Corsi reached back and pulled her blond hair into a tighter chignon. Professional, must keep it professional. It doesn’t matter that your old mentor’s son died on your ship.

Keep telling yourself that, Core-Breach, and you might believe it.

“Connection established. Channel secured.”

The sharp eyes of Professor Agosto Caitano stared at her from the viewscreen. There were a few more lines in his face, and there was more salt in his salt-and-pepper hair, but he still looked as distinguished as she remembered. “Domenica? Is something wrong?” he asked, his usually convivial voice taking a more cautious tone. “They pulled me out of a class.”

“I’m sorry, Professor,” she began, schooling her features to be as emotionless as she could manage. “There’s been an incident here that concerns Ken.”

A grim smile crossed the elder Caitano’s face. “You sound like some of his teachers in grade school. What happened?”

Corsi licked her lips. No words came to her that would make this any easier. “Professor, sir, I’m not sure how to tell you this other than to just tell you. I’m very sorry to have to say this, but Ken has died.”

The professor’s face fell. He took a few deep breaths. Finally, in a shaky voice, he said, “What happened?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that right now. The investigation is still at the classified stage.”

He slowly nodded. “I—I understand. If someone did this to him, you’ll find him. I know you will.”

I hope so, sir. Somehow, she managed to say, “I’ll do my best,” instead. “Professor, I hate to say it, but while I’ve got you on the comm, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if I may.”

“Anything I can do to help.”

“We don’t have any concrete proof that he was attacked, but I have to investigate that possibility all the same.” She took a deep breath of her own. “Is there anything that’s happened recently that might have made someone want to get back at you or Ken for any reason? Someone who might have killed him as revenge?”

His eyes went distant for a few seconds, and then snapped back. “I don’t know of anyone, Domenica. The last few months have been nothing but classes and remodeling our house. It has all gone smoothly. I’ll talk to Angelina. If she knows anything that might help—”

“Thank you, Professor. As soon as I can tell you what happened, I will.”

“Computer, initiate program Corsi Twenty-two.”

“Program initiated. You may enter when ready.”

The hololab doors slid open on Caitano and Deverick’s quarters, precisely as they’d been when Hawkins had taken the crime scene images just a day before.

Okay, Corsi, time to figure out what you missed.

“Now, access all log files from the crew quarters. Go back twenty-four hours. Replicator logs, personal logs, entry/exit logs, medical logs, whatever is available. Correlate those and extrapolate a re-creation of the events that transpired in this cabin. Begin with Caitano returning from his duty shift yesterday.”

“Accessing.”

While it worked, she took the time to further inspect the scene. As there was no actual evidence to contaminate, she picked up the bar of gold-pressed latinum and turned it over in her hands. As latinum was a liquid in its natural state, it was usually encased in gold whenever it was used in commerce. Her eye went over every curve, every recess of the ornately sculpted gold casing, looking for the maker’s mark—that one signature that would tell her where the bar was manufactured.

Where is it?

That alone was suspicious. No maker’s mark usually meant one of two things: either it had been stolen, and the mark filed off to keep it from being traced, or it was counterfeit.

And counterfeit bars of gold-pressed latinum were few and far between. How could Caitano have come across it?

“Corsi to Hawkins,” she said, tapping her combadge.

“Yes, Commander?”

“I want some more scans done on the bar of latinum. I’ve got reason to believe it might be counterfeit.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

“Not yet, Corsi out.”

What’s taking the computer so long to correlate that information?

As though it had read her mind, the computer finally said, “Extrapolated sequence of events is not comprehensive.”

She looked around the room once again. It was time to test a theory. “That’s okay. Computer, run program.”

The room’s virtual doors slid aside, and Caitano walked through. There were no signs of a holographic representation of Deverick. Not surprising, considering that he had been on his way to his duty shift at the time.

Caitano walked over to the replicator and put in his request for dinner, instructing the machine to wait thirty minutes before executing. He then proceeded to walk toward the small doorway to the bathroom. It slid closed behind him. After a few moments of silence, the sonic shower began running.

Okay, we checked the sonic shower for malfunction. Nothing. The autopsy report said there was indication of brain tissue in the blood. Lense thought something ruptured his eardrums, and then vibrated his brain to the point of resonance. If it wasn’t the sonic shower, what was it?

“Computer, speed up re-creation to twice normal speed.”

“Working.”

The shower stopped, and the holographic Caitano walked at an almost comical pace out of the bathroom and over to the replicator. He ate dinner, then went into the bedroom and changed into the bedclothes he’d been found wearing. The computer must have used the autopsy report and figured he pulled out the bedclothes when he opened the drawer.

He reached over, grabbed a padd from his shelf, and began thumbing through the contents. That looks like the one that had the Ferengi business journals on it.

But, if it’s coming up in the log, that means the padd accessed the computer for an update at one point.

He put that padd down and grabbed a second, putting a pillow between his back and the wall as he settled in to read. She watched as his eyes scanned each page, until he finally began rubbing his right temple.

That one looks like the padd that had the novel on it.

“Computer, resume normal speed,” she said, watching like a hawk for any indication of what might have caused the vibration in his brain. She couldn’t hear or see anything unusual.

That was when he put the padd down, folded the covers back and got out of bed. He walked into the living room, and went right to the replicator. “Two aspirins and water,” he said. Strain was obvious in his voice.

Aspirin? Why not just get something from sickbay?

He gulped down the pills, and lifted the glass to his lips. Slowly, he walked back toward the bed. When he was even with the foot of the bed, he fell to his knees. The glass slipped from his hand.

“Need help,” he whispered. His voice was growing weak as he said, “Commander Corsi?”

How did the computer know he was trying to reach me and not thinking out loud?

She heard her own voice saying, “Caitano? What is it?”

He fell to the floor. From her vantage point at the foot of Deverick’s bed, she could see a faint trickle of blood begin to form at his ear.

“Caitano?”

Knowing that he’d lost the battle had been one thing, but the thought that he might have lost it while she was talking to him tore at her insides. She hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary before Caitano got up to get the aspirin. Corsi tried to force that feeling into a corner to deal with later, realizing that even being able to see it happen, she still wasn’t sure what caused the death.