Admiral Miller looks up from her datapad and steaming coffee, glancing up at the door as she hears its chime. She's... an interesting case, for sure. 

"Come in." 

Maya nods and steps inside, saluting Admiral Miller crisply.

She nods her head down gently. 

"Please, make yourself comfortable. Hell, you can grab yourself a drink if you'd like - I think we're going to be here for a while." 

Maya nods thoughtfully and pours herself a cup of coffee — grateful once again that Sable gave her a sense of taste.

She sits down and takes a sip, savoring the richness and bitterness.

"May I ask the subject of this meeting, sir?"

She glances down at her mug, and takes a long sip of her own. 

"In a sense, this is all about you." 

She raises the padd up in her hand, and scrolls through it idly. 

"Your service record in and out of combat is spotless. You've been nothing but diligent with your duties, those you serve with have nothing but good things to say about your character and disposition. I've even gotten here some glowing praise from Geordi La Forge on your work in warp field theory. Frankly, the only reason that you haven't been offered a promotion yet is your stated preference to stay on the same assignment as your wife and that we weren't sure quite what to with a talent like you." 

"Oh. Thank you for the praise, Admiral."

Maya's mind rushes ahead. This explains much. There usually are not simultaneous senior staff openings for both executive officer or operations and science officer on the same ship. Either herself or Sable could work happily in either command or science, and she could enjoy operations, but finding a pair of compatible openings is hard. It would be slightly easier on a station, due to the generally higher populations and larger staff sizes, but Wanderlings do not mix well with stationary postings.

"I see the quandry, yes. Have you called me here because you have a possible solution?"

Her voice is steady, even, almost but not quite dismissive. She still has a bit of a taste for the exuberance that more junior officers have when they get a bone hung out in front of them, despite it all. 

"I have a handful of options in mind, yes. But first, some questions:" 

She breathes out softly, and glances down at her notes for a bare moment. 

"What is your opinion on the Galaxy-class?" 

Maya tilts her head for a moment. "An excellent ship, if a bit lumbering at times. Could do with being better-armed, particularly given the threat of the Borg. Quite a large target, and not particularly nimble enough to dodge well — a task necessitated by the Borg's tendency to win slugging matches rather handily. Insufficiently armored, as well. I am aware armor is not our usual fleet doctrine, but it would provide more survivable time to improvise away from the Borg's adaptations. Gorgeous sensor suite, from the specs I have seen, although I am aware Starfleet has been developing things further in recent years."

She nods firmly.

"Even with all the advancements we've made, it still has trouble sustaining speeds above warp 9 without shaking itself apart, and it requires a small city of people working on it to keep in it tip-top shape. It's still a fine design, if you don't mind the size and have use for all the amenities, but it's not quite what I'd want to rely on as the backbone of our fleet, even if some others in the admiralty disagree with me on that." 

She hums lightly, and sips slowly. 

"To fight the borg, we need stronger ships, ones better armored and better equipped to fight. They need to be robust and hardened to the rigors of combat, not test beds for the most configurable possible shielding systems. And yes, they need armor." 

She sounds a bit more energized now, if still on the subdued side. 

"Starfleet command hasn't been ignorant or idle. There's been several special weapon projects, but more relevantly to you... They're working on a few new classes of ships." 

She taps at the table, and turns the computer at her desk, showing her the sketched out schematics of two very different vessels. 

"The Defiant-class. A destroyer, dreamed up for a shiny new warfleet after wolf 359. It's got a hell of an engine for the frame, a new phaser cannon system, and an extensive suite of ablative armor. It's a tough little bugger that more resembles an old earth submarine than a modern starship, with a fraction of the crew anything near its weight class would have. We've been encountering some teething issues with the warp systems, though - the engine half-tears the ship apart when it's running at full power, and I'm not the most optimistic we're going to fix that anytime soon." 

"And the Intrepid-class. It's our next generation in long range exploration ships, which is to say that's it's a heavily armed scout vessel with all the bells and whistles thrown in for peak warp performance. The spooks are estimating that with their variable nacelle systems and the bio-neural upgrades to the navigational computer that it'll be able to cruise at warp ratings as high as 9.8 for a dozen hours without running it ragged. But it's a lot closer to a standard starfleet design - we're estimating a crew complement of around 150 once we get it up and running. We're hoping that the pilot ship will be ready for its maiden voyage in another 2 years, but for now, there's a lot of work left to do." 

