A new week, a new story. Enjoy!

Also, see who can spot the DS9 reference!

Disclaimer: Not mine, never mine.

Tribbles sure are cute... until one gets loose aboard the Enterprise and starts giving birth.

Hundreds and Thousands

“Bones, I need you on the bridge.”

“Jim, I'm up to my knees in...”

“I know. That's why I need you up here.”

McCoy sighed. He knew he had instantly doomed himself when the words 'today is a good day' had passed through his mind earlier on. It was a pity, he thought, because it really had been a promising morning: a crew-member had given birth to twin girls and a security officer who'd required treatment after a training accident (the beautiful Ensign O'Hara, McCoy thought with a happy grin) had given him a look that ended with the promise of a dinner date when their shift patterns fell into alignment. All in all, it was a morning that cheered up even a cynic like McCoy...

...Until Scotty's pet Tribble escaped. Now McCoy's lovely clean sickbay was carpeted by the happily humming furry creatures, all of whom seemed to be giving birth and adding yet more depth to the impressive shagpile they had created. Wading his way through them, McCoy struggled to get to sickbay's exit. He was needed on the bridge.

McCoy broke free, the sliding doors of sickbay opening and allowing a torrent of Tribbles to spill out into the hallway beyond. Stepping over them, his movements nearly dance-steps, McCoy made it to the turbo-lift and stepped aboard, only to find a family of eleven Tribbles dotting the floor.

“Good God,” he muttered. He hit the button for the bridge and looked back down. Eleven had become twenty-one. McCoy's eyes widened with horror. It was only a matter of time before the damn things found their way into the ship's extensive wiring...

A particularly horrific lecture from his days at the academy sprung to mind. They needed to get a handle on this Tribble situation soon otherwise all hell would break loose.

McCoy stepped onto the bridge in time to hear Kirk's voice state: “One thousand?” Apparently the Captain was so amazed at what he was hearing that he couldn't even get the emotion into his voice. “You brought a Tribble on board and there's already a thousand of the damn things?”

“One thousand eleven,” Spock commented from his console, reading the information given to him by the internal scanners.

Scotty looked suitably cowed. “No, Keenser brought him... and I was very glad, because I couldnae bear the thought of leaving the furry fella behind on Delta Vega... And I made sure not to overfeed it...”

“It's a damn Tribble! You don't even make jokes about bringing them aboard ships!” Kirk shot back.

“One thousand and thirty-three,” Spock added.

Scotty had the presence of mind to look shocked.

Kirk wasn't done yet. “You're an engineer. You know how delicate the ship's systems are. What the hell were you thinking!”

“I know! But it escaped and...”

“And you thought we'd never know?” Kirk's hands were on his hips, a clear sign he was both frustrated and thinking. “We've gotta get them off, and I don't care how.” He reached out and plucked a brown Tribble out of his chair. “They're a menace, a nightmare... a.... a... Huh.” He found himself stroking the fuzzy thing. It purred under his touch. Kirk's expression softened “Well... they're a little cute.”

Uhura failed to stifle a giggle. Scotty let out a “Y'see!”. McCoy rolled his eyes and told his friend to put it down. Kirk didn't listen. He seemed quite relaxed.

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Fascinating,” he commented, walking over and plucking the creature out of Kirk's hands. “Perhaps the creature uses its... endearing qualities as a defense mechanism.”

Kirk shook himself. “What, so we all end up liking them too much to get rid of them?” Spock inclined his head. Kirk took a firm stance. “No. No way. I remember those pictures they showed us at the Academy. Lecture 259...”

“God, don't remind me,” McCoy shuddered. “I had nightmares for a week.”

“Exactly,” Kirk said. “I will not allow the Enterprise to be overrun. We're finding a suitable, uninhabited planet and dropping them all off. We're too far from their homeworld to take them back.”

The ship trembled suddenly, distracting Kirk from whatever else he had to say. McCoy's cynicism reasserted itself in full. He shared a look with Kirk. “This can't be good.”

Sulu spoke up from the helm. “Captain, we've just dropped out of warp.” His fingers danced over his controls. “There's some kind of fault in the power relays. Nothing's getting through. I... ah! Damn that tickles!” He disappeared beneath his console briefly before coming back, arms full of Tribbles. “They must already be getting into our systems.” He glanced at Kirk. “I had that class too – the one with the videos from that overrun ship. We need to get rid of them all.”

