The files arrived fairly quickly, soothing the aggravation that came of not catching Rook again on the way out. Transmissions from Eadu got priority attention, though if he'd requested anything other than purely innocuous information it wouldn't have gotten results. Secret weapon designs were all well and good, but Orson didn't have nearly the clout he believed he did and the Outer Rim was no one's priority. He was going out on a limb sending Rook out for batteries, but he was sure he could explain that away. And he'd won himself a copy of what he needed.
Not that it seemed promising at first. No records at all before recruitment to the Imperial pilot program, and why would there be? Assignment to a backwater training facility, the slow fade of a good student to a mediocre one as the training became less theoretical and more stressful. Performance scores too low to even be considered for a Tie Fighter despite high marks on technical tests. An uneventful career shunting boxes from place to place on routes unpredictable enough to warrant an organic pilot.
A few years older than Jyn after all. Not enough to make a difference.
He found nothing he could use and almost abandoned the document. He only looked under the appended disciplinary record because it seemed mildly amusing that it existed at all, and the first item more or less confirmed that impression. Speeding. Which on plenty of worlds meant operating a vehicle while young. He had never been interested in flying, but he couldn't imagine anyone who was wanting to do it carefully and properly every moment.
The second entry, though, was more interesting. Gambling. Rook didn't seem the type, but Galen wasn't honestly sure what type that would be. Was it a lapse in judgment, a competitive streak, a clever way to supplement a pilot's meager income bolstered by a mathematical bent of mind? A single mistake or one lapse in an otherwise invisible second career? Betting on races, unfortunately, wasn't really blackmail material. Even the strictest Imperial functionaries wouldn't punish it too severely. If he could uncover proof of considerable debts or a pattern of corruption...
Then he would threaten to expose the first person in decades to care that Lyra was dead because she was a person, because her work and her principles and her stubborn smile were lost forever, and not because it might impact the director's work or because she couldn't be a threat anymore, just an example.
He could try simply lying. Telling the pilot his delivery was to an embedded Imperial spy or simply an innocuous exchange with an eccentric fellow researcher. The trouble was setting up a drop point or a contact without involving the pilot in the first place.
One of the troubles. The other big one was that Bodhi was clearly not stupid.
A bit naive, though, some might say. He'd been on the dingy little spaceport two hours, been yelled at by three separate people for a requisition he couldn't do anything about. He'd dealt with the loopy exhaustion of too many jumps and all his worries about Galen all the while. Surely he'd done enough penance for whatever wrong was delivering this karmic bite?
He really needed a quiet drink. He'd been to this port before and decided to go a little further than the bar next to the landing pad, figuring he knew the lay of the land. The metal and ceramic walkways, anyway. There were some good little shops where you could pick up borderline-pirated holovids, and he'd stop there on the way back. He deserved a little treat after the day he'd had. But first, that drink. Maybe two. No more. He'd be flying again by morning.
The drink was cheap and the room was quiet and he really was beginning to feel a little more at peace when a hand settled firmly on his shoulder. He jumped hard enough to rattle his table, spine going rigid, eyes widening. He'd have done as much if a friend had touched him unexpectedly. He made himself turn his head slowly. Not a friend.
He didn't recognize the man specifically. Medium height, medium build, middle age, an aggressive average that would have made him hard to describe. "Rook?" Even the stranger's voice was even and soft. Bodhi glanced around the bar, determined no one was even looking their way, and nodded jerkily. "Alomtoma wants to see you?"
Not good news, exactly, but news that made sense. "Why?" He would never have described himself as being on her good side. He didn't think anyone was, and a lot of his tricks didn't work on her very well. But he did try not to be on her bad side, and he hadn't been back here in months, not since he'd landed the Eadu assignment.
