Chapter 7

“I’m not easily embarrassed,” Uhura began. “But some of the things that led up to the peace conference on Khitomer left me feeling very much ashamed of myself, personally and professionally.” She knew Curzon didn’t need to be reminded of the events on Khitomer from nearly seventy years ago; he’d been there himself as part of the Federation delegation negotiating the Accords. But she also knew the side of the story she was about to impart wasn’t one he knew.

“First of all, there was the bigotry we all felt toward the Klingons after Praxis exploded. Kirk seemed willing at first to simply let the Klingons reap what they’d sown, and while not all of us felt that strongly, the idea of forming an alliance with them was, at best, unsettling. And while I didn’t share the concerns of some at the Starfleet briefing that we’d have to ‘mothball the fleet,’ as one of the brass put it-I know enough about history to know that as soon as you make peace with one adversary, there’s always someone bigger and scarier ready to take his place-I was, shall we say, less than open to the idea of having the Klingons feel they owed us a favor for coming to their aid. That’s not a healthy state of affairs for a species obsessed with honor. Not that I need to tell you that.

“But that aside, you know what really embarrassed me? The fact that I didn’t know enough Klingon to get past the guard post on the way to Rura Penthe. I speak several Earth languages, and know how to cuss in several offworld ones. I’ve even, for reasons I won’t go into here, had reason to make myself understood in basic Romulan from time to time. But beyond knowing how to call someone a petaQ-which is not something I’d do on an open frequency-I’d been relying on the universal translator on the rare occasions when it was necessary to deal with a Klingon ship, but this time, that wouldn’t do….”

 

When it was all over, and Enterprise moved out of Listening Post Morska’s sensor range and slid into warp, Uhura let the dictionary fall to the deck with a thud. “Well, that was mortifying!”

Regaining her composure, she gathered the stack of reference books her crew had scrounged from everywhere on the ship, including Kirk’s quarters, to try to convince the very sleepy Klingon at Morska that they really were just a passing freighter. The books had saved them from attack; she ought to have a little more respect for them. Always with one ear on passing comm chatter, she braced for the next crisis.

 

Oddly, the battle with Chang’s ship was such a case of déjŕ vu that it hadn’t rattled her. It had been a while-assigned planetside, chairing seminars at the academy-but once the shooting started, she’d even remembered the best places on her console to grab onto when the incoming fire battered the shields and the ship began to yaw. It was a standing joke between her and Scotty.

“Every time there’s a refit, the lass sneaks aboard a day early just to see what changes have been made to her station,” he’d say with a wink in her direction. “And I’ll catch her rehearsin’ which handholds worked best under what conditions. Space battles didn’t faze her in the least, long as she’s got somewhere to grab on to!”

It never once occurred to her that the ship, or she, might not survive. In the event they didn’t, well, she hoped it would at least be quick.

 

However, beaming into the thick of things on Khitomer wasn’t something she did every day. Yet there she was, right behind Chekov as they formed a flying wedge through a moil of panicked diplomats to get at Admiral Cartwright and the Romulan ambassador Nanclus while Kirk threw himself between the Federation president and harm’s way and Scotty took out the assassin on the upper level. Her adrenalin pumping, there was no time to think. It seemed to be over before it had begun, and if she needed to fall apart, she’d do it later. Even as Azetbur and Kirk were congratulating each other and everyone was lining up for the applause and the photo op, all Uhura could think was: At least give me a minute to comb my hair!

Only after security had asked everyone to clear the conference room so they could remove Colonel West’s body and clean up the blood, and everyone began to drift toward the buffet a little ahead of schedule, did she manage to excuse herself to find a restroom and try to restore order.

Even as she wove her way down the unfamiliar corridors, past well-wishers from a dozen worlds gesturing, touching her arm, murmuring their gratitude in as many languages, sliding past in a blur of good thoughts and feelings, she was remembering how primitive Klingon facilities tended to be. There had been a single cubicle on Kruge’s bird-of-prey, which once upon a time had brought them back to Earth in search of whales, containing little more than a hole in the floor. She couldn’t imagine, Khitomer having been chosen as the site for the interplanetary conference, that the same would be the case here. She hoped.

