“You make a good point. It is important not to be too self-righteous. I should talk to Commander Rakatheema again, try to understand his side. If I can relate to his intentions, maybe we can find some common ground when it comes to his methods.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Kirk said. “I believe in the commander’s good intentions. He only wants what’s best for both Starfleet and the Warborn. It’s just a matter of finding the right balance between the two.”

Janith-Lau sobered. “I hope you’re right, Jim. But I’m not sure he and I will ever agree on what that balance should be. And only history will be able to say if his vision of the Warborn’s future in Starfleet will turn out to be another of the Federation’s great mistakes.”

U.S.S. Enterprise

Earth Spacedock

“But how could you not have known this Jen was a man?” Montgomery Scott asked Uhura as they and Spock sat with her in the officers’ lounge, listening to her account of her discoveries on Earth. “When you talked about him in your logs and letters, you must have used a ‘he’ or ‘him’ somewhere.”

“Those logs and letters were in Kiswahili,” she told him. “The pronouns are ungendered.”

“Oh.” Scott flushed, embarrassed not to have known that.

Captain Spock steepled his fingers. “Now that you know, do your logs provide any further insights?”

“Nothing yet. But I did send a message to his current residence at the Penthara IV colony.” She did not let herself show how difficult that had been, given her uncertainties about the state of her relationship with this person. She had kept her communique as objective and calm as possible, focusing on the urgency of the vacuum flare crisis. “The only response was an automated notification that my message had been deleted unread.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Oh, this just keeps getting better. Bad enough you lost your memory of all this—it’s like the universe is conspiring to keep you from getting it back!”

“I’m almost tempted to believe you, Scotty, given that the universe itself seems to be generating these flares in response to me, somehow.”

Spock addressed them patiently. “It is premature to ascribe cosmic design to what may yet be accounted for by coincidence. We have made some slight progress, and there are still avenues of investigation we may pursue.”

He contemplated Uhura. “You said that the emotional stimulus of your reunion with your family triggered the recollection of fragments of memory you had believed were lost. Has your contemplation of Mister Shastri provoked any similar recollection?”