“How?” Chekov asked. “It is not as though we can beam zem all away. Zere will only be more born and we will not be able to keep up.”

“And we can't inflict them upon an unsuspecting populace,” Uhura added.

Kirk was pacing but he soon stopped when it became clear he couldn't think and dodge Tribbles at the same time. Standing still, he began issuing orders.

“Scotty, get to Engineering. I want us back at warp as soon as possible.”

“Aye Captain.”

“Spock, scan for uninhabited worlds we can dump the Tribbles on. But make sure it's a safe planet: I don't want to deal with Friends of the Tribbles. They're a bunch of crazies. Uhura, help Spock. Listen out for any signs that worlds may not be so uninhabited. We don't wanna accidentally dump the Tribbles on a pre-warp society. Sulu, keep us moving as fast as you can.” He then walked over to his chair but, finding a pile of Tribbles in his place, Kirk reached for the communicator and remained standing as he spoke. “Attention crew. Anyone not undertaking essential operations must report to the mess hall immediately. Same for anyone off duty. You will be divided into teams and sent to different areas of the ship. We need to clean out these Tribbles. Round them up and lock them down in Storage Bay One until we can get them off the ship. Anyone who attempts to hide a Tribble or keep one as a pet will resit Academy Lecture 259 on alien incursions.”

Shock passed palpably around the bridge. Everyone knew of Lecture 259. Cadets approached it one of two ways: terrified because of the rumours or certain everyone was exaggerating. But no matter what attitude they carried into the lecture, they all came out the same: utterly traumatised by the video they were forced to see. Lecture 259 was appropriately legendary.

“Jim!” McCoy hissed. “You can't do that! It constitutes cruel and unusual punishment!”

“I concur,” Spock added.

Kirk flicked off the communicator. “I know it is. No one wants to see those videos more than once so what could be a better motivator?” He turned to McCoy. “Come with me. You too Chekov. We're gonna round the Tribbles up.”

McCoy was less than impressed. “Don't come crying to me when the Tribbles defeat you.”

***

Several sweaty hours later (the Tribbles had chewed through something that regulated the heating system and now the ship was as hot as a midsummer's day), Kirk's plan to get all of the creatures into Storage Bay One seemed to be overly ambitious. He was currently in the depths of the ship's jefferies tubes, passing Tribbles back along a chain of crew members who were sealing them into boxes to take to the designated storage area. Unfortunately for Kirk, it was quite literally a case of passing on one Tribble and finding ten in its place.

Never before had his patience been so tested.

Systems continued to fail, thankfully all of them considerably more minor than the warp drive but still, Kirk couldn't banish those images he'd been shown at the Academy. The thought of the Enterprise being... harmed... in that way... The horror of it forced him to work faster despite the heat.

“Spock to Kirk. I have located a suitable world but without the warp drive it will take twenty-four hours to reach it.”

Kirk didn't allow himself to think of how many more Tribbles there would be by then. “Understood. Kirk to Engineering. Scotty, how's it going?”

“Aaaaah...”

Kirk picked up another Tribble, only for it to start giving birth in his hands. “Whoa!” The crew member behind him laughed and caught a few of the new babies. “Scotty, I need better than that.”

“Give me an hour.”

“All right. Kirk out.”

Handing over another Tribble, Kirk's mind whirled through various possibilities and options. Herding the critters wasn't enough. They needed a new plan...

“Jim? Jim!” It was Bones, calling from above. Kirk crawled through the tube until he reached the laddered junction. Looking up, he saw his friend's face peering down. “This isn't working.”

“You're the voice of hope, you know that Bones?”

“Jim...”

“Hey, if I can't come crying to you that doesn't mean you can do it to me.”

“I told you from the start this was hopeless!”

“Look, we're a little beyond that now...”

“We'd need every cadet from the Academy to clear these damn things out of here.”

“Got a better idea? I am all ears.” Because Kirk knew he couldn't just flush the Tribbles into space without depriving the ship of its atmosphere...

Bones shook his head. “You're the Captain. You work it out.”

Kirk found himself smirking. “We could always get the Klingons to give us a hand. Don't they hunt Tribbles?”

