Relative Match
Posted on 31 May 2025 @ 9:58pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Senior Deputy Marshal: Sven-Erik Lofthammer - FMS & Deputy Marshal: T'Sai - FMS
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Security
2347 words - 4.7 OF Standard Post Measure
“That the Davit guy?”
It was dim in the observation hall when Lofthammer led the way inside. Calliope was still in her event getup as she came up to the one-sided glass of the interview room. She could see inside as Deputy Marshal T’Sai questioned an obstinate Tellerite. The Vulcan carried on with common orienting questions in basic monotone, with less emotion than the computer had custom built into its own synthesized vocalizations.
“Upon embarking for Obsidian Command, at which port did you first board?”
“This trifling information is on all of my travel records. I don’t see why I’m being demanded to recount the obvious. Surely this is a fishing expedition to try to catch some insignificant forgotten detail. Next you’ll want me to tell you to the hundredth decimal place how many credits I paid for my dinners on the flight!”
“Humor me,” she deadpanned. “Where did you catch the first space flight on your journey?”
“I’m hardly going to play along just to provide a bunch of midwit badge polishers with the means to stave off the boredom of their completely meaningless jobs. How do you manage to botch standing around staring at things? Gifted. All of you.”
“Very well.” The Deputy pursed her already full lips for a moment, betraying her current state of consideration and controlled non-reaction. “Let us skip to the most recent facts. You were found plying a second identity in the maintenance access. There are four more ident casters that were removed from your person at the check in desk. That is six identities for one person.”
“So now you can count? Addition even? Four plus one plus one is six, is it? Very good, Deputy. You must be so proud. You’re a prodigy among your kind.”
“My early arithmetic skills are indeed satisfactory." She didn't care to think about her actual higher math scores and her trouble with advanced placement tests overall. Her limitations in such matters had directed her career choices away from academics in general. But she made it a rule never to let the interviewee touch such nerves which she instead processed through traditional means in order to always maintain presence of mind. "But this hardly addresses my question. What will you be able to do as six people which you cannot accomplish as one very highly qualified individual? Perhaps you can assist my limited understanding in the matter, Professor.”
“Is that mockery creeping into your tone? I’ll have you know, I keep other idents just in case of emergencies when abroad, precisely like whatever this excuse for a security department is overseeing at what was advertised to be a civilized exchange of knowledge! Clearly a threat arose and your department’s idea of handling it is to confine everyone into one convenient kill zone! Trust no one, prepare for the worst, is what I say to that! Can you fault me?”
“I see,” she said neutrally, hardly about to stoop to agree with the Tellerite’s makeshift explanation, particularly when the concern had arisen surrounding his own suspicious carry on case. “By which of these six aliases should we refer to you? Perhaps there is a seventh you are failing to disclose? Honesty, I can assure you, is the best policy in these affairs.”
“I am Professor Fezzer Davit the Second! First in my class of Bergomis School of Technology! Groundbreaking researcher of hyper massive folding tectonic modelling states! Inventor of the electro-shift meter! Author of Colliding Spheres: reading the past into the future! Professor Davit!" He pinched his ample arm flab for emphasis. "In the very flesh!”
T'Sai took a moment to enter his statement, although she did not find it any more compelling with him shouting a list of easily discoverable accomplishments which could be gleaned from a simple biography, perhaps even on the end notes of the same authoritative scientific publication which he had named among his supposed accomplishments. “And how is it you came by identity clones of station personnel? Was there anyone on the station or off who may have worked to provide them to you?”
“This is ridiculous. Patently outrageous! And I know patents! I have seventy-nine! I demand to be either charged and provided legal representation or released from this third rate, weeknight performance of procedural dinner theater!”
“Dinner Theater? If it is a meal you find lacking, I am able to have sustenance provided.”
