charges to the refuges. Where’s Mãe, Pai? Parents call out for their children, lost children cry in panic, bots locate the waifs and lost and shepherd them to safety. Families will be reunited after, if there is an after. In the noche and semana quadras, the sleepers, the early morning people, the shift folk are shocked awake. Fear, fire, fall! Offices, apartments empty; feet pound on levels and walkways. Bodies pour down staircases, drop from the lower levels in low-gravity leaps.

Figures in combat armour advance up Kondakova Prospekt, ignoring the people fleeing around them. Behind them, the offices of Corta Hélio explode, one after another, sprays of construction plastic, cheap wood and soft furnishings.

‘São Jorge, print me my armour.’

Available at West Fifteen public printer in three minutes.

‘Heitor, give me my knives.’

Heitor Pereira opens the ceremonial case. The light of the sunline flashes from Carlinhos Corta’s lunar steel blades. A squad of Corta Hélio security arrive breathless; unequipped, confused, too few.

‘You, you, with Rafa and Lucas. Heitor, take five escoltas and fall back.’ Carlinhos can’t afford five escoltas. But he’s seen the bodies among the flying debris of the exploded offices. The Mackenzies are destroying Corta Hélio substance and soul. ‘Put a general call out: every Corta Hélio employee musters with you. Get them to the East Sebastião refuge. The Mackenzies won’t touch them there.’

‘You think?’

‘Refuges are sacred. Not even the MacKenzies would blow a refuge. Go.’

Heitor Pereira beckons his troops to him. They lope up Kondakova Prospekt, hands on hilts. They are a brave sight and a hopeless one. João de Deus is too big, too diverse, spread across too many timezones and the Mackenzies are already all through it. João de Deus is lost.

‘Rafa!’

Lucas is already a level up, climbing steep ladders with his two bodyguards against the downpour of refugees. For the schemer, the man is handy.

‘Get out of here!’

‘Carlo!’

Lucas calls down from two levels up. The streets and prospekt are emptying now; abandoned motos crowd the refuge locks, purposeless bots scurry back and forth.

‘I can burn them. The Mackenzies. Robert, Jade, Duncan, Bryce: all of them. I can burn them all.’

‘We’re not like them, Luca.’

Lucas nods, then he is swooping hand over hand up the ladders. Rafa takes a last look and ducks down a cross-street. Carlinhos straps on his impact armour. He slides the knives into magnetic scabbards.

‘We buy time,’ Carlinhos tells his squad. Eight escoltas. The Mackenzie blades are twenty abreast, sweeping up Kondakova Prospekt. ‘A fighting withdrawal. Buy that time dear. Okay, with me.’ He breaks into a jog. His fighters form a wedge. Carlinhos cries a howl of defiance and his voice rings from the walls of empty São Sebastião Quadra.

Rafa runs. His jacket and tie flap. His shoes are all wrong. Emergency lights pulse-rotate yellow. The floor of the orbital tunnel is littered with discarded water bottles and drums and tassels in the colours of the orixas. The Long Run has finally come to an end.

Before they leave the apartment Ariel stuffs her and Marina’s bags with cash.

‘Lucas said the accounts were locked,’ Ariel says. ‘This works anywhere.’

‘On the train?’

‘I booked the tickets ten minutes ago.’

Corta Hélio is collapsing. João de Deus is under attack. Carlinhos is fighting, Rafa is trying to get to Boa Vista. No one knows where Lucas is. Wagner is in Meridian, Lucasinho in Twé. Ariel and Marina are going to join him there and seek sanctuary. Marina can’t believe how fast it all came apart.

Twenty levels, one kilometre to Meridian Station. A hundred deaths could be waiting out there. Motos are fast but motos can be hacked. Elevators and escalators can hide a dozen blades. Any or all of the hundreds on the street could be hired knives. Right now, drones could be targeting this apartment, assassin bots and neurotoxic insects climbing up the ductwork.

