Luna: New Moon

Before they reach the window they both know something is wrong. No music, no chatter, no splashing of bodies in the waterfall pool. Shouting voices, orders snapped in Portuguese and Globo. The pupil of Xangô’s stone eye overlooks the length of the Boa Vista’s gardens. Lucasinho sees Corta security escoltas guarding groups of guests. The band and the wait staff have their hands on their heads. Security drones scan the sculpted walls; their lasers rest a moment on Lucasinho and Abena.

‘What’s going on?’ Lucasinho asks. Jinji answers in the same instant as Abena’s face turns to shock.

There has been an attempt on the life on Rafael Corta.

The edge of the knife lies against Marina Calzaghe’s throat. If she moves, if she speaks, if she takes too deep a breath, it will part her flesh. The blade is so insanely sharp it is almost anaesthetic: she would not feel the slitting of her windpipe. But she must move, she must speak if she is to live.

Her fingers tap the stem of the cocktail glass clamped upside down on the tray.

‘The fly,’ she hisses.

Flies didn’t move like that. Marina Calzaghe knows flies. She worked as a flycatcher. On the moon, insects – pollinators, decorative butterflies like the ones the Asamoah kids sent wafting through Boa Vista, are licensed. Flies, wasps, wild bugs threaten the complex systems of lunar cities and are exterminated. Marina Calzaghe has killed a million flies and knows they don’t fly like that, in a straight attack line for the exposed soft skin in the corner of Rafael Corta’s jaw line. She lunged with the glass, caught the fly millimetres from its target and clapped the empty martini glass to the tray. A cocktail prison. And in the same instant, a knife whispered out of a concealed magnetic sheath to her throat. At the end of the knife, a Corta escolta in a tailored suit with a perfectly folded square in his breast pocket. He still looks like a thug. He still looks like death.

Heitor Pereira squats stiffly to examine the thing in the glass. For a first-generation, he is a big man, square built. A big ex-navy man peering into an upturned cocktail glass would be comedy but for the knives.

‘An assassin bug,’ Heitor Pereira says. ‘AKA.’

In an instant blades ring Lousika Asamoah. Their tips are millimetres from her skin. Luna wails and sobs, clinging to her mother. Rafael hurls himself at the security men. Men in suits pile on him, pinion him.

‘For your own safety, senhor,’ Heitor Pereira says. ‘She may be harbouring biological agents.’

‘It’s a drone,’ Marina Calzaghe whispers. ‘It’s chipped.’

Heitor Pereira looks closer. The fly batters itself against the glass but in its moments of stillness a pattern of gold tracery is clearly visible on its wings and carapace.

‘Let her go.’ Adriana Corta’s voice is quiet but the tone of command makes every security man and woman flinch. Heitor Pereira nods. The knives are sheathed. Lousika scoops up the howling Luna.

‘And her,’ Adriana Corta orders. Marina gasps as the knife is removed from her throat and realises she has not inhaled since security grabbed her. The shaking starts.

Lucas is shouting, ‘Lucasinho? Where is Lucasinho?’

‘I’ll take that now.’ Heitor Pereira places his hand on top of the glass. He takes a pulse-gun from a small holster. The device is the size of his thumb, a silly, camp weapon in his huge hand. ‘Shut down your familiars.’ Up and down Boa Vista familiars wink out of existence. Marina blinks off her own Hetty. That camp little gun possesses enough power to take down the whole of Boa Vista’s network. There is nothing to see or hear, but the little wired fly goes from moving to still and dead.

Lucas Corta leans close to his Head of Security and whispers to him.

‘They tried to kill my brother. They got into Boa Vista; into our home, and they tried to kill my brother.’

‘The situation is under control, Senhor Corta.’

‘The situation is that an assassin came within the thickness of a cocktail glass of killing Rafa. In front of guests from every one of the Five Dragons. In front of our mother. That doesn’t strike me as a situation under control, does it?’

‘We’ll analyse the weapon. We’ll find out who’s behind it.’

‘‘Well that’s not enough. There could be another attack any moment. I want this place secured. This party is over.’

‘Senhors, senhoras, there has been a security incident,’ Heitor Pereira announces. ‘We must secure Boa Vista. I have to ask you to leave. If you could make your way to the tram station. It’s now safe to relog your familiars.’

‘Find my son!’ Lucas orders Heitor Pereira. Lucasinho’s friends mill, lost and overshadowed. Their moon-run, Lucasinho’s saving of Kojo Asamoah, are eclipsed. Boa Vista security shepherd guests out of the gardens towards the station. A guard escorts Corta grandees indoors. Lucas Corta considers Marina Calzaghe with ice and iron. She is shivering with shock.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Marina Calzaghe.’

‘You work for the caterers?’