Unlike every other woman that I had gotten pregnant, Kara's pregnancy seemed to be taking a very long time. Hen couldn't explain it, either. She had seen that Lashina's had been a couple months longer than normal and because she was a long lived race, Hen just assumed her biological systems were somehow extended because of it, even though there was no actual evidence to support that hypothesis.

There was almost nothing about my race to be found, not even the name, so Hen was completely in the dark about it. Since Kara was also the same race, she had to also assume that our long lives combined were going to impact the pregnancy for some reason. How much it was going to impact it, she could only speculate, so she used a normal and very average human pregnancy as a guide to compare it to.

Hen used Kara's current growth in her belly, the date of conception, and the time between those two things to roughly estimate how long the real pregnancy was going to take when compared to a normal pregnancy. The prognosis... was not good.

“What do you mean I'm going to be pregnant for four years?” Kara asked, shocked.

Hen showed her the scaling chart and she looked at the development of her fetus at its current stage and saw it was only a few weeks old compared to a normal pregnancy, even though it had been over three months.

Kara stared at the two and tried to adjust the scale, and it only changed the prognosis to three and a half years. “By the Godde-HMM!”

I covered her mouth with a hand. “Yeah, you do not want to let her know you're going to be pregnant and vulnerable for that long.” I said. “I thought you stopped using her name in vain years ago.”

Kara sighed into my hand. I forgot. This is... I don't know what to say.

“It's all right.” I said and moved my hand, then gave her a kiss. “You're not going to go through this alone.”

Kara immediately thought of her parents and mine. “They never told us it took so long for us to be born!”

I chuckled. “The timing is perfect for mine.” I said and she gave me wide eyes. “That's almost exactly how long they were on the run before I was born.”

“So that's why they ran.” Kara said and thought about her parents. “Mine just surrendered me to The Order and that was that.”

“Don't be angry about that.” I said and hugged her tightly, then looked into her eyes. “It was a different time then and they did what they had to do to ensure their survival and your own.”

Kara stared into my eyes. “You actually believe that.”

I nodded. “If they tried to keep you like my parents did, they would have met the same fate and The Order would still have had you.”

Kara sighed again and reluctantly nodded.

“Plus, they didn't accept my offer to escape with us, even knowing you were aboard and coming with me.” I said and Kara caught her breath.

“I... when did you...”

“I tried several times during the build-up to get them and the rest of the clan to come with us, since we already had so many already. I was sure they would take the offer the last time, especially when I told them the Aviatoma and the Visidern were coming with us.”

“They didn't care about that, did they?” Kara asked in a whisper.

“Not even a little bit.” I said with a chuckle. “I think they said something along the lines of 'make sure to have fun adventures' or something.”

Kara squinted her eyes when the Presence wavered. “What did they actually say?”

It was my turn to sigh this time. “There's a reason that sector of space had been abandoned. Good luck finding out what it is.”

Kara stared at me, because the Presence didn't waver. “My parents... they... how could they...”

“Yeah, they could have just told us.” I said and let her go. “I'm curious about it, anyway.”

“But... if we go all that way and...”

“What? Even if there's no viable place to stay when we get there, it's not like we can't live on the ship.” I said with a chuckle. “It's built to last a thousand years. With the asteroid smelters and the robotic drones, we can completely rebuild the ship and it can last another thousand. At least.”

“But... I thought...”

“We can stop at planets and grab any compatible dirt and soil to replenish the hydroponics bays after a few hundred years. We can also keep stopping at gas giants to get as much oxygen and nitrogen that we need, even though the environment plants can handle the load. It's always nice to grab some fresh air.”

Kara nodded.

“Then there's nothing to worry about.” I said and took her hand to help her stand. “Now let me help you back to your room.” I put my arm around her and held her tenderly as we walked out of the medical bay. “You need lots of bed rest and to relax during your pregnancy.”

“I'm not an invalid yet.” Kara glared at me, even though she clung to me and didn't try to pull away.

“You know I spend a lot of time with a woman when she's pregnant, just so she knows I care a lot about her and for the child she's carrying for me.” I whispered and Kara blushed.

I'm shutting up now. Kara whispered into my mind as she leaned against me to give me all of her weight to support. I had to laugh at that and took her back to her room.

*

As the next two years of normal space travel passed by, the teenagers grew into young adults and the kids grew a little. Friendships formed and grew as well. People met, talked, and some even got together and became pregnant. Some came to Hen for help, once they had been discretely let in on the secret family blessing when they claimed to have trouble getting pregnant. Of course, once the secret was out, word of it went around the ship like wildfire, especially with the Visidern and their notoriously low birth rates.

They had thought that Simone and her son Markus were medical wonders and the event wasn't repeatable... and technically, they were right. They wouldn't have children with normal arms, not unless they tried to cross-breed with humans or another species. Even then, they might be deformed or not get the extra arms. So, they stuck with their own people to have children, now that they no longer felt like they were bringing those children into abject poverty.

There was a proverbial baby boom with hundreds of births just before we exited the galaxy and were going to jump into hyperspace. We delayed it for a month, just so the babies could adjust to being out of the womb, then we did another power down test. This time, I didn't give Kara the option to stay awake, because how would we explain the change in her birth time to everyone.

I was all alone on the ship for this journey, except for the AIs, and I spent time with each of them again. I had lots of free time this time, so no one felt neglected or slighted, not even Opina. It had taken her years to accept her mistake and she still resented being tricked out of such an important job, or so she had convinced herself. I never told her, or anyone else, that I was actually relieved that she had wanted out, because Zoe choosing to become the family's AI had been the best thing to happen for everyone.

