Sittin' Pretty

[Dave Skywalker]

"Hey man, that's not cool."

Dave watched the short felinoid wrangled Mako as he was easily carted away.

"Come on, man. Cybernetic rights! Restraining bolts are fascist!"

The marine taking him for a ride torqued one of his wrists a bit far and the space bum winced.

"Easy man, I'm conscientiously objecting to brutality!"

[Jorrun Cyer]

The Commander resisted the urge to facepalm as one of the marines carted Dave to the waiting lift. Another marine joined him and they prepared to take the prisoner down to process him.

"Take him to the brig and let him sleep whatever he's on out of his system."

Miri dutifully picked up the slack in passing the order along in Cizeri and with that the first debarking group descended. Jorrun nodded to his adjuctant as he gripped Kora by the upper arm.

"Let's get to work on this one. We can interrogate them separately and see if anything useable shakes out of it."

The lift returned, this time with the scanning crew and their equipment piled on the frame. They slowly began to pile into the ship, setting up their equipment.

[Miri Jitaurree]

A ship the size of Saantaurra was, in many respects, a space-going city with all the requisite utilities and amenities to serve its population of over eighteen thousand souls. Among those was an enormous prison block whose primary processing complex was conveniently located just off the primary hangar deck - all the better for quickly admitting prisoners wrangled off impounded vessels, or captives collared in the wild by a boarding party and shuttled back in defeat to face the sharp claws of Cizeri justice. Dave took the long route through, including a medical workup to decipher the mixture of illegal substances he'd been marinating in, but Kora received expedited service. A deep scan to ensure she wasn't hiding any contraband in her body cavities, a blood stick to catalog her genetics and run it against all known criminal databases, and then she was shuffled into a small, featureless room with a table and several chairs. The marines accompanying her sat her down, stuncuffs and all, growled a stern warning to stay put, and exited the room without a backwards glance.

Miri and Jorrun stood outside the room, observing through a one-way holoimager as a HUD displayed relevant biometrics, including body temperature, breathing rate, and pulse rate. Though Miri was no expert on Arkanian norms, she guessed from the prisoner's body language that most of the metrics were still running high.

"So jI've been rrrreadjing up on hyuman jinterrrogatjion technjiquess," Miri said, once more armed with her bevy of datapads. "jIncludjing sssomethjing called 'good cop, bad cop'? Doesss that actualljy worrrk?"

[Jorrun Cyer]

K'ohta'rrou Cyer broke his attention from the Arkanian to Miri's odd question. He'd interrogated his share of Imperial prisoners of war in the past, and perhaps even done some things he'd rather not in order to extract information. The way Miri put forth the query, however, he wondered whether she'd been reading up on techniques or watching holo procedurals.

"It can." he offered evenly with a slight nod. "If you believe they're uncertain exactly how the chips can fall, you can get a captive to give up information out of panic."

The more he talked it out to the Su'taun'rrou, the more he realized there might be a lot of merit involved. Jorrun's eyebrows bobbed up as he smiled.

"And I doubt these wayfarers have any idea the kind of trouble that could come their way."

Taking Jitaurree's example into consideration, he had a pretty good idea who she had in mind for bad cop. The slightly-built Meera'in might be able to intimidate a sajoi.

"Alright, Jitaurree, that's a game plan. You watch me, and you back my play."

[Miri Jitaurree]

"jYes, sjirr." Miri fought to keep an eager grin off her face, only this was parsecs more exciting than compiling personnel reports for the K'ohta'rrou's review. She made sure to school her face - and ears - and tail - before following Commander Cyer into the interrogation room where the prisoner sat in agitated silence.

[Kora Tau]

She stared at her hands, clasped together in agitation as her wrists were still bound in the stuncuffs that she'd been so graciously had slapped on. Her features ran the gamut of emotion, from worry so sadness, to anger, to even a giddy disbelief at the situation she now found herself in.

A litany of transgressions no matter how small paraded themselves before her, and Kora screwed her eyes shut as let her head fall, her bangs flipping forward to obscure the top half of her face. Why her? Why??

She sucked in a breath as the door opened, and daring a look, she cracked open one eye, head angling slightly up so that she could get a look at who was coming through. The sight of the human was enough to make her groan, and the fairer-skinned - and much shorter - Cizerack woman that followed him was given the tail (ha!) end of her vocal displeasure.

She leaned back; not out of some forced bravado, but more in an effort to place more distance between herself and her interrogators. The cuffs scraped along the tabletop before pulling fully back and her hands fell to her lap.

