Sneaky -- SD 10402.01

[LoAmi 0]

Lt. Cmdr. Lo'Ami returned to the science labs and removed the concealed tricorder from his pocket. He knew that the Romulan prisoner would not be eager to allow himself to be scanned. He didn't really expect to get anything about the Romulan security protocols out of Daise Dheno

Ne’Arrien Destorie N'Dak. Once he learned that he was a security officer, he no longer expected that he would even know where his ship was going, nor why. However, a simple five minute conversation would allow enough time for the tricorder to do its work through the interference of the security forcefields in the brig.

 

Lo'Ami looked at the readings. Romulan uniforms did indeed still contain two threads of acrylocite, a relic from the time when their ships were powered by nuclear fission reactors, and the crew may have needed a little extra protection from the radiation. Acrylocite was a fast absorber, and a slow releaser - quite simply, a way to manage radiation dosage due to short term exposure to dangerous levels of radiation. But it wasn't the Romulan's health that directly concerned the science officer. As a slow releaser, the threads may also contain a record of recent radiation exposure. Two low level radiation signatures were still detectable. One was clearly from the Thoron sensor-blocking field set up by Arcadia's away team. The second was quite a bit weaker and more subtle. The delta radiation signature most likely came from the alien ship's reactor, as there were no known sources on Romulan ships. Lo'Ami quickly looked back at the fragmentary data they had painstakingly obtained from the Salk Observatory. A delta radiation surge could have explained the energy readings obtained from the alien ship about six hours before the observatory was destroyed, and a few minutes before the ship launched smaller vessels (shuttles?). Lo'Ami surmised that the away teams never encountered any aliens because the aliens had abandoned ship due to a core reactor radiation leak. There were no indications of the reasons for the reactor leak, nor the destruction of the observatory, but it was additional data nonetheless. Further, with the radiation levels decreasing, and, now at nonlethal levels, the aliens might decide to reclaim their ship after they returned from their mission at Skaru.

 

Lo'Ami prepared his report to the captain, and submitted it. Included in the report was the new data on the alien ship, and the only information he had obtained verbally about the prisoner - his name, rank, position, and the name of his ship.

 

Just then, an unintelligible sound was broadcast over the shipwide comm system. Lo'Ami hit the trace button, which placed its origin as Lt. Nemesis' quarters. His first instinct was to tap the panel back and warn Nemesis that his recent promotion did not give him the excuse to play with the comm system, but, then, he remembered that Nemesis was a prisoner of the Romulans. A lifesign scan indicated a single simian lifesign, slightly different from any other he had seen before, in Nemesis' quarters. The lifesign registered as Nemesis' pet, named "Mini-me." Lo'Ami left the science labs and headed to Nemesis' quarters. He did not have any extra time on his hands to feed, watch and care for Nemesis' pet, so, he planned to retrieve it and turn it over to the zoology lab for safekeeping until Nemesis' return. Little did he know how intriguing he would find this particular "pet."