Injured Romulan Demands Immediate Audience with Picard
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Riker commands the energization of the transporter, bringing Setal aboard the Enterprise.
Setal materializes and immediately demands to see Picard, ignoring his injuries and alarming Riker and Worf with his urgency.
Riker insists on taking Setal to Sickbay first, but Setal asserts that his information is too urgent, hinting at a threat to the Federation's survival.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Frenetic urgency layered over controlled insistence—appears desperate but focused on a specific objective.
Materializes with a visible neck injury, scans the room briefly, refuses the offered medical aid, and insists on immediate audience with Captain Picard while claiming to possess information essential to the Enterprise's survival.
- • Gain immediate access to Captain Picard (or his attention).
- • Deliver critical intelligence without delay or interference.
- • Avoid being detained, treated, or questioned by lower officers.
- • Only immediate contact with the captain will ensure his information is acted upon.
- • Delay (medical or procedural) will jeopardize the mission or his survival.
- • Presenting himself as injured will create moral pressure to be admitted and heard.
Suspicious and tense; restrained readiness to use force if necessary.
Positions himself behind Riker with his hand on his phaser, watching the Romulan with overt distrust and readiness to act if the situation becomes hostile.
- • Protect the ship and crew from a potential Romulan threat.
- • Prevent any deceptive maneuver or weaponization of the arrival.
- • Ensure the Romulan cannot escape or endanger personnel.
- • Romulans are likely to deceive or provoke; assume hostile intent.
- • Immediate defensive posture reduces risk and preserves options.
- • Security must outrank hospitality until intentions are clear.
Professional calm with guarded curiosity—willing to help but alert to the diplomatic implications.
Issues the transporter command, steps forward toward the newly materialized Romulan, notes the injury, and attempts to follow Starfleet procedure by offering immediate medical care while deferring any interrogation until Sickbay.
- • Ensure the Romulan receives medical attention and is secured safely.
- • Contain immediate risk and prevent an uncontrolled diplomatic incident.
- • Gather initial facts to report up the chain of command.
- • Starfleet has an obligation to render aid to injured parties.
- • Field reports from unknown foreign agents require verification before operational trust is granted.
- • Preventing escalation starts with following procedure and informing command.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Setal's Romulan uniform — notably lacking insignia — is the primary visual clue to his origin and ambiguous status. The garment's distressed condition signals recent trauma and is treated as both proof of a genuine emergency and a possible staging device for deception.
A standard-issue phaser is physically referenced as Worf keeps his hand on it, signaling readiness to escalate to force. Its presence functions as an immediate deterrent and a silent check on Setal's movements and claims.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Transporter Platform is the precise locus of crisis: Setal's sudden materialization makes the pad both a technical origin point and a dramatic stage, concentrating attention and making the arrival simultaneously medical event and potential provocation.
Sickbay is invoked as the default next step — the institutional mechanism for care and, implicitly, for controlled questioning under medical supervision. It functions as the proposed procedural response that would delay direct contact with the captain.
Transporter Room Two is the operational threshold where the Romulan's arrival is processed and where procedure collides with political consequence. Technicians operate consoles, senior officers converge, and the room's function turns a technical rescue into a moment of urgent policy choice.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
No narrative connections mapped yet
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Key Dialogue
"RIKER: Energize."
"SETAL: I must see your captain immediately."
"SETAL: This cannot wait. I have information vital to your survival."