The file was incredibly thin, making her nose twitch. The death of a military colonel, let alone one working in intelligence, would surely rate a more thorough investigation than this. The entire file was only 11 pages. A quick scan for similar cases found three murdered colonels in the last year on Klinshai alone, none of those cases with less than 50 pages of documentation. But then, those colonels were actually murdered and this one just got stabbed in a stupid drunken bar fight. All of the murderers had been convicted and punished. Of course.
        "Boys will be boys," she muttered to herself as she went back to the start of the file and began reading it carefully.
        Colonel Khost worked at the GRU office building a few kams away. He had been there for four years. After finishing his work shift, he went to dinner at the tavern with a Major Dorav and a Lieutenant Bressica, both of whom were Klingons from his duty section, but neither of whom were warrior caste. The good colonel was warrior caste and had frontline combat decorations from his earlier days. Her nose twitched, and she ran a quick check. The colonel was head of a duty section with thirty people in it, and all of them were Klingons. No subject race personnel? There was nothing wrong with that, but most duty sections in military intelligence had about half non-Klingons. A section with no one from a subject race was probably involved in something very sensitive, perhaps it was even investigating subject races for something, but why would military intelligence be doing that? Such a mission belonged to the Empire Security Service.
         What were you into? she thought to herself. She had to use her imperial password to find out that his section dealt with the Tholians. Why would subject race personnel be excluded from that? Her nose twitched. Another check and she found three other GRU sections all focused on Tholians, all of which had subject race and even allied personnel in them. Got it, she said to herself. Not unusual for the GRU to have more than one section investigating the same thing by different methods. Having one section with no non-Klingons was just a paranoid security check, making sure that some things were kept very secure.

        Colonel Khost was killed by a Dunkar, who worked as an accountant at a government ministry building across the street. There was no indication that the Dunkar and Khost had any connection, although there had been incidental conversations at that tavern because they both ate there on a regular basis. She checked the link to one of those and it was just the Dunkar asking if he could have an unused chair from the colonel's table, six months before the incident. She listened to the 14 other such conversations which the file referenced, but none of them were more than that. (The tavern, being next to a military intelligence office, was completely covered by audio and video recordings and years of those were on file just in case some future investigation needed to check them.) She did a scan for unlinked cases where the two had passed words, and found none.
She checked the files of the actual bar fight and killing and it seemed to be nothing more or less than the report said.
         The Dunkar had approached the table when the Colonel was in the washroom, and had spoken to Lieutenant Bressica, who clearly wasn't interested in talking to him. Major Dorav had given the Dunkar an angry wave of his hand, telling him to go away, but the Dunkar (clearly intoxicated) continued to try to talk to the woman. Cross-species dating was nothing unusual, but the woman wasn't buying what the man was selling. "When did that ever happen before," she said as she kept watching.
       Colonel Khost returned to the table and ordered the Dunkar to leave. The Dunkar spoke angrily to the colonel, and the colonel (also clearly intoxicated) had given the Dunkar a sharp punch to the face. The Dunkar spun around and fell onto the next table, then jumped to his feet holding a steak knife and rammed it into Khost's throat. Pandemonium ensued but the colonel, his entire throat sliced open, had bled out before the medics had arrived. "Defending a co-worker from the unwanted advances of a drunk," Krenda said. "Well, Colonel, you died a gentleman."
        Krenda's mind went to standard police procedure. Where are the witnesses? she wondered. Major Dorav had repeatedly asked for a transfer to a front-line combat unit and had left for the Kzinti front a tenday after the fight. Lieutenant Bressica had been sent to a new assignment on Klomarth. Krenda's nose twitched.  If I were killed in a bar fight, would they scatter my staff to other planets or keep them here to brief my replacement? She checked, but none of the other personnel in Khost's section had left.
         The police had investigated, and the Dunkar was convicted of manslaughter and sent to a mining colony. The GRU had done their own investigation, but it was basically a copy of the police investigation. The Empire Security Service investigated (as was required when a senior intelligence officer was killed) and decided that the police had it right, nothing but a bar fight. Nothing to see here. Move along. Her nose twitched. That has to be the shortest ESS report on a murder investigation in the history of the Empire, she thought to herself.