The Wolf Reforged

March 29, 2182 AD, Hartmann City, Gloria, Procyon system

“You look so handsome in that uniform.”

Olt-mar-rost-kam could feel the warmth of her body as she pressed her naked scales against his back, her right arm draped around his long neck in a gentle embrace. As she whispered the sweet words into his tympanum, the hot breath escaping her hard lips brushed against his cheek and stirred his glossy black hair.

He slowly, almost reverently, tightened the knot of his black tie as he admired his reflection in the mirror. His uniform, a gray military jacket with red trim, utilitarian pockets, and polished metal buttons, worn over a pristine white shirt and gray trousers with razor-sharp creases, finished with tall black boots polished to perfection, was designed to inspire awe in anyone who encountered him. Raising his gaze, he met Tir-jal-rom’s deep black eyes, filled with quiet affection as they looked back at him through the mirror. Olt-mar-rost-kam smiled at her, and she answered by gently kissing his right cheek.

The status his uniform conferred upon him was, of course, nothing compared to that of a Sunguard Special Agent. Olt-mar-rost-kam was merely a regular Agent, but that was an honor in itself, he mused. Although he technically held the rank of major, no one would ever dream of addressing him as such. The title of Sunguard Agent carried all the respect he would ever need. In fact, even those who had risen to the rank of colonel but served the Sunguard as Agents still never used their military rank. Those titles were reserved for the regular Sunguard soldiers, the millions of women and men from the four races who served in the Terran Federation’s combined military and police force.

The Special Agents, meanwhile, carried no traditional military rank at all. Existing entirely outside the martial hierarchy, the solar wolves had no need of any other title, yet that title alone was sufficient for them to command any and all Sunguard forces, should they choose to do so.

With great care, Olt-mar-rost-kam fastened the lapel pins bearing the Sunguard emblem to his jacket. From them, the black wolf’s head superimposed over a bright yellow sun stared up at him, a constant reminder that he was one of the predators standing between the four races and darkness.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” he said to her, his voice apologetic. It was only two hours past midnight when the call had come in, rousing him from his much too short sleep. He had done his best to slip out of bed without disturbing her, but entwined as they had been, that had not been possible.

She wore no clothes, of course. Kelar never did unless their work required it. It wasn’t considered taboo. It was simply the way they lived. No one would bat an eye at a Kelar doctor wearing a white robe or a Kelar firefighter wearing protective gear, but whenever circumstances allowed, they preferred to feel the wind upon their naked scales. While he was always meticulously dressed at work, he would never dream of wearing clothes to the supermarket or the cinema.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie,” Tir-jal-rom replied with a wink. “I knew what I was getting into with you.”

She playfully turned him to face her.

“Here, let me help you,” she continued, adjusting his left lapel pin until it matched the angle of the right.

“Thank you. Bless your hands.”

“Now go out there and dazzle them,” she whispered, stroking his cheek. The dull claws of her fingers rasped softly against his blue scales. “Show them why you’re the best of the best.”

He wasn’t, of course, nor could he ever be. The role of Special Agent was reserved exclusively for Terran officers. As a Kelar, the position of regular Agent was as far as he could ever rise within the Sunguard’s investigative branch. He could make a colonel. He could even become an admiral, if he left his role as a detective. But he could never become a Special Agent.

That was exactly how things should be, he thought, perfectly content with his place. If anything, he was deeply grateful for the opportunity to serve the Terran Federation in any capacity. The day he had been appointed an Agent had been the most blessed day of his entire life.

Olt-mar-rost-kam found the very notion of a Kelar serving as a Sunguard Special Agent absurd. After all, it was the Kelar who had started the war, and although a century had passed since then and they had become a valued and integral part of the Terran Federation, it simply would not be right for one of his species to become a solar wolf. The hundred or so Special Agents in existence, serving as enforcers, intelligence operatives, and judges all at once, wielded authority that surpassed that of every member of the military save the admirals of Solar Command.

Appointing a Kelar as a Special Agent would be akin to an old-time bank appointing a well-known bank robber to guard its vault. It didn’t matter if the criminal had reformed. The people who depended upon the bank would still never fully trust it to keep their gold safe. The Sunguard existed to guarantee the security of the people of the Terran Federation. Ensuring that it could continue to do so without the inevitable distractions that appointing Kelar as Special Agents would create was paramount.