‘Get your legs,’ Marina says. ‘We walk.’

Ariel freezes halfway to the ladeira.

‘Come on,’ Marina shouts.

‘I can’t,’ Ariel says. ‘My legs won’t work.’

Marina had covered every threat and hack except the most personal and debilitating.

‘Get them off.’ The very next hack could command the legs to walk Ariel straight into a ring of blades.

‘I can’t disconnect them.’ Ariel hisses with effort and fear. Marina pulls her knife.

‘Sorry about this.’

The first cut sends the skirt to the ground. The second and third sever the flex cables to the power supply. Servos unpowered, the legs buckle. Ariel flails, falls, Marina catches her.

‘Get them off me, get them off me,’ Ariel cries, fumbling at the dead prostheses.

‘I don’t want to cut you.’ Marina works carefully, quickly with the point of the knife, nicking plastic locks and catches. The concentration is furious. ‘Keep still!’ Two connectors to go. Ariel’s apartment is off a quiet side alley but it can only be a matter of moments before those who hacked the bot legs come looking to see why their plan has not succeeded. And this is a blind alley. ‘Got you.’ Marina prises the legs open. Ariel drags herself clear.

‘Can you climb?’ Marina asks.

‘I can try,’ Ariel says. ‘Why?’

Marina nods at the service ladder at the back of the access alley.

‘I don’t know if I could make it all the way down,’ Ariel says.

‘We’re not going down. There’ll be a Mackenzie a metre all the way to the station. We’re going up.’ Up into the poor places, the high places, the Bairro Alto. The city of the unregarded. Where the moon’s greatest matrimonial lawyer and her bodyguard can disappear into the roof of the world. ‘I’ll help you. First though …’ Marina touches a forefinger between her eyes. Familiars off. Beijaflor vanishes an instant after Hetty. ‘You go first.’

‘Give me a hand,’ Ariel orders, wrestling with the jacket of her suit. Marina helps her off with it. Ariel is stripped down to Capri tights and sports bra: her fighting garb.

‘Give me my bag,’ Ariel says. Marina kicks it away from her reach.

‘How are you going to carry that? In your teeth?’

‘The cash could be useful.’

‘More useful than keeping your throat intact?’

Ariel hauls herself up two, three, four rungs of the ladder.

‘I’m not going to be able to get very far.’

‘I said I’d help you.’ Marina ducks in close to the ladder under Ariel’s hanging body. She drapes the paralysed legs on either side of her neck. ‘Lean forward and put your weight on my shoulders. We’re going to have to co-ordinate this. Left hands. Right hands. My right foot, then my left foot.’ Piggyback, Ariel and Marina climb the ladder. Jo Moonbeam muscles and lunar gravity reduce Ariel’s weight but they don’t abolish it. Marina guesses Ariel’s perceived weight at about ten kilogrammes. How long can she climb straight up ladders with a ten kilogramme weight on her shoulders? One level and she’s aching already.

Two levels. Three. Sixty to go to the roof of the world. What Marina will do there she doesn’t know. Whether the Cortas live or die, whether their empire stands or falls, she doesn’t know. If she’ll find a place in Bairro Alto, if she’ll survive, if the Mackenzies will be waiting for her, she doesn’t know. All she knows is left hands right hands, left foot right foot. Left hands right hands, left foot right foot, rung by rung, level by level, Marina and Ariel climb into exile.

The sound room burns; sheets of flame lick and lap across the walls, the acoustically perfect floor. The perfect mechanisms beneath crack and pop. Smoke swirls, stirred by the air-conditioning system into ghosts and devils, flicked with fire. The ball of vapour and smoke ignited in a fireball. The fire prevention systems click in, seal the room and douse it with halon.

