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A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR SCIENCE FICTION
The continuing saga of the Five Dragons, Ian McDonald's fast-paced, intricately plotted space opera pitched as Game of Thrones meets The Expanse
A hundred years in the future, a war wages between the Five Dragons—five families that control the Moon’s leading industrial companies. Each clan does everything in their power to claw their way to the top of the food chain—marriages of convenience, corporate espionage, kidnapping, and mass assassinations.
Through ingenious political manipulation and sheer force of will, Lucas Cortas rises from the ashes of corporate defeat and seizes control of the Moon. The only person who can stop him is a brilliant lunar lawyer, his sister, Ariel.
Witness the Dragons' final battle for absolute sovereignty in Ian McDonald's heart-stopping finale to the Luna trilogy.
Luna
1. Luna: New Moon
2. Luna: Wolf Moon
3. Luna: Moon Rising
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
| ISBN-13: | 9780765391483 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 03/19/2019 |
| Series: | Luna , #3 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Sales rank: | 493,217 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
CHAPTER 1
Eight figures escort the casket across the Sea of Fecundity. Four to carry, one at each handle; four to guard the cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. They shuffle in heavy armoured shell-suits. Dust scuffs high from their boots. When carrying a casket, co-ordination is everything and the bearers have not yet learned the required rhythm. They lurch, they jolt, they leave smeared tracks, blurred footsteps on the regolith. They move like walkers unaccustomed to walking on the surface of the moon, to the suits they wear. Seven white shell-suits and one, the last, scarlet and gold. Each white suit bears an emblem out of time and place: a sword, an axe, a fan, a mirror, a bow, a crescent moon. The lead walks with the aid of a furled umbrella, silver tipped, the handle a human face, one half living, one half naked bone. The tip stitches precise holes in the regolith.
It has never rained in the Sea of Fecundity.
The casket has a porthole. This would be unseemly in a coffin; this is not a coffin. This is a medical life-support pod, designed to protect and preserve the injured on the surface of the moon. Behind the window is a young man's face, brown-skinned, high strong cheekbones, thick black hair, full lips, closed eyes. This is Lucasinho Corta. He has been in a coma for ten days; ten days that have rung the moon to its core like a stone bell. Ten days in which Eagles fell and rose, a soft war was fought and lost on the stone oceans of Luna and the old order of the moon was swept away by the new order of Earth.
These ungainly figures are the Sisters of the Lords of Now and they bear Lucasinho Corta to Meridian. Seven Sisters, plus one; the back-marker in incongruous scarlet and gold. Luna Corta.
'Is there word of the ship?' Mãe de Santo Odunlade tsks in frustration and peers at the tags on her helmet display, trying to identify the questioner. The Sisterhood of the Lords of Now by doctrine eschews the network. Learning a shell-suit interface is a sharp curve. The Mãe de Santo finally identifies Madrinha Elis as the speaker.
'Soon,' Mãe Odunlade says and raises the umbrella to point to the eastern horizon, where the ship from Meridian will touch down. The umbrella is the sigil of Oxala the Originator. With the sword, the axe, the mirror, the bow, the fan, the crescent, it is an instrument of the orixas. The Sisterhood bears not just the sleeping prince but the sacred emblems. All Santinhos understand the symbolism. João de Deus is no longer the city of the saints.
Ship on approach, the Mãe's suit says. In the same instant the horizon seems to leap into the sky. Rovers. Dozens of them. Fast, hard, bearing down. HUDs sparkle with hundreds of glowing red contacts.
The Mackenzies are here.
'Firm, my sisters,' Mãe Odunlade cries. The cortège marches forward towards the line of blazing headlights. The lights blind but she will not lift an arm to shade her eyes.
Mãe, the ship has committed to landing, the suit says.
A rover pulls out of the encirclement and swings in to confront Mãe Odunlade. She lifts the sacred umbrella high. The cortège halts. Seats descend, safety bars lift, figures in the green and white sasuits of Mackenzie Helium drop to the regolith. They reach for holsters across their backs and draw long objects. Rifles.
'This can't be permitted, Mother.'
Mãe Odunlade bridles at the familiarity. No respect, not even Portuguese. She locates the speaker on her HUD.
