"They do, and have implemented some rather barbaric testing regimens to supplement that system."

"The Founders can perfectly mimic all of the biometrics we would usually use to verify identity, and in that respect we are somewhat insecure. In the known incident of replacement, blood samples were taken to demonstrate who was the imposter, as any part of a founder that is removed from them immediately reverts to their natural, gelatinous state, but that individual found a workaround within an hour, and so we assume that the only known detection method is unlikely to succeed on any imposter who knows to expect it."

"However, all non-emergency orders are passed through a decentralized bureaucracy, requiring approval from three different individuals in different cities before they can be followed, and emergency orders currently require authorization from two thirds of the Detapa council. As very few Founders are willing to travel alone, the Cardassian people are more than willing to believe in the overall integrity of the State."

"Do you predict that the Klingons would react positively to news of a superior method for identity verification? Or is that not their true determining factor in waging this war?"

"Oh, they'd love it. It would change nothing though."

"They like war. The longest they've been at peace in recent memory was only 10 years, and that ended in a civil war."

"The stinking brutes consider the pinnacle of their culture to have been over a thousand years ago, when one of them invented a more efficient method of stabbing, and they're constantly trying to re-enact it. - But they had no such reason to declare war on everyone else, and likely wouldn't trust any newer testing method, especially if it comes out of Cardassia."

"Ah well. Inconvenient, but obviously there would be less war if not for those who pursue it when inefficient and even disadvantageous."

"Indeed."

"I am looking forward to being able to provide you with more details, our methods may be relatively secure, but they are not as swift as one might hope in some situations."

"Of course."

And R'vneh will return to designing preliminary psionic technology that the Cardassians might be able to actually build.

Psi-lensing diamonds is not something that Cardassians have much experience in, but diamonds are one of the easiest arrangements of carbon to replicate. If R'vneh can sketch the precise shape of the lens it will be much easier than miniaturizing the necessary radiation shielding.

Do they have any other equipment from the Koon Heya? Any of the computers, including the minimal system in the cryopod, would have some basic definitions of technical specs. R'vneh could use those to define a lens exactly. Though the psi-lensing process requires treating the lenses with a high-intensity psionic field, so they aren't ideal as a first step.

Fair enough, Pirak will focus on radiation shielding for now.

She appreciates the help. How much radiation shielding will they actually need? ...How big is this prototype going to have to be?

It's going to end up about 15kg and 35 centimeters along its shortest side, we should be able to reduce it in iteration though.

Meh. A little unwieldy, but it'll do. R'vneh will talk Pirak through the basic engineering considerations, how conscious thought creates particular coherent subspace ripples that can be identified by a properly-tuned resonance chamber. This chamber is a bit weirdly-shaped, because it's intended to catch many possible patterns that will all resonate differently from one another. It's actually a lot easier to make an emotion-detector that detects exactly one emotion, but R'vneh has only the barest clue what Cardassian emotions might look like under this model, so they're going to go with something hilariously overpowered for the task, instead.

Pirak is taking a lot of notes and asking a lot of questions. This is really interesting! She hasn't worked much with psionics before, and it seems really elaborate and hard to work out from first principles for a non-psion.

Her attempts to grasp the structures are occasionally weakening her defenses against telepathy, and R'vneh can get small senses of her emotional state.

"If emotions are detectable as waveforms in subspace, how long have your people been aware of subspace? Normally scientists develop a faster than light drive before even beginning to study the nature of subspace properly."

She's very frustrated, somewhat awed, and annoyed with herself for feeling awed.

Stet! Do all telepaths work like this? How telepathic are the Romulans? Can Romulans stetting hear ships dropping out of warp? Aliens are the worst!

The annoyance is taking over the rest of her emotional spectrum.

Ah, so Cardassians do have emotions. Is it because she's getting more passionate, or because her control is slipping?

"Why, more than two thousand years, I'd say!"

"But yes, Jaleyl had psionic technology that interacts with subspace for generations before I was born. I don't actually know much about macro-scale subspace physics, since the field is mostly applied to these areas, not to transportation. My ship did utilize a subspace bubble, but primarily for obstacle-avoidance, not for propulsion. The relation between consciousness and subspace is foundation to much of our culture."

Most of the annoyance has converted into a pleased surprise at the joke.

"That is the foundation of modern warp travel though. It is very good for avoiding obstacles in normal space, because it effectively puts you in subspace."

"Did your people really build a warp drive not knowing it could take you faster than light?" It is intended as an insult, but Pirak is still quietly projecting amusement tinged with something else...

"We hadn't yet conducted experiments at suitable scale! It was known that a subspace wave could move faster than light in realspace, but the singularity drive was primarily intended as a reactionless gravity drive. It was considered very plausible that the warp bubble would pop under excessive spatial shear. Which may well have happened! I wasn't awake at any point when the warp bubble was active. The abstract principle had certainly been predicted, but many of us would have guessed we were much further from truly breaking the lightspeed limit."

"Well, pity that didn't turn out to be more of a pleasant surprise." That's kind of a downer, she starts picking her mental shields back up.

"Better than still being a a frozen rock in deep space, I'm sure. But I would be interested to see any other wreckage you were able to collect, nonetheless."

Some amount of control over her visibility, then? Consistent with Cardassians having much lower, but not nonexistence, psionic capacity. Are Cardassians outside this facility less well-trained? Do the trace psi-reactive materials in the walls act as purposeful psionic shielding?

"What we do have is extremely highly classified at this point, and will have to wait until you have clearance."

Pirak has some additional questions about the nature of the subspace waves they'll be trying to detect.

R'vneh continues to be the planet's top expert on micro-scale subspace wave dynamics. And an indeterminate region of space beyond. She is happy to talk on the subject.

The two of them finalize a design for the emotion detector, and Pirak heads out to start programming the pattern into the industrial replicator.

The next morning she comes in with a new datapad, that actually runs in Jaleyli, all of the summaries from yesterday are already loaded in, and she'd be happy to help R'vneh transfer her notes over if she wants?

Sure, she'd appreciate a walkthrough of the new system. Also more summaries, if they have them yet.

She's also going to start poking at the operating system, looking for documentation on any standard scripting methods.

"We've actually got you hooked up to the facility's main database, there's a bit of a delay in retrieving information thanks to the translation protocols, but it seemed more efficient for you to have access to whatever information you needed, now that you have the basics. If you do need more summaries to help with your specific context you can make a request here," indicating a specific messaging channel, "and someone with relevant knowledge will answer."

Access to the industrial replicator is slightly more limited than she was hoping, the prototype should be ready in about 2 hours though.

That documentation is not hard to find, and pretty clearly laid out. It looks like there was a lot of work necessary to get this working properly, and it was only finished about an hour ago.