The first taser takes Carlinhos in the back. He locks rigid. Every muscle spasms. Carlinhos cries out with effort as he fights to keep grip on his knives. He slashes down, jolts as he severs the wires that connect the barbs to the tasers. Spins, slashes out. Blades step back. He is alone now. All his squad lie awkward in their blood along Kondakova Prospekt. Mackenzie blades dance around him but Carlinhos Corta battles on. His armour is slashed and gouged, jagged with barbs where tasers have struck Kevlar not flesh. Five Mackenzies have fallen to him but every second more arrive.

Carlinhos has fought step by step, Mackenzie by Mackenzie, back to the lock of East refuge. Heitor Pereira is dead, his escoltas with him, but the refuge is full and sealed and safe.

Blades pile in around Carlinhos, taunting and jabbing. He cannot get out. He cannot get out. The second taser drives him to his knees. The third disarms him. The fourth turns him to a jerking puppet of flesh, webbed with the sparking lines of taser barbs. His strength, his agility, his knives are gone. He will die on his knees in a cave on the moon. All that remains is the rage. A blade steps towards and removes their helmet. Denny Mackenzie. He picks up one of Carlinhos’s fallen knives and admires the finesse of line and edge.

‘This is nice.’

He pulls Carlinhos’s head back and slashes his throat through to the windpipe.

When the corpse is drained the blades strip it naked. They drag Carlinhos Corta to the West 7 crosswalk and hang him by the heels from the bridge.

Five minutes later, the contracts go out. To all surviving employees, subcontractors and agents of Corta Hélio. Terms, conditions and remuneration rates for the transfer of allegiance to Mackenzie Metals. The money is more than generous. The Mackenzies repay three times.

The rover races north across the Sea of Fecundity.

It is a fool who only has one escape plan.

Lucas first devised his exit strategies when he ascended to the board of Corta Hélio. Every year he reviews and revises them against such a day as this. They are all based on the same insight: there is nowhere to hide on the moon. He realised that when he took his seat at the board table and touched his hands to the polished wood and felt the fragility of the elegant table, the spindly chair on which he sat, the weight of the rock above him, the cold of the rock beneath him. No hiding place, but there is a way out. The last instruction Lucas gave Toquinho before he shut it down was to lay in the course to the Central Mare Fecunditatis moonloop terminal.

Ten million in gold, deposited in the Mirabaud Bank in Zurich, Earth, five years ago. The Vorontsovs adore gold. They trust it when they can’t trust their machines, their ships, their sisters and brothers.

Save yourselves, he’d ordered the escoltas at the lock. Throw away the knives, drop the armour, go dark. I’ll go from here.

He didn’t want them to know his true escape plan. He hopes they made it. Lucas has always appreciated true service. So do the Mackenzies, so they won’t senselessly waste good labour, over and above the necessary bloodletting. It’s what he’d do. Lucas has had to run fast and silent to avoid Mackenzie detection. João de Deus will have fallen. Carlinhos will be dead. He can only hope that Rafa made it to Boa Vista, that the madrinhas got the kids to safety. The Mackenzies will eradicate his family, root and branch. It’s what he’d do. Wagner is on the run. Ariel. He has no idea about Ariel. Lucasinho is safe. The Asamoahs have asserted their independence in two dead Mackenzie assassins. That warms Lucas in his plastic environment bubble clutched to the belly of the Corta Hélio rover. His boy is safe.

Five minutes to Central Fecunditatis Terminal, the rover says.

‘Ready the capsule,’ Lucas instructs. The curving screen shows him the terminal, a kilometre-tall girder work tower attended by a long row on tether-transfer pods. Loading and docking facilities, a solar farm, a siding from the close-by Equatorial One: Central Fecunditatis Terminal is a major cargo hub for Corta helium-3 canisters and pallets of refined Mackenzie rare earths. Today it will heft a different cargo.

‘Operate docking sequence,’ Lucas says. The nimble rover scuttles in to a ring of flashing blue lights: the outlock. And stops dead.

‘Rover, please dock with the terminal.’