And of course she couldn’t remember the Klingon word for “rest room,” either, she thought ruefully, approaching an exceptionally serious young Klingon security officer, who saw her puzzlement and offered his assistance. She mimed something which he somehow understood, and pointed her toward the proper door.

Behind which, mercifully, someone had seen to the provision of facilities to accommodate females of all species present at the conference. In fact, the appurtenances proved to be quite luxurious-marble basins, polished brass fixtures, real wood paneling, even a shower and sauna. She sighed with pleasure, her heart rate finally returning to normal.

She didn’t dare look at herself in the room-wide mirror above the basins until after she had washed her face and hands and straightened her uniform. She was choosing a comb from the dispenser when a muffled sound from one of the booths told her she was not alone.

At first she was annoyed, mostly with herself. She’d assumed she wasn’t the only one in need of a fresher, and had cased the joint, looking for telltale feet under the doors of the booths as soon as she entered. But all the doors were at least partway open, and she’d heard no sounds and seen no feet, so she’d assumed the place was empty.

Now she pretended to work on her hair while she used the mirror to scan underneath the doors behind her once more. Nothing. But she definitely heard breathing. Whoever was in there was deliberately hiding, waiting to do-what?

Her nerves still jangling from recent events, Uhura had her phaser out before she realized it.

“Who’s there?” she demanded, whirling around, activating her translator and trying to keep her voice steady.

The response was silence, as of someone holding their breath hoping not to be discovered.

Too late for that now, Uhura thought. Whoever you are, I’ve got you!

“Come out of there,” she ordered quietly. “I’m armed. I won’t harm you if you show yourself, but you’ve got to come out now.”

Still nothing. Phaser at the ready, she moved quickly, pushing doors open randomly, her eye on the second-to-last booth. By now she could hear labored breathing, as if whoever was in there was no longer attempting to hide, but rather was coiled, ready to spring. Pushing the final door open with her phaser hand, Uhura made a grab at a bundle of quilted fabric, found a limb underneath, wrapped her hand around flesh and bone and yanked, hard.

She swung her captive around, out of the booth, and against the wall, casually frisking her for concealed weapons, finding only a small honor blade, which she palmed and slipped into her uniform belt before really taking stock of what she had on her hands.

It was a very young Romulan female, wearing the livery of the diplomatic corps. She was ashen, and not only from the effects of having a phaser pointed at her throat. Her face was smudged with tearstains, and fresh tears started in her luminous brown eyes.

“A-are you going to kill me?” she stammered.

She was just a child, Uhura realized. Probably some diplomat’s daughter, frightened by all the shooting, needing to empty her bladder and wash the tears off her face before she disgraced herself. And here was a Starfleet officer scaring her all over again. So much for diplomacy! Chagrined, not for the first time that day, Uhura put her phaser away.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “No, I’m not going to kill you. But after what just happened in that conference room, I thought maybe you were planning to kill me.”

As if remembering, the girl started to tremble, and Uhura resisted the urge to put an arm around her and comfort her. She was Romulan, she reminded herself. How would someone from her culture handle it? In a gesture of complete trust, she held out the honor blade and, when the girl did not take it, pointedly placed it in her hand and turned her back to her, returning to the mirror.

“It’s my guess,” she said, addressing the mirror, watching the girl’s reflection, “that you’ve never seen anyone killed before. It’s horrifying. I know.”

“You are a Starfleet officer,” the girl said seriously, weighing the blade in the palm of her hand for a moment before concealing it within her quilted tunic. “You must be accustomed to it.”

Uhura put the finishing touches on her hair and dropped the comb in the disposal. She contemplated the choices of lip color in the dispenser as she continued to address the girl without looking directly at her. “Believe me, honey, even if you’re trained for it, you never get used to it. And you certainly weren’t expecting it. My guess is you came here with your family, expecting nothing more than an offworld adventure, a chance to mingle with other species, enjoy some exotic food in alien surroundings-“

She watched the girl’s spine stiffen.

“Do not mistake me for some sheltered child. I am an aide to Senator Pardek. I-” She as quickly snapped her jaw shut, angry. “You are a spy! You are trying to trick me!”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Uhura exploded, turning on her. “May I remind you that you’re the one who was hiding from me?”