“An insult!” the Tellerite snapped, leaning into the table, obviously enjoying anything he could twist into emotional response from his chilly inquisitor. “You can’t even have the decency of veiling it like a proper Vulcan! You’re coming apart at the seams, Deputy- probably because you’re one of those lowest denominator law enforcement thugs just waiting to snap on an innocent man and get away with cruelty. I won’t be intimidated! I demand to speak to your superior officer! I’m in danger! Help!” he shook a fist at the camera in the room. “ I’m going to press charges!”
“Very well.” She stood up, primly gathering the evidence padd and lifting her eyebrow at the unreasonable fellow. “If you would excuse me, momentarily.” Unconvinced by his responses, she quite noticeably and intentionally failed to use his falsely presumed name. She left without telling him anything at all about the case they had brought in and since he had demanded her superior officer and invoked a right to counsel before she had the chance to do so, it would simply have to wait until the arrival of a lawyer.
Left to himself, the Tellerite shuffled around, puttering and muttering.
“So?” Lofthammer prompted Zahn once more after the show in the room before them. She hadn't jumped to defend the interviewee as her supposed old coworker. Clearly she had been thinking.
“It looks like him…” There was a hint of doubt in her voice. “But his nose is… less pronounced than the Professor’s.”
“You remember Davit with a bigger snoz?” Lofthammer tried to ask neutrally, but a soft snort of his own escaped in spite of himself. This guy’s nose was already hard to beat.
“The hair color is similar. Grey. But… I notice his roots are coming in darker.”
Sven nodded, rubbing his chin in thought. “Treatment…”
“The voice is really similar. He has the same inflections. It’s just… a little off. Maybe he was just always more pleasant with me in our verbal spars. Computer,” she brought up a small holo display from her cuff. “Compare vocalizations of the man in interview room four with the post graduate lectures of Professor Fezzer Davit. The Second.” She amended the last, knowing that Davit’s father of the same name had likewise been a lecturing professor.
There was a short loading cycle as the computer ran the analysis. “Ninety-two percent match.”
“Computer-” Sven leaned in over Calliope’s wrist display as if that would help the computer to hear him better. “Does Fezzer Davit the second have any brothers?”
“No male siblings are on record.”
“Cousins? Male ones?”
“On record, Professor Fezzer Davit the Second is known to have four male first cousins, twelve male second cousins, forty-two male third cousins–”
Calliope turned away from Sven to get a little personal space. “Run a likeness match on those cousins with the guest in interview room number four. Display close matches.”
The files flicked through the images and biometrics as the computer ran them against the present scans, Narrowed the selection to three and then to one. Calliope held her arm up as the final chosen profile images cycled, ghosting them over the face of the guy on the other side of the one-way glass.
“Lappin Davit-Silmadd, Replimat Service Assistant, Bergomis School of Technology, First cousin to Professor Fezzer Davit the second. 100% match.” The computer intoned.
“Food tray guy. Huh. Why didn’t the computer detect this match at the boarding gate?”
“It didn’t have to.” Calliope answered for the computer. “Someone had to have front loaded an affirmative bio check in the logic train of of the biometric circuit.”
Sven looked at her, kind of impressed. “You say that like somebody with sneaking around experience.”
The Orion shrugged. “I’ve run a few of my own ops. Now that we know to look for it, I'll have the computer searched for the file fragment.” She frowned, unsure how well it could be masked if regular diagnostics hadn't already scrubbed it.
Sven folded his arms and leaned back. “I told you I had a hunch about this guy. Assuming his cousin’s identity to move something for someone.”
“I guess we won’t know to who.”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“You took the bait out of commission.”
“I did. I did.” He rubbed his growing five o clock shadow and looked past her thoughtfully.
Calliope could see the glint in his eye as if he was toying with her. But before she could ask what he had up his sleeve, the door to the narrow viewing gallery opened.
“There you are, Sir.” She said to Lofthammer. “Commander,” she denoted lightly, having grown accustomed to her superior spending time with the Starfleet Officer. She preferred to presume it was for professional reasons and spend no further thought on the matter. “Our guest would like a word with my superior.”