The rover stands on the Sea of Fecundity five metres from the flashing lock.

‘Rover …’

‘It’s not going to work, you know.’ The voice breaks in on the com channels. A face appears on the screen: Amanda Sun.

‘Isn’t this a little excessive for post-divorce vindictiveness? Couldn’t you just have cut up a few jackets?’

Amanda Sun laughs deeply and truly.

‘I have to hand it to you, Lucas, you’re a professional. But, you know, jackets? Deprinter? No, what’s going to happen here has nothing to do with our divorce. But you know that. And I am going to kill you. This time, I will succeed. Unless you have a resourceful and plucky cocktail waitress tucked away in there somewhere? Didn’t think so.’

‘We always wondered how that fly got through security.’

Amanda Sun taps an earlobe.

‘Jewellery, darling. You half-brother would have got there eventually. He’s thorough. You Cortas are ridiculously easy to manipulate. All that Brazilian machismo. The Mackenzies hardly needed prodding at all. But it’s far too easy when you can predict your enemy’s next move. That’s why we knew you’d try and get off the moon. And so here I am, in your software. But we’re wasting time. I need to kill you. I have several options here. I could blow you up but you’re a little close to the moonloop terminal. I could depressurise the rover. That would be fairly quick. But I think I’ll just order the rover to drive and keep driving until your air runs out.’

Depressurise the rover. The human hide is an excellent pressure skin. The human body can operate for fifteen seconds in vacuum. Moonrun. He needs to keep her talking while he checks the cabin for what he needs to save his life. Vanity was always her vice.

‘I have a question.’

‘Yes, it is customary to grant a last request. What is it, darling?’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, that would be no fun at all. The villain gives away her entire master plan? I tell you what though, I’ll give you a hint. You’re a smart boy, Lucas. You should be able to work it out. It’ll give you something to do rather than watching the air gauge run down. From day one my family has been taking out options on surface terrain adjacent to Equatorial One. Two lunes ago we started to exercise them. There. That should provide you with some distraction.’

‘I’ll give it my undivided concentration,’ Lucas says and launches himself across the capsule. He slaps the emergency hatch release. The hatch blows. Lucas screams as needles are driven through his eardrums. Every sinus is filled with boiling lead. The scream is good. The scream saves his lungs from rupturing. The scream dies as the blast of air blows Lucas in his jacket and pleated pants and tie out on to the Sea of Fecundity. He hits the regolith in a cloud of dust and rolls. Eyes. Keep the eyes open. Close them and they freeze shut. Blind is disoriented. Disoriented is dead. He hauls himself to his feet. On the edge of his vision he sees the rover spin its wheels. It’s moving. She wants to run him down. One step, two steps. That’s all. One step, two. But everything is dying. He is tearing apart inside. Lucas lurches forward on his two-tone loafers and hits the outlock panel. The flashing lights lock solid blue. The lock slams open. Lucas hauls himself in. The lock seals. Lucas’s lungs and eyes and ears and brain are about to burst. Then he hears the roar of air flooding back into the lock. Over it he hears his own voice. He never stopped screaming. A bang, the lock shakes. Amanda has rammed the rover into the lock. The Vorontsovs build tough but assault by a possessed lunar rover is not in their design parameters. Lucas gasps down air and crawls to the inlock. The door opens, he falls through. The door closes. Central Fecunditatis Terminal rocks again. Lucas presses his cheek to the cold, solid, wonderful floor mesh. On the wall in his direct line of sight is an icon of Dona Luna. He reaches out to stroke a finger down Lady Moon’s bone face.

Still it is not over.

‘Corcovado, Dorolice, Desafinado.’ Lucas croaks the code.

Welcome Lucas Corta, the terminal says. Your capsule is ready for you. Moonloop rendezvous and orbital transfer in sixty seconds.

With the last of his strength Lucas staggers to the capsule.

