Luna: New Moon

We did it with six rovers: two teams of three. We timed the attack just as Mackenzie Metals was to deliver on an important new rare-earths contract with Xiaomi. Carlos went with the first team. I rode with the second. It was so exciting! Two rovers full of big brawny escoltas, one with the demolition team. It was really quite simple. We hit Crucible on the eastern Procellarum. The escoltas formed a periphery; the demolition teams struck simultaneously three kilometres up line and down line from Crucible. I watched the charges blow. The rails flew up so high I thought they would go into orbit. I watched them tumble away, catching the sunlight, and it was the closest we can get to fireworks on the moon. Everyone cheered and whooped but I couldn’t because I hated to see fine, brilliant engineering destroyed in a flash. Track I might have laid myself. I hated it because no sooner had we built a thing to be proud of, we destroyed it.

The clever part was, even as we ran with Mackenzie Metals rovers on our tails, our secondary attacks went in twenty kilometres up and down the line. The VTO repair teams would have to bridge those breaches before they could rebuild the ones closer to Crucible. Even if VTO got teams out within the hour, Crucible would be in darkness for a week. They would miss the delivery deadline.

We lost their blades in the chaotic terrain of Eddington.

After the battle of East Procellarum, Mackenzie Metals moved their attacks to the Court of Clavius.

I think I would have preferred the war of blades and bombs.

Their tactics varied but their strategy was clear and simple: bleed Corta Hélio to death through legal fees. They hit us with suits for breach of contract, breach of copyright, personal injury, corporate damages, plagiarism, damages suits for every single crew person on Crucible on the day of the attack. Suit after suit after suit. Most of them were swept away by our AIs as soon as they were served but for every one we dismissed their AIs created ten more. AIs are prolific, and AIs are cheap but they’re not free. The judges we had agreed upon finally ruled against any further frivolous suits and that Mackenzie Metals lay a solid suit with a reasonable chance of success.

They did. It named Adriana Maria do Céu Mão de Ferro Arena de Corta in forty separate instances of breach of Mackenzie Metals patent in my designs for the extractor.

AIs, lawyers, judges settled in for a long trial.

I didn’t.

I knew this could drag and drag and Mackenzie Metals would file injunctions against our exports and for each one we dismissed, they would file another. They wanted us soiled goods. They wanted my name and reputation dust. They wanted our terrestrial clients leery of us, leery enough to consider investing a little seed money in a helium-3 extraction venture with an established company, of good standing, who could deliver the goods: Mackenzie Fusion.

I had to end this hard and fast.

I challenged Robert Mackenzie, in name and person, to trial by combat.

I didn’t tell any of my legals. I didn’t tell Helen, I didn’t tell Heitor, though he may have guessed because I asked him to teach me something of the way of the knife. I didn’t tell Carlos.

There is angry, and there is furious, and there is a deeper rage beyond those for which we don’t have a name. It’s pale and very pure and very cold. I imagine it’s what the Christian god feels at sin. I saw it in Carlos when he found out what I was going to do.

It ends it, I said. Once and for all.

And if you get hurt? Carlos said. And if you die?

If Corta Hélio dies, then I’m dead too, I said. Do you think they’ll just let us walk away? The Mackenzies repay three times.

Half the moon was in the court arena that day, or so it seemed to me. I came up on to the fighting floor and I just saw faces faces faces, all around me, going up up up. All those faces, and me in a pair of running shorts and a crop top, with a borrowed escolta knife in my hand.

I wasn’t afraid, no not a bit.

The judges called for Robert Mackenzie. The judges called again for Robert Mackenzie. They instructed his lawyers to approach them. I stood in the centre of the court-arena with another woman’s knife in my hand and looked up at all the faces. I wanted to ask them: Why have you come here? What have you come to see? Is it victory, or is it blood?

‘I call on you, Robert Mackenzie!’ I shouted. ‘Defend yourself!’

In a heartbeat, there was absolute silence in the arena.

Again I called on Robert Mackenzie.

And a third time, ‘I call on you, Robert Mackenzie, defend your self, your name and your company!’