Everything went so much smoother because she readily accepted her role as the family guardian. She performed it admirably and never complained, then as we started to build the outside of the ship, her role increased exponentially. Her importance increased as well, and we all appreciated her more and more as time went on. By the time we had launched, she had hundreds of dummy AIs working for her to run everything and she was extremely happy to have so much to do and to stay busy.

I also enjoyed my alone time, since it had been a long time since the last time I managed to be alone. I worked on my techniques and did my best to develop individual training regimens for the kids. I had lots of time to work on them and I put it to good use. Just because the people on board were in stasis, that didn't mean the work had to stop. Warships still needed reloading, black barrier machines needed to be completed, and things had to be monitored by both AIs and myself.

My attention wasn't strictly necessary, however. I had removed that particular roadblock a decade ago so that the automated warships could function without a pilot until the crucial mission time when they were needed. Of course, I let the AIs learn all of the moves that the pilots could do, just in case a connection was lost or the pilot couldn't take over in time.

There were also hundreds of pilots back in the Dizahl System that were unaffected by the pilots on the Ark being in stasis. They were just informed that they were going on an extended break and would be back on duty as if nothing happened as soon as we exited hyperspace. The other pilots never said anything, because it was impossible to use both the communications and the pilot programs while in hyperspace. They just assumed it was business as usual and kept doing their jobs.

The jump passed and then it was life as normal. Kara wasn't angry about me leaving her in stasis, because she shared the same outlook as Lashina. She wanted to be there for all the time that she had with her pregnancy and skipping years of it and going through it without the other mothers to help, was not what she wanted.

The next jump happened barely six months later, then the next and the next. Years and decades passed in hyperspace and only months and years passed in normal time. Rumors started to spread around about the ship going faster than we were letting on and that we were advancing on our trip much quicker than we were supposed to. Rampant speculation was raised about how it was possible to bypass the laws of physics, including a lot of crazy theories.

When those rumors reached the upper echelons of each social group and they started to make official inquiries, I decided that it was time to let everyone in on the secret. I made a ship-wide announcement about what we had been doing during the power down tests and let everyone know we did that to make sure everyone was stationary to put them all in stasis.

Instead of the huge uproar that Sheph and a few others had expected, namely Tish, nearly everyone laughed it off and a lot of them actually thanked us for being so considerate. The communications section was flooded with calls and compliments about how the majority of them were going to live to see the end of the journey instead of dying part of the way there.

A few thousand people were upset that they hadn't been told right from the first; but, they were mollified by the same fact that they were more than likely to be alive when we reached where we were going. There wasn't much we could do for the elderly, except to keep them comfortable and to let them live their lives to the fullest until it was their time to pass on. The kids on the other hand, they could also do the same thing, with the full knowledge that they were going to see the end of the journey.

I spent time with my children, all of them, even the ones that were getting a little old for spending time with their parents. I also made sure we still took our monthly family weekends at one of the resorts or at one of the many planets we stopped at to give everyone a break from shipboard life. The only ones that didn't take that option were the Visidern, and that was understandable. They had some agoraphobia and weren't forced to do anything that they didn't want to do.

Kara went into labour and Hen didn't try to rush her to the medical bay. I didn't have to ask her why, because she was clearly broadcasting that Kara was going to be in labour for a long time. Unfortunately for Kara, Hen was completely right and it had taken a week of struggling, pushing, and labour pains for Kara to give birth. I stayed by her side the entire time and I took all of the insults, punches, slaps, and curses she dished out.

I was actually thankful to my son Markus for preparing me so well for the onslaught. He had been pummelling me as hard as he could for years and Kara's blows paled in comparison. A little boy came out with a full head of hair... and it was pink. For the first time, after all the children I had contributed to the birth of, he was the very first one that had hair that wasn't blonde. The Aviatoma didn't count, because they had feathers and not hair.

Kara was just as surprised as I was, then I thought of a reason why it wasn't blonde. I told her that my father's hair was a dull brown and my mother's hair was a golden blonde, which according to that small sample size, apparently our race had children that inherited their mother's hair and not the father's. I didn't even joke about trying to find another female member of our race, just so I could try to get them pregnant and see if my guess really was true.

“His name is Niaga, after my father.” Kara said and looked at me. “You can give him his second name.”

“Dias.” I said.

“Niaga Dias Moor.” Kara said and hugged the baby to her chest. “I'm sorry you can't have your father's last name, Niaga.” She whispered to the baby and kissed the top of his head.

I held in my sigh at her family's traditional marriage requirement for children to have birthing names. I put a bit of Presence on my fingertip and touched the spot Kara had kissed to let him know he was still loved, even though I wasn't married to his mother.

“It's a good thing you grow up normally.” Hen said with a chuckle. “Imagine being stuck as a kid for a couple of decades!”

I chuckled and gave her a knowing smile, then looked at Kara. “Yes, that would be terrible.”

Kara gave me a sad smile, because she knew I had been reincarnated and had done exactly that. If she had known it at the time, her attitude and her entire perception of me would have been completely different. Not just when she had returned as a master to the council, either. When she had been young and had visited that poor orphan and comforted him on her lap, she would have stayed with him and let him know who she was before she had been whisked way for special training.

“Well, that's that.” Hen said. “You can stay here and recover for as long as you need to.”

“Thank you, Hen.” Kara and I said at the same time.

Hen laughed at that and opened the observation window as she passed by it. There were several adults, a couple of teenagers, and three kids to witness the birth.

“Hey, he has pink hair!” Mina, now eleven years old, exclaimed. “How did that happen?!?”

“Genetics.” Lashina said from beside her.

“Sometimes genes suck.” Mina said, and several people laughed, including me.