“Aye, but now those times have come back to haunt us. Not Nomad itself, thank heaven, but some secret it took from you. I want to be there to help you figure all this out, lass—like I should’ve been back then.”

“Oh, all right,” Blake said after a moment, wiping away more tears. “Just go already, both of you. It’s not good for a crew to see their captain get all blubbery.”

Despite her words, she gave each commander a warm hug before letting them go. “Good luck, my friends. I really hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I do too, Uhura thought. But first we have to figure out what that is.

Chapter Nine

Starfleet Security Headquarters

San Francisco

“So you admit this doesn’t look good for you, Commander.”

Admiral Cartwright paced around the table in the sparse, windowless interview room. It was an intimidation tactic, but one that Uhura did not let herself be cowed by. Over her years as a starship communications officer, she’d been shouted at, browbeaten, and threatened by admirals, ambassadors, commissioners, warship commanders, planetary leaders, revolutionaries, pirate queens, and superbeings that defied classification. Cartwright had nothing to throw at her that she hadn’t seen before. Still, she drew some comfort from Captain Spock’s presence as he stood nearby, a pillar of stillness and serenity to counter the admiral’s storm-cloud intensity and thundering voice.

“I only acknowledge the truth, Admiral. And the truth is that I have no answers for you.”

“But don’t you see how that’s suspicious in itself?” Cartwright took a breath and went on more reasonably. “Look. I don’t question the reality of your memory loss. Your medical records provide ample confirmation. What’s strange is the lack of any other evidence of your activities on those planets.”

“We may make certain deductions, Admiral,” Spock interposed. “The echoes of the commander’s voice patterns in the vacuum fluctuations imply that she was undertaking some form of communications experiment. Perhaps she was studying a natural subspace phenomenon that reflected the vocal and musical patterns she transmitted.”

“Or maybe,” Cartwright countered, “she was in communication with some intelligence that’s beaming her singing back as a reply.”

“That cannot be ruled out, no. Neither can it be supported.”

“That’s the problem, Captain. A Starfleet communications officer conducting communications research on Federation worlds—why not do it in Starfleet facilities? There’s nothing in her records suggesting she’s ever conducted any research on vacuum fluctuations, micro-wormholes, quantum communication, or anything of the sort. Not using any Starfleet or official Federation resources, at least.”

Cartwright turned back to Uhura. “Which means that whatever you were doing, Commander, it was on your own personal time, and you chose to conduct it at private, civilian research facilities.”

“Which is within my rights, Admiral,” she said. “Being in Starfleet doesn’t prohibit having a life outside it.”