Luna: New Moon

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.