Luna: New Moon

Behind the boy comes the woman: tall, red-haired, white-skinned. Green-eyed like her boy. With infinite poise she stalks up to Rafa and slaps him hard across the face. Bodyguards’ hands flash to the hilts of knives concealed in well-cut suits.

‘We have trains, you know.’

Rafa cracks into great golden laughter.

‘You look stunning,’ Rafa says to his wife. And she does look fantastic, for a woman who has been bucketed across the moon in a converted cargo can like a load of ore. Make-up immaculate; every hair, every pleat and fold: immaculate. And she is right. The BALTRAN is outmoded since the high-speed rail network has been linked up: it’s crude, but it is quick. The BALTRAN is a ballistic transport system. On an airless moon, ballistic trajectories can be calculated with precision. A magnetic mass-driver accelerates a capsule. Throws it up. Gravity brings it down. A receiving end of the target mass-driver catches the capsule and decelerates it to rest. In between, twenty minutes of free fall. Repeat as necessary. The capsules can contain cargo, or people. It’s tough but endurable; fast and only hair-raising if you think about it too much. Rafa used to enjoy it for the freefall sex.

‘I want him to catch the game. He’d miss it if he came by train.’ Then to the boy: ‘You want to see the game? Moços versus Tigers. Jaden Sun thinks he’s got us beat but I say we kick Tiger ass all over the stadium. What do you say?’

Robson Corta is eleven years old and the sight of him, the presence of him, his magnificent hair, his face, his great green eyes, the way his lips part in excitement, fill Rafa’s heart with a joy so great it is pain, and at the same time a loss so deep it is a nausea. He crouches to kid level. ‘Game day. What do you think, eh?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Raf.’ Rachel Mackenzie knows, Rafa knows; their respective sets of bodyguards, even Robson knows that this is not about a handball match. The terms allow Rafa access to his son at any time. Even if that means lobbing him like a handball across the moon. Throw and catch. Throw and catch.

‘We can have this in front of him if you want,’ Rafa says.

‘Robbo, honey, could you go back to the capsule? It’ll only be a couple of minutes.’ A nod from Rachel sends one her blades with the boy. He glances back once at his father. Killing green eyes. He will break hearts. He is breaking one now.

‘Robbo,’ Rafa says with contempt.

‘I had nothing to do with what happened at the party.’

‘“What happened at the party.” What happened at the party was someone tried to stick me with a neurotoxin-armed fly. I’d’ve been spasming and pissing and shitting myself for hours before I suffocated.’

‘Classy, but it’s not our style. Mackenzies like you to see our faces before they kill you. You should look to your friends the Asamoahs. Poisons, assassin bugs; that’s more their game.’

‘I want him back.’

‘The terms of the settlement …’

‘Fuck the settlement.’

‘Leave this to the lawyers, Raf. You really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘He’s not safe with you. I’m invoking the security clause. Please send Robson to me.’

‘Not safe with me?’ Rachel Mackenzie’s laugh is like mining tools on stone. ‘Are you insane? Raf, I don’t care how they kill you, or even if they kill you but I know the moon and they won’t stop at you. Root and branch, Rafa. Let you take Robson? No fucking way. Rob stays with me. Mackenzies look after their own.’ She turns to her guard. ‘Lay in a new BALTRAN jump. We’re going to Crucible.’

Rafa roars in inarticulate rage. Knives whip out from magnetic sheaths: escoltas and blades.

‘You know, your brother’s right,’ Rachel Mackenzie says. ‘You are shit-stupid. You want to start a war with us? Stand down lads.’ The Mackenzie blades open the capsule. Rachel Mackenzie says as the lock closes, ‘I tell you something; your sister scares me more than you do. And she’s got more balls.’

The capsule is in the elevator, Socrates says. The mass-driver is powering up.

Rafa punches concrete, hard. Blood sprays from his knuckles.

‘I know it was you!’ he bellows. ‘I know it was you! You want to put him in the chair of Corta Hélio!’