Please be informed that maximum acceleration will momentarily peak at six lunar gravities, the capsule says as it lowers safety bars over his chest and clasps his waist in a padded hug. The locks seal. Terminal ascent. A different jolt shakes Lucas in his capsule and he almost weeps with relief: the capsule undocking and climbing the terminal tower to the tether platform. At ascent. Moonloop lift in twenty seconds.

He imagines the moonloop wheeling towards him along the equator, sending counterweights climbing up and down its length to dip lower into the moon’s gravity well to snatch this parcel of life. Then Lucas cries out as the grapple connects. The capsule with the screaming Lucas Corta huddled inside it is snatched up into the sky, and flung away from the moon, into the big dark.

Bodies lie strewn like surface scrap along the platform of Boa Vista tram station. An entire Mackenzie blade squad taken down. Dart throwers swivel and lock on Rafa with a speed and accuracy that makes the breath catch in his throat. The guns hesitate. If the Mackenzies have hacked security, Rafa will be dead before he can reach the gate. The dart throwers snap up and away. Pass friend.

Socrates tried to raise Robson and Luna but Boa Vista’s network is down.

Rafa steps out of the station expecting horrors. The long valley is deserted. Water cascades between the impassive faces of the orixas, gurgles through streams and pools and falls. Bamboo stirs, leaves flicker in the subtle breezes. The sunline stands at early afternoon.

‘Ola Boa Vista!’

His voice returns in a dozen echoes.

They might have made it out. They might be dead in their own blood among the columns and in the chambers.

‘Ola!’

Room after empty room. Boa Vista has never felt less his palace. His mother’s apartment, spacious rooms open to the gardens. The reception rooms, the board room. Staff quarters. The old apartment he shared with Lousika, the crawlspace where Luna used to hide and spy and thought no one knew. Deserted. He steps through the door to the service area and an arm grabs him, swings him, slams him into the wall and throws him to the ground. Madrinha Elis stands over him, a knife-tip a centimetre from his left eyeball. She snatches the blade away.

‘Sorry, Senhor Rafa.’

‘Where are they?’

‘In the refuge.’

Boa Vista shakes. Dust drops from the ceiling. There is no mistaking the flat thud of breaching charges.

‘Come with me.’

Madrinha Elis takes Rafa’s hand. Room after room, through the labyrinth of Boa Vista’s ever-growing corridors. The refuge is a tank of steel and aluminium and pressure-glass; striped yellow and black, the universal dress of danger. Madrinhas and Boa Vista staff huddle nervously on the benches; Robson and Luna rush to the window, press their hands against the glass. Familiars can speak through the local network, Rafa goes down on his knees and presses his head to the pane.

‘Thank gods thank gods thank gods, I was so scared.’

‘Papai, are you coming in?’ Luna says.

‘In a minute. I need to see if there’s anyone else out there.’

Boa Vista rattles again. The refuge creaks on its vibration-damping springs. It is designed to keep twenty people safe and breathing against the worst the moon can drop on it.

‘I can do that, Senhor Rafa,’ Madrinha Elis says.

‘You’ve done enough. You get in. Go.’

The lock cycles open. Madrinha Elis gives Rafa a last questioning look; he shakes his head.

‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ Rafa says to Luna. They touch hands to the glass.

He’s checked the south wing but the company offices and ancillary areas are on the north side of the gardens.

‘Ola!’

Another blast. He needs to hurry. The air plant, water recycling, power, thermal. Clear. A fresh explosion, the most powerful yet, shakes leaves from the trees. Masonry falls from the São Sebastião Pavilion. A crack runs down the face of Oxossi the hunter.

Clear.

Utterly clear. He was a fool to have come here. Luna and Robson didn’t need him to save that. The madrinhas looked after them, calmly, efficiently. He is the liability, he’s the danger. If he goes to the refuge, the Mackenzies will cut it apart to get him. They’re up there blasting a path down to him. Boa Vista is a trap. Another explosion, the heaviest yet. The crack down Oxossi’s face widens into a fissure. The dome of the São Sebastião Pavilion collapses into the water. Rafa runs.