"You'll have to ask her." Well, he couldn't argue with that. Bodhi stood and followed the man out of the bar, down a circuitous, hard to follow route designed to confuse and frustrate. Bodhi had an excellent sense of direction, but he was confused and frustrated enough already. He might know how to find his way back, but would he have to time if he were in real trouble? And how much damn, slippery garbage would be in his way? This was an Empire-controlled base, but it was on the Outer Rim and plenty of little things could slip right by. Like the nice, legal establishment where, purely by coincidence, individual customers were often seized by the urge to bet large sums of money and where the staff always had helpful suggestions as to what kind of return one might expect on such a bet.
Bodhi usually kept his gambling confined to other pilots. It was safer, gave him a good way to manage credits won and, slightly more rarely, lost, and made for the plausible deniability of just a friendly little wager, nothing to be concerned about. But sometimes he had a sure thing worth cashing out on big, or really needed the money. Cargo pilots weren't really paid enough to help offset an emergency at home or even a few slow weeks and the pay cut that came with idling, as if he chose to sit on his license doing nothing. Little places like Alomtoma's were exactly the way to do it.
And yes, he'd lost last time. He saw patterns, made calculations, was always one step ahead, but sometimes his reach exceeded his grasp. And sometimes the damn odupiendo lost its footing and yet no one called it track tampering, no matter how dry the day. He'd hand-washed his flight suits and cut rations for a month and only his last payday had put him to rights.
Which made it very odd that he was being dragged down here and through the restaurant, where several races were up on screens and discrete fliers sat on each table, poured over by everyone from some obvious career players even Bodhi didn't bet against to a tourist couple who'd sure be eaten alive.
They didn't slow down. His escort hadn't said a word all the while, and he didn't say a word as he ushered Bodhi into a back room.
It was clearly a private office, the furniture larger and more solid than the uncomfortable chairs outside that looked nice and made people slightly edgy trying to find a good position. The air was a little smoky, hopefully with incense. He didn't have much of a head for anything else, and the spicy smell already tickled a bit. There were no windows, which were meaningless on a space station, and few lights, which were not.
"Hello, Kitten." The voice was low and sweet and perfectly unaccented. He turned to find Alomtoma at a desk, intently eyeing a screen and not paying him much mind. He'd been sweated before, and he tried to just stand his ground. It might have worked. The twi'lek did turn and look at him a minute later.
It bothered him how much she bothered him. He'd grown up on Jedha. He hadn't always been like this. There was nothing special about humans. But the empire made sure that was hard to remember.
"I must admit I'm disappointed in you, darling. You've never really displeased me before."
"You—you've threatened to cut my thumbs off twice."
"If I'd meant it you wouldn't have thumbs anymore, dear. You always paid me before you left the station." The blue of her skin was very pretty in the faint, smoky light. She was very pretty. But that wasn't the important part, and given what he knew about why she was here and not safely home in Rylothian space, he didn't think she'd want to know he was thinking it. "What happened to my good little pilot?"
"What... wait, what do you mean what happened?" He hadn't done anything to deserve this. And knowing he was being sweated didn't keep it from working.
"You're almost painfully reliable, always have been. It's why I never stopped you card counting. It made it easy to keep an eye on the rest of the table, and you were reasonable about taking your share. Which is why I'm so confused now."
"Please tell me?"
"You left this station fifteen hundred credits in the hole, Kitten. Don't tell me they pay cargo pilots well enough that you didn't notice."
Finally, something to fasten onto. He didn't know how to tell a ruthless not-quite-gangster she had a bookkeeping error diplomatically, but he had a goal. "That... That isn't true. I paid. It was... Mena was at the counter." He tried to remember if he'd seen the cashier on the way in. Maybe he'd have someone to vouch for him.
She looked at Bodhi's escort, not at him. The man coughed meaningfully and clarified. "Had a little accident with the airlock a few weeks back."
"Ah, that one." She was clearly watching for Bodhi's reaction, but he was too horrified to guess what she was seeing. Had they really just confessed to a murder in front of him? That was what it meant when people said accident in that tone. He was pretty sure. Did that make him a witness, too? How bad a person did it make him to worry about his own skin when a man was dead? "How did you pay him, Kitten?"
His voice shook, but he managed to answer after swallowing a few times. "Pay voucher."
