Luna - Moon Rising

Luna – Moon Rising

By Ian McDonald (excerpt)

(A hundred years in the future, a was has broken out among the Five Dragons – five families who control the moon's leading industrial companies. Each clan does everything in its power to claw its way to the top of the food chain – marriages of convenience, corporate espionage, kidnapping, and mass assassinations).

The rule is this: women of a particular status, in their ninth decade, do not hurry. The do not scurry. A fussy bustle is permissible but it is the limit. A lady never rushes.

Lady Sun rushes, heels clip-clopping in and undignified trot down the palace's curving corridors. Caught between walk and run, here entourage struggles to keep pace with her. The message on Amada's secure channel had ordered her to come at once. Her granddaughter's suite is too near for a moto to arrive in time, too far to avoid the shame of haste. A palanquin, like the dowagers of old China. That would be the very thing. Like the Vorontsovs use to gad around St.Olga, powered by Earth-muscle and youthful enthusiasm. Perfidious Vorontsovs. Lady Sun will not soon forgive the humiliation of the Battle of Hadley, Marooned by VTO, taken in an upholstered cage to Hadley. The smirking politeness of the Mackenzies. Denny Mackenzie grinning his ghastly gold teeth. Grin while you can, golden boy. The power rests elsewhere and when you have served their purpose, the women of Hadley will arrange a boardroom coup, and it will cost you more than your finger. The ransom was insultingly low; Taiyang will recoup it through the breach of contract case against VTO, but it is another unforgivable offense.

Lady Sun instructs her sharp young women and men to wait outside Amanda Sun's appartement. Zhiyuan is present, Tamsin. The whole board. The surprise is Mariano Gabriel Demaria.

“Is it Darius?” Lady Sun asks at once. “What has happened to him?”

“Darius is well,” Zhiyuan says. “Mariano brings information about the Eagle of the Moon.”

“Lady Sun.” Mariando dips his head in respect. “Now that I have the board in full, I can deliver my information. Lucas Corta serves Amanda Sun, plaintiff in the case of Corta versus Corta, Sun and Luna Corta as an Academic Ward of the University of Farside, with a summons to satisfaction at the Court. The time and location of this satisfaction to be mutually agreed, but within one hundred and twenty hours.

“Satisfaction?” Amanda Sun says.

“Trial by combat,?” Lady Sun says.

“I know what it means,” Amanda Sun snaps.

“Ridiculous,” Zhiyuan says. “There hasn't been a satisfaction by combat since...”

“Since Carlinhos Corta opened up Hadley Mackenzie balls to voicebox,” Amanda Sun says. She twists open a vape, inhales deep, exhales slow. “The Cortas have form here.”

“He knows he was a weak case,” Lady Sun says.

Fascinating, ruthless. Every moment with his characters makes them precious, real, and alive. Illustration by Elena.