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

Part 9: The Blue Light

Being Vulcan, Suvok did not gasp when the flash of blue light washed over him. He did, however, raise a curious eyebrow. He pressed a button on his tricorder, then nodded.

"I am registering repeated tachyon bursts," Suvok commented to nobody in particular. "They appear to be emanating from - " he waved the tricorder in the direction of the door, "from the corridor."

The beta shift staff all around him didn't so much as look up. Suvok reflected that, whatever one might say about Commander Reya, at least Reya paid attention to the people under his command. Suvok resisted the urge to sigh - he had been around humans too long - and went looking for a beta shift member who wore the two pips of a Lieutenant.

It took a good three minutes to find a Lieutenant, a young human male who was leaning over the railings that surrounded the warp core, aiming a tricorder in the direction of the pulsating cylinder. Suvok stood, hands clasped behind his back, and cleared his throat. There was no reaction. Suvok cleared his throat again. The Lieutenant looked up, but then down again.

Suvok blinked, twice, but showed no other sign of annoyance. For the third time, he cleared his throat quite noisily, but then, in a normal voice, said, "Sir?"

Unlike Suvok, the Lieutenant actually did sigh. "What do you want, ensign? I'm rather busy, as you can see."

"I detected a series of tachyon bursts, sir, and - "

"So did I. And if these have anything to do with the warp core, we're all in trouble."

"Sir, I believe that the tachyon bursts are originating in the corridor."

"The corridor? There's nothing out there that could act as a tachyon source, ensign."

"Not a normal source, no, but Commander Reya did say that the warp core was not involved."

"That's true," the lieutenant agreed with a frown.

"May I take this tricorder and attempt to find the source of the tachyon bursts in the hallway?"

The lieutenant straightened up and looked around the room. He had plenty of staff; a few more members of gamma shift were starting to make it into the room. Sparing one ensign on a wild goose chase should not be problematic. "Make sure you check in with Reya or me at the end of your shift, ensign," he cautioned.

"Of course, sir." The position of Suvok's eyebrows implied that the order was so obvious as to be a non-issue. Fortunately, his expression did not betray any of the quiet excitement that was bubbling just below the surface of his hard-won, calm rationality