Posted by Ensign Rand Farquharson (Yeoman First Class) in side - sim: Honoring the Ardent
She had put this plan into motion months and months ago, when Randy was still Alden’s yeoman, and Randy and Roman were butting heads and arguing like spoiled toddlers. Yes that’s how Rand saw it. Rand had spent enough time around officers to know that lost work was considered one of the worst possible things to happen to an officer’s career. Roman had let slip that very first day he’d asked her to help in the lab, that he’d lost all his notes, all his work, all his animals on the Ardent.

All those months ago, Roman had told her he had lost his entire research project previously. And then when, some time later, Roman had told her about the Ardent, well, it was pretty obvious where his project had gone.

The animals and samples could never be recovered, but the files could be. She had made an inquiry to a friend back at SF Command, who had found that the wreckage of the Ardent had been sent to Surplus Depot Z15. Rand then got in touch with the depot and found that the ships computer core had been sent to Luna Shipyards. The core was able to be physically reconstructed, but Luna did not have the facilities to restore the digital date. That led Rand to inquire to Starfleet Command’s Fleet Operations Center, Department of Starfleet Corps of Engineers, Sol Sector. It was there she finally tracked down the data. After a few trades, and several months the team was able to reconstruct the data that had been lost. This included personnel records, ship’s logs, officers’ duty logs and personal logs, and being a science vessel there were a lot of science logs. Roman’s included. Well he’d been the CSO so they were all his, technically.

The files were sent to Roman, but a few days before she received word from Eng Corps that they were sending the files out, so Rand was on the lookout for it. She intercepted it and moved it all to a data disk. She warned Randy, just in case, and then finished work early that night, and after changing out of her uniform she knocked on Roman’s door.

Rand

Roman had forgotten all about telling her about his lost notes. He thought about them, from time to time, but he’d remind himself it was gone, and he knew of no way to get it back. The Ardent had been destroyed. It had taken Engineering time to get life support systems in stable working order. The computer core had not been repaired in favour of life support and Sickbay systems. There hadn’t been much left to do. He still couldn’t technically finish the project, not without the final samples he’d lost. He wasn’t sure he’d want to, though, without Jay, who he’d done nearly all the work with.

That day hadn’t been overly busy for him, and he was glad for that, he’d been more tired lately. Not like those first days, when Rand had first caught the mistakes in his reports, but he was having some trouble sleeping. He’d gotten off duty at his usual 1800, changed out of his uniform, and then let Pipkin out and spent some time playing with her. It was earlier than he expected that he heard a knock at his door. He assumed it would be Rand. Very rarely did anyone else come to his quarters. He set Pipkin on his bed and pressed the button to let the door open.

~ Roman