Crush Depth

[Camille Gabriel]

Crush Depth

"We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts."
Mary Montagu

Camille Gabriel

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Camille Gabriel had never set out to be a criminal. Yet, as the early morning frost beneath the floor crackled with the touch of the drug runner's engines, she could not help but admit that was exactly what she had become. She curled her toes in a vain effort to drag sensation back into her foot, wedged between two packing crates as tall as her shoulder. Similar crates dotted the freighter's bay, meticulously strapped to fixings in the floor and ceiling to prevent the precious cargo from shifting during hard manoeuvring. The runner's human cargo had no such protection - Camille's shoulder still ached from where she had slammed into an exposed strut during a frantic turn to avoid a police picket.

A handful of other people littered the bay, crammed in amidst the crates bearing the latest shipment of cardamine to hit New London's surface. She knew them. Not by name, but she knew their stories to be echoes of her own. The trip from Los Angeles had cost her everything she had, and some things she'd had to steal. It still hurt to imagine her Lynx in the hands of some planetside drug lord, but it was infinitely preferable to the alternative of falling into the hands of the authorities.

Camille ducked below the sea of straps gripping the fabric mesh strung across the freighter's ceiling and squinted out at the grey dawn. Beyond the grubby porthole the scars of a dozen mining operations littered the planet's dead surface, great holes sinking into the ground like inverted pyramids. Tiers of roads lined the edges of the pits, lending the construction the air of a crudely carved funnel, eager to once again swallow the earth the Bretonians had carved from it. The sprawling metropolis' that had dominated military broadcasts on Lyons were nowhere to be seen, lurking somewhere below the horizon. The freighter's ramp extended with the tortured groan of metal that had gone too long without grease, the rush of dust-encrusted air curling into the cabin.

"Grab a box! We're taking them to the mines, boys and girls." Nails slung his feet atop a crate in a cleared area closer to the cockpit, an old solid-slug rifle resting across his knees. He was hazed again, eyes darting from one refugee to another with the hyperactive attention bought on by cardamine. Camille stifled her disgust. Nails was just one of Wolf's enforcers - hired for his muscle and paid in the same drug that the crime boss hired him to move. Wolf wasn't above spreading the addictive drug to his own gang to ensure their loyalty. Wolf wasn't above much at all. The cargo bay's occupants slowly moved to obey, working the collated soreness of the two-day journey out of their joints. Camille gripped a handle opposite an emancipated Kusarian man with an empty holster at his belt and bent her knees to lift. "Not you, Ribbit! Come with me, let's take a little walk, yeah?" Nails patted the rifle with a faux-cheerful grin that made Camille want to slap it out of his hand. He jerked the barrel to the dustbowl waiting outside.

Dust sprung up in miniture whirlwinds where Nails' boots kicked the ground, the enforcer sending a rock skittering into the pit's wall. Physically, Nails was about as intimidating as a newborn kitten. His arms hung off his scrawny frame like vines dangling clinging to a dying tree, the cardamine tank and mask strung to his belt like an overripe fruit only reinforcing the effect. But Nails didn't need muscle. With the cardamine pulsing through his nervous system, he was as good a sharpshooter as any Royal Navy marksman. As Camille watched, he bought the mask to his face, regulator hissing as he took a long draw, eyes darting from her the skyline and back again. Camille hid her frustration behind a face of quiet obedience. Nails was an odious little man, and like most such men given power, he liked to make people wait. Finally, he pointed the rifle to the sky and spoke. "You see something wrong, Ribbit?"
"Aside from an astonishing lack of rifle discipline?" Camille followed the line of the weapon and saw only empty sky.
"Don't play toring joker with me!" A crack like lightning echoed through the pit as Nails pulled the trigger, sending a round shrieking into the opposite wall in a cloud of dust. Even through her earplugs, the sound left her ears ringing. Nails seemed almost as surprised as she felt, lowering the weapon to rest across his body. "I know my guns." He ran a hand across it, as though it were a disobedient pet. "I know my guns, Ribbit, you see? So don't you go getting smart, or I'll put a nice little hole in your nice little head and haul you back to Liberty so the pigs can pay me that nice fat bounty on it. How's that sound?"
Camille didn't answer. The ship belonged to Wolf, and there was less then half a chance of it so much as shifting just because Nails said so. It was an empty threat, but there was a very real possibility that Nails was too hazed to realise that. Behind Nails, by the freighter, a few backs straightened at the mention of bounty.
"Not good, then? No? I didn't think so either." Nails slipped back into his friendly facade. "How about you just answer the question, then? I'll even say it nice and slow for you. Do. You. See. Something. Wrong?"
"No." She scanned the sky again, and saw nothing but a dust cloud. "The second transport is not yet here, but I hardly-."
"Bingo! The second transport! Give that girl a medal." There was a dangerous gleam in Nails' eyes. "Care to take a guess at what happened to it, Ribbit?"
Camille's blood froze. That transport had been her ticket out of Liberty, the final installment in a long string of payments in exchange for a ticket off-world. A dozen scenarios ran through her head, pirates and rival gangs topping the list. She bit back a response. Guessing would only make her look responsible, and if by some quirk of probability she guessed right... Nails continued, oblivious.
"Hang just got comms back, and guess what came through while we were cruising? Boom." He splayed his fingers for added effect. "Whole toring thing went up like Fourth of July. Nice little crackle-fuel boom, bits of ship driftin' across... Now..." He tapped a mirthless tune on the gun's stock. "Seeing as your little deal went down in flames with that brick, Wolf'd like you right back on that transport. I hear Malta's nice this time of year, yeah?"
"Surely you do not seriously think that I had anything to do with that." Outwardly she blustered, but inside Camille cursed. The destruction of the transport was unfortunate, if that was indeed what had happened. It was just as likely that Wolf had redirected it to give him an excuse to deny her her freedom, and that was simply unacceptable.
"Ribbit, you seem to think I care. Back on board." Interest was already fading from his eyes, the brief high wearing off. He turned his back to Camille and began walking back to the freighter. That was his first mistake. No footsteps followed him, and the enforcer turned back towards her. That was his second.

Camille's fist slammed into Nails' nose, the flash of pain sending the hypersensitive enforcer reeling. The rifle flashed up in a blur of steel, but Camille was already there, one hand gripping his wrist, even as she drove a knee into his crotch. To his eternal credit Nails remained upright, dropping the weapon and aiming a punch at Camille's ribs. She gasped as the breath was driven from her, eyes watering. She stumbled back, bent double and wheezing.
"Toring pig!" Nails raised a finger to the side of his nose, stemming the slow stream of blood seeping from it. "I'll-"

Camille never did find out what exactly it was he would do because at that moment she shouldered Nails' rifle and fired. Steel dug into her shoulder, and the enforcer staggered back a pace, blood blossoming in strange patterns through his shirt. His jaw worked soundlessly, lips moving and eyes wide with surprise, pain finally working its way past the drug's haze. Camille fired again, and Nails' body fell into the dirt. His chest convulsed a final time, and then was still.

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Dulce et decorum est.
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