Tight Spot
Posted on 26 Mar 2025 @ 9:21pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Senior Deputy Marshal: Sven-Erik Lofthammer - FMS & Deputy Marshal: T'Sai - FMS
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: OC, (environmental deck) - Conference Center, Exhibit Hall
Timeline: MD 27 1450HRS
1517 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure
The display stall was neatly paneled with an arrayed backdrop which had been prepared to be layered over with a mix of hard and soft light holo-projections. Included in the setup was a physical set of risers for guests to walk up and back down again. Sven began to yank off the display facade panels, casting them into the walking aisle. Small mounting clips burst and cracked and flew off in all directions. He didn’t have time to fiddle around deciding whether the tie downs twisted clockwise or counter.
Under the risers it was dark, but after a couple of seconds Sven’s shades adjusted to the lighting conditions and projected an image for him as if it was evenly lit, revealing that most of the space beneath the risers was hollow.
There were small nodes under each stair, the kind of thing that might be a pressure switch. Sven’s mind was looking for bomb triggers, so that’s exactly what he took them to be at first sight before considering they could trigger a pop song or a neon light show or, most likely, the next holographic cue in an engineering poster display, just the same.
The dead space of the blocked sensor readings was very close, leaving a blank rectangular block in his visual which grew larger as he crawled under the risers. The largest gap in the riser was under the top stair, naturally, and it afforded the big man enough space to twist himself out of the army crawl he had used to get inside and examine the underside of the top riser.
He reached up, intending to pop this panel out as he had the rest, but second guessed himself. He scratched the underside of his chin, thinking better of brute forcing the installation.
“Marshal Lofthammer?” The voice came from his feet and he saw the face of an Antican woman, her narrow, grey speckled snout turning side to side sizing up the space before she hauled herself into it. Sven guessed she herself was a lot slimmer under all of her bulky armor. He shifted a little sideways to allow her to fit into the central gap with him. “Sergeant Tarrie Charger,” she introduced herself. “EOD Specialist.”
“Sarge Charger…” Lofthammer had to say it outloud to fully appreciate all of the irony contained in this little bomb sniffer wolf woman. “Where’s the rest of your team?”
Charger pointed to their feet, where another teammate Lofthammer couldn’t make out waved at them. Lofthammer knew they worked in pairs then four man teams, and if properly responding, a second team would be in the wings.
“What are we looking at, Marshal?”
“No active scans,” he said quickly. “And no one on top of the riser, we’ve got pressure sensors.”
“Hear that, Karlson?” Charger barked.
“Passive scans only, stay on the deck,” the man at the opening of the crawlspace confirmed.
Charger and Lofthammer were chest to chest, both of their hands and eyes fully engaged in examining the panel overhead. “There’s a spring-loaded locking switch on the left and the right.”
Lofthammer reached up to pull the tab on his side.
“Hold up. We have to assume the assembly is potentially a trigger set.” She took a moment to use a small scope to trace around the framing. After a moment of examining her side, she scooted around, twisting with Lofthammer until they traded spaces. He’d at one time shared a cramped shower stall just about this size with a girlfriend and this was about as close, only his former girlfriend hadn’t been in a tritanium layered lead vest at the time. The maneuver of place switching done, Charger checked the second switch. “It’s innocuous. Safe to pull. Ready to catch?”
“Ready.”
As they released the setting the floor above dropped into their hands. Neither Lofthammer nor Charger could see over it as they brought it down over their heads and both began to try and twist and scoot to create the space needed to lower the hefty object to the deck.
They reached a bottleneck. Both of them couldn’t reverse crawl themselves back out at once.
“I wish we could assume this thing wasn’t transporter signal triggered,” Charger muttered. Nearly every threat had been easily overcome since the advent of the transporter. But as everyone knew, better mousetraps just lead to craftier mice– or in this context, transport signal trigger bombs. “You first, Marshal.”
“I got it, Sergeant,” he insisted, knowing he had the strength to lower it after she let go. Seeing her hesitation, he intuited what Charger really wanted. Priority. The room to do her job. “As soon as I back out with it, it’s all yours.”
“Don’t let it bump.” Charger growled at him as she let the full weight of the base plate into his hands and moved out of the display structure the way she had come.
“Right, got it.” Sven didn’t bother recounting to Charger the careless treatment he had seen the Tellerite handle it with while he had it on a hand cart. Either it wasn’t a bomb, or it hadn’t been armed at the time, or else the supposed Professor was just okay with the possibility of taking himself out with his science project same as the rest. There were other possibilities too… Maybe in spite of all his bluster about the delicate nature of the project he’d crafted himself, the guy was just paid for delivery and didn’t ask what was in the box.
Sven did his best to keep his word and not jostle it. He slid backwards into the gradually narrower gap under the risers until he was out of the tall center space and could manage to set the plate down. He got a look at it properly then, visually confirming for himself that it was definitely the object he’d had on his check in table.
Sven maneuvered himself back, edging the device along after him. He’d barely extricated himself from the risers before he was muscled aside by the rest of the Marine bomb squad, all of whom were far bigger than the little Sergeant Tarrie Charger. It was clear despite her diminutive size however, that she was running the team as they did some kind of evaluation rundown on the item at hand, calling out their findings to Charger.
At first he tried to get their attention to tell them he had some specs from the security check he’d run, but it seemed someone on the team had already gotten those from Security. He was more than redundant now. A hover cart was on hand, and the device was set in some kind of containment field on the cart before a heavy fitted cover was brought in by a second team and fitted over it. There were marks all over the case– multiple radiation symbols. Various energy cancelling marks including a code Lofthammer knew indicating Thalaron radiation under a ‘no’ symbol. Lofthammer marveled, wondering what all the shell was layered with and if it wasn’t possible to build bunkers out of it. With a satisfying thud of an engaged suction seal, they had a lid on it. And then the small parade of Marines marched out of the hall, all inside of ten minutes. In their high octane wake, the place was dead silent.
Lofthammer looked around at the rows and rows of vacant displays, considering his next move. He keyed his Commline. “Deputy Marshal T’Sai.”
“Yes, sir?” The dry female vulcan voice returned over the line.
“I got a couple of suspects I need brought in for questioning.” He’d been so focused on the potential bomb, he’d let a whole fifteen or so minutes pass when his suspects could have realized they were being sniffed out. Lofthammer paused and forwarded T’Sai the travel papers of Tellerite ‘Professor Fezzer Davit II’ and his Andorian traveling pal. “...Last seen by yours truly in the Auditorium. Maybe twenty, thirty minutes ago. Get security to check people leaving the conference hall and the environmental deck.”
“Consider it done. Outbounds?”
“Have tower control hold any outbound transports, say, for fifteen minutes. If we don’t have them in custody by then–”
“There is no reason we should not have them in custody by then,” T'Sai said with the kind of Vulcan indifference that conveyed absolute confidence.
“Thanks, T’Sai. See you back at the office.”
Sven let his arm fall to his side and scrubbed a hand over his face. He’d have to give the all clear and let the attendee folks back in, of course. But on his way to the door he caught sight of the rows and rows of prepared lunch tables in the adjoining dining hall. He might not have been certain whether or not he had foiled a bombing, but he was pretty sure either way no one was going to miss one meatball sub from that spread.