"So it could have been redeemed anywhere on the station, and he knew you were about to leave? Poor planning. I'd have expected better."
As the first wave of sick terror began to ebb, he pieced it together. "Mena was skimming?"
"And not very artfully. It would have taken longer to catch him if he'd taken a little off the top of every big payout. He's taken care of, sweetest. Now, what to do with you?"
Why was there anything to do with him? "But... It isn't my fault. I paid. We just established that." He was a little indignant under all the terror. If you couldn't go to grasping underworld lowlifes for fairness, where could you go?
"Not really." He couldn't exactly argue with that. His heart sank. "But I believe you. I do." And rose again. "You don't have the spine to lie to me. But I still need my money, Kitten." And there it went. "You can see your own lapse in judgment, I'm sure. Take him out back, would you, dears?" To her lackey again, and suddenly there were two more bulky figures beside him, another human and a falleen. He instinctively tried to twist away from the hands that settled on his shoulders. He might as well have tried to take on the walls.
"Don't kill me!" Some small, distant voice inside his head wanted to laugh. He always thought that was a dumb line when it come up in holovids.
Alomtoma laughed for him. "I'm not the government, dear. I can't afford to be be frivolous about murder. And it's not like it's personal. Think of yourself as an example if it makes you feel better. Just smash the one hand, would you? And don't take too long about it."
She said something else, but he didn't catch it around the white noises roaring in his ears. The world took on every aspect of the shadow puppet plays he'd watched in the marketplace as a child, all light and movement that refused to resolve itself into reality. He was hyperaware of the heavy hands that nudged him along, a puppet himself—His skin crawled at every point of contact. Everything felt too tight and the way his flightsuit shifted was strangely distracting, made it impossible to watch where they were shoving him. Somewhere outside, back behind the restaurant. He thought about shouting for help—chances were there was no one to hear, chances were it would be worse, what did he know about chance if he couldn't even pay off a gambling debt without it going wrong.
He felt the impact when the hammer came down, but not the pain. By then it wasn't a sensation his screaming nerves could really register, or not more urgently than the hands holding him down, the impassive voices of Alomtoma's enforcers grating in his ears.
The sudden, buzzing retort of a blaster. Four, five shots in quick succession.
A solid, slack weight landed on him and he instinctively shoved. The world snapped back into focus all at once. His hand was in cold-burning agony, the slightest motion triggering the feeling of broken glass dragged across the inside of his skin. The weight he'd shoved had been Alomtoma's enforcer, who, like his companions, was a corpse with a smoking hole in his chest.
"Hold fire, he's one of ours." The electronic crackle of the trooper's observation should have been a comfort, but Bodhi's eyes were locked on the bodies. One of the troopers kicked the falleen's body out of the way unnecessarily, leaving the two humans where they'd fallen. "Identification, pilot?" Her helmet didn't conceal a certain youth in her high pitched voice.
He tried, automatically, to reach for his papers and let out an involuntary squeak. More slowly, he raised his right hand to open his pocket and hand over the papers. He couldn't really talk without wheezing and whimpering, but his forms were all in order, and the trooper commander didn't seem that interested in details. He heard her tell a few of her soldiers to search the area and allowed himself to be escorted to the command center. The head of base security was similarly uninterested in the story, just sent him to the medic for the cheapest and most inefficient treatment for his broken fingers, the lousy painkillers and medpack and brace that would keep his bones from grinding themselves into powder before they healed.
They had him back on his ship within a few hours.
No reason for an investigation, after all. He was an imperial and a human, they were criminal scum. They were dead and out of polite society's hair. He had a function (not too important a function, or there'd have been bacta and decent drugs) and an approved place, and would go about his business.
They were, he reminded himself as he nudged at his controls with his elbow, just about gangsters. Maybe they'd found Alomtoma. Maybe they'd closed down the whole place and shot everyone inside. He'd been too much of a coward to ask. No one inside had had the empire's insignia on their shoulder, so no one inside would have been disregarded alive instead of disregarded dead.