Promises, Promises
Posted on 28 Jul 2025 @ 10:45pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Senior Deputy Marshal: Sven-Erik Lofthammer - FMS
Edited on on 29 Jul 2025 @ 8:25am
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: The Brig, OC
1687 words - 3.4 OF Standard Post Measure
Calliope stepped back from the interview room, the security guards flanking the door falling in on either side of her and filling the space she had just left. At the table remained the Orion pirate she had captured on patrol, Allers Tergosa. He looked relaxed at the interview table, an expression of complacency, or even mild pleasure in his face. He’d been in and out of his fare share of facilities, and the station accommodations rated highly compared to many other conditions he’d done time in. It was better, even, than many of the ships he’d worked. But most of all, he appreciated every conversation with Commander Zahn.
Calliope felt he was taking his sweet time teasing out everything he knew, forcing the pleasure of her company, making her play out the posture and attitude she was most disgusted with. But even feigning the slightest bit the part of an Orion Mistress kept him talking.
She brushed a thumb upward on her padd and the copious information she had to follow up on this time. Most of it, she knew, would lead nowhere, or to nothing of importance. Yesterday one of the people he mentioned while regaling her about his various jobs had turned up under another alias in association with a smuggling ring, and based on another one of his location descriptions, she’d had a policing outfit in a neighboring system locate a lunar thieves den, although it had been recently abandoned. The cove’s rats-nests of rooms were being turned over and searched for anything of import to try and ascertain who else was operating there before being tipped off. It was a good lead.
You couldn’t take a pirate’s word at face value, but she’d verify everything she could and sift truth from creative license dross. He liked to talk. But only to her. And only so long as she let herself sound just a little silky.
In spite of the progress being made, she still felt dirty every time she talked to him. It was cultural for him, she knew, and Calliope tried to let that fact help her relax slightly, no matter how guarded and resentful she really felt. The playacting reminded her of the Orion nature on which their various societies, empires, settlements and syndicates were built. Few of them sounded to her like worlds she would have wanted to grow up on. But then, she had to admit, those most steeped in Orion culture probably found the Federation bland and not worth committing to, especially lacking figures to whom to assign their fealty.
The guards had the irons back on Tergosa and led the big guy back out into the hallway, past her. The look he gave her was somehow simultaneously thirsty and subservient. She did all she could to maintain expressionless eyes, keeping a lid on a weird mix of pity and self-preservation that told her to back away from inherent danger while his hulking figure overshadowed her. Somehow her boots stayed planted on the deck long enough for him to pass out of view.
Calliope exhaled heavily.
“Commander, can we talk?”
She tensed a little, before looking around to see Marshal Lofthammer in the passageway, and then walked the long corridor that separated them to join him at the juncture. He let down the force-field that was part of the multiple measures between the holding area and the security offices, and once she was through, re-energized it. Calliope looked up at him.
“You still getting the slow drip from our pal Tergie?” he asked.
“It’s painful.”
“Could always resort to some other classic techniques. There’s always Klingon pain sticks.”
She looked dubiously at Sven.
“Yeah, you’re right.” Sven smirked. “He’d get excited, likely as not.” Sensing she wanted a change of subject, Sven moved quickly on. “I got some other news I knew you’d want to hear first thing.”
They started to walk together, Calliope leading. “Go.”
“It’s about your mother.”
Calliope restrained a reactive reflex. Ever since the ship to ship confrontation with her supposed cousin, she’d wanted her mother’s safety confirmed. Lofthammer had asked her to leave it to him. Was it good news? Bad? “What about my mother?”
“Just got her to a safe location.”
Relieved, Calliope sighed. “Is she on her way here?”
“What?”
“Is she on her way now? To OC.”
Lofthammer shook his head slowly. “Station’s not safe for her.”
“What do you mean? We have families and everything here. It’s a secure Starfleet installation." How far it had come in just a year, she reflected.
Lofthammer hitched a thumb back over his shoulder to holding areas. “The guys and girls you’re in with now… they find ways to get back at people held in high security asteroid prisons. Revana Nazar’s cell is one of the most brutal and vicious Syndicate cells on record. We weren’t taking any chances with your mother.”
“We?”
