Tribble Fan Fiction #11 Captain’s Log, Stardate 47634.2 The Enterprise-D has received a priority distress signal from Research Station Epsilon — the Federation’s tribble conservation facility orbiting Iota Geminorum IV. The station reports a “containment anomaly.” I have learned, in my years as captain, that the phrase “containment anomaly” is Starfleet’s way of saying “something…
Tribble Fan Fiction #10 I. Critical Mass Nobody noticed when tribbles became sentient. In retrospect, the signs were obvious — but then, the signs are always obvious in retrospect. That’s what retrospect is for. It started on Tribble Reserve Seven, the managed habitat on the Cestus moon where three million tribbles lived in grain-fed contentment…
Tribble Fan Fiction #9 Lecture One: Introduction to Being a Tribble The following is a transcript of lectures delivered by Professor Emeritus Prrrt of the Tribble Academy of Sciences, translated from the original Purr by Dr. Yara Tal, Federation Tribble Ambassador. Professor Prrrt is the first tribble to hold an academic appointment at any institution…
Tribble Fan Fiction #8 I. The Proclamation Federation Order 4127-T, known colloquially as the “Tribble Deportation Act,” was signed into law on Stardate 5201.3. It was four paragraphs long, written in the bloodless bureaucratic prose that the Federation Council used whenever it was about to do something unconscionable, and it said this: All specimens of…
Tribble Fan Fiction #7 Session One: The Referral General K’Vort, son of Martok, hero of the Battle of Donatu V, slayer of thirty-seven enemies of the Empire, and recipient of the Order of the Bat’leth (Third Class), was afraid of tribbles. This was, in Klingon society, roughly equivalent to being afraid of pillows. Tribbles were…
Tribble Fan Fiction — A Midsummer Night’s Tribble The Athens Starbase was experiencing what Commander Helena Vasquez would later describe in her incident report as “a category-five romantical disturbance.” Four Starfleet cadets — Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius — had gotten their shore leave assignments tangled with their love lives, which is the sort of…
Tribble Fan Fiction #6 Episode One: On Your Marks The Federation Interstellar Bake-Off was, by any reasonable measure, the most prestigious cooking competition in the Alpha Quadrant. Held annually on Risa — because everything pleasant happens on Risa — it attracted the finest amateur bakers from a hundred worlds. Vulcans who could calculate rising times…
Tribble Fan Fiction #5 I. The Gift The tribble was a birthday present. Marcus Chen had been dating Lieutenant Priya Adeyemi for exactly one year when he decided that what their relationship needed was a small, round, impossibly soft ball of fur that purred when you held it. He bought it from a trader on…
Tribble Fan Fiction #4 I. The Appointment Commander Lwaxana Troi would have told you she was the most powerful empath in Starfleet. Her daughter Deanna would have gently corrected this. But neither of them could do what Ensign Yara Tal could do. Yara Tal could hear tribbles think. This was not, she wanted to be…
Tribble Fan Fiction #3 Chapter One: The Dame It was raining on Space Station K-7. Not real rain — recycled coolant from a busted atmospheric processor on Level 3. But it dripped from the ceiling in the bar district the same way rain does in all the old stories: slowly, steadily, like the universe crying…
Tribble Fan Fiction #2 I. Aftermath The Klingon ship smelled like disruptor fire and regret. Commander Koloth had been thorough. When Scotty beamed 1,771,561 tribbles aboard the IKS Gr’oth — which he later described, with barely concealed glee, as doing them “no tribble at all” — the Klingon crew responded with characteristic restraint. They screamed…