“You’re giving me command of my own ship?” Sisko asked, puzzled. This was the last thing he’d expected.

“Temporarily,” Uhura said. “Just for the duration of this mission. And it’s a very small ship.”

“May I ask what ship?”

“Not at liberty to tell you that yet, either,” Uhura said.

“But I can safely assume the mission will be covert, and it would mean leaving my family behind. With all due respect, Admiral, I’d prefer you found someone else.”

“I wasn’t asking, Mr. Sisko,” Uhura said, her voice even quieter than his.

She saw his jaw working, knew he was trying mightily not to let his temper get the better of him. Like many a big man, he had learned very young that he didn’t need to shout or threaten; his mere presence was usually enough to get him his own way.

He stood up to his full height, not intending to intimidate, simply prepared to refuse the assignment and leave. He hadn’t counted on having the wind knocked out of his sails by The Look.

“I want to tell you, Commander, it was the expression on your face more than the phaser that backed me into that closet,” Lieutenant Heisenberg had told her a lifetime ago, Spock’s lifetime to be precise, when she had volunteered to man the most remote transport station in the Sol System in order to help Kirk and company steal Enterpriseout of Spacedock and bring Spock’s katrahome.

“What are you talking about?” she’d said, suppressing a chuckle, though she knew darn well.

She’d been hoping to have the station to herself that night, but not a half hour before Kirk and Sulu broke McCoy out of the loony bin and stormed out of the turbolift onto the transporter pads, this big galoot had shown up.

“Heisenberg, Scott, here to assist you, ma’am,” he’d said, fuzz-faced, tall, and gangly, with a knack for putting his foot in his mouth.

“I don’t need any assistance, Lieutenant.” She’d frowned. The duty roster had indicated this to be a one-man station. Did someone upstairs suspect something? All of Kirk’s crew had felt Command’s eyes on them since leaving Spock behind on Genesis. Had Heisenberg been sent to keep an eye on her? “I’m supposed to be assigned here alone. There must be some mistake.”

Heisenberg, meanwhile, had been sizing up his new assignment. “Oh, this is great, just great! I wonder whose toes I stepped on to get relegated to this dump?”

“Do you frequently step on people’s toes, Mr. Heisenberg?” Uhura pretended to busy herself with a Level-1 diagnostic, probably the first one these battered controls had had in ages. She wished the big lunk would sit down and stop prowling around. Everything depended on timing. If Scotty and Chekov had infiltrated Enterpriseby now, if Kirk and the others showed up on time, every second she spent trying to sidetrack her unwanted assistant could put the mission in jeopardy.

She’d secreted a phaser under the edge of her console when she came on duty, just in case. Just in case of what, she hadn’t been sure, but anyone trying to stop Kirk from getting to Enterpriseonce he was here would have to get through her first. She contemplated the back of Heisenberg’s head and wondered if she could just stun him while he wasn’t looking. Just then he finished scowling at the charred and battered walls and swung around toward her.

“Yeah, that’s me. Open mouth, change feet. Bad enough they used to call me Uncertainty back in the Academy—you know, as in Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?” he’d explained, and this time Uhura almost did burst out laughing. “—but bad luck follows me everywhere. Not that I mind being here with you, ma’am, a Starfleet legend and all that, but—”

“Well then, why don’t you light somewhere before you trip over those feet as well?” she asked him. Nothing made her feel older than when the younger generation started that Starfleet legend nonsense. “Since you’re here, you may as well help me with this diagnostic.”

He’d parked himself in the empty chair at the duty station, but made no effort to assist her. Then he’d made that remark about her career winding down, and she’d frozen him in his tracks with what would become known as the Uhura Look.

It wasn’t much. Just a pause for about the length of a breath while she stopped whatever she was doing and slid her eyes sideways under those long eyelashes, fixed her victim with them, and raised her head slightly, as if to say “I know you didn’t say what I just heard you say.”

She’d sworn she could hear Heisenberg’s jaw snap shut. She would have liked to see how long that would last, but then Jim Kirk had burst through the door, giving Heisenberg something else to think about.

Months later, after Spock had been restored, and they’d saved the whales and Earth in the bargain, and the flood waters had receded and the “Trial of the EnterpriseSeven,” as the media dubbed it, was over, she’d run into Heisenberg in a corridor at HQ. That was when he’d told her about the Look.

“It’s like lasers,” Heisenberg said. “You turn those high-beams on a man, you can cut his heart out.”

“Best you remember that next time you have dealings with me, young man,” Uhura had said, poking him none too gently in the shoulder. “How long were you in that closet, anyway?”

“Couple of hours. I thought my kidneys were going to give out. Earned a nasty reprimand from my CO for letting you get the better of me, too.”

“I’m sorry, Heisenberg,” she’d said sincerely. “I’ll have a word with your CO about that. After all, we both know you were defenseless against The Look.”

Many a junior officer had felt the power of that look in the intervening years. Every time she had call to use it, Uhura thought of Heisenberg and resisted the urge to smile.

She turned the Look on Sisko now, and he felt his ears starting to singe. He opened his mouth and nothing came out, found himself shifting his feet, something he only did when he didn’t know what else to do. Uhura, barely masking her amusement, let him stew for a few seconds longer, then relented.

“As you were, Mister,” she said very quietly, and Sisko returned to his seat. “Liya na tabia yako usilaumu wenzako.”

“Sir?”

“ ‘Don’t blame others for problems you have created yourself.’ I didn’t think you spoke kiSwahili. But now that I have your attention…”

She cleared her throat, folded her hands on the desktop once again, and began communicating.

“I’m not going to flatter you by telling you’re the best theoretical engineer or the most versatile young officer in the fleet, because you’re not. What you are is the most versatile young officer in the fleet who has also excelled at my Special Communications course, and who happens to be available in this sector at this time. There are at least three other people I could tap who qualify on the first two counts, but you’re here, they’re not. And I don’t have the luxury of waiting for someone halfway across the quadrant to rendezvous with the rest of my team, which is here, in place, and good to go on a mission where time is of the essence, because lives are being lost with every minute’s delay. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Sisko?”

“Loud and clear, sir.” Sisko was looking at his boots.

“Good. Now I will give you until 0800 tomorrow morning to reach a decision. If your decision is ‘no,’ then I will go to the next person on my list. If your decision is ‘yes,’ then you will see your son safely launched on his first day of kindergarten, and then you will report to me.”

She watched his head come up at the mention of Jake.

“A child’s first day of kindergarten is a milestone his father shouldn’t miss. But there are sacrifices we sometimes have to make, Mr. Sisko. You see Jake off on his very important mission. Then I’ll trust you to make the right choice about yours.”

“You actually let him walk out of your office without committing?” Curzon was surprised.