Abdiel

[Camille Gabriel]

Pound of Flesh

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__________Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
__________They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
__________What God abandoned, these defended,
__________And saved the sum of things for pay.
______________- A.E. Housman, Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

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2nd September 822 - Barrier Gate Station, Coronado

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Depravity had a name, and it was Utopia.

The club was one of the more expensive dens on the Barrier, a hole where expensive automatically translated to exclusive. Utopia was the sort of place you went if you had enough cash to gilt over the corruption. Wraparound screens worth more than she would make in a decade of chasing bounties lined the corridors leading the door. Naked men and women, digitally edited to beauty beyond human, gasped and sweated on the walls, bodies twisting together in positions that would have made a lifelong prostitute blush and avert her eyes.

A dozen sets of soulless digital eyes stared out of heaving bodies, tracking her as she glided down the corridor. Camille’s wry smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Two weeks hunched over Brian Karlsberg’s files hadn’t been quite enough to inure her to the depravities the former executive had indulged with company funds since the split from Carthas, but it had been sufficient preparation to meet the gaze of his tamest simulacrums. She was in no position to picky. Those same appetites had dropped a ten thousand credit bounty neatly on his head.

She kept her false smile in place and strode towards the break in the screens that marked the security desk. PRIVATE PARTY scrolled across the bodies of the simulations as she closed the distance, and the floor flashed beneath her heels in time with the thumping bass; ocean blue, neon green.

Blood red.

”May I see your invitation, ma’am?” The guard glanced up from her datapad, gave Camille a look that suggested watching paint dry would have been thrilling by comparison and extended a hand for the invitation. Camille conceded the sentiment. There were only so many human sex-dolls you could stomach in a night before they all started looking the same. Camille reached into her handbag and flicked her eyes over the guard. The woman bore the subsonic boarding pistol, nondescript grey uniform, and unflappable apathy that were the standard issue for Barrier Gate Security Services, and wore them well. Hair neatly trimmed, shoes polished, uniform ironed. Ex-military. Tick, tick, and tick.

”Certainly.” Camille rummaged through the bag, hands passing over the hard plastic and synthetic of a gas mask, cool toughened plastic cuffs, and, bought her hand out empty. She flipped her smile to a frown, gave the bag a half-hearted little jerk, and flicked her eyes back to the guard. ”I’m so sorry, I had it with me when I left the house, I swear. It must have fallen out.”

”This is an invitation-only event, ma’am. If you don’t have an invitation…” The guard gave a helpless little shrug that was completely devoid of sympathy and turned back to the kusarian daytime drama on her datapad.

”Please, mademoiselle.” Camille pulled out her most pitiable expression, mentally dialled her voice back a few years, and piled on the accent as thick as she could without laughing. The hard-partying foreign arm-candy kept from a party. She crossed her legs and leaned forward, palms on the security desk, just in case. Her lower lip may have quivered a little. She tried not to throw up in her mouth. ”Adachi promised he’d take me out to the rim a week ago, he said he would, he gave me a ticket and said he’d meet me here but it’s been three days and the self-righteous pig isn’t returning my calls and…”

The guard gave a long-suffering sigh and pulled up a guest list. ”Do you know this Adachi’s last name?”

Camille pouted and shook her head. ”Adachi is his last name.”

”I don’t have any Adachis on the list, ma’am.” The guard tapped the entry closed.

”Oh, surely he didn’t! But he said we had a booking. He promised me.” Camille seethed. ”That arrogant, lying, kusarian son of a twice -” Several years of royal naval training promptly paid for themselves with a string of curses that would have made the saltiest of legionnaires proud. The guard bore the tirade with remarkable stoicism.

”Stood up, huh? Look, ma’am. I’ve been there. You have my sympathy, but what part of private party isn’t getting through? It doesn’t matter how much leg you’re flashing at me-”

Camille took an offended step back from the bench that was only half acting.

”No invite, no entry. I don’t make the rules, ma’am. I just work here.” She tapped a few keys on the pad and the daytime drama was replaced by another guest list. ”Look, you don’t want to go in there anyway. Bunch of drugged-up suits without an inch of common sense between them and even less restraint. You go in there dressed like that, there’s a good chance you’re waking up somewhere you don’t want to be in the morning.”

The guard gave a vague wave in Camille’s direction, taking in her black heels, matching bag, and almost painfully short one-piece dress that extended maybe a hand-span past her waist. Together, the ensemble was tight enough that breathing was an act she risked as infrequently as possible.

”Here. There’s a public party down at Nirvana, maybe five minutes from here. Way better joint than this.” The guard’s fingers hung over the pad. She saw Camille’s expression and glanced up again. ”I know, being stood-up sucks. Like I said, been there. How about this? I’ll put you on the VIP list down there as a favour, okay? Forget whateverhisnamewas and just relax some.”

”Please, there must be something you can do.” Camille’s accent dripped poor, lost, foreigner. Unfortunately, on the Barrier, that translated to ‘walking corpse.’ The guard shook her head again.

”I am so sorry. I am not usually like this.” Camille sniffed a little, and extended a shaking hand towards the guard’s pad. ”May I at least call a friend to go with me?”

