Earth Singer

Chapter Three

'Nice work kid, reeeaaal pretty.'

Vesta had lost count of just how many smug comments had been dropped at her desk as she sat, in her cramped corner on the thirteenth floor of the Casta Vigile. Confounded by the images on her screens. Grainy, green-tinged footage from the night vision recorders played before her in a loop.

The recording jolted with the movement of her body-cam. Another corner. Another alleyway. A graffiti-laden door half-ajar. Swung open by an outstretched hand.

'Hey Vesta, you're missing Tike's party, I brought you some...' Dali's voice stifled in her throat.

Vesta didn't look up. Her eyes fixed were on the screens in front of her. A bare, green-tinged wall with a great smear that trailed diagonally from ceiling to floor. Like someone had started a paint job but given up after the first few miserable strokes. This was no paint, however. That smear was human once.

'Actually, you can take mine too,' Dali added, after another vomit-supressing gulp, 'I've lost my appetite.'

Two cheap-looking trays with equally cheap-looking corners of cake dropped beside Vesta as Dali retreated to the ladies. Dali and Vesta had been friends since the first day of training. Unlike Vesta however, Dali was a desk Vigile through and through and lacked the stomach for field work. A chronic book worm. Very handy when Vesta needed last minute cramming. A favour Vesta would always repay by buddying up with Dali to see her through her active duty training.

Vesta poured over the footage. As the camera weaved slowly closer to the smear, the gore dripped in blotches, while formless clumps of unrelated appendages came into focus. A twisted finger, a mangled foot, what looked like a rib-bone. All strewn without any sense of order amid the bloody mess.

Another jolt of the camera. The ground shooting up, taking over the screen.

'Here it is, this is my favourite part.' A voice chimed in gleefully behind Vesta.

A long wrenching noise emited from the screen as a stream of vomit erupted from out of shot, pooling on the grainy-green ground and spreading over the monitors.

Laughter erupted behind Vesta's chair.

'Vesta!' A voice boomed from another corner of the office. 'Get the fuck in here.'

+++

'Grrrrrrgh'

She wished she had slammed the door. That would have been something. After the grilling she'd got, and the beaming, punchchable faces that followed her as she left the Chief Vigile's office.

Stress leave. Fuck them!

A bead of cool sweat traced the base of her neck and disappeared below her already slick undershirt. A palpable steam rose from her body.

Excuses? Wild stories? What the hell was he talking about?

She paused briefly at the peak of her push-up, catching her breath. Her face flushed red.

She had recorded everything from the bar, to the street, to her pursuit of the dissident. Besides losing him in the labyrinth of back-alleys and the gory mess that was the Praetor. What was the big deal? Fyon and Trace had lost two dissidents this month. The Toganii twins had let a whole cargo shipment slip through a check-point without screening because they were both hungover. It didn't make any sense for her to be stood down. This was her first assignment on this stupid slag pit of a planet.

She pushed herself to her feet, reaching for a crude metal pipe that ran along her ceiling.

'Playback,' she grunted as she pulled herself up into her first rep. A screen on the wall flicked to life and played the same footage from her body cam.