The tram service is not currently available, the lock AI says. The tunnel is blocked by a roof fall at kilometre three.

Rafa stares dumb at the lock, as if it has committed some personal affront. All ideas have fled. The surface lock. He can steal out the way Lucasinho did, in a hard-shell emergency suit. João de Deus is lost, but there’s a depot at Rurik; two hours run at full shell-suit speed. Pick up a rover, get out to Twé. Regroup and recover. Gather the family, strike back.

He runs for the surface lock elevator. Is blown off his feet by a staggering detonation that lifts Boa Vista and drops it like a fighter breaking an enemy’s spine. The front of the elevator lobby disintegrates in a wall of debris. Deafened, stunned by the pressure wave, Rafa understands the meaning of the flying debris. They’ve blown the surface lock. Boa Vista is open to vacuum.

The pressure wave reverses. Boa Vista vents its atmosphere. The gardens explode. Every leaf is stripped from every tree, every loose object is syphoned towards the surface lock shaft and blasted out in a fountain of litter, leaf, garden furniture, tea glasses, petals, grass clippings, lost jewellery, debris from the explosion. Doors and windows buckle and shatter. Boa Vista is a tornado of glass splinters and shredded metal. Depressurisation alarms shriek, their voices weakening as the air pressure drops. Rafa clings to a pillar of the São Sebastião Pavilion. The killing wind tears at him. His clothes, his skin are lacerated by a thousand cuts of flying glass. His lungs blaze, his brain burns, his vision turns red as he draws the last oxygen from his bloodstream. He gasps in a shallow, airless final breath. He dies here but he won’t let go. But his vision is darkening, his strength failing. Synapses fuse and die one by one. His grip is weakening. He can’t hold on any longer. There is no point, no hope. With a final silent cry Rafa slips from the pillar into the storm.

The moonloop capsule flies out beyond the far side of the moon. If he had cameras or windows Lucas Corta could have gazed on the wonder of a half-Farside, diamond-bright, filling his sky. He has no windows, no cameras, little in the way of communications or entertainment or light. Toquinho is offline: everything is sacrificed to keeping Lucas breathing. There is not even enough power for a call to Lucasinho, to let the boy know Lucas is alive. The calculations are tight but they are accurate. They require no faith; they are equations.

Lucas’s tie has worked loose from his jacket and floats in free-fall.

The Taiyang plan is child-like in its straightforwardness. Lucas has time to think about it in his capsule and he deduced it in instants from Amanda’s confession. Never confess. That’s a mistake he will repay three times. She never esteemed him. The Suns always treated the Cortas as a lesser, dirty class. Ludicrous gauchos. Jumped-up favelados. Mackenzie Metals destroys Corta Hélio. Planet Earth watches and fears for its helium fusion plants. Mackenzie Metals has a helium-3 stockpile from its attempts to muscle into Corta Hélio’s market but the long game lies in Taiyang’s exercising its long-bet options on the equatorial belt. Pave the moon’s equator sixty kilometres on either side of Equatorial One with solar panels sintered from lunar regolith and beam the power to Earth by microwave. Taiyang has always been information and power. The moon as non-depletable permanent orbital power station. It is humanity’s most expensive and largest infrastructure program but in the paranoia following the fall of Corta Hélio and the shrinking of the lunar helium-3 supply, investors will stab each other in the throat to bang cash on Taiyang’s table. It will be the Sun’s final victory in their long war with the PRC. It’s a magnificent plan. Lucas admires it nakedly.