McCoy gave a sarcastically tinged laugh. “Yeah, right, Klingons aboard the Enterprise. That'll happen. And I thought you didn't wanna piss off Friends of the Tribbles?”

“There's got to be a way to stop them giving birth.”

“I could pump sterilization meds through the ship's ventilation system but the downside of that would be no member of crew would ever be capable of parenting their own children.”

“What about sedating them?” Kirk asked.

This idea McCoy seemed to consider. “If we kept the dose so that it was barely noticeable by the crew...” He looked down at Kirk. “I'll go speak with my anaesthetist. She'll be able to do the calculations a bit better.”

As McCoy turned to leave, he knocked over a pile of Tribbles that showered down over Kirk. The fluff balls squeaked as they bounced off his head. “Bones!”

McCoy's head reappeared above. “Oh, sorry Jim.” He didn't seem particularly apologetic; he never did when he was focused on the task at hand. “Just be glad you're not allergic. You should see the reaction poor Ensign Usar has had.”

With McCoy gone, Kirk resumed his part in the Tribble clearout operation... But his lapse in attention meant some of his crew were now stroking Tribbles, cooing soft nonsense to the furry animals. Kirk was not impressed.

“Lecture 259 people!” He called.

That got them moving.

***

When McCoy and his medical team reached a satisfactory conclusion, McCoy found himself hunting Kirk down because the Tribbles had broken the ship's internal communication system. He eventually found the Captain in the mess hall, passing out cold drinks to crew members who had been overwhelmed by the heat of the ship's troubled environmental systems. Even the Tribbles in attendance seemed to wilt in the warmth but it did nothing to stop them giving birth. Just before communications had gone down, Scotty had informed the ship that the temperature regulators would be back online soon. McCoy gladly grabbed a drink of water before catching his breath and explaining the plan to Kirk.

“You really think that can work?” Kirk asked once McCoy was done.

“It'll be fine. Besides, people won't necessarily fall asleep. The sedative will be a relatively low dose... there's just gonna be a lot of it. The most you'll get out of the crew is a yawn or two...”

***

They did more than yawn. Kirk had taken to walking laps around the bridge to keep himself awake. Any Tribbles in his path found themselves unceremoniously booted to one side: not that they noticed in their slumber. Kirk gazed around the bridge, taking in the sight that was his senior staff. Sulu was slumped over the helm, sleeping with his mouth open. Chekov had fallen back in his chair, head tilted and snoring loudly. Even Uhura was dozing; although every so often her head would snap up and she'd begin working again, casting looks around the bridge that challenged anyone to pass comment. Only McCoy and Scotty weren't present. They were both in engineering, keeping the steady stream of sedative in check: no one wanted to risk the Tribbles awakening prematurely. And Spock, thanks to some marvel of Vulcan biology for sure, seemed relatively unaffected, as did many other crew-members of non-Earth origin.

“How much longer?” Kirk asked, trying not to reflect on how much he sounded like a child. He'd asked the question a hundred times in the past twenty-plus hours. He kept walking, his eyes heavy and his whole body weighed down with drowsiness. However, with the insane amount of caffeine he had consumed he also jittered with a highly unpleasant buzz that rubbed against his tiredness in a way that left him both drained and energized all at once. McCoy had already told him he looked like a junkie coming down from a fix.

“An hour at our current speed Captain,” Spock answered. He viewed the security monitor that showed the feed from the engineering level. With internal communications still down, the crew had taken to the inventive method of communicating via large written messages held up to any security camera they happened to be nearby. It was either that or the elaborate game of Telephone the crew now used to pass along messages. “Mr. Scott informs me that we will be ready for warp shortly thereafter, although he believes many of the ships more minor functions will take longer to repair.”

“What about the Tribble count?”

“Internal scanners report there are in excess of five hundred thousand aboard the Enterprise.”

That woke Kirk up a bit. “Whoa.”

“However, the birth-rate has dropped considerably since sedation began. I believe their population will cease to grow shortly.”

Kirk yawned long and hard, just about managing to say “Good, that's good” as he did so.

“Captain,” Spock said, “if you are struggling you are perfectly free to sleep. Myself and the other unaffected members of the crew are more than capable of...”

Kirk shook his head. “No, I'm fine.”

Spock's eyebrow twitched. “Forgive me Captain, but your current state does not suggest that you are 'fine'.”

