Luna: New Moon

The boy has already exited the lock. He stands alone in the arrivals, still in sasuit and helmet, smeared with dust, his familar hovering over his left shoulder.

‘He taught me a trick,’ Robson says. Joker relays his words to the world beyond the helmet. ‘It’s a real good trick.’ Gloved hands take a deck of playing cards from a thigh pocket. Robson fans them out. His voice is dead, flat, alien. Joker catches every tone. ‘Pick one.’

The cards fall from his fingers. His knees collapse, he pitches forwards. Rafa is there to take him.

‘Your mother.’ Rafa shakes the trembling boy. ‘Where is your mother?’

FIVE

Duncan Mackenzie storms through Crucible. Humans make way for him, machines accommodate him. The CEO of Mackenzie Metals is not to be kept waiting for trivial safety regimes. Not in his pale wrath. Duncan Mackenzie’s anger is grey, like his suit, his hair, the surface of the moon. Esperance has hardened to a ball of dull pewter.

Jade Sun-Mackenzie meets him at the lock to Robert Mackenzie’s private car.

‘Your father is undergoing a routine blood-scrub,’ she says. ‘You’ll appreciate the process can’t be disturbed.’

‘I want to see him.’ Duncan Mackenzie’s voice is cold as the metal above his head is hot.

‘My husband is undergoing a delicate and important medical treatment,’ Jade Sun restates. Duncan Mackenzie’s grip is at her throat. He slams her head back against the lock. A fat drip of blood runs slowly down the white lock. You have a scalp contusion and possible impact trauma, her familiar Tong Ren says.

‘Take me to him!’

I have images, Esperance says. The familiar overlays Duncan Mackenzie’s lens with a high-angle view of the old horror in a diagnostic cot. Nurses, human and machine, surround him. Tubes and lines pulse red.

‘That’s not real. You could have fed that to Esperance. You fuckers are clever like that.’

‘You. Fuckers?’ Jade Sun whispers. Duncan Mackenzie releases his grip.

‘My daughter is dead,’ Duncan Mackenzie says. ‘My daughter is dead, do you hear?’

‘Duncan, I’m so sorry. A terrible thing. Terrible. A software error.’

‘The recovery team found precise cuts in her sasuit. That bot hamstrung her.’ Duncan Mackenzie covers his mouth with his hands to hold in the horror. After a moment he says, ‘They found drill marks on her helmet. That’s a very precise software error.’

‘Radiation regularly causes soft fails in chips. As you know, it’s an endemic problem.’

‘Do not fucking insult me!’ Duncan Mackenzie roars. ‘Endemic. Endemic! What kind of word is that? My daughter was killed. Did my father order this?’

‘Robert would never do a thing like that. You cannot possibly suggest that your father – my oko, my husband – would order his own granddaughter assassinated. That is ridiculous. Ridiculous and odious. I’ve seen the report. It was a terrible robotic accident. Be thankful that the boy is unharmed.’

‘And the Cortas are parading him around like a newly signed handball star. When that idiot Rafa Corta isn’t swearing that he’ll cut the throat of every Mackenzie he sees. We’re on the edge of war because of this.’

‘Robert would never court the possibility of harm to the company. Never.’

‘You put a lot of words in my father’s mouth. I’d like to hear them from his lips. Let me through.’

Jade Sun takes a step forward. The only way to the lock is through her.

‘What are you saying?’

‘Like you say, Robert would never harm his own granddaughter.’

‘Is this an accusation?’

‘Why won’t you let me see my father?’

Duncan Mackenzie takes Jade Sun by the shoulders, lifts her, hurls her hard against the lock. She crumples. Hands fall on his shoulders. Strong arms wrestle him away from the gasping, shaken woman. Duncan Mackenzie tears free to confront his assailants. Four males in suits as grey and corporate as his own. Big men, Jo Moonbeams, heavy with Earth-muscle.

‘Leave us,’ he orders. The four men do not budge. Their eyes flicker to Jade Sun.

‘These are my personal blades,’ she says, still pale and shaking on the floor.

‘Since when?’ Duncan Mackenzie bellows. ‘By whose authority?’

‘Your father’s authority. Since I started to feel unsafe in Crucible. Duncan, I think you should go.’

The largest blade, a mountainous Maori with rolls of muscle down the back of his neck, lays a hand on Duncan Mackenzie’s shoulder.

‘Get your fucking paw off me,’ Duncan Mackenzie says and slaps away the hand. But there are four of them and they are big and they are not his. He lifts his hands: no trouble here. Security steps back. Duncan Mackenzie straightens the fall of his jacket, the alignment of his cuffs. Jade Sun’s blades place themselves between Duncan Mackenzie and his stepmother.

‘I will see my father. And I’m ordering my own investigation into what happened out there.’