No, Olt-mar-rost-kam felt very strongly that such power was not something any Kelar should possess. It was their duty to support the Federation, not to run it.

What of the Etarians or the Jerrassians, then? The former species simply had no interest in such work. Outside their homeworld of Etar, you almost never saw any of them serving even as regular Agents. The notion that they would aspire to become Special Agents was preposterous. And as for the Jerrassians, well... if they couldn’t even resolve that nasty Liberation Front business they were bogged down in back on Jerr, they certainly couldn’t be expected to shoulder the responsibility of policing the entire Terran Federation as Sunguard Special Agents.

No, all four races willingly and faithfully served the Sunguard in whatever capacities they were best suited for, but Olt-mar-rost-kam was firmly convinced that the role of Special Agent was, by necessity, exclusively reserved for Terrans.

Suddenly another thought struck him, and he swore under his breath.

“What is it?” Tir-jal-rom asked, her voice now filled with concern.

For a moment, he didn’t answer. He wasn’t entirely comfortable talking to her about this.

“I just remembered I forgot to prepare my cover story for being with you tonight,” he finally said. “I told my wife I was going out with the guys for a night at the pub. I was planning to go down to O’Farrell’s this morning and get a fake receipt to show her in case she became suspicious, but now I won’t have time for that. I’ll have to think of something else.”

She said nothing. It was easier for both of them to pretend he wasn’t married. She knew he was, of course, but they never spoke about it. That way, neither of them had to listen to their consciences. After all, didn’t everyone have a vice or two? Surely he wasn’t the only one who needed a little distraction after the end of a demanding shift. And as long as his wife never found out, the lie didn’t really harm anyone, he thought.

At least, that was what he was desperately trying to convince himself of.

Headlights swept across the room from the dark street below, breaking the awkward silence.

“I need to go now,” he told Tir-jal-rom. “Lieutenant Ratanapol just arrived.”

Rushing out of her apartment, he gave her a quick kiss in the doorway. She returned it with less enthusiasm than he would have preferred.

“See you on Friday,” he called as he hurried down the stairs to street level, the heels of his polished black boots echoing against the concrete walls of the stairwell.

She didn’t reply.

When Olt-mar-rost-kam stepped out of the tall brown brick building where his mistress lived, he found Lieutenant Ratanapol waiting beside the Sunguard vehicle she had arrived in, her long black hair falling almost as far as his own. As he approached, Ratanapol opened the passenger-side door for him before walking around the gray vehicle and settling into the driver’s seat.

After giving the onboard computer their destination, Lieutenant Ratanapol turned to Olt-mar-rost-kam as the car automatically pulled out onto the street and began navigating the nighttime traffic of Hartmann City.

“Here,” she said, handing him a tablet, its glowing screen awaiting his authorization to unlock. “Coil compiled an initial dossier for you. Just the basic facts to get you started—crime scene photographs, maps of the area, a list of surveillance logs relevant to the case, and the like. I hope you’ll find it useful, sir.”

Olt-mar-rost-kam snorted a sigh, then caught himself. The Terran Sunguard officer probably wouldn’t recognize the tonal difference between a weary sigh-snort and a derisive one. Forcing himself to adapt to Terran mannerisms, the Kelar Agent made a largely unsuccessful attempt to sigh the Terran way instead. In the end, however, Lieutenant Ratanapol didn’t appear to notice.

“Thank you, Lieutenant, bless your hands,” Olt-mar-rost-kam replied. “I might look at that later. But first I want to see the scene with my own eyes.”

It wasn’t that he distrusted their intelligent computer. Quite the opposite. Coil was exceptionally good at its job, and that was precisely why Olt-mar-rost-kam didn’t want to bias himself with Coil’s initial report before he even had a chance to see the body for himself.

“Of course, sir.”

If Lieutenant Ratanapol was offended that her thoughtful attempt to make Olt-mar-rost-kam’s work easier had been declined, she gave no indication of it. Then again, the woman had no personal investment in the case. Clearing the way for Olt-mar-rost-kam was simply her job, and whether the Sunguard Agent accepted the gesture or not made little difference.

