Uhura and the Career Change
Author's Note: For background on the S'chn T'gai family in my Spock-Uhura universe, check out "Adaptation" from chapter 8 on or "For the Love of a Child" I'm working on my Academy canon, it's just all in pieces while my beta (my first) recovers in the hospital from reading my raw writing. Occupational hazard for betas, I guess... Kinda like crewing for Jim Kirk.
The Poker Posse laughed about it at the poker game - everyone, that is, except Kirk. Not that he wouldn't love raising Grayson in his own quarters, but he'd meant to do that by marrying Uhura one day - not by nearly killing her and her husband.
Uhura and Spock hadn't been back on the Enterprise a year when reminders of their absence during the previous two years came roaring up to bite the Enterprise in the tuchus once again.
Acting First Officer Sulu underestimated Kirk's ability to cause an interstellar incident. Kirk had an allergy to the Prime Directive - could barely speak the words and certainly didn't prioritize the mandate in his scheming and plotting.
Deeply "invested" in a long distance quadrant-wide tournament in "The World Series of Poker", Jim snuck his playing PADD into his luggage to meet with the сигма [Sigma] Iotia II diplomats - an inquisitive and intelligent peoples on an industrial planet - and promptly forgot it in his accommodations on the planet when the away team was forced to leave in a hurry to intercede in a planetary emergency elsewhere.
Had Spock or Uhura accompanied him, the PADD would never have left the Enterprise; each would have searched him like he was their two-year-old son trying to sneak candy into his nursery school snack. Grayson didn't act like a two-year-old even though he was one, only Kirk did that. Sulu, a consummate professional, made a single error: he presumed his captain actually functioned as an adult. Hikaru Sulu's close friend, Nyota Uhura, could have disabused Hikaru of that fallacy had she been aboard.
The priority diplomatic call from Starfleet HQ informed the Enterprise bridge - in loud, hostile phrases - that the admiralty held Captain James T. Kirk personally responsible for rectifying the situation. A First Contact research team found the сигма Iotian culture COMPLETELY changed after the Enterprise visit. In a scant two-plus years сигма [Sigma] Iotia II transitioned from a peaceful pre-weaponized argo-mechanical culture into a menace to local space. Presently, two diplomatic shuttles and a Romulan reconnaissance vessel were being held for ransom.
The сигма [Sigma] Iotians demanded credits - which the Romulans immediately refused to pay - and a star ship [the CONSTANT demand for star ships by these lesser developed planets never ceased to amaze Kirk]. The сигма [Sigma] Iotians expected the Federation to send their best negotiators. The admiralty informed Jim Kirk that "best negotiator" was now his new job description.
The ultimatum from Kirk's Starfleet bosses? Fix this or lose the Enterprise.