Dossier
© 2022 by Walter Reimer
(Stanislaus Coon and Ivar Vargsson courtesy of E.O. Costello.)



I must have walked back to my office after taking my leave of the Commander, because I found myself sitting down and staring at the gray file folder on my otherwise uncluttered desk.

A field assignment.

My last field assignment had been the Wilk Matter, and there was no sense in going over all of that again. However, this assignment would not necessarily require me to traverse half of the Terran Sphere to a poisonous little planet in order to confront a crazed young wolf, and from there to a POW facility.

And it probably wouldn’t drive me mad again.

Probably.

In a shadowed corner of the room I fancied I could see a certain lupine shadow. “My dear Stanislaus,” Ivar reminded me, “there is no need to rush up to the target as if one were meeting him on a football pitch. If you permit, I would suggest reading around the subject. From whence did he come? Surely not from the head of a god and a headache remedy. The fur in question must have a trail of documents, however humble.”

Of course he did, and I stretched, twisting my neck to ease tense muscles before I opened the folder. First rule in police, as well as counterintelligence, operations – do your due diligence.

Hmm.

Moka Bustani, tiger, forty-six standard years old. Born on Maratha . . . parents . . . family emigrated to the planet on the first colonization wave, and that was a damned long time ago . . . attended Primary School #625 and Secondary School #148, grades thus-and-so; graduated . . .

My fingers moved across the desktop and the display created a twenty-centimeter hologram of Bustani, dressed in his secondary school graduation robe. Earnest, open expression on his face, with his parents on either side of him, all smiles. Clearly a loving family. I brought up the planetary security database and ran a quick search, finding that his family had been loyal to the ruling family on the planet, the al-Sakai, for generations.

Enlisted in the Navy, which was rather odd. A minority of recruits in the military at the time were voluntary, and Maratha was like a lot of worlds in that it practiced conscription. The image on my desktop changed to a young adult tiger wearing the blue and gray of the Confed Navy, with a yellow swallowtail badge on one shoulder for his home planet, Fleet blue on his collar tabs (mine are a lighter, sky blue, for Intelligence) and the rank of a junior noncom. He had the sort of strained, slightly intent look that a lot of furs get when they’re posing for a portrait. I felt myself frowning as I brought details of his service record.

He was a quartermaster’s mate, serving aboard the Scimitar, during the Holdfast Rebellion about ten years ago. That was Admiral al-Sakai’s flagship, the present Emperor’s grandfather. The loyalist forces were getting the worst of it when one of the flagship’s fire-control systems failed. Petty Officer Bustani, finding the control crew dead, aimed the weapons by paw and destroyed the attacking ship, but not before the attacker inflicted more damage that resulted in Bustani losing his right leg just above the knee.

So, good service record, cited for bravery, wounded in battle . . . wait a minute.

I sat back, gazing at a new image on the desktop, showing the tiger as he was now. The interface between his prosthetic and his body was very subtle. The fur on the prosthesis matched the rest, but a trained observer would see the difference.

But that wasn’t what had me thinking.

What had me thinking was why he hadn’t had the leg regenerated.

“A badge of honor, perhaps,” came the voice from the shadows. “I confess that I am unfamiliar with the vagaries of the military mindset, although friend Bustani could have retained it for long-firming.” Ivar’s likeness sighed. “Ah, perhaps the pinnacle of art in crime. It requires patience. Daring. Imagination.”

“Long-firming?” I asked.

“Long-firming, my dear Stanislaus, is the art of presenting a business as a legitimate, ongoing concern, the better to assemble a list of steady creditors and customers. Then, at the opportune time, the doors are suddenly shut and locked, the inventory and cash-box missing.” Ivar had a quiet smile on his muzzle. “There are, of course, obvious parallels to deep penetration agents.”

I nodded. “You’re quite right.” I enlarged the image so that the tiger’s head was normal-sized, and sat back in my chair, studying the hologram for a long moment.