Its magnificence is its simplicity. Set a few simple motivators working and human pride will do the rest. The assassin fly was brilliant; a simple obfuscation that cast shadows between the Cortas and Asamoahs but pointed to the Mackenzies. Lucas has no doubt that the software malfunction that killed Rachel Mackenzie was sourced in a Taiyang server; or that the knife attack that disabled Ariel came out of the Palace of Eternal Light. Little triggers. Feedback loops. Cycles of violence. Conspire for your enemies to destroy each other. How long had the Suns been scheming? They worked in decades, planned for centuries.

It’s far too easy when you can predict your enemy’s next move, Amanda had said. Wagner had mentioned, Ariel had confirmed, that Taiyang had designed a quantum computing system for Whitacre Goddard. The Three August Ones. Highly accurate predictions from detailed real-world modelling. What serves Whitacre Goddard serves the Suns better.

They had not predicted Lucas would survive.

Toquinho powers up, a low-rez basic interface that allows Lucas to mesh with the capsule’s sensors and control systems. The capsule has pinged, and the destination has pinged back. It was all calculation. Out there, close to the far end of its loop around the back of the moon into its return orbit to Earth, VTO cycler Saints Peter and Paul has locked on to the capsule and assumed control. Lucas’s tie falls as the capsule jerks to micro-accelerations; thrusters burping to push it into a rendezvous orbit. Now the cycler is within range of the capsules’ cameras and Toquinho shows him the breath-taking sight of the sun-lit ship: five habitat rings arranged up and down the central drive and life support axle, a crown of soar panels.

Ten million in Zurich gold will buy Lucas sanctuary here, for as long as he needs to calculate out his return and revenge.

Thrusters pop and belch, docking arms reach out to grasp the capsule and draw Lucas Corta in.

The moonship comes in low over the debris field. The ejecta of Boa Vista has fallen in a rough disc five kilometres across, graded by size and weight. The lighter material – the leaves, the grass clippings – forms the outer rings; then the glass shards, the pieces of metal and stone and sinter. The largest and heaviest items, the most intact ones, lie closest to the wreckage of the lock. The pilot brings her ship in manually, hunting for a safe landing zone. She plays the manoeuvring thrusters like a musical instrument: ship-dancing.

In the surface activity pod, Lucasinho Corta, Abena and Lousika Asamoah suit up with the VTO rescue team and the AKA security squad. There has been no sign of activity from Boa Vista for two hours now, except the pulse of the refuge beacon. Refuges are tough but the destruction of Boa Vista is well beyond design parameters. Green lights. The ship is down. The pod depressurises. Lucasinho and Abena bump helmets, a recognition of friendship and the anticipation of fear. Familiars collapse down into name tags over their left shoulders.

VTO had protested that diverting to Twé to pick up Lousika Asamoah would add perilous minutes to their rescue mission. ‘My girl is down there.’ VTO had still demurred. ‘AKA will pay for your extra fuel, time and air.’ That had settled it. ‘There will be three of us.’

Pod depressurised, Jinji says. Doors opening.

Abena squeezes Lucasinho’s hand.

Lucasinho has never flown in a moonship. He anticipated excitement: rushing over the surface faster than he ever travelled before, rocket-powered, riding to the rescue. His experience was a seat in a windowless pod, a series of unpredictable jolts and thumps and accelerations that threw him against his restraint harness and much time to imagine what he would find down there.

The VTO rescue squad strike through the debris field to the lock. They rig winch tripods and lights. Lousika, with Abena and Lucasinho and her guards, descend the ramp to the surface. The moonship’s searchlights cast long, slow-moving shadows of warped garden furniture, twisted construction beams, shards of reinforced glass stabbed into the regolith, smashed machinery. Lucasinho and Abena pick a path through the wreckage.

‘Nana.’

Lousika’s guards have found something. Their helmet lights play across tweed, the curve of a shoulder, a hank of hair.

‘Stay there, Lucasinho,’ Lousika orders.

‘I want to see him,’ Lucasinho says.

‘Stay there!’