That seemed to back her off. Uhura programmed in her makeup choices, powdered her nose, touched up her eyebrows, applied the lip color she’d chosen, all in silence, watching the Romulan the entire time. Finally the girl sidled up to the mirror beside her. She ran some water into the palms of her hands, splashed her face. Uhura handed her a towel, which she took after only a moment’s hesitation.

“Forgive me,” she said at last, watching Uhura’s reflection in the mirror as well even though they were all but standing shoulder to shoulder. “You are correct. This whole event has been…not what I expected. I rushed in here because I was feeling ill. I had hoped no one would find me until I had regained my composure.” She disdained the choice of combs in the dispenser, and began running her fingers through her helmet of dark hair. “That is the only reason I was hiding. And then for you to take me for a child…”

“That was presumptuous of me,” Uhura said. “Guess I owe you an apology as well. Here, you’ve got the part all crooked. Allow me…”

With that she selected a fresh comb from the dispenser and began to groom the Romulan’s short, dark hair; the girl permitted it, and seemed to relax with the added attention.

“There, now, that’s much better!” Uhura announced when she had done, leaving the young woman to wonder if she meant the apology, or the repair to her person. “You okay now?”

The girl listened to the translation, then nodded.

“If it’s any consolation,” Uhura said, disposing of comb and makeup, and wiping the water spots off the basin before disposing of the towel, “the first time I saw someone killed, I also lost my breakfast.”

She waited for the translator to render that into an analogous Romulan idiom before she offered her hand and said, “My name is Uhura. Nyota. May I ask yours?”

“Cretak.” The girl’s handshake was firm and decisive. “Kimora.”

“Kimora,” Uhura repeated, smiling. “That’s lovely. But I will of course call you Cretak until we know each other better.”

“Will we?” Cretak withdrew her hand, tucked both hands into her sleeves; it made her look very dignified. “I do not see how. After what happened in that conference chamber, no doubt our peoples will consider each other enemies for a very long time.”

“Why? Because some on both sides turned out to be traitors not only to the peace process but to their own people?” Uhura waved it away. “Either we’re all implicated with the traitors or none of us are.”

“Truly?” Cretak considered it. “How ironic!”

“What?”

“That I am in training to be a diplomat, yet this is an aspect of diplomacy that I had never considered.”

“There’s a jewel in the bottom of every Pandora’s box.”

“Pandora’s box? What an interesting expression. What does it mean?”

Uhura told her.

Cretak tilted her head like a bird, considering this. “A moral, no doubt. There are many such tales in my culture as well.”

“Which shows we’re more alike than different,” Uhura suggested.

For the first time, the young Romulan smiled. “If only it were that simple!”

“It can be,” Uhura said. “Azetbur and Kirk have just made peace. And so have you and I.”

 

“And so with that the two of you became lifelong friends,” Curzon suggested dryly.

“Hardly,” Uhura sighed. “You know how they say timing is everything? Just then a whole flock of Andorians came fluttering through the door and, as if we’d rehearsed it, Cretak slipped outside, I checked my hair in the mirror one last time to give her time to put some distance between us, then I went back to join my crewmates.”

 

Whom she found, just on a hunch, diligently working the buffet, rounding up traitors having had no noticeable effect on their appetites. The only one missing was Spock, whom she couldn’t find at first in the crowded room. Escorting Valeris into custody, Uhura assumed, not wanting to think of what that scene must have been like. It really was a shame. Such a bright young woman, her whole career ahead of her…

Two things happened simultaneously. First, Uhura spied Spock at last, talking rather seriously to a portly Romulan senator at the far side of the room. Among the senator’s staff, most of them female, most of them young, she caught a glimpse of Cretak, who, as if sensing she was being watched, glanced briefly in Uhura’s direction, and as quickly looked away. Or had she been watching her, Uhura wondered, ever since she’d entered the room?

The second thing was that she suddenly found her path blocked by a very tall female officer with captain’s bars whom she didn’t know but who seemed to know her, and who didn’t waste time on formalities.

“Commander Uhura? Unfair of me to stop you on the way to the buffet after the day you’ve had, but a word alone?”

 

They beamed blind onto a ship whose identity Uhura never did learn but which, judging from the fact that there were only two transporter pads, she surmised to be about the size of a scout or a frigate. The transporter room was empty. So was the small soundproofed briefing room directly off the transporter room, which was all she ever got to see.

