“Read it to you, yes, sir,” he said for Miki’s benefit. “Just a moment. Here we are. Yes, sir. He was associated peripherally with the resistance cell they caught last year in Port Chait. Questioned but not prosecuted. No records since then.”
“Close enough,” Sololo said. “Do we have any known associates that we do have addresses for?”
Kinnel hunched forward, his palms over his eyes. He kept his voice bright and pleasant. “Let me check his RQ history for you, sir.” Miki was slapping her thigh now, her face dark with repressed hilarity. Kinnel hummed to himself as he worked. “His closest known associate is a Trandoshan dockworker named Cyr Hassk with a berth address of 113-624-e45.”
“Hold on. Hold on. Six … two … four … What was the rest?”
“E four five, sir.”
“Got it. Thank you. Good work.”
The connection dropped. Kinnel pulled off his earpiece and looked over at Miki. She was still shaking with laughter. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Where do they get these people?” Kinnel asked before the next connection request came through.
Cyr Hassk considered himself in the mirror. The cut on his right head ridge had almost healed, but the scales there were the bright green of an adolescent. He rubbed at the spot with his thumb pad, hoping to scuff the scales to something a little nearer a mature man’s gray. He didn’t want to get cosmetic abrasives, but maybe if no one saw him—
A knock came at the door of his berth, three strong blows. Cyr lurched back from the mirror, falling into his warning hiss automatically. The berth was tiny. It wasn’t more than four steps from his privacy corner to the door.
The human man in the doorway had the uniform of an Imperial officer and the demeanor of a salesperson. Hassk disliked him immediately.
“You’re Cyr Hassk?” the man asked.
“Maybe.”
“Japet said I’d find you here. That you could maybe help me out.”
“He was wrong,” Cyr hissed. He tried to close the door, but the officer had already stepped into the berth.
“He seemed pretty certain,” the Imperial said, sweeping off his hat. His hair was a shaggy mop of brown, unlike the razor-cut Imperial style. Cyr’s pupils narrowed and he flexed his hands. “Maybe we should go talk to him.”
“Maybe you should step back out of here,” Cyr snarled. “This is my berth.”
The man gestured at his uniform. “Do you think I care about whether this is your berth or not?”
Cyr flexed his pectoral muscles and bared his teeth. The man’s uniform didn’t fit right, either. Too tight at the shoulders and loose at the gut. The lopsided smile was rich with threat, but it was the kind of threat that got settled in the street outside a bar, not in an interrogation chamber.
“Cut the crap,” Cyr said. “Who are you, what do you want, and what makes you think I can or will give it to you?”
“I need to find Japet,” the man said, dropping the ruse without a hint of chagrin. “You’re his friend; you can tell me where to find him.”
“If I’m his friend, I’m sure as hell not telling you where to find him. Get out.”
“Under other circumstances, I would,” the man said. “But he made a decision, and that decision affected me and my job, and now I’m going to need him to make it right.”
Cyr weighed a few possible responses. Japet’s a small-time creep who will never make anything right in his whole blasted life, or I don’t care about you and your problems, so get out, or How about we call security and see if they can help you. In the end, he opted for punching the man in the gut. The fake officer’s breath whooshed out, and he doubled over as Cyr brought a knee up to break his descending nose. Only the blow didn’t connect. The man wrapped an arm around Cyr’s leg and lifted. Cyr windmilled his arms, trying to keep his balance. His claws raked the walls, throwing sparks from the metal, but he went down with a clang. The world went a little quieter for a few seconds, and the universe contracted to the interior of Cyr’s body and maybe a few inches past it. The man rolled onto him, putting a forearm lock across Cyr’s throat.
“Okay,” the man said. “I tried being nice and asking.”
“Didn’t,” Cyr croaked past the choking arm.
“What?”
“Didn’t ask. Weren’t being nice.”
“Oh. Okay. Will you please tell me where I can find Japet?”
“No.”
“All right then,” the man said, and punched him in the face. The blow was surprisingly strong. Cyr tasted the metallic flavor of his own blood. “Please?”
Cyr twisted, bringing his claws up toward the man’s sides. A few more inches and he’d peel back the fake Imperial’s skin until the ribs all showed. The man broke off the hold, pushing back just far enough to drop an elbow across Cyr’s neck.
“Pretty please?”
The lights seemed dimmer than they’d been, and Cyr’s breath sounded close and wet in his own ears. He rolled onto his belly, got to his hands and knees. The man kicked again, trying to shove him off balance, but Cyr pushed up. His punch went wide, skinning by the other’s head and leaving a dent in the metal of the berth’s wall. He pulled his arm back for an open-handed rake that would spill the man’s guts on the floor.
The muzzle of a blaster dug into Cyr’s neck.
“Sugar on top?”
“You pull that trigger,” Cyr said, “and the real security force will be—”
“Yeah, I know. But we could avoid the whole thing if you’d just tell me where to find Japet.”
Cyr licked his bloody lips. He could feel the swelling under his scales. When he went to the docks, the one thing no one would be paying attention to was the bright scales on his right head ridge. Cyr grinned.
Japet was an idiot, anyway.
“He’s staying with Aminni. That’s his girlfriend.”
“Great,” the man said. “And how do I find her?”
When he’d first come in, Aminni had thought the Imperial officer looked like trouble. Two drinks after that, he was actually starting to seem a little cute. Another drink, and she was wondering if maybe it was going to be an interesting night, after all.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. His smile was sly and warm, and it made her feel like he was laughing at a joke that she was in on, even though he wasn’t. “You don’t have a boyfriend?”