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 Enterprisewill 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 situanyway, 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.