Luna: New Moon

‘Lucas, enough.’ Adriana Corta occupies the head of the board table. For months her seat has been empty, her only presence the large, clumsy portrait of her in a sasuit, Our Lady of Helium, looking down the length of the table. An immediate and lethal threat her children has brought her to the board room in all her authority. Rafa is seated at her right hand, Ariel to her left. Lucas sits to the right of his brother.

‘Mamãe, if your head of security can’t keep us safe, who can?’

‘Heitor has been a faithful agent of our family for longer than you have been alive.’ No one can mistake the sting of authority.

‘Yes, Mãe.’ Lucas dips his head to his mother.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Rafa fills the stinging silence.

‘Is it obvious?’ Ariel says.

‘Who else has it ever been?’ Rafa leans low over the table. His anger smokes. ‘Bob Mackenzie has never forgiven Mamãe. He’s slow poison. Not today, not tomorrow; not this year or even this decade, but some year, some day. The Mackenzies pay back three times. They’re striking at the succession. They want you to see everything you’ve built come apart, Mamãe.’

‘Rafa …’ Ariel begins.

‘Kyra Mackenzie,’ Rafa interrupts. ‘She was at the party. Did anyone search her, or did we just wave her through, because she was one of Lucasinho’s friends?’

‘Rafa, do you think the Mackenzies would risk all-out war?’ Ariel says. She draws long on her vaper. ‘Really?’

‘If they thought they could break our monopoly, they might.’ Lucas says.

‘It’s starting again, can’t you see that?’ Rafa says.

Eight years before, Corta Hélio and Mackenzie Metals fought a brief territory war. Extractors fallen in tangles of metal, trains boarded and shipments hijacked, bots and AIs crashed under bombardments of dark code. Dusters fought hand to hand, knife to knife in the tunnels of Maskelyne and Jansen and out on the stone seas of Tranquillity and Serenity. One hundred and twenty deaths, damage in the millions of bitsies. In the end, Cortas and Mackenzies agreed to arbitration. The Court of Clavius ruled for Corta Hélio. Two months later Adrian Mackenzie married Jonathon Kayode, Eagle of the Moon, CEO of the Lunar Development Corporation, the owners of the moon.

‘Rafa, enough,’ Adriana Corta says. Her voice is thin, her authority is incontestable. ‘We fight the Mackenzies through business, we beat them through business. We make money.’ Adriana rises from the table, stiff and worn in face and limb. Her children and retainers bow and follow her from the board room.

Carlinhos stands, purses the fingers of his right hand and bows to his mother. He has not spoken a word at this board meeting. He never does. His place is out in the field, with the extractors and refiners and the dusters. He’s the duster, the fighter. Rafa can outshine him with his charm, Lucas bludgeon him with his arguments, Ariel tie him up with her eloquence but none of them can walk the dirt the way he does.

Lucas detains Heitor Pereira a moment.

‘You made a mistake,’ Lucas whispers. ‘You’re too old. You’re past it, and you’re gone.’

In the lobby outside the board room Wagner Corta waits. Adriana and her retainers pass without looking at him, then Lucas and Ariel. Ariel nods, a tight smile. Carlinhos claps his brother on the back.

‘Hey brother.’

Wagner is the conspicuous absence at the board table.

‘I want a word with Rafa,’ Wagner says.

‘Sure. You want to bike back to João?’

‘I’ve something else planned.’

‘Catch you later, Lobinho.’

‘A word about what?’ Rafa says. He perches on the inside lip of Oxala’s right eye. Behind him water tumbles slowly.

‘The fly. I want to take a look at it.’

Rafa has made sure that Wagner received Heitor Pereira’s schematics. Rafa makes sure Wagner receives all data from every board meeting.

‘You’ve got everything.’

‘Respect to Heitor and even your R&D, but there’re things I’d see he wouldn’t.’

Rafa knows that Wagner’s life is complicated and lived in the shadows on the edge of the family and that his contribution to Corta Hélio is solid but hard to quantify, but he is an outstanding engineer of the small and intricate. Sometime Rafa envies his two natures; the dark precision, the light creativity.

‘Like what?’

‘I’ll know it when I see it. But I will need to see it.’

‘I’ll let Heitor know.’ Socrates, Rafa’s familiar, has already sent the notification. ‘I’ve told him not to let Adriana know.’

‘Thank you.’

Wagner has been the shadow in the family so long his siblings have evolved an alternative social gravity, informing him, including him while keeping him invisible, like a black hole.

‘When will we see you around, miudo?’ Rafa says. Adriana is looking back, waiting for him.

‘When I have something to say,’ Wagner says. ‘You know me. Keep breathing, Rafa.’

‘Keep breathing, Little Wolf.’

‘Ariel.’ Lucas calls to his sister down the length of the Oxala steps. Ariel turns. ‘Going back already?’

‘I have business in Meridian.’

‘Yes, the reception for the Chinese trade delegation. I couldn’t ask you to miss that.’

‘I told you clearly at the party.’

‘It’s family.’