Twinks in Space: Destination Unknown - Part One - 15. Chapter 15 - Questioned

Captain Suoki heard the door to his room unlock. He leapt to his feet and bellowed, “Are you going to let us out of here or what?!” His pug, Froufrou, yipped in grumpy agreement.

The door opened, and Penqui was on the other side of it with a pair of soldiers.

“Where is it?!” he asked.

“Where’s what?” Captain Suoki sneered in reply.

Penqui looked over his shoulder at the two officers behind him. “Search the place.”

“If I knew what these two space-apes were looking for, maybe they wouldn’t need to throw my couch cushions around,” Captain Suoki replied as the men began to tear apart his apartment. Froufrou barked at them.

“We know you were talking to someone,” Penqui stated. “Who was it? And where is the device?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the captain said coolly.

“Who were you talking to and where is your hidden device?” Penqui snapped.

Captain Suoki smirked. “You’re cute when you’re angry,” he cooed to the scowling man. “Cheer up, buttercup.”

One of the officers stepped up to Penqui. “We can’t find anything, sir,”

“Search him,” Penqui ordered, pointing a bony finger at Captain Suoki.

The two men looked at each other with uncertainty.

“Go ahead, lads,” Captain Suoki said with a kind smile. “I give you permission to search me.”

“They don’t need your permission,” Penqui retorted. “You no longer have any authority on this ship.”

The two officers approached their former captain. Froufrou growled as the men began to pat him down. They turned back to Penqui.

“He doesn’t have anything on him, sir. I don’t know how he was communicating with someone outside the ship.”

Penqui huffed and stormed out of the captain’s quarters without another word.

Captain Suoki and his dog were locked inside again.

Once alone, he shifted his eyes to his now open and disheveled closet. Quite a few of his hung clothes were now in clumps on the floor, and the trans-satellite receiver was in plain sight.

“Good thing they were looking for a portable device,” he said to Froufrou, and he looked back at the locked door to his room. “And it’s a good thing they didn’t recognize my old table-mounted unit.” Captain Suoki turned back to it. “Now, how am I going to reestablish a connection to Lyoth and Phentrom?”

Hello, readers, and thank you so much for checking out my first sci-fi story up to this point
Question: Is it believable that the guards would miss the old style communicator since they were looking for something small and portable? I imagine them looking for basically a smartphone, so they overlook the desktop-style setup in his closet that even he'd forgotten about. But what do you think? Would they have found it or miss it?
Thank you all again!