Refractions: Chatterbox
Posted on 04 Jun 2024 @ 4:41pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Senior Deputy Marshal: Sven-Erik Lofthammer - FMS
Edited on on 04 Jun 2024 @ 4:44pm
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Pathfinder - en route to the station
Timeline: MD25
1699 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure
The brig was full. With the layout of a Nova, Pathfinder had two holding tanks under the watchful eye of brig duty officers at the central watch station inside the brig plus additional officers guarding the brig doors; as they had apprehended eight pirates from the ill fated skiff, Pathfinder’s brig was at max capacity with four overnight guests per tank. Although it was never preferable to house a bunch of prisoners in one place where they could either conflict or conspire, Senior Deputy Marshal Sven-Eric Lofthammer would have preferred to have the challenge of transferring even more prisoners, had they been able to arrest anyone from the so-called Revenant.
For the Marshal, the disappointment was still very fresh.
He imagined securing their murderous hides in secured junior enlisted quarters, or inside of force field generated cell blocks in the storage bay. After all, prisoner transfers were a regular matter in the Marshal’s Service. He knew they could produce more than enough ankle metal for them all to wear on the ride back to the base to be processed for their trials.
As it was, Pathfinder had collected far fewer criminals than Sven would have liked.
It wasn’t that they’d done badly. Sven had to remind himself they’d still netted a brig full to capacity of thieves and murderers. Still, no matter who he ever caught up with, the satisfaction in anticipating justice being served to those he helped to arrest never did seem to last in light of the endless supply of outlaws yet at large, conducting their vile business as usual in the universe.
At least he’d never be out of a job.
As Lieutenant Junior Grade Saaba was laid up in sickbay on her concussion recovery watch, Lofthammer was the next on the command chain in ship Security. He had already finished interviewing six of the pirates. They hadn’t been very helpful, but he hadn’t drilled them that hard either. The first four he interviewed two at a time. They were just a bunch of lackeys– not high enough on the food chain to know anything very valuable. All the same he’d gotten a couple of names from them, names he suspected would turn out to be aliases. As he questioned them in pairs, he watched them fumble through looking at one another for confirmation of all of their answers. They were stupid and they were scared. Their identities had come back from a biometrics check over subspace. They were amateurs, new hirelings. Which was good news for them, even if they didn’t think so right now. Being caught this early in their criminal careers meant there was a better chance they’d wise up and reform while doing their time.
After their little get together, Sven had a one on one with the Bajoran henchman. He was a bit more steely willed– a tough streak probably developed from a life of hard knocks. With his biometrics from a scan, Sven had found no less than six Warrants for his arrest, in half a dozen different sovereign systems, under as many aliases. He hadn’t been ready to cooperate, so Sven had told him how many hours were left in the ride to the station in order to let him decide if he had something he wanted to share to give himself a leg up in with the prosecution before the piracy and murder charges were officially filed. There was a chance, he knew, they would lose him to extradition demands.
And now, he’d pulled out the Naussican from the tank. The Naussicaan had been unpleasant, but that was a baseline for the species over all. If he hadn’t spit at Sven while talking, Sven would have known he was putting him on. But no matter how much growling or puffed up posturing his interviewee put on, the Deputy continued to read through his notes and ask his questions in monotone. It had been a long time since he’d let something peeve him enough to get hot under the collar in the interview room, at least not visibly. When your whole job was hunting down the worst scum in half the galaxy, It was actually tough to be disturbed by the usual attitudes. He had just calmly dried the nausicaan’s spittle off his forehead with a kerchief from his vest, refolded the square and tucked it back away a couple of times between questions.
“Let’s start over again. My sources tell me your name is Metjin Luuveyichk Yatzjeirnit, am I pronouncing that correctly?”
He snorted. “Your tiny, tuskless, huumon face hole is not capable of pronouncing my name!”
“I’ll take that to mean I made a fair approximation of it. So does that mean you’re the son of Horvagnit Luuveyichk Chaggnoch, the elder?”
He pounded the fixed table with his manacled hands, his head full of braids bouncing as he filled more of the space between them. “Do not bring my grandmother into this!”