'Who are you?'
'I am Loysa Divinagracia,' says the woman at the centre of the armed posse. 'I am Head of Security for Mackenzie Helium, North-East Quartersphere.'
'This young man requires advanced medical attention.'
'Mackenzie Helium would be honoured to offer the services of our fully equipped company med centre.'
Sixty seconds to touchdown, the suit says. The ship is the brightest, fastest star in the sky.
'I am taking him to his father.' The Mãe de Santo steps forward.
'I can't allow that.' Loysa Divinagracia plants a hand on Mãe Odunlade's breastplate. Mãe Odunlade smacks the woman's hand away with the sacred umbrella, follows with a blow to the side of her helmet. Such insolence. Polymer cracks, atmosphere jets, then the suit heals and seals.
Guns level.
The Sisters of the Lords of Now close in around the life-support pod. The sword of Ogun is drawn, the axe of Xango, the bow, the razor-edged fan. How can the orixas be honoured, if their emblems are without practical use?
Luna Corta lifts her cumbersome arms to shoulder height. Sheathes unlock, magnets engage: knives fly to her hands and dock. The light of Earth in its first quarter, low on the western rim of the world, glints from the edges of the meteoric iron blades: the battle-knives of the Cortas.
We have protected them, Mãe de Santo Odunlade said, in the biolight-glow of the room where Lucasinho lay in the Mother House. Until a Corta comes who is bold, great-hearted, without avarice or cowardice, who will fight for the family and defend it bravely. A Corta who is worthy of these blades.
Carlinhos had been the family fighter. He had owned these knives before her. He had shown her the moves once, with chopsticks for blades. He scared her; the speed, the way that he became something she did not know.
Carlinhos had died on the edge of these knives.
Madrinha Elis steps between Luna and the ring of rifles.
'Put the knives away, Luna.'
'I will not,' Luna says. 'I am a Corta and Cortas cut.'
'Do as your madrinha says, wilful child,' Mãe de Santo Odunlade says. 'It is only the suit makes you big.'
Luna falls back with a sullen hiss but she does not reholster her beautiful knives.
'Let us through,' Mãe Odunlade says on the common channel, and Luna hears the Mackenzie woman answer, Give us Lucasinho Corta and you are free to leave.
'No,' Luna whispers and then she, the Sisters, the pod, the Mackenzie blades are drenched in blinding light. The dazzle breaks into hundreds of separate lights; rovers, dustbikes, the navigation lights of shell-suits and sasuits, all racing across the dark regolith. A vast plume of dust rises beyond them, casting moonbows in the diffracted Earth-light. They bear down on the Mackenzie encirclement. At the last minute blades and shooters flee as a wedge of rovers, dustbike outriders and a host of running dusters splits open the Mackenzie line.
From aerials and masts, from rigging wires and struts, from rovers and suitpacks and shoulder mounts, stencilled on the helmets and chestplates of surface armour, spray-painted, fast-printed, graffitied in vacuum marker: the half-black, half-white mask of Our Lady of the Thousand Deaths, Dona Luna.
João de Deus has risen.
The wedge of dusters unfolds into a phalanx of pikes and spears. Dustbikers brace polearms against footpegs. Luna saw a thing in a story like that when she was a very small kid, a crazy bit of old Earth: metal men sitting on big metal animals, with long spears tucked under their arms. Knights-in-armour, Luna's familiar tells her, remembering as she remembers. Knights with lances.
Blue lights flicker high above the encamped armies: the attitude thrusters of a VTO moonship manoeuvring over the Mackenzie lines to a safe landing site. The main engine gives a final, brief burn as the ugly amalgam of fuel tanks, radiator panels and structural beams comes in for landing.
Gauntlets and gloves tighten on spear shafts. Pikes brace. Fingers close on dustbike steering bars.
'Luna,' Madrinha Elis says.
'I'm ready,' Luna says. Luna's suit is primed, the power reserves activated. Give the word, and it will run, run faster than her own legs could ever carry her. She knows the feats a standard-issue suit can achieve: she used them when she carried Lucasinho, anoxic, by any standard dead, to the refuge of Boa Vista. 'I've done this before.'
The dust from the moonship's descent burn engulfs Santinhos and Mackenzies. Madrinha Elis shouts, Go, child.