Without being invited, she took one of the two chairs on either side of a bare table in the center of the room and watched, fascinated, as the captain, who still hadn’t given her name, ran a hand-held debugging device over the bulkheads (on her own ship?) before she spoke again. In that amount of time, Uhura studied the captain.

Humanoid, but not Earth human. Judging from her pallor and the shape of her skull, possibly a Rhaandarite. Uhura scanned her memory for all the captains whose names she knew, and none of them was a Rhaandarite. Maybe she shouldn’t have accompanied her so readily.

“There’s no need to look for escape routes,” the captain said as if reading her mind, setting the debugger to scramble and putting it on the table between them. “If you can’t trust me, it’s too late now.”

Uhura said nothing, just watched and waited. The captain produced two porcelain mugs and a thermos from somewhere, and took the chair on the other side of the table.

“I’ll make this simple. Before the night is over, the command crew of Enterprise will be formally debriefed on the events of the past twenty-four hours, but I’m due elsewhere by then, and I wanted to talk to you personally before I left. We’ve had a listen to your conversation with the Klingons on the way to Rura Penthe-and yes, against orders, in violation of treaty, et cetera-and, no, this time you’re not in trouble. Command’s long since given up trying to keep Jim Kirk on a leash, but even after he came up roses yet again by saving the president today, there’ll be some very big names who’ll sleep easier once he’s retired.”

The captain poured coffee as she spoke. Uhura, remembering the coffee plantations near her grandparents’ house, recognized the aroma of real brewed arabica roasted to perfection, and it set her radar tingling. Was the coffee just a coincidence, or had someone learned enough of her background to have supplied it to make a point?

“All that aside,” the captain said, setting a steaming mug in front of her, “we’re impressed with your handling of the Listening Post and…is something funny, Commander?”

“It is now,” Uhura said, suppressing a bubble of laughter, “it wasn’t then. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of my recent career.” She grew suddenly serious. “And I doubt very much that that’s the real reason you brought me here. What I’d really like to know is how the hell-begging the captain’s pardon-you were able to listen to that conversation?”

“And we were wondering-‘we’ meaning my superiors and I-” the captain continued as if Uhura hadn’t spoken, “now that your ship’s about to be decommissioned out from under you-again-whether you really would be content chairing seminars at the Academy for the rest of your life, or if you’d like to join us. How’s the coffee?”

Uhura had been holding the mug between both hands, but hadn’t tasted the contents. The mundane question superseded a dozen others, and helped her focus.

“It’s probably delicious,” she said, pushing the mug slightly away from her. “And you expected me to say that, because it’s brewed exactly the way I like it, which you know because you’ve investigated everything that’s known about me, probably right down to my DNA, and you didn’t do that in the time it took us to get here from Rura Penthe. Are you special ops, SI, or from some other branch of intelligence that we don’t talk about?”

“There is no other branch,” the captain said evenly. “Yes, I am with Starfleet Intelligence.”

“And you know my likes and dislikes, my entire personal and professional history, probably my IQ, my shoe size, and the fact that I love real coffee,” Uhura said, also evenly, but there was fire in her eyes. “And you somehow managed to monitor transmissions made while we were deep inside Klingon space and on silent running. And much as the rest disturbs me, it’s that last part that really bothers me, because I thought I could detect any bug Starfleet could produce.”

“Who said it was Starfleet issue?” the captain asked ingenuously. Uhura had nothing to say to that. “Intrigued? Want to know more? Want to think about joining us?

“This latest escapade shows what we’ve known about you for a long time, Nyota, which is that you can think on your feet, always essential in an undercover operation,” she went on. “But I won’t pretend your feeble attempt to master the complexities of Klingon grammar at a moment’s notice was what decided us. As a matter of fact, we’ve had our eye on you for quite some time. It’s just that the opportunity to recruit you presented itself here and now because you and I were both in the same place at the same time, and I’ve decided to act upon that.

“Before you say anything, think about it. Who better than a comm officer to simultaneously work in intelligence? You’re in situ anyway, monitoring every whisper and string of code incoming and outgoing on a vessel anywhere in two quadrants. Who better to keep her ears on for things outside the parameters of the job?” The captain sipped her own coffee. “Mm, this is good. I wish you’d try it. We can trade mugs, if you think yours is drugged.”

