Luna: New Moon (2015) by Ian McDonald

Author:Ian McDonald [McDonald, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction
ISBN: 9781466847637
Google: eUONBwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0765375516
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2015-09-21T12:00:00+00:00

The man goes low, swinging for her knees with the wrench. Marina dives away. Her strength and momentum carry her high, far. High and far are vulnerable. Momentum kills. Marina comes down hard enough to knock the wind out of her, slides, slams into a girder. The Mackenzie man knows how to fight. He’s on his feet, wrench raised to bring it down on her chest. Marina kicks out. Her boot connects with kneecap. The crunch of bone, the scream silences the dock for a moment. The man goes down, felled. Marina picks up the wrench.

‘Marina!’ Carlinhos’s voice. ‘Don’t.’

The Mackenzie is tall, fit, male. She is short, female, but she is a Jo Moonbeam. She has the strength of three moon-men. She could crush this man’s ribcage with a single blow of her fist.

How did the fight start? Like any fight starts: like a fire: combustible tempers, proximity, a spark, something to feed the ignition. Beikou Lock Control kept Team Corta in the holding bay while a Mackenzie Metals rover squadron docked and locked. The squad fretted: enough confining tunnels, foul air, old water. They wanted home. Patience frayed. The Mackenzie squad – all men, Marina observed – filed in from the outlock carrying the spicy smell of moon dust. As the squad leader passed Carlinhos: two words: Corta thieves. Patience snapped. Carlinhos roared and felled him with a head-butt and the holding bay exploded.

Marina has never been in a fight. She has seen them in bars, in student houses, at parties but she was never part of them. Here she is a target. These men want to hurt her. These men don’t care if she dies. The Mackenzie man is down and out of the fighting, burbling faintly in shock. Marina crouches – low is strong – scanning the room. Real fights are not movie fights. Fighters go to ground, tug and claw and try to smash each other’s heads in. Carlinhos is down, on his back. Marina grabs his attacker by the arm. The man screams. She has dislocated his shoulder. She picks him up by suit collar and belt and slings him across the dock as easily as if he were a piece of clothing. Marina spins, charges at the first Mackenzie she sees. She mashes the Mackenzie man against a stanchion. She stands, panting. She has superpowers. She is She-Hulk.

‘Where are the cops?’ she yells to Carlinhos.

‘Earth,’ he yells back, sweeps an attacker’s legs from under him. Carlinhos drives fist into face. Blood sprays from the crushed nose; slow falling red.

‘Fuck!’ Marina cries. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck.’ She throws herself into the fight. The seduction of power is horrible and juicy. This is what it’s like to be a man on Earth, to know that you will always have strength. She kicks, she grabs, she seizes and snaps, she smashes. And it’s over. Blood on the sinter. Burbling sobbing. Dock control has arrived and are holding the parties apart with tasers and knives but fights have half-lives and this one has decayed into pointing and lunging and shouting.

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