Fingers curling around a cup of coffee, Kirk knocked back the incredibly cold contents and somehow managed not to gag. “Look, it's just one more hour...”

“Then allow me to discuss another problem.” That was Spock, ever efficient. “We have yet to come up with a satisfactory method of getting all of the Tribbles off of the ship,” Spock went on, not noticing how Kirk seemed to sag at the very idea of forcing his mind to plan anything. “We may be able to beam them down to the surface so long as they are still asleep but in order to effectuate a ship-wide clearance I recommend that all of the Tribbles that were crated and placed in Storage Bay One be taken to the surface aboard shuttle crafts in order to alleviate the strain upon the transporter systems and...”

“Good plan. Do that,” Kirk said, interrupting before Spock could conclude his thoughts. “And uh... anyone who's fully awake needs to start checking the jefferies tubes. I don't wanna find a si-” He broke into yet another jaw-cracking yawn, “ngle Tribble in there once we move on.”

“Understood.” Spock passed the message on to a nearby member of crew, an equally unaffected Andorian, who dashed off to pass on the order and start the search for any Tribbles sleeping in concealed places.

Kirk finished yawning and resumed pacing. It was going to be the longest hour of his life...

***

“Spock to Enterprise.”

Kirk startled awake. Dozing again? He found himself on the floor, curled up beside his chair. Wiping away the small stream of drool that had trickled down one cheek, Kirk pushed himself back to his feet, stumbling a little. “Kirk here... Wait... When did the communication system go back online?”

“About forty-five minutes ago Captain. You were sleeping at the time.” Damn, he hadn't gotten away with it. “You may wish to consult Doctor McCoy about the photos he took.”

“What?”

Spock didn't comment on that particular matter further. “All of the Tribbles have been successfully relocated, although to avoid making foolish assumptions may I recommend a final internal sensor sweep to ensure that none have been missed?”

Kirk walked to Spock's station, blinking hard as his eyes blurred with tiredness. “Uh, yeah. Gimmie a minute.”

“I suggest you take considerably less time than a minute Captain.”

“Hah hah.”

“I did not intend it as a joke.”

“Whatever.” Kirk initialized the scan, widening the parameters so that the sensors took in every last nook and cranny the Enterprise had. When the sweep came up clean, he slumped with relief. “Got 'em. Every last damn one.” Forcing himself to focus one last time, Kirk opened a line to engineering where the sedative gas had been pumped into the ventilation systems. “Bones, the Tribbles are gone. Turn the gas off.”

A great huge rasping yawn hit the airwaves. “Gotcha Jim.”

“Make sure Scotty gets the air cleared as fast as possible.”

“Yeah, uh huh. Gonna wanna get someone else down here.”

Kirk shook his head. “Kick him.”

“I did.” McCoy sounded half-asleep. “D'you wanna have a go?”

“I'm on my way down.”

“Captain, I will beam someone to engineering.”

“Don't worry about it Spock,” Kirk said, padding into the turbo-lift. “I'm on my way. I'll...”

...Kirk woke up two hours later in the turbo-lift, Spock looking down on him with one eyebrow most definitely cocked.

“Tell no one,” Kirk said as Spock pulled him to his feet.

Spock looked away. “Then you may also wish to speak with Lieutenant Uhura about the photos she took. She described one such image as... 'cute', although I am uncertain as to whether she was referring to you or the Tribble that had been placed upon you.”

Kirk's eyes widened. “There are still Tribbles aboard?!”

“I... relieved her of it.”

“Good.” Kirk rubbed his eyes but it did nothing to alleviate his tiredness. “We'll stay in orbit while repairs take place to the damaged systems. The bridge is yours.” Kirk reached out to the lift's controls and hit the button that would take him to the level his quarters were on. “Wake me tomorrow.”

“Aye Captain.”

The turbo-lift arrived and Kirk stepped out. “Inform the crew that if anyone ever brings a Tribble aboard this ship again they will face court martial. Oh, and tell Scotty we will be having words.”

“Understood.”

The lift doors closed and Spock was gone. Kirk headed to his room. Once inside he didn't even bother to undress. He threw himself on the bed and was asleep in an instant, only to awaken a mere hour later in the aftermath of a horrific Tribble-related dream. He groaned. Kirk knew he was going to have nightmares for weeks.