Once upon a time on a Klingon Empire fighter, that belonged to the glorious House of Torg, there lived a Klingon and his wife.

"B'itra, my lady! I am hungry! And there is no honor in hunger!" the captain, the glorious dahar master named Kh'Tor, yelled once in the morning — or was it the night, it is space after all.

"Kh'Tor, my husband, there is not a single creature on this inglorious piece of junk to cook a worthy dinner for a Klingon warrior!" the first officer replied, interrupting each word with the whistle of sharpening bat'leth in her hands.

"Don't you dare speak of the magnificent battleship, Targ, veteran of a thousand battles, in such a manner! Go scratch the walls of the decks, search through the storages, I am so hungry, that even a slush made of parasites would seem to me sweet, as my enemies blood!"

Mighty B'itra unwillingly left her bat'leth, and a silent "petaQ" flew from her lips when she stepped away from the bridge. She took a d'k tag from her belt and scraped polips off the walls of the cargo deck, where the Gorn science officer shed regularly without a shade of shame. She mixed them up with a pack of fleas from Ferasan's bed - he added graciously an equal bunch of living ticks from his tail. After search, long enough to be worth gloryfing in a special opera, in the crate long ago forgotten she discovered the main and final ingredient - a box of tribbles, stewed in bloodwine.

The entire crew of the battleship Targ stood in a queue in the ship mess, and each of them Mighty B'itra had to fight, standing for captain's dinner. But in a long battle with Gorn she did not see that a despicable creature, called a tribble, was hiding in his pocket.

How many poems and operas had the Klingons shaped about the immense losses of delicious food in the wombs of these insatiable creatures, devastating ships! But there were those, whose insatiable gluttony induced them to consume their own kind without a sign of disdain, and it earned them their own story.

A white furry monster fell into a cup of soup and climbed out of it, stuffed with the flesh of its brothers. It then rolled away through the vent that was operable that very day, to give birth to a small cannibal tribble under the yelling of frustrated Klingon captain.

"B'itra, my lady! How can I go to the battle after such a soup?" glorious Kh'Tor mourned. His hunger only increased after that liquid pottage.

"There are replicators, my husband you headless baktag!"

"I will personally break this synthetic rubbish, if the crew of my ship, the glorious Targ, had forgotten the taste of fresh gakh, crusting on tee—" the word froze on captain's lips, when a piece of fur fell into his arms from the vent on the ceiling, squalling insanely.

Glorious Kh'Tor, dahara master, was strong both with bat'leth and voice. B'itra covered her ears with palms, when his war-cry filled the bridge as a lava flow, and the cannibal tribble echoed him with ultrasound. Short was the battle of their voices, as B'itra was quite clever! She pressed a comlink with her knee and made the order to beam the despicable beast into space.

That could be the end of the saga of little cannibal tribble, barely born, but by the will of the Prophets, or Q, or whoever else that one would call destiny, a Starfleet ship was on a routine research mission exactly in these time and space coordinates, so the tribble materialized on a plate in front of the chief engineer instead of the vacuum of space.

The Terran in a yellow shirt was quite puzzled, because he did not order such a dish from replicator. Meanwhile the tribble, not being squeamish, ate all the food that lied around, and purred delighted, moving his soft, fluffy fur. A firm Klingon warrior never falls under the charm of such a despicable creature, but a soft-hearted Terran melted immediately in tender emotions and completely forgot about his dinner. He took the fluffy beast to his quarters and was happy to see never once, how the little cannibal eats his descendants.

Soon the whole ship knew that a fluffy ball, with teeth sharper than d'k tak, lived in the eingeneer's wardrobe in cozy neigbourhood with Scotch whiskey. And all was well, until one day he encountered a bloodthirsty competitor, also fluffy, called felis catus. Piercing squeals, fierce jumping and hissing were not enough to explain to primitive people that it was never a game, but a battle! The cannibal tribble did not desire to enter Sto'Vo'Kor yet. It was much too young. He clutched his teeth on his foe's long fluffy tail. Deafening was the yell of the wounded cat, and its teeth were sharp, but they slipped in vain through the tribble's dense fur in its desperate attempts to toss him away.

"Ach!" the chief engineer yelped and made his choice in favor of tribble's rival. In a temper he put the defeated beast into the tight interiors of a photon torpedo.

Not much can be said about Federation torpedoes. They hit so weak that make true warriors think of them as being made for the sake of appearance to scare pre-warp civilizations. But more adventures begin, when someone improves them with Borg nanoprobes without informing the captain and then put inside a martial cannibal tribble.

A Romulan warbird received minimal damage after the impact with the Federation torpedo, even with lowered shields. Subcommander Tidara was pleased to see how the awkward body of the Federation cruiser slowly turned her back and left the Neutral Zone, losing pieces of its duranium hull under the permanent fire of plasma beams. She collected the trophies and assigned the tasks to the crew. After she was finished she went to her quarters in order to have a nap, and did not notice that it had become a little bit greener.

The cannibal tribble, upset and hungry, ate all the wires of the torpedo and became a tribble of Borg! Energizing himself directly from ship's subsystems, instead of giving birth to tribbles, it spawned nanoprobes. When Subcommander Tidara woke in her quarters, she was assimilated and became a part of the Borg, as the rest of the crew. Willing to join the Collective, she modified the ship, and soon something that was once a Romulan warbird moved through transwarp to a nebula, where a transporting node was hidden.

The queen of the BORG was happy to get such a gift. The cannibal tribble fell into her palms from a Jeffery tube. She pet his thinning fur, and few green lamps blinked from under it with a sound of monotonous mechanic purr. She had never seen such a species before and never considered a creature, able only to eat, breed and purr useful to the Collective.

"What an inglorious end for a little cannibal!" the mighty Kh'Tor would say, because being a part of his soup is more honorable than being a part of the Borg.

"Ach, how could I let this occur?!" the Federation Captain groaned, after recieving the reports both from the chief engineer and the cat, and many times had his palm covered his face.

"Damn Tal Shiar cannot control its researches again!" D'Tan exclaimed in despair, after examining all the intelligence reports in his quarters.

And the cannibal tribble in unison with the queen and trillions of drones purrs till today:

"We are the Borg."

And every rival surrenders without any battle, melted with waves of affection.