Michael saw that Josepha, or rather Joph’rena, was not amused at his antics thus far. Let’s try this one out. “Oh, you mean, do I know how to fix up that shitty curl job you did on your hair last night?”

Joph’rena pressed her fingers on her temples, trying to massage the building pressure away. “No, you jackass; what do you know about the ambush?”

“Nothing. I don’t even know how you found us!” Michael felt the pressure build in his stomach.

Joph’rena doubted his ignorance. “You thought you could outwit us?”

Michael blinked hard and pointed to himself, “I didn’t. But the ‘theory’ was that driving onto and off of the Shil’way would cause it to go on the fritz and you wouldn’t be able to track us.”

Joph’rena flared her nostrils at that. “Ah, so that’s why you ruined all of our landscaping: you thought it would make you more difficult to follow?”

Michael rolled the paper cup between his hands. “Yes?”

“We bombed you from orbit. You don’t think we can find you via other means?” Her lips tightened into a straight line between her tusks. “We have orbital ships. We have drones. We have roads--’Shil’way’ you called it, hmm. Creative name, but not too creative in terms of our technological superiority over you.”

Michael put the paper cup on top of the Red Grail bottle like a condom, spilling some Maker’s on the table. “You’re asking me about things I know the least about here.” He noticed the spill, flipped the paper cup rightside up so that it sat on top of the bottle. It won’t spill this way, he thought while damning Newton and all his Laws.

“What do you mean you know the least about?” Joph’rena pressed. “You seemed quite familiar with the leader of the rebel crew!”

Michael tried to remember the last time he’d been around anyone he’d call a leader, per se. His boss, maybe, but that seemed like a stretch. Thinking of his boss, he sure hoped this wouldn’t have any consequences at his work. His mental meandering was brought back to the fore when he heard his interrogator breathe out in frustration. “The leader?”

Unsure of what to say, despite their newfound language access, Joph’rena continued, “Yeah, the one who sat on the professor’s throne.”

“The...professor’s throne?” Michael felt that the thought of treating professors like royalty would be nice. He wanted to be a teacher. Especially if he would get a cool seat.

“Isn’t that the name of the Human who sits at the biggest desk of a classroom?” Joph’rena held her hand up at him, as if it helped, but Michael felt the condescension even through the haze of the alcohol.

“The biggest desk of a Human classroom?” Michael tried to process the pieces of this particular puzzle together. He had a vision of the teacher’s desk, the smoke rising on the whiteboard behind Amber’s newly begotten head hole. It was big enough that he could read the spines of the books on the shelf behind her. “You mean Amber?”

“Yes! You do know her!” at last, she had landed on success.

“Know her? I fucked her once.” He shrugged casually then felt immediate guilt at saying something so intimate about the recently deceased. His filter was too slow to stop himself.

“Oh, once?” She raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, I’d been trying for the better part of a year.” He wiped at the spilt bourbon with his bare hand. He then licked the wicked liquid off his palm.

Joph’rena’s dour expression did not stop her from continuing her pursuit. “So you’d say that you knew her intimately.”

“PreInvasion? I guess.” He started licking the bourbon off each individual finger. Sucking the base of the knuckle before putting the whole finger in his mouth. “But to be honest, I don’t pay attention to things that don’t matter to me in most conversations.”

She tried to ignore his seductive tactics. “What wouldn’t matter to you? Shil’vati lives?”

“I mean, I’ve got nothing against you people.” Finished from pointer to pinky, he started rubbing the fingers with his thumb. He clasped his hand into a fist before saying, “You did kinda kill a bunch of people.” He smiled loosely. “But they knew what they were signing up for.”

Joph’rena seemed to tuck that phrase away. “I’m glad your beneficence reaches up to your superiors.”

Michael smiled pleasantly, “Oh, totally. No sweat.” He shifted to asking questions himself. “Why did you kill her?”

“Who? Ahm'bur Favreau, the leader? She was the leader, wasn’t she?”

“Why is it you Shils can say Favreau without difficulty but ‘Amber’ is too much?” Michael’s linguistic query was getting in the way of Joph’rena’s interview. She gave him a stern look and spun her hand as if to tell him to keep talking. “Maybe, but it didn’t seem like that.”

“Oh?” Her disbelief was evident in her tone and body language.

“No, Human women tend to work in packs. Sometimes an ‘alpha’ isn’t discernible. Sometimes they trade who’s in charge.” Michael could feel the alcohol making him sweat. “Look, ladies are tricky creatures.”

“You’re saying one of the others could be the mastermind behind the attack?”

Michael turned his head, watching the room spin a bit further than his range of motion allowed, “Fuck if I know.”

Seeing that this was a dead end, Joph’rena pulled out her omnipad. She studied it a bit. “The other girl we captured, ‘Ray’chelle’, could she be the leader?”

Glad to be moving on, he chuckled at the exaggerated pronunciation. “Could be.”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She was becoming annoyed with his flippance, “You seem to know her more than Ahm’bur. You fuck her more than once?”

Michael’s guilt dug in a bit. “Look, we were a thing, but she’s a different person from who I knew.” Scanning his mental timeline, “I didn’t know she was such a marksman.”

His statement was intended to be a jab at his interrogator but it also ended up hurting himself. Serca didn’t deserve the death she received. She was a pencil pusher on a world alien to her.

Joph’rena’s face stiffened. “I can respect when a warrior demonstrates how well honed their skills are. I can also respect when she fulfills her duty.” She continued almost sadly, “Though I don’t know that her aim will ever be as true as it once was.”

