The legionnaire hovered in a world of darkness. Water clamped its freezing hands around her body, threatening to squeeze the air from her lungs. Sensation faded from her limbs as the cold enveloped them, pain replaced by a curiously detached tingling. It was, Camille summarised, as close as she had ever been to nonexistence. Not death, no, that was still pleasantly distant. This was far closer to simple nothingness, to that endless void that waited before birth. There was, in that, something soothingly primal. Here, a few feet beneath the frozen waves, she could forget the world.
It felt good to forget. Tau-44 waited above her, rebels and insurgents waiting to pick at Gallia's underbelly while the Crown turned its attention elsewhere. Contact with Komatsu was still a good few hours away, the Foreign Legion Capitaine no doubt busy preparing for her transition to Kusarian smuggler. Time enough for her to make a dive or two, if she could endure the weather.
Ice packs floated above her, veins of ice stretching across the ceiling of her world, the stained glass of some great natural cathedral grand enough to rival any of the terrestrial temples of her home. It was beautifully intricate, thin panes of ice filtering Borneo's sun to solitary rays that pierced the black water. Even that light faded quickly in the depths, leaving Camille hovering between the glowing ice above and endless black below. From above, she imagined she might as well be a moth trapped in amber. It wasn't a pleasant thought. She tugged the secondary line at her waist, feeling the answering hum of the winch mounted atop the ice. A second slap to the control halted the tugging motion. It wasn't much, but it would keep her safe enough for the moment.
The gentle rasp of her own breathing hung in her ears, amplified by the hiss of the rebreather fixed to her back. Goosebumps danced across her arms in stalwart defiance of the wetsuit she wore. Despite the cold, Camille preferred the wetsuit to the sealed environment suits. The latter felt too much like a prison, with its limited view ports and internalised air supply. It all felt too detached. Here; shivering against the cold, it was impossible to forget where she stood. She glanced at the display fixed to her wrist. Two minutes, and she hadn't even begun her dive. Already, she had delayed longer then she should have. The hole cut into the ice above her would not remain in place forever, nor could she ignore the cold indefinitely. The thought of being trapped beneath the ice until she froze or drowned sent a shiver up her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. If she was going to dive, it would have to be now.
She had a record to break.
She focused on her breathing; calm settling over her, as it always did, stilling her shivering limbs. Oxygen flowed through her, reinforcing her muscles, sharpening her mind for what was to come. There was nothing now but her and the ocean. She felt the currents swirling past, the gentle caress of the faded sun as surely as the pulse of her heart, slowing as her breathing settled. With a final glance up at the icy cathedral she released the regulator from her lips, letting it float away in a trail of bubbles that shot to the surface like deep-sea creatures seeking the light. Her rebreather followed a moment later, secured to the same line that ran from the hole above her to the ocean below. It would be waiting for her when she returned. A translucent orange ‘30’ flashed into existence over her wrist when she tapped the dive computer. A depth gauge, programmed to count down the metres to her target.
Finally, content with her preparations, Camille re-orientated her body, head down, the tips of her fins intersecting a ray of light, released her grip on the line, and dived.
Suspended on her wrist, the display flickered to '29.'
The ocean below her faded to black, cable stretching further into the depths then she could see, the woven fibres swallowed by the waiting trench. Michaux's specialists claimed this had been a freshwater lake once, millions of years ago, before Borneo's oceans had swallowed the land. It made little practical difference to Camille, though the water here was shallower than elsewhere on the planet. Her target depth would take her within ten metres of the lake's bottom, and a part of her insisted that she could make the extra distance. Camille quashed the notion. Diving, especially freediving, held one fate only for a lone diver who misjudged her limits. Again, she was struck by the image of a bug suspended in glass. Not a pleasant fate in the least.
One hand moved over the other, pulling her down the line, surface fading to flickering white lines above her. Her lengthy fins remained motionless above her, the odd kick sufficient to fight off the residual buoyancy of her suit. Her lungs were comfortably full, and she was content to relax and let the near-automatic machinations of her hands take over. One hand over the next, one handhold after another. The currents swirled around her, tossing her hair about like a fisherman's discarded net, and she remembered why she had come.
Tiny fish, no longer than her outstretched finger swarmed around her, carried by the current, transparent mouths gaping like marionettes as they raced alongside the minuscule particles carried by the current. Ghostfish. Michaux's resident marine biologist had insisted on lecturing Camille on the local wildlife before she'd departed. In hopes, she suspected, that she would return some new specimen for him. The man would be solely disappointed. Regardless, her newly-acquired education had come with some small benefit. The fish were relatively shallow water dwellers, skimming the upper limits of the currents for nutrients swept up from below, currents that did not usually begin until some twenty metres below Borneo's ice. A quick glance at her depth gauge confirmed the assessment, orange light casting its supernatural '15' over her wetsuited wrist.
Good. She was making good progress, though the pressure on her chest had increased to a dull ache. Camille wasn't unduly worried. It was just- Yes, there it was. She relaxed her grip on the rope and felt herself sink, buoyancy forced from her lungs by the pressure. Inside her chest, she knew her lungs were shrinking as the water did its work. Once, the thought had terrified her. Now, it simply meant less work to descend. Shadows moved at the corners of her vision, shapes twisting and pulsing in the deep blue that stretched on beside her. Borneo's ocean was home to a vast variety of sea creatures, plenty of them less than friendly. Still, humans were rare enough here that the sheer unusual nature of this new grey-skinned creature would give them pause enough for her to complete her dive. At least, that was the idea. Even with the diving knife at her wrist, Camille was in no hurry to find out. She equalised, ears popping, and returned her attention to the rope.
She passed twenty five metres before she felt it. A shudder pulsed through the water, punctuated with the groaning of the ice packs above her. She froze in place, hands gripping the rope, knuckles white, descent forgotten. No. Something was wrong. She'd been careful, she'd checked the geo-readings. There hadn't been any plate activity predicted until- An almighty grating cut through her hearing, like a gears-up landing, but oh-so much louder, even through the water. Despite herself, she found her hands releasing the rope to clamp over her ears.
The ice hit the water like a giant's punch, throwing shockwaves that rippled through Camille's wetsuit twenty five metres below. Ice packs above her shifted and crunched beneath the onslaught, groaning but holding strong. And then light faded from her aquatic world as the ice settled over the small hole in the ice above. Her line grew slack in her hands, upper clamps shorn free. Camille let it go, numb hands letting rope slip by as the pegs plummeted past her to the lake's floor.