Warp travel was a rare time when Lieutenant Commander Tynleigh Ache could relax her eyes; at least, it should have been.

Without starships and celestial bodies in the immediate vicinity, Ache could, theoretically, follow up on the mundane matters of running the security department. She could trust that helm, operations, and science were just as capable as she was to keep watch for potential threats. And with Constellation Squadron only hours away from the Barzan Wormhole terminus that would return them to the Alpha Quadrant, Fleet Captain Taes had ordered a speed increased to warp nine.

But on this day, Ache couldn’t focus even one of her six eyes on her tactical interface. Every visible shuffle, shifted weight, or crossed leg of the bridge crew attracted her attention like a neutron star. Her heart began to race, as if there were a Vaadwaur soldier hidden somewhere among them. When a particular Nova stepped out of the observation lounge, Ache’s vision focused not on Nova’s footsteps, but on the ball of fluff dangling from her waist.

“This has got to stop!” Ache announced.

“Pardon me, commander?” asked Commander Calumn from his seat on the elevated command platform. He uncrossed his right ankle from his left knee, settling his boots on the deck, but he moved at the pace of a Tiberian sloth cat. While his enunciation was precise, he expressed himself with little enthusiasm.

Maintaining his half-lidded gaze on the LCARS panel extended from his armrest, Calumn asked, “Is there something erroneous about our heading?”  He tapped at the panel, likely searching for whatever had raised Ache’s ire.

Ache’s chest tightened, and her fingers numbed at the misunderstanding she was to blame for. She held her breath for a couple of rapid heartbeats, and then her voice rose when her explanation didn’t come out cogently.

“No, commander,” Ache spat out first to avoid causing a panic. “We remain at condition green and on course to the Epatha System. It’s, ah, it’s just… If I may, I expected better from Lieutenant DeVoglaer.”

DeVoglaer had only just arrived at her communications station, behind Calumn, when Ache socially reprimanded her. At the mention of her name, she spun to face Ache, her eyes widening. Her heavily-painted festival lips turned down into a frown.

“I said I was going to take the last pastry from the briefing,” DeVoglaer riposted. She raised her palms as if Ache had pointed a phaser at her, rather than questioned her decorum. “You could have said something before I housed it.”

Ache’s facial tentacles went rigid at DeVoglaer’s overreaction. Her face felt hot.

“It’s not about feeding,” Ache said, incredulous at DeVoglaer’s lack of observational skills. “It was hazardous enough when the junior officers in engineering and science were doing it, but now you’re wearing a Tribble chain too.”

Ache snapped her heels together. “Captain, I am formally reporting an epidemic of noncompliance with the uniform code.”

“Is it contagious?” Taes asked, hardly above a whisper. She didn’t look up from the PADD she was reading.

Waving a hand in DeVoglaer’s direction, Ache said, “Clearly, captain, it is.” Clipped to DeVoglaer’s belt by a pink chain was a plush toy resembling a Tribble, no larger than the palm of her hand. Not only DeVoglaer, Ensign Addae Danbo, at engineering, was also wearing one on his sleeve.

“Half the junior officers bought plush tribbles from a Ferengi trader while we were at the Markonian Outpost,” Ache said. “I’ve received similar reports from the Minerva and Almagest.”

Ache was about to recite the precise violations of the uniform code, but Taes leaned closer to Calumn to whisper in his ear. She couldn’t hear what Taes said, but Calumn smirked, and Taes returned her attention to her PADD. Ache took half a step back. Had Taes just privately mocked her?

If she had, Calumn didn’t show it. In all seriousness, he said, “There was a time tribbles were thought to be extinct. These Tribble chains could be classified as Remembrance Day pins.”

As he spoke, a recording of a Tribble purr rose up from the aft of the bridge, grating to Ache’s senses.

“Commander,” Ache said, her voice rising an octave, before she forced herself back to her normal register. “Those allowances are made for fallen heroes, not plush vermin. With your JAG training, I would expect you to know that.”

Sitting in the other seat by Taes’s side, Counsellor Turro interjected where he wasn’t invited, by saying, “By all accounts, the Tribbles are offering our first morale boost after leaving behind the Vaadwaur home world. And Nova’s doomsday light-show.” –He shrugged– “It’s a harmless fad, in my opinion.”

When she blinked, Ache could still see it behind her eyes: the Kazon boarding shuttle, lancing towards Constellation’s away team in the Nacene Reach.  The nose of the shuttle gleaming with all of its hull-tearing bite.

Reining in her temper, Ache puffed up her chest and expressed herself in her formal timbre. “Violating regulations is not harmless. It’s never harmless.”

Taes was watching Ache now. Her PADD was abandoned at the foot of her chair. Still, she kept her thoughts to herself, but Ache had won her audience.

“They’re just stupid little things,” Danbo interjected. His sigh expressed an alarming degree of exasperation for an ensign among senior officers. Ache would speak to his department head about it later. “They’re soft, and they purr when you squeeze them. The sound is designed to lower bodily stress reactions. Why can’t we have something soft?”

Ache breathed out a “tt” and explained, “They’re synthetic and were likely constructed under dubious methods.”

Turro offered, “Whatever their derivation, patients find such… symbols of comfort to be useful in soothing themselves or finding embodiment in the discussion of emotionally difficult matters.”

“The tribble plushies are simple biotech-fibre; hardly all that different from all-weather uniform fabric,” Danbo said. “But what they represent makes all the difference. The engineering of empathy. We fought the Vaadwaur to maintain our identity. Our choices. That can’t have been for nothing.”

“Why don’t you get it?” Ache exclaimed. “The Vaadwaur are why I’m saying this. As soon as you make one concession, it becomes easier to make the next one, and the next. It’s the uniform code today, and then it’s the three-hundred-series regulations from the bottom of the list tomorrow.

“Next thing you know,” Ache went on, speaking faster than she was thinking, “the away team protocols aren’t comfortable enough, and the Kazon have kidnapped half our away team. If the crew need plush animals to cope, then we’ve failed them as senior officers.”

Deafening silence was the only response to Ache’s outburst. The life support systems droned on. Every eye on the bridge was trained on her, except for Taes’. Evaluating the faces around the compartment, Ache could spot serious expressions of furrowed brows and clenched jaws. And she saw sadness from a couple of watery eyes and open mouths. Only in that moment did Ache realise she had spoken the wrong truth aloud.

“Let them have their fur,” Taes said simply.

Ache’s posture deflated. This wasn’t the first time Taes had boldly, thoughtlessly, smashed through inconvenient rules. Ache had been charged with arresting Taes the very first time they had met. This probably wouldn’t be the last time either.

Behind the command platform, Nova flicked at her plush Tribble and watched it dangle from her hip. Danbo unclipped it from his shoulder and repositioned it in place of pride below his combadge. Even Counsellor Turro squeezed one out that he had been, evidently, hiding in his boot.

Ache shifted her gaze back to her transparent panel. There was no Tribble reflected back at her. No softness to be found.

“I’ll, ah, make a note in the logs,” Ache said.

“Already drafted,” Calumn replied.

Ache nodded. “Naturally, commander.” She made a note in the log and another in the long list of failures that she kept only for herself.