“And end up ingesting something Rhaandarites are immune to but Terrans aren’t?” Uhura snapped back, not sure whether she was finally starting to fray after the events of the day, or was just annoyed at the cavalier way in which she’d been virtually kidnapped in order to be given this recruitment speech, or whether it was something else entirely.

Because the truth was, the offer sounded like just what she was looking for. There was a tendency in Starfleet to keep kicking people upstairs until they were so brass-heavy they could barely move, then mothballing them behind a desk on a remote starbase somewhere. She wanted to be on a ship. No other ship would ever be Enterprise, but she wanted to be on a ship.

The captain’s smile widened. “Oh, you are good! And that’s why we’d love to have you aboard. But only if you’re comfortable with it. All we ask is that you think about it. I promise you won’t have to compromise your principles or put your life on the line any more than you’ve had to under Kirk’s command.” She coughed. “This isn’t some antique spy movie. There’s no combat training, you’ll not be issued a license to kill or anything silly like that. We just need you to do what you do anyway, which is listen. But listen for us. The opportunities for promotion are…interesting. It would be a wise career move for someone with your skills.”

“How long will you give me to think about it?” Uhura said after they’d both let the silence go on for a while.

The captain finished her coffee and got to her feet.

“As long as you need to. Let me get you back to the party before you’re missed. When you’ve reached your decision, you can contact me here.”

She handed Uhura a communicator of a type she had never seen before.

“It’s a one-way, single-use comm unit,” the captain explained. “Activate it within one year’s time, and it’ll find me wherever I am and tell me you’re good to go. If I don’t hear from you within a year, it’ll deactivate itself, you can toss it out the airlock, and you and I never had this conversation.”

 

“That was the whole sales pitch?” Curzon asked, taking the empty brandy snifter from her hands.

“Pretty anticlimactic, wasn’t it?” Uhura said. “Oh, and by the way, there was no Rhaandarite captain in the fleet. I checked. But I did a little investigating of my own once I was inside SI, and managed to track her down, just to return the favor.”

“Who was she?”

“That I can’t tell you. She’s dead now, so it doesn’t really matter, but she had her reasons for remaining anonymous. And, the truth is, I was at a crossroads; I wanted to jump at her offer. But I was annoyed with the way she’d approached me, so I kept her waiting until after Kirk disobeyed orders one last time and we took the old girl for a spin out That-away. When I came back, I said yes, and here I am.”

“So all those years, even when you had command of your own ship-?”

“Yes. And before you ask, no, I never spied on anyone in Starfleet. Mostly what I did was what I always did, monitored every layer of multiphasic transmission that we passed through on our way from Here to There.”

“I’m sure there was more to it than that,” Curzon suggested.

“Well, yes, then there’s learning to interpret what you hear. What sounds like two merchant captains having a conversation about ion storms could really be a code for safe smuggling routes. What sounds like random static could be a Tholian numeric code revealing an attack plan on a Romulan outpost. If Starfleet is able-circuitously, of course-to get word to the Romulans so they can abort the attack before it happens, at some point that’s going to count in our favor.”

“Which brings me back to Cretak. Surely you two haven’t been incommunicado all this time?”

“No,” Uhura said thoughtfully, wondering if the years had been as kind to Cretak as they had been to her. “We never met face-to-face again. But we kept in touch. Sometimes not for decades, but we kept in touch. There are always ways to punch a message through, if you know how. Just a word now and then, a specially coded transmission that only the other would understand, which says ‘I’m still here, and you?’ And that’s all I can tell you on that subject, even here.”

“And eventually you ended up running the whole show,” Curzon inferred, returning to sit beside her on the overstuffed divan.

“Something like that,” she said, feeling his arm slip around her shoulders and deciding to let it stay there.

 

Not surprisingly, Benjamin Sisko couldn’t sleep that night. He tried not to toss and turn too much, but Jennifer was so attuned to him she knew something was wrong even when he was lying still. Finally she said into the darkness: “Want to talk about it?”

Sisko groaned and put the pillow over his head, as if that would make it go away.

“Ben? Ben, come out of there and talk to me,” Jennifer bossed him, laughing and tugging on the pillow. She heard him mumble something, then sigh, then surrender. “Ben? You were at HQ today. My guess is it was something important. Is that what this is about?”

“Can’t a man have any secrets?” he wondered.