"I completely agree with those ideas, sir," Maya replies, leaning in a bit eagerly. "I wonder how it feels to go that fast, to feel space twist that sharply around your hull."

Oh. Her excitement got away from her. Admiral Miller did not ask for her to gush about how much she enjoyed being a starship.

She composes herself smoothly.

"I am relieved to hear that Command is pursuing these new designs. The Intrepid, in particular, sounds fascinating."

A bemused smile flickers in her eyes for a moment, before she returns to her drink. 

"That does rather bring me to my next question. Where do you want see yourself in say, five years? What are your goals for yourself, going forward? As best I understand it, beyond your attachment to your wife, such things were left as something of an open question in your programming." 

Data had his quest to be human, but by all accounts, her work was more than enough for her to be satisfied on that level.

Interesting question.

Also a common misunderstanding. Sable did not program Maya to love her. She simply built the personality that best complemented her own and let Maya choose.

But now is not the time to correct that.

She considers her goals, her desires, her dreams. There is one thing that stands out to her, but it is unprecedented. She and Data are the only of their kind to ever try it, and Starfleet has shown no signs of researching such things. They would likely prefer a purpose-built AI in such a case, regardless. That would be the rational choice.

"Realistically, I would like to be Sable's executive officer, if she is offered a command. I would like to see new places. I would like to protect people. I do enjoy researching novel stellar phenomena and warp field variations, as well."

She leans back in her seat slightly. 

"I could arrange most of those things. Your credentials speak for themselves in warp theory, and I can think of any number of vessels that would be happy to have you as a first officer or chief engineer and sable as science officer, say, and there's plenty of exploration in places like that. As for Sable getting a command... I'm not sure she's entirely ready, but I think it wouldn't be hard for her to prove herself well enough in a year or two more of training and experience out in the field."

She pauses, and looks into her eyes meaningfully. 

"Have you familiarized yourself with the technology behind bio-neural gel packs?"

"A marvelous technology, simultaneously capable of outperforming traditional isolinear circuitry in many fields, especially organization and classification of information, while smoothly working alongside it for those few tasks where it is not superior. From Sable's and my tests of the technology, the classification flexibility is only beaten by positronic matrices — which, we have found, also cooperate well with both isolinear and bio-neural computing."

She nods firmly. 

"The Intrepid class is a very new design - there's been a few prototypes of bioneural systems, here and there, but nothing at the scale of a ship, or with anything like the speed of a starship's main computer or a mind like yours. It will need quite a good deal of debugging, I expect, but I for one, am interested about the possibilities."  

Three times now Miller has redirected from ships and computing to her.

That is officially no longer coincidence.

Further, her slip of unprofessional excitement about linking with an Intrepid was the first.

On some level, it feels unreasonable to hope for such a thing, but the conclusion is inescapable.

"Admiral Miller," she asks, leaning in, "may I have permission to speak freely and less realistically?" 

"Of course." 

She sets down her cup, and looks up at her attentively. 

"I have long doubted Starfleet would ever pursue such a possibility, but I do have an unrealistic dream."

"I want to link with a starship again. I want to link longer. I wish I could be both a gynoid and a starship, full-time."

"However, though Sable and I have done some research into how, that is not something I can ask of any current captain I know. They all have quite reasonably gotten attached to their ships' lack of sapience."

She steeples her fingers together, and leans in. 

"I have a proposal. The Intrepid and Voyager already have enough arranged administratively that it wouldn't be too feasible to adjust their command staff too much, but the federation is going to make far more than just two vessels of the class. You and Sable would be assigned to Utopia Planitia as special engineering consultants on the Intrepid project. You would be free to link up to the systems of the ships as much as little as you'd like, and you would be free to propose modifications to the design specifications, both across the class, and potentially for a ship designed with your particular requirements in mind, to explore the possibilities in improved starship automation and computation." 

"There's been enough interest in what Data and you have been able to do to get Starfleet Command curious about what a dedicated AI system could do, and see what could be replicated elsewhere with more isolinear and bioneural systems, and yes, perhaps limited positronic systems. If all goes well, you and Sable would have right of first refusal for the positions of Captain and First Officer, however you wish to split those between you, and input on the composition of the rest of the crew. If not, you'll have spent a year or two of your life working on making the federation a safer place and enjoying Earth's amenities, and you can simply return to the kind of work you are already doing, or pursue your other interests." 

For an entire half-second, Maya is speechless.

This is more than she dared hope.

But there is only one answer she can give.

Her wife's decision is likewise predictable enough that Maya can speak for her.