the Trouble with Kittens: When Invasion was Cute and Cuddly

Two hundred kittens. One smooth-talking merchant. One very tired station commander.Pinnacle Station is falling apart at the seams - the gravity plating in Section Nine has a personality disorder, the cantina solves nothing, and Commander Deidre Sherman runs the whole aging operation on willpower and bad coffee substitute.So when independent trader Kull Tolbani Polvani docks with two hundred "Certified Felisian Purr-Companions" - adorable, hypoallergenic, and certified sterile - Sherman knows better. She lets them aboard anyway. It's the biggest mistake she'll ever make, and she's made some spectacular ones.Within days, crew morale is soaring and everyone has a kitten. Within a week, the kittens are reproducing - silently, asexually, and at a rate that makes the chief science officer's spreadsheets look like horror novels. They're in the air ducts, clogging the CO2 scrubbers, shorting out the wiring, and floating through zero-gravity corridors in warm, purring clouds. And a visiting alien diplomat has just declared them sacred fertility symbols, turning the crisis into the best trade negotiation Pinnacle Station has ever had.Now Sherman must save her station, keep the deal alive, neutralize the merchant responsible, and figure out what to do with eight thousand kittens - without offending a religion, starting a diplomatic incident, or letting her chief engineer commit a crime.A wickedly funny sci-fi romp in the tradition of classic space opera comedy. Ten chapters. No epilogue. All fur.My tribute to Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles," which aired Season 2, Episode 15 in 1967. Perfect for fans of comedic science fiction and anyone who has ever underestimated something very small and very cute.