“Your grandmother, the physicist and professor? I bet she thought you had a bright future ahead of you. I mean, imagine my surprise, when I got a hit on your identity and discovered you have a degree from Kadam College on Dessica.”
Yatz growled.
“I agree. It’s not the most prestigious of schools out there, but I’m looking at your transcript here and you didn’t have the worst grades. You even made the Dean’s list for a couple of semesters. Why didn’t you go for your masters on Alpha Tauri, or Dopteria? You could have tried your luck, even, and sent an application to schools on Risa or Trill.” He pursed his lips. “Well, anyway, you can pass the time studying while you’re in prison for your part in the deaths of Gregory Matthers, Torinne Javosk, and Ralph Bridgers. All I want to know is if you care to make any statements for me to add to your processing paperwork.”
“I will make you a statement! You are the murderers! The Feds killed my Father, my brother, my clansmen! The Federation is merchant of death and chaos!”
Lofthammer tilted his head with interest. The more violently emotive a prisoner got, the more they usually were brimming to tell something gnawing at them. Sven was wishing right about then that he’d secured the wrist irons behind his prisoner, in case he started getting ideas in the heat of his emotion. Switching them now would probably dampen the progress he was making however. Casually, Lofthammer rested a hand on his sidearm. “Care to illuminate me?”
“The blockade of Lugan, meant to drive out General Gr’lingatz! Many died on the planet, including my father. Half of my extended family were devastated by the riots!” Yatz was beating himself in the chest with his manacled fists to show his powerful feelings on the matter. “I no longer care about school or other distractions of the Federate Dungbrains! The right is with the strongest in body, the strongest in will! This is the first principle of my clan! We do not lie, pretending to be of the weak and then preying on them in secret, like your masters.”
“Masters?”
“You, Deputy Huumon,” He tilted his head back and forth mockingly. “Are a little toe of a big boot, crushing people where ever you go.”
“I see,” said Lofthammer, not giving a spit what Yatz thought of politics. Idealism ran rampant in the criminal community in one stripe or another. It didn’t have to make sense. “Do you wish to testify against any of your crewmates, Allers Tergosa, or Oremmu Sh’azikress, or your Captain… Harv?” Those three were more or less the brains of the operation, so far as brains went among this lot.
“They are nothing to me.”
“So it shouldn’t be too hard then. We can start with how long ago you came into business together.”
The Nausicaan sat back a little. “My father owed a debt to Harv before he was killed.”
A quick look up on a small padd told Lofthammer that the aforementioned blockade due to which the prisoner’s father had supposedly died had been a couple of years long a decade ago. “Around 2388, then?” He said, looking back up quickly. Even with another security guard in the interview room, Lofthammer knew better than to take his full attention off of a dangerous prisoner like Yatz.
“I was repaying his debt by enlisting on the crew. If I had not, my father’s debt would have been visited upon my family on Dessica. They are scientists and teachers and know nothing of this way of life.”
“And have you broken even on the debt yet?”
The Nausicaan snarled again. Lofthammer had seen enough Nausicaan facial expressions to know this was a kind of a frown.
“I take it Harv’s been moving the goalposts on you. You haven’t been getting a fair share of the take, so you haven’t paid it back as fast as you expected.”
“I would have evened the score soon enough!” Yatz snapped back.
That sounded to Lofthammer like a thinly veiled threat to stab Harv through the gills. “If you testify against him it will probably be the next best thing.”
“Huumon revenge is weak. Blood is never satisfied with blood.”
Sven found himself not entirely disagreeing. There were plenty of rotten people he'd met that, in some bygone age, would have found themselves at the end of a rope after all the disturbing things they'd done to innocent folk. He could easily imagine himself tying their nooses and making sure the knots were fashioned right. But revenge wasn't part of the job.
"It’s the best I can offer.”
“Fah! I am done talking to you, Deputy Huumon.”
Compared to his tight lipped Bajoran compatriot, Yatz had practically been a chatterbox. Disinterested in dragging out the conversation, Lofthammer pressed his lips together in a faux smile. “It’s been a pleasure. I’ll walk you back.”