Angry, Michael exclaimed, “You Purple Bitches can cure cancer, surely you can put her arm back on! It was a laser. Can’t you weld it back on?” Michael tried to correct himself, but found his vocabulary diminishing. “Well, fix it, anyway, right?”

Joph’rena’s mask of respect continued, “She’s refused.”

“What?!” I can’t believe that!

Joph’rena tapped a bit on her omnipad. Turning it to Michael, she showed him a schematic of a mechanical synthetic. “We can’t weld it back on, but we can replace it with something better.”

Michael was familiar with general prosthetics and knew that some were better than others. And some have specific uses that may be less aesthetically pleasing than others, but more functionally useful. A hook isn’t pretty, but it grasps items better than thick faux fingers. This, however, was on another level. The schematic and surrounding notes made it clear that tactile feedback was possible. She could feel with this prosthesis, Michael gawked. Why wouldn’t she want it?

“Why wouldn’t she want it?” his stream of consciousness urged him to repeat his question.

Joph’rena took back the omnipad. “She said'', tapping a few places on the screen, “‘I don’t want shit from you Purple Bitches!’.”

Michael sat back, “She’s really got it out for you folks.”

“Don’t you?” She shifted.

“What? Have it out for Shil’vati?” Michael burped in his mouth.

“Did you go out last night targeting Shil’vati women?”

“I mean, I’d go for any woman who wouldn’t hold it against me.” His thoughts spun, “I mean, if she would hold it against me?” He laughed out loud, remembering a joke, “Hey, that’s not the way the joke goes. It goes, if I told you you had a nice body-”

She slammed a fist against the table. “Did you go out last night in an attempt to gain access to the Shil’vati base!?”

“I mean, no..?”

“Explain yourself ‘no’!”

“No, like I was having a good time before Gwen fucking raped me.”

Joph’rena’s train of thought stopped, though she did not look surprised.

“Oh? You didn’t know that part? You didn’t know she pushed me on her bed and forced herself on me!?” Aggression didn’t suit Michael. When he got mad because someone wronged him, he spiraled into further aggression. He had leapt before he looked.

“Who is Gwen?”

“Gwen? Gwen is Serca’s roommate? That Gwen!”

“Serca, Goddess bless her soul, had a roommate. Her name was Pennar’dun.”

“The fuck? No way!”

“And Pennar’dun would never have forced herself upon a filthy stiffy like you. You came up to us, you little horndog!”

The room spun around Michael. No, no, this is not happening!

He slurred angrily. “Fuck you! Did you take a look at their room?”

“No, the rebels struck several other pods, but did not go to theirs.” She thumbed her tusk in his direction. “I assume because you ran away instead of following orders.”

“I ran away because I didn’t know what was going on!” Michael screamed.

Her hands hit the table. Her arms framed his view so that all he could comprehend of the room was her. “You ran away because you knew that we were a superior force and you would not survive. You ran away because you were scared!”

“I ran away because I had nothing to do with the ambush.” Tears flowed from him. “I ran away because I slept in the same room as my attacker. I ran away because I had feelings for Serca and watched her die. She didn’t see it coming and neither did I!” His chest heaved.

“You had feelings for Serca? You had a one night stand with a member of the Imperium’s best. You were the last thing she saw before she was escorted to the [Shil’vati Heaven]! I pity that that curse was upon her!”

Michael wiped his tears. The flow had stopped. The anger sank further inside of him. “Yeah thanks, I have to look at myself all the time. How do you think I feel?”

“Probably pretty useless right now.” She thumbed her tusk again, an odd habit he hadn’t noticed her doing at the bar. Why’s she keep touching her snaggletooth? Was she doing this at the bar?

Michael’s view spun from the tip of her tusk as it became a flipper from the Wheel of Fortune. There was no holding back now. “No kidding.” He managed to get out before he threw up on the table.

Joph’rena barely got her hands off of the table in time.

He continued vomiting until he felt like a wrung out dish rag. “Huurgh!”

“Empress’s tits!” She hurled at him before calling for help.

Some officers arrived quickly with a hose. They sprayed vomit on the table toward Michael, soaking him in his own puke and water. What did manage to dodge him ran down a drain he hadn’t noticed before on the floor. God, that’s handy, he thought dreamily, teetering in his seat with the spinning of the room.

Joph’rena got up and towered over him. “You know what would be useful though, you pink whore?”

He didn’t even try to look up. He tried, in vain, to wipe eaten hamburger chunks off of himself. “Uugh?”

“Where’s the one that got away?” She knelt down so that she could look him eye to eye. Seeing that he did not understand. “Where’s Celeste?”

Cold, smelly, dizzy and soaked, he was as vulnerable as a lost kitten. He looked her straight in her eyes and pleaded, “I have no clue.”

“Did you fuck her?”

Michael’s head hung loosely from his shoulders. He breathed deeply. Vomit and alcohol burned his throat for the second time. He coughed before he chuckled breathily, “Actually, no.”

Joph’rena stood straight up with her hands on her hips. “Oh, the one who managed to escape us...you didn’t get her either?” She nodded incredulously.

He folded his arms on the table and laid his head down in their nest. He yawned, “...the one that got away.”

Joph’rena shook her head. She wasn’t going to get anything out of him. Not that he was a master spy or ruthless rebel. He was useless. Further inquiry was a lost cause.

She turned away from him and walked to the door. No leads. No help in identifying any patterns or expanding their roster of usual suspects. She’d wasted a bottle of Grail and her personal store of good liquor on him.

Pausing as she closed the door behind her, “You’re a real shithead, Micheal.”