The vehicle glided almost silently along the busy avenue, weaving between the other cars that shared the electrified roadway. Although it was well past midnight, traffic remained heavy, and the darkness surrounding them was pierced by a thousand and more lights.

Hartmann City never slept.

This was Gloria, after all, Olt-mar-rost-kam thought. This was the beating heart of the industrial might of the Terran Federation.

Things had not always been this way. Almost a century earlier, during the Expansion, not long after the end of the Kelar War, Gloria had been little more than an arid colony world on the outskirts of the Terran Federation. The first settlers found the climate of the vast savannas covering Gloria’s main continent harsh, but the soil was fertile, and the native flora and fauna, by sheer luck, proved to be neutral to the biochemistries of all the founding races of the Federation.

It wasn’t that Gloria was a savanna planet, per se. Like every world where humans of the four races could live, it encompassed a wide range of biomes, from frozen polar caps to equatorial rainforests. But the distribution of its landmasses, the location of its major mountain ranges, and the direction of the prevailing wind currents placed vast stretches of the main continent in the rain shadow of the Kookaburra Mountains. As a result, it was the savannas of Gloria where most of the first colonists chose to settle.

They soon discovered that the fertile soil beneath their farmsteads concealed something far more valuable than mere nutrients. Deep within the bedrock of Procyon A’s fourth planet lay immense veins rich in titanium, aluminum, and rare earth minerals. For a few brief decades, the settlers of Gloria found themselves in possession of wealth worth trillions upon trillions.

But, as is so often the case when great riches are discovered deep beneath the surface of a remote world, the women and men living simple lives above them lacked the means to extract the vast fortune hidden beneath their feet. In the end, the mining rights were sold to a handful of interstellar corporations, which arrived with their administrators, supervisors, machines, and workers. Before long, the once pastoral world of Gloria had become little more than a planet-spanning network of mines.

As it turned out, this was merely the first step in Gloria’s rise to prominence within the Terran Federation. Less than ten AU farther out from Procyon orbited the gas giant Aphrodite, around which the Sunguard constructed Von der Layen Base. Designed as a backup to Sunguard Headquarters on Europa, Von der Layen Base contained redundancies for every system and department required to keep the Sunguard operational, should some unforeseen calamity befall the Solaris system in the future. For the Sunguard, Von der Layen Base soon became a home away from home.

Redundant operations inevitably created the need for local starship construction. Just as the orbital shipyards around Mars operated under the direction of Headquarters, Aphrodite Command required its own shipbuilding facilities within the Procyon system. And what better world to build them around than Gloria, where the minerals required to construct the giant warships of the Terran Federation were already being mined?

At first, the arrangement had been little more than a matter of convenience. Shipping bulky starship hulls from Jerr or Etar when they could be built locally in the Procyon system was simply bad business. Before long, however, Gloria’s industrial output expanded far beyond hull modules alone. Once the Terran Federation’s private manufacturing conglomerates had established themselves on the once-pristine savannas of Procyon 4, they adapted to the Sunguard’s growing demands and diversified their production accordingly. It did not take long before most of the components required to construct the Sunguard’s War Cruisers, Command Ships, and Deep Space Carriers were manufactured on the very world around which the shipyards orbited. Only when rare, specialized items were needed were they imported from faraway stars.

With the industrial boom came an immense demand for workers. Drawn to Gloria by the promise of well-paying jobs, women and men of the four races flocked to the Procyon system. But the available positions were never quite as lucrative as the corporations’ recruitment officers had promised, and while Gloria’s need for laborers had not been exaggerated, not everyone who arrived was suited to the work available. Consequently, despite the constant demand for industrial labor, unemployment rose steadily with each passing year. The strong labor protection laws enacted by the Solar Council notwithstanding, the interstellar corporations always seemed to find ways around them.

Nor was it only those immigrants denied the jobs they had been promised who discovered that life on Gloria was difficult. Even among the millions employed in the surface industries that supplied the orbital shipyards, many found themselves dissatisfied. Their jobs paid well enough, but they were grueling, repetitive, and exhausting, and with that strain came a need for distractions—distractions the criminal underworld was more than willing to provide to a growing population eager to drown its sorrows in drugs, sex, and gambling.

Gloria never slept.

And neither did Olt-mar-rost-kam.