“Marshals service. We weren’t taking any chances,” He repeated. “We got her directly into protective custody.”
Stopping, Calliope turned to face him again. “You have her in custody?”
“Protective.”
“Where is she?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t say? Or won’t?”
He just stood silently while the reality sunk in for Zahn, watching her eyes shift from questioning to realization. Her mother was hidden, completely off the grid. “If you like,” he said in his lowest, gentlest tone. “I can get a message to her for you.”
Her mouth hung agape. “How long?”
“Until you can see her again? We can arrange visits in a secure location every few months. Holidays, things like that.”
“No.” Calliope wanted to shove him, for as much good as it would do against the mountain of a man. “How long until she can go back to Norvex?”
He continued to look right at her with his piercing baby blues, as if transmitting the obvious truth telepathically. He knew that she knew.
Calliope started walking again, quickly now, with the heat of feeling growing in each successive step. Lofthammer followed effortlessly with his natural gait.
She snapped. “That’s not what I meant when I said you could help!”
“It’s what I do, Cal. I make sure people are safe.”
“By taking her away from her whole life? She’s going to hate me!”
“She hasn’t got the right to. She was the one who got all…” He paused to rephrase some ill chosen words which were unlikely to ingratiate himself, “all, er…. wrapped up with a smooth operator swashbuckler almost forty years ago. Syndicate’s taken long enough to catch up to her. She’s lucky you talked to me.”
“Lucky? You promised me you’d get her to the station!”
“I know that’s what I said. But that was before the hit job.”
“What hit job, no one told me about any hit job!”
“The Marshals Office on Norvex stopped an active hit on your mother. There’s any number of other attempts out to collect on her, just like we suspected there could be, what with your cousin’s temper—”
“Adopted cousin.”
“I don’t think that’s a relevant distinction to…” he waved it off. “Anyways, it was already in motion. And there’s no shortage of low-lives on Norvex for the Syndicate to pay or pressure to get to her. They made the call to relocate her.”
“You don’t know where.”
“It’s not for me to know.”
“Just.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Don’t talk to me right now. I can’t.”
Fairly used to her calls for silence by now, he continued to follow, saying nothing.
Together, they got out to the check-in desk and rounded it. Lieutenant jg Saaba innocently looked up from her station and smiled at the two senior officers. “Commander, Marshal,” the Bolian started brightly, looking to be conversational. “The foot patrol on the upper level of the Promenade is about to change over. Did you want to swap in?” She was used to Lofthammer swinging himself into the schedule at random and relieving others.
“Not today, Saaba,” he said, smiling. “Put me in for the rounds on Beta tomorrow.”
“If Tergosa asks for me again, just log it. Don’t call me,” Calliope ordered while inputting her access code and closing out her visiting logs.
“Good call,” the Marshal said approvingly. “Let him get nice and antsy. Start second guessing his own story. Wonderin' if you're onto him. Begging you to let him set his lies straight, suddenly let his memories come back clearer.”
Calliope’s lips thinned as they pressed more tightly closed.
Saaba looked between Zahn and Lofthammer, uncertain why the Commander was ignoring the Marshal. Then she blurted a question, innocently enough—
“What did you talk to the Admiral about?” Saaba asked her out of the blue; her curiosity had been bubbling over ever since Tilmer had told her and the other junior officers in their friend circle that he had seen Commander Zahn going to talk to Sepandiyar on the command deck. Now was her chance to find out more to bring back to the table.
Unaware that Saaba had any knowledge of her meeting, Calliope looked momentarily caught off guard; Sven noticed that the Commander was neither confused nor denying it, and knew from Calliope mentioning it previously that she had planned to make a pitch to Admiral Sepandiyar for more resources for her investigations. Maybe even a dedicated security task force.
“So?" Sven prompted. "Did he bite?”
Calliope finished transferring some files at the desk and then tucked her padd inside her jacket, walking away.
As Zahn exited the nearest electro mag door and it slid shut and sealed behind her, Sven leaned over the desk where he knew Delta shift kept a stash of butter candies and unwrapped one for himself, crunching on it.
Saaba's eyes crinkled. “What was that about?”
Sven shrugged and then said around his hard candy, “She’ll tell me later.”
