Bill Woods wrote:JohnRoth wrote: Master Sergeant Cognasso is not an officer. It would not be at all out of character for him to be in charge of a Marine detachment assigned to Admiral Gold Peak's security; it seems to be out of character for him to be standing sentry duty; he's too high in rank. If part of the objective is to maximize Alfredo's surprise factor among people who haven't been briefed in on what Sphinxian treecats can do, then staying in character would be important.
Does a treecat have to be in line-of-sight? If not, put him in another room for interviews, ready to nudge the intelligence officer when there's an interesting reaction to a question. (Or hit the big red button if there's a threat.)
If you're worried about reaction to nano-programmed threats the Treecat pretty much has to be in the room.
Not so much before of his empathic sensing range, but because of reaction time of others in response. Remember that in the attack against Honor, with Nimitz right their next to her, there was barely time to react.
Now there are non-treecat actions you can take to make that
particular attack less likely; like making it harder to bring weapons (or anything unusual) near the principle and simultaneously making it harder to swipe a weapon from a sentry. But that doesn't help if it's one of your own guards that got reprogrammed. If they turn while in the same room with you you've got seconds
at most to foil their attack.
A treecat in another room hitting a panic button just adds delay which you can't afford.
If just using the treecat to improve interrogation results then obviously there isn't that split-second timing required. For that it probably is practical to put the treecat in the observation room watching an interrogation next door with a more subtle way to signal the interviewer. And
A Beautiful Friendship tells us that Lionheart was able to recognize the mind glow of a particular human (other than Stephanie) at "one hundred and fourteen meters"; while seated inside a restaurant. Now I doubt that was as much info as he could have gotten up close; but that does seem to indicated that the empathic sense will work through walls and over modest distances. Seems more than enough to work from an adjacent room.
