“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 LieutenantPragmatist 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.