Directorate Two Kh
© 2025 by Walter Reimer



The office was cloaked in shadows, with muted lights along the walls at floor level casting their beams up to the ceiling. Framed copies of musical scores were meticulously arranged on the walls, with a holo-window depicting a moonlit predawn sky behind the desk. Just at the hearing level of a sharp-eared species the second movement of Yu’s Variations was playing.

A tall serval femme in a severely tailored black suit sat at her desk and studied the request that had come to her directly from ‘M.’ One elegantly trimmed eyebrow rose as she reread the very short message.

The Terran Empire’s Ministry of Intelligence was nominally a branch of the military and contained several directorates. Directorate Three was devoted to counterintelligence, while Six (Foreign) dealt with entities outside the Empire, such as the Kashlani and the now-independent Terran colonies, with an emphasis on threats and assessments of possible actions by those governments.

Directorate Two, or II, was devoted to domestic intelligence, nominally tasked with working paw in glove with Three to track down and unearth Terran individuals or groups who might attempt to subvert the authority of the government.

One section within Directorate II was deliberately obscured and never appeared in the published organizational charts. It was dignified with the designation ‘kh,’ from khasun or ‘special’ in Terran Basic.

Heads of the various directorates were allowed some leeway in their codename designations. Lord MacRuari of That Ilk, in charge of Three, preferred to be called ‘Commander’ with the rest of his title a personal homage to some distant ancestry. The serval’s designation was Maestra, in tribute to her musical pretensions. The framed compositions on the walls had been written by her, and she would refer to her subordinates as her ‘orchestra.’

The message from the roebuck played into her pretensions: I require a soloist. A virtuoso.

The Maestra respected ‘M’ to a certain point, mainly for his maneuvers that led to the removal of his predecessor and respecting her position. The serval had naturally heard the rumors that she had been the minkess’ lover, and the memory of hearing the rumor made the feline’s ears go back. She had loathed the minkess, and had not been sorry to see her toppled by the roebuck.

The Maestra read the message again before clearing it from her desk and calling up a list of likely virtuosi that might meet ‘M’s’ requirements. Not knowing the mission would be a complicating factor, but he trusted her judgement and expertise.