Earth Singer

Chapter One

Best not let it linger on the nose.

The first shot had done more damage to her sense of smell than her stomach, but only just. Not any smell she could call to mind, more the sensation that her nose was burning from the inside out. The booze back at base wasn't much better, but she missed the passable liquor her brother Vigiles would often share on their return from a raid on a smuggler's den or pirate barge.

She held her breath and ground her teeth as she shot a second gulp of the oily liquid down. At least she would not have to suffer another glass. This one, she thought. This is the one I have been waiting for.

Vesta took stock of her surroundings. Every surface of the subterranean watering-hole was as oily as the booze they served. There were few lights and plenty of patrons as was the custom on these working-class planets. People who spent their lives working in cramped and dimly lit pits found little comfort in bright open spaces.

Gerrin was behind the bar tonight, taking orders and offering advice, all without uttering a word. Despite the multitude of dialects spoken in the sector, people here communicated almost exclusively in grunts. Vesta had been coming in every night for the last two cycles, posing as a slag-hauler. These places catered to everyone from slaggers and haulers, to pilots and black-market smugglers with equal indifference; but not Vigiles. That wouldn't matter for much longer, she had found what she was looking for.

The diminutive figure standing on the chair on the opposite side of the dive spoke timidly at first. Cowled in a stained, floor-length robe, hiding all but a blue-tinged and slightly snouted mouth. He was not from around here.

The slag game brought in all manner of off-worlders. Deforms, they call the humanoid ones. Some had strange colouring, furry skin, extra eyes. As long as there were two arms, two legs and something resembling face you were tolerated. Deforms couldn't climb political ladder or work in official Imperial posts like the Vigiles, but no one was turned away from the slag pits. The Pax didn't suffer any non-humanoid intelligent life-forms to live within its borders.

'What purpose have these slag pits but to enrich the Emperors and to break our backs?' the figure persisted in a voice as diminutive as his frame.

'Heresy,' Vesta spat under her breath.

It was not as uncommon in the fringes as they would have you believe in the civilised parts of the Empire. Yet for some reason, the top-brass on Victus were all in a bother about this sector. This cluster of planets. Which is why she, and a whole company of Vigile cadets had been stationed here on Servile IV. Rather than earning their commission handing out cargo infringements in one of the core systems.

Something had the Tetrarchs in a stir. That's what led her to this dive; and after three long weeks, this scrawny hooded figure, busy being ignored by the morose inhabitants around him. That was his first mistake; the slag-pits leeched all the resistance out of anyone who worked them. Wrong crowd, kid.

She had almost passed him over as a harmless street-urchin gone a little mad drinking too much of the gutter run-off they call drink here. But for one detail.

It was the odd way that its hooded gaze darted back and forth. Keeping an ever-present check on the entrance. As if he had been chased out of places like this before. And repeat offenders were exactly what Vesta was on the lookout for. Not common fringe-system griping, but something organised.

She sized up her quarry, and the distance between it and the stairs. She ruled out a forceful approach. Its jumpy nature would see it up the stairs and into the streets before she could tear off her jumpsuit and reveal her Vigile livery. She needed a casual approach, something with more finesse.

She dragged her booted heel from the chair it was perched on and slipped her hand through the strategic hole she had worked into her jumpsuit pocket, wrapping it around her power-cudgel before raising herself, as 'drunkenly' as she could to her feet.

'Halt, in the name of the Emperors!'

SHIT!

Another figure sprang up from a table even further from the tiny orator than Vesta was. Another Vigile. What the fuck was he doing here?

'Stop that heretic!' he shouted at the indifferent crowd as Vesta looked on dumbstruck.

Amateur.

She already knew what she would see when she turned back to the figure on the chair. He was gone, a wisp of ragged cloak disappearing up the last few steps and into the night.

It was hopeless now, but she gave chase anyway. Legs moving fast, her brain trying to keep up.

Tearing aside the Brute-hide flap that made up the entrance to the to the dive, the sting of cold air and thick rain halted her for a moment. She squinted and scanned the labyrinth alleyway for signs of her mark.

'Out of the way, slagger!' boomed a smug voice from behind her.

Vesta refused to take her eyes of the huddled mass of rain-soaked bodies in front of her. This rookie was never going to get anywhere if it took him that long just to clear a flight of stairs.

'Stand down, rookie,' she muttered flashing her Vigile's insignia and still refusing to shift her gaze from the alley. A firm hand shoved hers aside.

'Who you calling rookie sweetheart?' Vesta glanced to her side where the figure was now standing, his own insignia held firmly to her face. A Praetor... Of course.

'Now, why don't you go and order us a couple more drinks while I take care of your mess?' The Praetor was broadly built and more than a foot taller than Vesta. A crack, and the whine of static energy erupted from his wrist as he flicked his power-cudgel to life and bounded out onto the uneven stones of the rainswept alley. The conspicuous squelch of his thudding footsteps faded into the distance. Her luck, mouthing off to a Praetor. She just knew she was going to hear about it when she returned to the dorms.

Vesta no longer felt the cold or the sting of the rain, just the burning feeling in her chest and the fleeting idea of following the smug officer and introducing him to her fist. She was already bound to get a mouthful, might as well make it worth it.

That's when she saw it. What she had been looking for.

Some twenty or so paces from her, on the opposite side of the bustling alley. The sea of bodies, slaggers, dealers, skin-merchants and low-lifes, all shrouded in their ragged cloaks and tarps shifted and scurried through the rain. All except one.

The corner of her lip up-turned and she took a moment to enjoy the fact that the Praetor had bounded off in the opposite direction. She took too long.

The shadowy outline turned on its heel and vanished between two buildings. Vesta moved as swiftly and casually as she could in pursuit. Unlike her counterpart she still looked every bit the common slagger. Which didn't hurt in streets like these. Or whole planets like these, for that matter.

The hunt was on.