How to Break the Prime Directive (and get away with it)

Part 12: More Blue Light

His eyes fixed firmly on the tricorder, Suvok rounded a corner. The tachyon bursts were getting stronger as he moved father from engineering, but Suvok was still unsure of the source. Suvok swung the tricorder's sensor in a slow arc, then raised an eyebrow as the device's cheerful beeping grew louder. He tapped a few buttons - this couldn't be right.

Suvok was, by now, a level up from where he had started, and half-way to the holodecks. This level contained cargo bays and a matched pair of transporter rooms. The holodecks and the transporter rooms both had potential as a tachyon source. The cargo store rooms did not. Suvok had helped fill these cargo bays himself - three hours of geometry puzzles, trying to fit boxes of nutritional supplements in amongst casks of Altair water and cases of Trixian bubble juice.Suvok turned again in a slow arc, watching the tricorder display. The small device registered the same results - the tachyon bursts were coming from the aft storage bay.

Suvok slid the sensor back into the groove on the side of the tricorder, and tucked the entire device into the holder at his hip. He was aware that his curiosity had grown inappropriately strong, threatening to cross out of the realm of mere intellectual interest and into the destructive realm of strong emotion. He took several deep breaths, centering himself. Intellectual curiosity was good; emotional involvement was not. When he was ready, he walked to the cargo bay door.

The door hissed open, bathing the corridor in blue light. It look a moment before Suvok's eyes adjusted, but in that moment, a clash of voices - most of them familiar - barking orders, trying to head someone, or something, off, assaulted his sensitive ears. Suvok blinked, and his eyes adjusted enough to make out the people. Captain Williams and Commander Reya stood at the apex of a ragged horseshoe of security personnel. The pulsing blue light washed over all of them, seeming to emanate from the centre of their rough semicircle.

Still standing in the open doorway, Suvok pulled out the tricorder. The tachyon bursts were coming regularly now, at the same frequency as the pulses of light. Suvok did some quick mathematical calculations - if the faster movement of the tachyons was accounted for, those faster-than-light particles passed through the centre of the semicircle at the same moment the pulse of light began. It did not seem unreasonable to assume that the pulse of light, and the tachyon bursts, were being emitted at the same instant, by the same phenomenon.

Suvok stepped into the cargo bay, the doors sliding shut behind him with a mechanical sigh. The slight noise caused the chief engineer's head to turn.

"Ensign! What are you doing here?" Commander Reya barked.

"My orders were to determine the tachyon source, sir, and - "

"That was hours ago!" Reya cut him off. "This area is under quarantine. Out!"

Suvok did not bother to correct the commander; it had been perhaps twenty minutes since Suvok had left engineering. Instead, he slid the tricorder back into its holder, and turned towards the door.

"Belay that, ensign," Captain Williams snapped. Her phaser was trained on the source of the blue light. "What's your name, ensign?"

"Suvok, Captain."

"Vulcan-sounding name," she commented. "You are Vulcan, ensign?"

Suvok quirked an intrigued eyebrow. "I am."

"Good," Captain Williams said, "I can use you."