Two guards seize him, turn him away. Lucasinho tries to wrench free but these are fresh workers six months up from Accra and they outmuscle any third gen moon-boy. Abena stands in front of him.

‘Look at me.’

‘I want to see him!’

‘Look at me!’

Lucasinho turns his head. He glimpses Lousika on her knees on the regolith. Her hands are pressed to her faceplate, she rocks back and forth. He glimpses something smashed and distorted, burst open and freeze-dried to leather. Then Abena claps her hands on either side of his helmet and turns his head to her. Lucasinho returns the gesture. He pulls Abena’s helmet to touch his, a duster kiss.

‘I will never ever forgive the people who did this,’ Lucasinho swears on a private channel. ‘Robert Mackenzie, Duncan Mackenzie, Bryce MacKenzie, I name you and claim you. I put down a marker. You’re mine.’

‘Lucasinho, don’t say this.’

‘You don’t tell me that, Abena. This is mine, you don’t have a say in it.’

‘Lucasinho …’

‘This is mine.’

‘Ms Asamoah-Corta.’

Lousika starts at the call on the common channel from the VTO rescue squad.

‘We’re ready.’

She rests a hand on Lucasinho’s shoulder. Sasuit haptics communicate the nap of the terrain, the touch of a hand.

‘Luca, it will kill you.’

He only caught a glimpse; he was not allowed to see what Lousika saw; his uncle, her oko; but what he did see he will never stop seeing.

‘Nana, they’re waiting for us,’ says one of the guards. She carefully steers Lucasinho to keep his back turned to the dead thing. The moon kills ugly.

The Vorontsov team hook first Lousika, then Lucasinho, last Abena to the winches. Lucasinho swings out over the black gullet of the lock shaft. He glances down, his helmet beams splash around the wall of the pit. The enormous blast of Boa Vista’s depressurisation has scoured the shaft clean of anything that might snag and tear a sasuit. Still, it is a descent into dread and darkness. The refuge has been beaconing constantly but it could have shifted, become jammed, failed, ruptured.

‘Lowering.’

It must have been likewise when Adriana first descended into the lava tube she would sculpt into her palace. Light on rock, the vibration of the winch through the drop line. You came up this when you stormed out on your pai, Lucasinho thinks and feels a brief burn of embarrassment. How differently you make the return trip.

Then Lucasinho’s proximity sensors beep and his feet touch down. Crunch and texture of wreckage under his boots. He unsnaps the harness and steps out into Boa Vista. The Vorontsov team has rigged working lights; they hint at more than they reveal: dark shadows in the eye sockets of Xango. Pavilions fallen and strewn like unsuccessful card tricks. Leafless trees, frozen to their hearts, eerily underlit. The full, sensual lips of Iansa. Hints and glints of ice: the frozen tears of the orixas; Lucasinho’s helmet beams playing across dead lawns rigid with frost, lenses of black ice in the dry pools and watercourses. What water wasn’t blown away in the DP has flash frozen in a frosted glaze.

Lucasinho blunders into a lost object and sends it skidding across the tiled pavement. His helmet beams locate it: the wreckage of the old Corta Hélio board table; cracked, missing a leg. He sets it upright. It keels over immediately. Through broken door frames and smashed chairs, under trees draped in shredded bedding. His boots crunch vacuum-frozen twigs and crumbs of glass. Not a pavilion stands. He plays his helmet lights across the faces of the orixas. Oxala, Lord of Light. Yemanja the Creator. Xango the Just. Oxum the Lover. Ogun the Warrior. Oxossi the Hunter. Ibeji the Twins. Omolu, Lord of Disease. Iansa, Queen of Change. Nana the Source.

He never believed in any of them.

‘I will bring this back,’ he whispers in Portuguese. ‘This is mine.’

A second pair of helmet beams strike out and fix him in a pool of light, a third: Lousika and Abena have arrived, but he walks ahead of them, down the dead river bed between the orixas, down to where the rescuers are waiting.