Series: VOY
Codes: C/Tvk
Rating: NC17
Categories: Humour, First Time.
Disclaimer: These characters are the property of Paramount-Viacom. I just borrowed them and am not writing for profit.
Summary: The crew of Voyager find it impossible to mind their own business.
Warnings: This is NC17 rated so graphic descriptions of m/m sex.
Author's Note: This story was originally completed in May 2001 and I was really excited when it won 1st place for Voyager Misc M/M slash in the Star Trek GO Awards!
Command Logic - Chapter 10
When Lieutenant Carey began his shift in engineering he immediately realized that his superior was in a strange mood. B'Elanna Torres seemed extremely distracted and her temper was even worse than usual so that everyone in the section was keeping well away from her station.
He watched her surreptitiously for a few moments and frowned in puzzlement when he heard her muttering to herself.
"…hopeless… how many times am I going to have to do this… damned Vulcans… Chakotay is an idiot sometimes… why doesn't he get on with it…"
Obviously she was upset about something and Lieutenant Carey quickly checked through his own board to ensure that nothing could be blamed on him. He frowned again as he noticed the state of the turbolifts, one of them was stalled with the power cut off, but when he checked again, its controls were routed through B'Elanna's station.
Then, B'Elanna was called to the bridge. Carey saw her frown and then quickly glance around engineering and he was astonished when she almost seemed to creep out of the section.
Alive with curiosity, he wandered over to her board and found that indeed she had cut off power to one of the turbolifts. Obviously something was amiss with it, so he ran a quick diagnostic but found nothing wrong. He shrugged; B'Elanna had it offline for some reason he supposed. Then he noticed the com signals of the occupants.
Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Tuvok.
Immediately, Carey was worried. He could see no good reason for the lift to be stopped and it looked suspiciously like B'Elanna had been holding them there deliberately. And now of course she wasn't there and as the next in command he was in charge. If there was trouble later and Commander Chakotay found out that Carey had known about this, he would be in for a share of B'Elanna's blame.
Carey made an instant decision. There was no way he was going to let that happen. He made a quick announcement to Commander Chakotay and re-routed the power back to the lift.
"What the hell are you doing?" B'Elanna's voice hissed behind him.
"Lieutenant Torres," Carey babbled nervously. "I thought you were on the bridge."
"The Captain commed me, they didn't need me after all," said B'Elanna, and then she frowned. "Why am I explaining myself to you? What were you doing at my station?"
"One of the turbolifts…"
Before he could finish, B'Elanna had shoved him out of the way and was looking at her board.
"Damn, you restored the power," she glared at him.
"Yes, I did," Carey finally found his nerve. "There was nothing wrong with that lift, why did you have it stopped?"
"There was an intermittent power surge," B'Elanna was looking at him intently. "I had to take it offline, but the diagnostic showed nothing wrong."
"Oh," said Carey.
"Oh damn!" exclaimed B'Elanna, looking at her board again.
"What?"
"There's just been an emergency medical beamout from the lift. Lieutenant Tuvok. Did you warn them you were restoring the power?"
"Yes," said Carey, his heart sinking. Then he looked at B'Elanna and saw that she was smiling, and he swallowed nervously.
"There must have been another power surge," she said triumphantly.
Carey found himself returning her smile. "Oh, yes."
"Lieutenant Torres, I'd like to see you in your office immediately."
Both of them jumped at the softly menacing voice behind them, and they turned to find Commander Chakotay standing in the entrance of engineering. Carey swallowed nervously again. There was a gleam in the Commander's eye that was frankly terrifying.
B'Elanna fidgeted for a moment beside him and then nodded. "Of course, Commander," she said with what Carey knew was false confidence.
He watched them walk up the small set of steps to B'Elanna's tiny office and then quickly made his way to the spot that everyone in engineering knew was the prime location for listening in on any conversation in that office. He was going to find out what this was about if it killed him.
The Commander's first statement astounded him and he raised his eyebrows in astonishment.
"Know anything about skiing holoprograms, B'Elanna?"
"Well, Harry has one," his Chief answered nonchalantly.
"Correction, had one," the Commander replied. "Yesterday it was found jammed into the circuitry in jeffries tube 14, which as you know is on this deck. I'd like you to explain to me how it got there, and before you answer, think very carefully."
There was a long moment of silence.
"Oh, all right, I put it there," Carey was astonished to hear B'Elanna say. "But I had a very good reason."
"Well, I'm dying to hear it," said the Commander in an icy voice that sent shivers down Carey's spine. "Would it be, by any chance, the same reason that you cut off the power to the turbolift I was just in?"
Carey heard B'Elanna laugh nervously. "Strangely enough, it is."
"Let's hear it then."
The next thing Carey heard amazed him so much that he almost fell over into the storage box next to him.
"Okay, Chakotay. I know all about the problems you've been having in your relationship with Tuvok. I was just trying to help out."
There was another long moment of silence, and Carey wished desperately that he could see the Commander's face.
When the Commander finally spoke, Carey cringed at the serene politeness of his tone. B'Elanna was in for it, for sure.
"What the hell makes you think I'm having a relationship with Tuvok?"
"Well, I sort of… ah… accidentally… um… overheard Tuvok talking about it."
"Tuvok talking about it?" Carey could hear his own astonishment echoed in the Commander's voice. "With whom?"
"The Captain," B'Elanna continued quickly. "He said he considered you as his mate, Chakotay. Do you realize how important that is? Then he said you would only talk to him if it was ship's business, so I created some ship's business. I just wanted to help. You throw good things away sometimes out of stubbornness, Chakotay, you know you do. And this is a good thing. Chakotay, I think…"
"Lieutenant Torres," Chakotay's voice was quiet but it cut through the air and B'Elanna's words like a knife. "Do you mean to tell me that you perpetrated acts of sabotage on this ship in order to interfere in something that is none of your business?"
"I wouldn't exactly call them acts of sabotage," said B'Elanna sullenly.
"Oh, what would you call them? You deliberately created failures in the ship's systems, and you also, twice, caused an injury to another crewmember. Lieutenant Tuvok is in sickbay with a broken ankle. Yesterday he was in sickbay with burns on his face."
"Well, if you'd just stayed still and talked like you were supposed to," B'Elanna sounded personally affronted and Carey couldn't help smiling at her nerve.
"That's enough," Chakotay snapped out. "I'm putting you on report and your replicator rations are cut for two weeks. And seeing as you obviously have too much time on your hands I want a Level 10 diagnostic performed on all security systems."
"I'll get right on it," said B'Elanna with a sigh.
"Two more things," Chakotay continued. "First, I shudder to think what type of literature you read. I would have thought you could think up something more original than trapping us in a turbolift. So I want a full check performed on the turbolifts as well."
Carey heard B'Elanna groan.
"Manually," added Chakotay. "Just be thankful that I'm not telling the Captain about this."
"What's the second thing?" B'Elanna asked nervously.
"If you ever, and I mean ever, interfere in my life again, I will demote you to Neelix's kitchen hand. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Sir."
Carey quickly scuffled away as he heard the Commander exit the office and leave engineering.
What an amazing and crazy thing he had just heard! Commander Chakotay and Lieutenant Tuvok. He just couldn't believe it, but then he realized with a small thrill of excitement that the Commander had not actually denied it. He couldn't wait to spread this juicy piece of news.
"Lieutenant Carey," he turned to find B'Elanna standing behind him.
"Yes, Chief?"
"I believe you have some advanced expertise with the turbolift systems. I require your assistance with a manual check of all turbolifts on the ship. We'll be starting at 1500 hours. Don't be late."
She smiled sweetly at him and then walked away.