“Spock, Spock. I’ve heard of a Spock. But no, he’s a lieutenant on Chris Pike’s ship. Discovery, wasn’t it? No, it’ll come to me.”

Uhura stared at the commodore, recognizing a kindred spirit. Several months before her encounter with Nomad, right at the start of the brief Federation-Klingon War of 2267, Reppert had been captured on an intelligence mission in Klingon space and subjected to the experimental memory probe that they called the “mind-sifter.” Uhura knew that Spock had endured the same probe on Organia, protected from its effects by his Vulcan mental discipline. Starfleet Intelligence trained its members to resist mental probes as well, but Reppert had been in Klingon hands for over a week and had endured repeated sessions under the mind-sifter at its highest setting, far beyond what Spock had experienced. The device had stripped his memories from his mind and left little behind. It had been much like what Nomad had done to her, but what Nomad had excised with cool, surgical thoroughness, the mind-sifter had ripped out with bare claws, leaving stray fragments behind but doing too much damage to the underlying substrate to allow Reppert to recover as Uhura had.

She felt ashamed of feeling so sorry for herself. She had lost memory but not function, allowing her to rebuild and resume her career with minimal difficulty. Reppert had been left a shell of his former self, damaged beyond repair and forced to retire decades early. For the first time, she felt that she had been the fortunate one.

Except that Reppert was their only lead to her past, and his memory was in ruins. What hope was there of recovering anything?

Uhura cut short that line of thought. She’d believed her own memories were just as irretrievable, until her family had proven her wrong.

She took the commodore’s hands, drawing his attention. “Commodore Reppert… do you recognize me? We may have met when we were younger. I was a cadet at Starfleet Academy, early in my fourth year. I wore my hair long and straight then.”

“Academy?” Reppert shook his head, giving a gallant smile. “If I’d had a classmate as pretty as you, dear, I’d remember.”

“No, sir, you were working for Starfleet Intelligence. I was a student. I believe you came to speak with me about some research I was doing. Something involving subspace communications and the quantum vacuum.”

“I studied communications at the Academy. Yes. Signal intercepts… decryption… They wanted to know our decryption codes… I wouldn’t tell them. They put me in the chair…”

He was growing agitated now, and the nurse stepped in. “Conrad, it’s all right. You’re safe with us. You’re here on Kaferia. Do you smell the trees? Do you hear the fruit drakes chirping?” The nurse laid both pairs of foreclaws on the commodore’s arms and shoulders, gently massaging them and turning him outward to look at the apple grove.