”Go for it. Station-only, I can’t afford subspace.” She pushed it across the table to Camille. Camille nodded her thanks and retreated across the hallway under the unbroken stares of a dozen simulations that had abseiled right down the uncanny valley and forgotten to climb out again. Camille dropped the act as soon as she had her back to the security desk. Quiet little gallic-accented sobs stopped mid cry, and her fingers danced a familiar number on the pad. It picked up on the third ring.

”Fowler.” A man’s cigarette-scarred voice answered. ”The hell are you calling for, Hannah? Who gave you this number? Whatever it is, check it down and we’ll talk about it at the station tomorrow. It’s ten o’-bloody-clock here and I’m up my neck in things I’d rather be doing.”

”Such a picture of elegance, Deputy Chief Fowler.” Camille forced a smile over the line. Fowler was a local two-bit player in the Barrier’s power stakes, and the patron god of police corruption, even among the notoriously unreliable crowd station security attracted. The Royal Police were quietly known for extorting money from the transports they were paid to defend, and Barrier Station Security made them look like teenage shoplifters. If someone needed it, Fowler could get it for you or from you. No-one who stayed on the Barrier long did so without crossing the path of officers in his pocket. ”Colin. I trust I am not interrupting anything.”

”Angel, what a surprise. You better not be stealing my people’s equipment now. Give me three, I’m in public.” An operatic wail in the background trailed off under the sound of scuffing feet. ”Unless this is a pleasure call?”

”In your twisted, lonely, dreams, perhaps.” Camille said lightly, turned back down the corridor. The synthetic stares were unnerving. ”No. I’m calling in a favour. I need access to Utopia, rim deck -”

”Yeah, yeah. I know where Utopia is. Nearly surface-level. Full-G, all that expensive crap. Some of my best business partners shoot the breeze there. So, sorry, hun. No dice. Can’t have you scaring off the clientele, because they’ll jump up management’s arse, and management’ll bend ol’ Georgie over a table and screw him until he bleeds, and then the chief patches himself up and comes after me. And me, I’ll be going right after you.” Fowler made a popping sound that could have been a gunshot or an airlock decompressing. ”Although I’d be happy to direct you to an alternative source of earthly ecstasy.”

”Ten percent.” Camille said.

”Who’s the perp?” Fowler added a Texan drawl to the word. The station rumour mill said that he’d run as a corrections officer at Sugarland for ten years before he got pinned up taking bribes from the rogues to smuggle in weapons. Camille almost admired it. Men too corrupt for the LPI were in painfully short supply. He was dirtier than a rat in a sewer plant, and working with him left her feeling like she needed a shower, but the security deputy was predictable. As long as she didn’t damage the station or his reputation, Fowler would follow the money.

”Enrico Montiago, Three thousand credit bounty for smuggling prohibited substances, courtesy of our good friends in Liberty Police Incorporated.” Camille mentally raced through the bounty listings she reviewed each morning. Enrico was in Utopia, but he was a small fry next to Karlsberg. There was no point telling Fowler that, though. Karlsberg would outbid her in a blink if Fowler gave him a chance, which the slimeball almost certainly would if he found out before Camille got her mark’s sorry hide off-station.

Involving Fowler only complicated an already complicated job, but it was that or shoot her way past station security. Acceptable somewhere else, perhaps, but she tried not to leave corpses where she lived. Aside from being distasteful, bodies were bad business. You couldn’t pump a dead man for information.

”Three hundred credits? Are you kidding? I found that down the back of the couch this morning.” Fowler laughed, a deep rolling chuckle that wouldn’t have sounded out of place at a family dinner. ”Make it six hundred and I’ll consider us square.”

”Six hundred? You wound me, Deputy Chief. Fifteen percent, four hundred and fifty credits, and you do nothing more onerous than tell Hannah there to let your dear friend Sophia Lefevre in to the bar to forget her romantic woes in the arms of the cancerous mass that passes for the upper class here.” Camille paused. ”And, if I recall, you still owe me for cleaning up that mess in the Revenant last month.”

”It’s hardly my fault you didn’t ask for payment up front for that fracas.” There was the sound of a sucked breath. ”Four-fifty, deal. Have it in my account tonight.”

”Always a pleasure, Colin.” Camille lowered the pad from her ear and sauntered back to the security desk. This time, the smile on her face was real. She pressed the pad back into the waiting guard’s hand. ”Hannah, I believe this is for you.”

Hannah the security guard shot her a dubious frown and raised the pad to her ear.

”Oh. Sir. Yes, I’ve told her.” Camille could almost see the frustration creeping into the guard’s expression. From her protests, it sounded like she’d had the misfortune to strike the only honest beat cop on the Barrier. Workplace politics were the same in every sector. ”She’s not on the- Yes, yes. I understand, but-. Sir, it’s a private- Yes, sir. I’ll send her through.”

A long silence, and the guard dropped the datapad back to the desk with a heavy thump. ”Prick.”

She settled back in to her chair, picked up the pad, and the joys of Dark Sun Rising blared out of the tiny handheld once again. Camille waited. Finally, the guard looked up and shot her a stare that could only be described as disgusted. Oh, the joys of sharing an association with Colin Fowler. ”Huh. You’re still here. Go on, then. Try not to get yourself killed, Miss Lefevre.”

Camille smirked, stepped around her, and opened the door.

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Dulce et decorum est.
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