PROLOGUE

“Name?”

“Lu”

“Occupation?”

“Detective.”

“Planet, station, or vessel of first residence?”

“Luna.”

“You’re ‘Lu from Luna?’”

“It’s what happens when you’re allowed to choose your own name within moments of arriving at full sapience.”

“Moving on… where did you find the body?”

“Officer, that’s a leading question.”

“It’s just a question, Lu.”

“It presupposes an unsupported theory regarding the provenance of the body in question, which could have come into our possession in any number of ways less ostensibly damning than ‘we found it.’”

“But you DID find it.”

“You have the testimony of two witnesses whose stories contradict each other on every salient point except one, which is that they both happened to use the word ‘found’.”

“You know what? Forget the body for a moment.”

“Hard to do given its proximity, but this deposition is your circus.”

“I said forget the body. I have new concerns, starting with how you know whose testimony we do and do not have?”

“THAT, officer, is an excellent and fair question, and it is the first of such questions whose answer I will, for now, simplify to ‘I am a detective.’”

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SHAFTERS SHIFTERS AND THE DRAGONS OF DAMAXURI is a work in progress by Howard Tayler