Finally, both eyes opened, her expression one that tipped the scales of apprehension.

She didn't say a word, instead only staring at the two who she now shared the small room with.

[Jorrun Cyer]

"Well I think this is pretty much open and shut."

With more than a little steel in his jaw, Jorrun tossed the datapad in his hand flippantly to the table in front of the Arkanian. The pad contained effectively nothing - a dry sensory readout of the stellar makeup of Saantaurra's present position in space. In Cizeri glyph, however, the lady in the chair would have no idea at all.

"Possession with intent to distribute of fourteen controlled substances. That alone usually nets a summary death mark for the Cizerack...Miss Tau. In fact, I'm trying really hard to think of a way you get out of this without knowing what color your insides are."

Leaning close, the Commander slapped open palms against the table in unison as he fixed eyes on the Arkanian's seemingly blank orbs.

"Unless you give up your supplier and your smuggling routes, you're wasting my time. I'll let the Jaanni'saari sort you out."

[Kora Tau]

Oh gods alive...

Her eyes went as wide as saucer plates at the words that the man thundered out, and Kora felt her heartrate rise to a terrifying beat. Her mouth opened as if she wanted to speak, but nothing came out as her mind seemed to be stuck in an endless loop of 'no no no no no no no'.

Finally, her voice found purchase. Of course, what came out was more of a timid, flinching squeak than anything substantial.

"I'm just a normal girl, I don't do bad things, I try to be good all the time!" She lifted her bound hands up in a show of pleading, palms open in a gesture that begged him to understand.

"I don't even know that guy, I swear I swear!"

[Jorrun Cyer]

"You have to do better than that!"

Jorrun slapped a sobering hand on the desk to hopefully inject clarity into Korra's head.

"You're far enough off the Perlemeian to not be out here by mistake. This is deep space, you understand? Out here, ships only drop into sublight if they've got a good reason not to be found. A good reason like making a contraband drop. You understand me?"

Jorrun leaned over the desk, getting to eye level with Korra.

"Right now, there are a dozen Trade Navy slicers working on both of your computer cores. If they get the details before I do, you're going to get sorted out, and not the way you want to be sorted."

[Kora Tau]

"I know it's deep space!!!"

There was a deep desperation to her voice, and Kora lifted her bound hands up, pleading to him with open palms.

"I was having issues with my engines, and I was drifting!"

Her fingers clenched, unclenched, then clenched again as she brought her hands back, blank white eyes going to the side.

"I mean, I know it looks bad, but it's really not!"

There was an expression that crossed her features then, and she bit her lip.

"Look, when I was in grade school, I cheated on a test. And then after that I kissed a boy behind the bushes and lied and said I liked it, and I told him he was a good kisser even though I really didn't think he was. And then after that I just sort of drifted, and I never cheated on anything after that, but I did make a few copies of some test answer sheets for friends, but that's harmless, right? RIGHT?!"

There was no going back now.

"I mean, no one died, right? After all of that though, I guess I was kind of terrible because I told a guy I was into him when I really wasn't, and then I left him and got with his best friend and I mean, it didn't really matter because I was going off to University that summer anyway!"

Everything was spilling out, and she couldn't stop it. The terrible things that he was accusing her of were utterly silly, in that she knew they were. Was he just trying to get her to admit to something? Whatever it was, she was admitting to every single discretion in her past no matter the severity.

Everything... except for what he was hoping for.

"I even once told a boy that I liked vanilla flavored ice cream the most, even though I really like namana and candied hakkanut instead!"

She didn't care if it was what he wanted to hear. It was the pure truth, and she was giving him both barrels.

"Even after schooling I was a good girl! Never found a boy to get with, and just stuck with the droids... which, ah, nothing bad there, I swear! I just like to tinker and experiment!"

Which of course didn't sound good, either.

"But not like... that sort of experimenting! I just like to make droids easier to talk to!"

[Jorrun Cyer]

Jorrun closed his eyes, resisting the urge to press them into the waiting palms of his hands. Just a few seconds to collect himself, and he was able to deal with this mess. He sighed, and opened his eyes.

"I'm going to go check with the slicer teams. I hope for your sake they're not finished working."

He quietly made his exit of the interrogation chamber, slamming the door shut loudly for effect. Once hidden from view, he gave a knowing glance to Su'taun'rrou Jiitaurree.

"She's all yours. Be gentle, she's delicate."