Sven sighed, resigned to the fact as he had already witnessed it. “That’d be me. Commander, can you please swipe our research over for the records?”
It was just a practiced flip of the wrist and authenticated code entry, and T’Sai was immediately viewing their newest information. “This is an unsurprising development. There mus have been a data insertion in the biometric file circuit—”
“Musta been. Any nibbles on the line?”
“Not as yet. I have situated several crewmen on watch.”
“Don’t let them look too interested, tell ‘em to hang back some, or they’ll scare the bigger fish.”
“I will convey the message.” Deputy Marshal T’Sai confirmed with a tilt of her head before continuing on.
“Wait…” Calliope said slowly as T'Sai disappeared down the corridor, the pieces coming into place. "Nibbles on the line?"
“Aw, I already put it back. Not the original. Made up a convincing-from-the-outside dummy and cleaned up our mess before we reopened the hall. Unless the bit of a delay opening the Exhibit hall scared off the pick-up, we’ll see anyone making a grab, or even just looking suspicious about it. Wanna place bets it’s somebody from engineering with direct computer core access?”
“Seems like safe money.”
“Does at that.” Sven cleared his throat like someone consigned to an unpleasant job. “Anyways. I’m gonna go and have a chat of my own with your old co-worker’s first cousin here. Anything you want me to pass along? Compliments on his fine nasal structure?”
“Yeah,” Calliope smirked, knowing they were stirring the pot a little. Nothing boiled a Tellerites blood quite so much as paying them a kind word. “Make sure to compliment him for me. Tell him I like his dye job. Very subtle. He even remembered to get his brows. But he should really go natural, makes him look so much younger.”
“Wow, It’d be awkward coming from me. He might think I’m making a pass." Sven hitched a thumb over his shoulder towards the interview room. "You want to tell him yourself?"
“I’ve got to get going.”
“Back to networking with the Ferrengi? Hobnobbing with brainacs at dinner–”
“No. I’m headed back to my quarters to work on something. I’ve been working on a project.”
“The project?” Sven had asked her sometime ago to read him in on her one-woman intelligence undertaking.
“While I was prepping it to share with you, I got to thinking that I need to do more than sit on this and pick at threads. I mean you and I can't take on this whole thing alone. It's potentially much bigger than we can properly stage. With all of our recent related arrests and the fresh lines we're drawing now, I think I’m ready to take it up to the Admiral.”
“You don’t want to fly it by DeHavilland first?”
“She has all my summaries. Or Zayne does, at least. He just date stamps them with the rest of security files and throws them in the read folder. I don’t know; it’s like someone told him not to take me seriously or something.” Sven got locked into her frustrated emotion as she recounted something she’d already told him a half a dozen times. But he made no motion to stop her this round, either. Maybe it was the pheromones, his reasoning brain reasoned. In any case he wanted to be supportive, so he listened and looked on as she emoted with her hands. “Zayne’s from Intel. He should be able to see the positive hits I’m getting and the investigative progress I’ve made. I don’t think it was DeHavilland stopping him following up with me. I doubt he’s even updating her. She’s been reasonable with me since we got back from the Korix ride. Anyway." She huffed, trying to come back to center and avoid actually getting worked up about it again. "Captain DeHavilland has her own three ring circus. I want to ask Sepandiyar for something outside of base resources. I need off-station manpower and resources.”
Lofthammer could sense her eagerness. She was a proverbial shark in the water smelling blood. “You want yourself a Task Force.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly what I wa–”
They both jumped at a sudden pounding on the other side of the glass.
“I want out of here! I have rights, you know!”
“I gotta go,” Sven said to her. “Read him his rights.”
Smirking, Calliope gave him a lazy, informal salute. “Marshal.”
He returned the gesture in kind, excusing himself. “Commander.”