“Not when a shuttle comes all the way from San Francisco to retrieve you personally.”

He’d planned to wait until breakfast to tell Jennifer as much as he could about his meeting with Uhura, trying to figure out a way to tell her just enough but not too much, but now he thought: Wait a minute. What exactly is there that I can’t tell her, since Uhura told me not much of anything? Jennifer’s as much bound by Starfleet regulations as I am. She knows whatever we say about this never leaves this room.

He sat up and told her everything.

“And-?” Jennifer prompted when he’d finished.

“And, I don’t want to go off on some open-ended assignment and leave you and Jake.”

“And you told this to Admiral Uhura without even knowing what the assignment was?” Jennifer said carefully.

“Jennifer, I don’t want to leave you. Not for a day, not even for a minute. Can you understand that? I think I’m more in love with you than I was the day I met you. I feel as if every moment away from you is a moment lost forever.”

“Every moment except when you’re up to your eyebrows in engine specs,” Jennifer said dryly. “If I really believed that, Benjamin Sisko, I’d think you were a man obsessed, and I’d tell you you need to have your head examined.”

There was a silence between them, a silence where he lost himself for a moment in the liquid depths of her eyes and forgot everything else.

“You think I’m being silly,” he said at last, a little sheepishly.

“I wouldn’t put it in so many words, but-“

“-but I’m being silly. I should at least find out what the assignment is before I say no. Curzon said something about it helping me to see the world beyond an engine room, but-“

“And how often is Curzon wrong?”

“Curzon is a poet,” Sisko grumbled, rolling over on his side and clutching the pillow beneath his head in case Jennifer tried to take it away from him again. “I’m a pragmatist. I don’t have the patience for-“

“An assignment with Intelligence can only help your career, Mr. Pragmatist,” Jennifer suggested.

Sisko rolled over and scowled at her. “That’s Lieutenant Pragmatist to you. Are you saying you don’t think I’m being promoted fast enough? Are you saying I’m a trophy husband?”

Jennifer laughed and punched him on the shoulder, not entirely playfully.

“I’m saying you married another pragmatist. Someone who’s interested in seeing you become your best self.”

“No, that would be Curzon.” Sisko turned away from her again. He sighed. There’d be no sleeping until they got this settled. “Why is it everyone knows what’s best for me better than me?” he asked of no one in particular.

There was no answer from Jennifer, who lay there smiling secretly to herself.

“You want me to go back there tomorrow and tell Uhura I’m in,” he suggested. “Without even knowing what it’s about.”

“Oh, far be it from me to tell you what I think you should do!” was Jennifer’s answer.

This time it was Ben who said nothing.

“Ultimately, it’s up to you,” Jennifer said at last, kissing his elbow, which was the part of him closest to her. “But let it be about you, not about Jake and me, because we’re not going anywhere.” She kissed his arm where the bicep bulged, then his shoulder, then his neck, then his ear. “Wherever you go, however long you’re gone, when you come home, Jake and I will be right here. And I hope the same thing would be true of you if I were the one on special assignment.”

“Of course it would!” Sisko said plaintively, turning toward her, stroking her cheek, cradling her head tenderly in one of his big hands.

He kissed her then, and for a long time neither of them said anything.

“You said yourself you don’t know where you want to go in your career,” she murmured later, snuggled against his shoulder. “Maybe this mission will help show you the way.”

“I just miss you,” he said, much calmer, settling down toward sleep at last. “Even when I’m with you, I miss you.”

“A man obsessed!” Jennifer repeated with a smile. She waited until his deep breathing told her he’d gone to sleep before she too closed her eyes.

 

The next morning, Benjamin Sisko scooped Jake up in a bear hug and danced him around the room.

“And how is Captain Jake this morning?”

“Going to kiddergarten!” Jake announced seriously in spite of being spun around and in grave danger of being tickled.

The elder Sisko stopped spinning and matched Jake’s seriousness with his own.

“Kiddergarten, eh? That’s a very important assignment,” he said, lowering Jake to the floor. “Are you fully prepared, Captain?”

Jake stood up as tall as he could. “Aye, sir!”

“Well, then, we’d better get you there at warp speed!” Sisko announced, scooping him up again and carrying him out of the kitchen at a run, amid much whooping and giggling.