K’Naut rubbed his eyes. He’d been staring at the screen for hours, and he realized that the images had stopped registering in his mind. He blinked a few times, then looked at the screen. It showed a view of the crowds on Firste that had gathered for the signing ceremony. The recording had come from the Caitian’s own tricorder. He was looking for any sign of a weapon among the throng.

His scans had already proven useful during the investigation. The tricorder had detected the explosive in the presidential vehicle. He felt a bit guilty about it since the device had tried to warn him, but he shut off the alert without looking at it.

The readings confirmed the findings of the trace residue from the clothing of the victims, as far as what type of explosive was used. The tricorder also revealed the amount of explosive and its placement in the vehicle. This data, along with the details of the car’s construction, allowed for a more accurate forensic reconstruction of the attack.

The construction details were also important to the acoustic analysis to determine the direction of the shots that had been fired prior to the explosion. The composition of the parts of the car’s interior, their location, and their shape all added to the way sound bounced around. The tricorder readings made it possible to build a very accurate model of the car’s interior for the computer to use in its calculations, which were still in progress.

K’Naut glanced over at Patricia, who was working on extracting more acoustic recordings from the computers on Firste. It was proving a difficult task, given that the only systems still working were encrypted military communications connected to equally encrypted computer networks. Even so, Patricia and the hacker she’d scrounged up were slowly making progress.

He turned his attention to Statzia, who sat back in her seat with a scowl as she read from a PADD. A medtech entered the conference room, walked over to the intelligence officer, and handed over a pair of PADDs. Statzia spared a glance at the young man and murmured, “Thank you, ensign. On the table, please.” As she returned to her reading, the ensign scurried from the room.

The Caitian reached for his teacup and found it empty. He grabbed the teapot to refill the cup and found it empty as well. He stood and stretched. He took the teapot back to the replicator. As he passed Statzia, he placed his hand briefly on her shoulder. She looked up at him and gave a weary half smile before turning back to her work.

He set the pot into the replicator and ordered Earl Grey. He’d found that by alternating the bergamot-flavored beverage with his favorite Vulcan herbal tea, he could sustain these marathon sessions without getting too jittery.

K’Naut returned to his seat and refilled his teacup. He took a sip, savoring the hot liquid before returning to his task. The Caitian found it difficult to keep his mind on the work at hand. There was something bothering him about the whole situation, and it wasn’t the coup. He was a student of history. He recognized the pattern of what was happening on Firste. On Earth, on his home world of Cait, and on dozens of others, when one group didn’t like the way things were going and they had the power to do something about it, you had a coup, or a revolution, or a civil war. It was a very old story, one that K’Naut knew well.

No, it wasn’t the planetary situation that was distracting him. It was the captain’s behavior. K’Naut had lived and worked with humans for a long time, even before joining Starfleet. There had been humans working in the dilithium mines on P’teera, where he lived as a child. Later, after the Tholians had forced his family off the mining world, he discovered that Cait was a popular place for humans to visit. Then, of course, there was the Academy, where humans were everywhere. He thought he knew humans pretty well. But the captain’s actions on the planet perplexed him. He had never seen such disregard for an individual’s personal safety.

No, that wasn’t quite correct. He fingered the ragged edge of his left ear. K’Naut himself had engaged in reckless, possibly deadly behavior, but as a civilian, and not on duty. Then he caught sight of the straight line of dark fur on his arm, the trace of an encounter with a Borg drone. OK, so the Caitian had done something dangerous while on duty, but it was in self-defense. K’Naut hadn’t been in command then, he didn’t have the lives of hundreds of people who were his responsibility.

It worried him that the captain had acted so recklessly. Was this an anomalous incident, or was this part of a pattern? Did Captain Crow represent a hazard to the crew or the ship? K’Naut didn’t like the mutinous direction of his thoughts, but he had regained so much lately…he glanced over at Statzia…and he didn’t want to lose it. He sighed. It was probably best to keep his thoughts to himself for the time being.

As he turned his attention back to the readings, the computer chimed to indicate that it had finished the preliminary acoustic analysis. K’Naut called up the results. He grinned and said, “We have a direction, people!”