Run, she orders but the suit is already in motion.
So are the Mackenzies. The moment of surprise is over; rovers peel off to outflank the Santinho dustbike cavalry and cut off the path to the ship. Santinho foot-soldiers charge to intercept the Mackenzie force and hold open the way.
A body falls. A figure in a sasuit twists and goes down. A shell-suit splinters into flying shards. The Mackenzie guns have opened up. A helmet shatters. A head flies into bloody smash; the banners of Dona Luna fall, one by one. Now Luna sees the blood, the plugs of flesh, the body fluids gouting into vacuum.
Sister Eloa of the Crescent of Iansa goes down at Luna's side, tumbling and rolling. The top of her head has been ripped away. Slugs are flying unseen all around Luna but she can't think of them, can't think of anything but the moonship, settling on its landing gear, unfolding a ramp from its transport pod.
'Luna!' Mãe Odunlade's voice on the private channel. 'Take the right side of the casket. The suit can handle it.'
'Mãe ...'
'Elis will take the other side.'
'Mãe ...'
'Don't argue, child!'
Her armoured hand locks on to one of the handles. The gyros stabilise the weight. She sees her madrinha lock on to the other handle.
Santinhos engage Mackenzies. Two, ten, twenty, drop under withering fire but there are always more spears, more pikes. Hand-to-hand violence, close, intimate, passionate as sex. Spear points drive deep, punch through bodies from front to back, tear suit, skin, bone, shatter visors and stab down through faces, skulls, brains.
'What's happening?' she asks on Madrinha Elis's private channel.
'They're buying us time, anjinho.'
The phalanx of spears reforms, links, locks, lunges in attack. The shooters break and retreat. In that instant, between the walls of pikes, Luna feels her suit tighten its grip on the handle of her cousin's casket, lean forward and sprint for the ship. She hits the ramp at full speed, brakes hard to avoid the rear bulkhead of the transport pod. Crew in sasuits secure the pod. Luna feels the deck vibrate through her boot haptics.
Main engine burn in ten nine eight ...
Luna's final glance through the closing doors is of the remaining Sisters of the Lords of the Now, white suits back to back, the sigils of the orixas held high. Around them, a ring of pikes, and the bold banners of Our Lady of the Thousand Deaths. Beyond, the Mackenzies, numerous as stars. Then the engine fires and dust covers everything.
* * *
Mãe de Santo Odunlade watches the moonship lift from the blinding dust on a diamond of rocket-light.
Meridian will harbour them. Meridian will heal them. The Eagle of the Moon will take them under his wings.
The Santinhos encircle the Sisters with pikes and lances. So many down, so many dead. This is a terrible place to die.
Mãe Odunlade finds the icon for the common channel.
'The regolith has drunk enough blood,' she calls to every duster and Santinho in the Sea of Fecundity, to every blade and mercenary, to Bryce Mackenzie, wherever he hides himself.
The Mackenzie gunline stands firm.
'There is no need for anyone else to die out here.'
Two rovers start from the rear of the encirclement, accelerating with startling speed in pursuit of the moonship, now a constellation of hazard lights, burning westwards. Mechanisms unfold from the backs of the rovers; things with multiple barrels, belts of ammunitions. Gods and spirits, those things are fast. Already they are on the horizon. Streamers of light arc up – seeking the lights of the VTO ship. Mãe de Santo Odunlade does not know what she is seeing but she understands what it means. If Bryce Mackenzie cannot have Lucasinho Corta, no one will. And she understands another truth. There will be no mercy here for anyone who lifted hand and blade in the name of the Cortas.
'In the name of Oxala, light of light, ever-living, ever-fearful, ever-sure!' Mãe de Santo Odunlade raises the umbrella high above her head. Opens it. As one, the remaining Sisters lift high their sigils. The sword of Ogun, the fan of Yemanja, the bow of Oxossi, the axe of Xango.
The shooting begins.
* * *
Luna can't unlock her fist from the medical pod. Lucasinho is free, Lucasinho is safe; she should let go of him now, but the suit reads a truth she can't acknowledge and won't release her. This suit: she feels she has been in it forever. This suit, it has protected her, guided her, helped her. Betrayed her, endangered her.
