45-71623
© 2021 by Walter Reimer

Stanislaus Coon and references to Knight Errant courtesy of  eocostello. Thanks!
Thumbnail art by  marmelmm


Lying down on my bunk before the lights went out in my cell one night, I started thinking about my registration number.

Ivar, I’m sure, would have disapproved. “A matter of no moment,” or something like that. Of course, my onetime associate had had his own experience with the prison system, until he found himself co-opted by Confed Intelligence.

He might have been better served if he’d stayed in prison. The wolf might still be alive, instead of inhabiting a very different sort of cell in the small prison graveyard beside what’s left of the fur we’d chased almost to the Empire’s doorstep, Oliver Wilk. Despite being feline, I felt a bit of kinship with Ivar. We’d had a definite adventure, which ended with him in a grave and me in . . .

Well, a different sort of grave, if you want to be depressing about it.

My registry number is 45-71623. It’s the year, followed by my actual number, showing that I’m the 71,623rd inmate at this facility this year. In some circumstances it’s more important than my actual name, which is Stanislaus Coon. I was a police officer, seconded to Directorate III of Confederation Intelligence. Now, however, I’m Stanislaus Coon, prisoner of war and inmate.

My padd, upon which I’ve related my mission with the late Ivar Vargsson, had its location software disabled permanently before it was given back to me by Colonial Intelligence. I have no idea where I am, although it’s got a Terra-normal atmosphere and gravity. Maybe a hair lighter.

I do know a few things, though. The facility I’m being held in is Detention Facility Number Nine, and it’s part of a regular prison. There are only a few hundred or so POWs like me, housed separately from the general population – you know, the ordinary, run of the mill murders, thieves, and miscreants.

The number gets me out of my cell, allows me to get meals, and gets me the occasional meeting with a nurse or doctor. You see, I had gotten a heavy dose of radiation and chemical poisoning on that mission, and apart from the successful failure of the mission (that’s my take on it), I was more than a bit depressed at first. I never went on suicide watch, but they were monitoring me.

The number’s also on my identification card, along with my name and face, and a chip bearing it is implanted on the back of my right paw. If I ever get out of here, I wonder if it’ll be removed.

I believe that they’re still monitoring me. When I came out of my depression the staff gave me an induction charger for my padd and moved me to a new cell where I could interact with my fellow prisoners, although I still have a cell to myself when I sleep. I resumed setting down my thoughts and impressions, as you can see.

I’ve often wondered who gave the orders to move me and give me a charger, and I strongly suspect the gazelle from Colonial Intel. I’m guessing that he’s still hopeful that I might give in and accept a job with the other side, or they’ve got wormware in my padd and they’re eavesdropping.

Well, let them snoop. I have nothing to hide any more.

My fellow POWs are a mixed bag of Navy types who were taken captive after their ships were disabled or they were caught planetside. Some are line Navy, and they generally respect me for my former rank of lieutenant, despite me never being in their branch of the service. Others are – well.

I’d heard the scuttlebutt, of course; some bright bulb in the Navy had decided to set up commerce raiding, and had crewed the ships with cast-offs, disciplinary cases, and graduates of the military prison system. Those furs avoid me like the plague, partly because I’m an ex-cop and partly because they fear that I was deliberately planted in order to sniff out any escape plans they might be brewing.

With ID chips implanted, I have to question their premise. Hard to escape when the guards can simply home in on your chip.

A few have tried to brew other things, like alcohol, but they’ve had those plans thwarted as well. Not by me; I refer to the earlier statement about them avoiding me, and I blame the sensors that the staff will likely have everywhere. Fermenting fruit does give off a distinctive smell, you know?

There’s also one fur, a corgi. He’s on the short side, shorter than me, and mostly keeps to himself, playing chess on a set supplied by the prison staff. Nothing fancy; not a holographic or 3-D set, but a simple 2-D board and pieces.

He looked lonely, and I came to a decision one morning after breakfast.

The corgi looked up when my shadow fell over him and I asked, “Care for a game?”

He nodded, and while I sat down, he moved the pieces to their starting positions. I chose black, the board was turned around and the game started.

We were partway through the match when the corgi asked, “What’s your name?”

“Stanislaus Coon. Yours?”

“Lihan Pembroke,” he replied as he moved one of his knights.

We ended up playing three games before lunch. Cops are trained to be good listeners, and Pembroke looked like he had a story to tell. He started talking midway through the second game, and I listened to him explain that he was a freighter pilot from Xinhua, with a wife and two children. Private citizen, who didn’t want anything to do with the war.

The Navy saw otherwise. They needed a pilot for one of their raiders; he was a pilot, so he got drafted.

I also got the impression that he didn’t like his fellow crewfurs, a few of whom were here at the prison. They had bullied him while aboard, and he’d no doubt thought that when his ship, the Mudak, had been forced to surrender at This Far, he’d be well shut of them.

Fat chance of that, he was sorry to say. A few had bullied him once or twice since being taken prisoner, the harassment usually taking the form of tripping him, knocking over his food tray or his chessboard, etc. All too depressingly familiar, if you think about it.

At least they hadn’t tried anything else. From my own observations, I could tell that the POW population was shaking down into much the same categories you’d see in the civilian prison across the way: Those trying to “resist” by various means and/or escape, the arse-lickers who try to get ahead by ratting on their colleagues, the big mass that just wants to go home, and a rag-tag of furs that don't fit in any category for one reason or another. If I’m honest, it was fairly easy to see who might be sharing a bed with whom, willingly or not.

Pembroke and I fall into that latter category, the ones who don’t really fit into the little community.

The staff seemed perfectly satisfied to rely on their sensors to keep track of us, with a few superintending things like doling out gardening tools or escorting an inmate to see the medical staff. They would also referee the occasional fight, wading into one melee and quelling it easily by virtue of coming in armored and outnumbering the combatants two to one. That got the rest of us confined to our cells for the better part of a day.

While Pembroke and I play chess, I find myself clinging to more pleasant memories. The university on Cherwell, for example; the day had been so nice. Or the time I’d share a whisky or a chess match with Commander The MacRuari of That Ilk. It made me wonder if the red deer buck had survived the fallout from the Wilk Affair, despite Three having succeeded, in a way, in stopping the young wolf. I think he would have; deer are known for being very sure-hooved.

Compared to The MacRuari’s playing style, Pembroke was quietly methodical, and I would occasionally find myself fighting with my back to a corner.

Ordinarily, entertainments shown to the prisoners were of Colonial make, and constituted old movies or fictional works like Monsoon Poultry Hospital. No news or anything like that, apart from a multipart series on living a virtuous and moral life that hardly anyone paid attention to because, sweet Deus the makers of it laid the lessons on with a trowel.

But, as I said before, cops are good listeners, and I had my ears on a swivel whenever the staff would intrude upon our little enclosed world.

“I heard the most extraordinary thing yesterday,” I said one day as I pondered whether to move a pawn or my remaining bishop.

“Oh?” Pembroke asked, studying the board after I’d moved the bishop.

“A trio of guards were walking the yard,” I said as the corgi took my piece. Damn, I knew I shouldn’t have moved it so far forward. “Heard two of them talking that there’s a cease-fire.”

Canine ears swiveled. “Yeah?” A brief glimmer of that most elusive commodity, hope, shone in his eyes. “Do you – d’you think – “

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”