In her initial moments aboard the Trabe carrier, Celestis Ascendant, Flavia ir-Llantrisant resisted the urge to palm her tricorder.  She had materialised in a wide corridor panelled in metal terrazzo.  She used her sight, sense of smell, and keen Romulan hearing to observe the people around her. Trabe of all ages diverted their hurried paths of travel to avoid bumbling into her away team. The people were what her character would care about, she assumed.

Security Officer Jurij reached for his phaser similarly hesitantly and appeared to decide against it when the Trabe showed them due deference. Doctor Nelli clutched their medikit to their trunk and started to give orders to her team of medics.

Governor Vesht waved at them from down the hallway. Her gesture was lethargic as if she had yet to decide if they were worth the effort.

“We already showed your other officers the way to engineering,” Vesht said. Inconvenienced by this interaction, she suggested, “Can they take you with them?”

Flavia stepped forward.

“I’m Doctor V’lin,” Flavia declared, the way Starfleeters always spoke in the satirical holos back home. “Take us to your patients.”

In Constellation’s transporter room, Flavia had shrugged on a leather Starfleet field jacket over her jumpsuit. She’d also tied her hair back into a bun and taken a Starfleet tricorder. Commander Calumn had quoted regulations at her, but since nobody physically restrained her from slipping into the black and teal uniform top, Flavia assumed those couldn’t have been important regulations. Merely decorative ones.

Governor Vesht had already bristled at Starfleet’s mission of exploration in her initial negotiation with Taes. As a member of a displaced people without a true homeworld in the Romulan Free State — like the Trabe — Flavia understood what an extravagant luxury it was to journey for its own sake. However, the Trabe had made the mistake of accepting their lot rather than grasping for something better.

So, Flavia decided it wisest to blend in as a Vulcan Starfleet doctor. Vesht certainly wasn’t going to be able to tell the difference. And even if she could, she was probably restrained by social mores that wouldn’t let her ask the question.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Vesht said. She approached Flavia’s away team at a quickstep and pointed out a side corridor branching from an intersection. “It’s this way.”

Striding by Vesht’s side, Flavia quickly asked, “You spoke of fending off a robot boarding party. Did they maim many of your crew?”

“No, thank the spirit,” Vesht replied. A relieved sigh escaped her at that one small fortune. “Those things never stepped one chrome foot on my ship. We took casualties from the savagery of their attack on our home.”

“Artificial intelligence will destroy us all,” Flavia said too quickly. She wasn’t acting. In her opinion, Starfleet computers were given too much free will; the creation of the Pralor android army was begging for an extinction event.

But then Flavia quickly adopted Vesht’s language to invade her good graces. “Our reports say those things are locked into an eternal war with some other crazy robots. What could they possibly want from your righteous crew and families?”

Vesht scoffed, gently clasping Flavia’s upper arm, guiding her as they rounded a corner. She raised her eyebrows and looked deeply into Flavia’s eyes.

“Those things were designed to be servile,” Vesht explained. “That means they have no spark of invention. They don’t know how to create; they only know how to take.”

“So it’s about resources?” Flavia guessed. “Deuterium, water, torpedoes, dilithi–”

“No, nothing like that,” Vesht said. The tone of her insistence and the movement of her eyes told Flavia that dilithium was a difficult subject for Vesht.

And then, to cover over her sudden outburst, Vesht said, “Those things wanted tripolymer plasma batteries. They called them chronodynamic power modules? They demanded our prototypes and research. But we don’t conduct research here. We’re just trying to stay alive.”

“Chronodynamic power,” Flavia remarked, sounding it out slowly. She shook her head at Vesht and referred to the APUs as “Beasts!” one more time.

She said it particularly loudly to cover the flipping open of her tricorder behind her back.