A memory: Lucasinho wrapping tape around the joint seal where razor-edged moondust ate away the pleated fabric, step after step, kilometre after kilometre, until the joint blew out. She touches the knee joint, the glove haptics relay the rough imperfection of the binding. She had not noticed the patch when the Mãe de Santo had told her to come now, child, suit up, we are leaving.
Where are we going, Mãe?
Meridian. The Eagle has sent a ship for his son.
She pulled on a suit-liner, stepped into the huge hulk, the haptic rig embraced her and the shell sealed and she was back in the lock at Lubbock BALTRAN station and Lucasinho was calling her to step forward. The suit does all the work.
And even as she was clanking along the peripheral tunnel towards the lock she was back in the refuge at Boa Vista, under the green light and Lucasinho lying where she had laid him. The big suit could be so gentle. Lying, not moving. Not breathing.
What do I do?
The refuge showed her where to connect Lucasinho to the LSU, where to jack in the monitors, where to attach the refrigeration unit that would keep him in deep, saving cold.
He is very sick, the machines told her. He requires critical medical attention.
But all she could do was wait in the cold and the green light. As she waits now in the hold of a VTO moonship.
Freefall in three, two, one ...
The launch burn ends. Luna's boots put out bristles to hook her to the micro-loops woven into the decking. She is anchored but free; she remembers the dizzy, sick-in-the-pit feeling of freefall from the BALTRAN. She hated it then. She doesn't like it any better when it is a VTO moonship on a suborbital trajectory to Meridian.
A series of bangs rattles up through Luna's boots. Centimetres from the heel of her left foot is a line of holes, precisely spaced. A clatter; another line of holes is stitched across the cargo hold bulkhead, bottom right to upper left. Earth-light streams through the perforations.
A third set of impacts, then a sudden acceleration rips Luna from the floor, tears her fingers free from their grip on her cousin's pod. Acceleration shifts, throws her towards Lucasinho's coffin, then she is floating free, swimming in mid-air.
We are under attack, the ship says. We have been penetrated by high velocity kinetic rounds. Hull integrity has been compromised. Number three tank was punctured and out-gassed, hence the unplanned acceleration which I have now stabilised.
Luna grabs hold of the life-support lines and hauls herself towards the bulkhead. Another burst of impacts drives an arc of holes through the decking and out through the roof. Two heartbeats ago her head had been there. There are holes in the roof. There are holes everywhere.
Luna turns and her boots once again anchor with the decking. She turns to look for Elis: there she is in a pile of white pressure plastic on the other side of the casket. She doesn't move, doesn't speak. Why is she down? Lady Luna, let there be no holes in her suit, no holes in her madrinha.
A sighing groan on the private channel. The heap of surface armour shifts, becomes a person in a suit. Madrinha Elis struggles to her knees.
Then the lights go out.
'What's happening?' Luna cries.
The main power connector has been severed, the ship says. Auxiliary power will come online momentarily. I should inform you that my processing core has been severely damaged and my functionality is impaired.
Emergency lights flash on, low and sickly yellow. Luna's helmet HUD is a mosaic of red alarms: the crew, up in the command module, in trouble. One by one they turn white.
White is the colour of death.
'Elis!'
Her madrinha comes to her, opens her machine arms, embraces the monstrous, clumsy suit.
'Coraçao.'
'Are you all right?'
'The pod,' Madrinha Elis says. 'The pod.'
'Lucasinho!'
Luna circles the casket, checking for holes, damage, the slightest graze. A near miss has drawn a valley across the bottom left corner of the pod. She presses her visor to the window. Everything seems to be working.
There has been a change to the flightplan, the ship says. I shall be making an emergency landing at Twé. Standby for turnover in three ... two ... one ...
Micro-accelerations jostle Luna, then she is in freefall once more.
Stand by for main engine de-orbit burn.
Weight returns; many Luna piled on her shoulders. The suit braces, stiffens but Luna feels her teeth grind, her blood heavy like lead in her veins.
Distress calls initiated, the ship says. Luna imagines fear in its calm, informative voice. My radiator panels have sustained catastrophic damage. I am unable to discharge excess heat.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Luna"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Ian McDonald.
Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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