Family from Beyond the Stars, Ch. 15 (Patreon)

CH. 15Safe Harbor

"You doing okay out there Nova?" Kenny asked for what he was sure was the fifth time in the last half hour.

From outside of the ship, Nova gave him a visible nod.  She was perched on the hull of their vessel, tentacles and paws expertly working on the machinery underneath an opened panel of armor plating.  The complexity of the trained motions were hard to track, often accompanied by sparks of energy from where she was making repairs.

During one of their recharging periods, an alarm had sounded.  Nova had run a diagnostic and discovered an overloaded drive core in one of the four main wing thrusters.  With repairs having to be made from the outside, and no nearby planetoids to land on with a breathable atmosphere, she had simply decided to suit up and work on it then and there.

Watching her strap into her armor and then willingly jettison herself out the hangar doors had been nothing short of stressful for Kenny.  He still had nightmares occasionally of their first meeting and how he had nearly been spaced.  Granted, the situation was in no way shape, or form the same.

Nova had taught him that her species could actually survive in the vacuum of space for quite an extended period of time while wearing their power suits.  He suspected this wasn't the first time she had done this either, from the ease and nonchalance of her attitude about performing a spacewalk.

When she had sensed his trepidation, she had immediately curled around him and given him many teasing but also comforting licks and nuzzles until he finally cracked a smile.  Then came the ordeal of managing the cubs' intense interest in going out after her, staying far enough back for safety.  It had helped distract him from having to watch her literally jettison herself out of the doors.

Once outside, he and the cubs watched on one of the wall panels, functioning as a camera to the outside, as she had activated a set of boosters on her back, legs, and waist to propel herself gently back to the ship after her rapid exit.  After coming into contact with her vessel, she latched on, using her adhesive pads, and from there easily crawled, Spiderman-style, along the plated siding to the damaged wing.

It was almost unnerving seeing her do so in the weightless void but it appeared wholly natural to her.  She had left him and the cubs in the hangar bay when she went out, but her orders had not been to just sit idly by.  So instead, he had made the arduous but now routine climb back up to the cockpit, cubs in tow, to help her however he could from there.  Now he watched her, keeping himself wary for any dangers but easily distracted by the spectacle of her at work.

With her heavy armor on and her visor tinted to an opaque sheen, it was impossible to tell anything about her other than just watching her through the external sensors.  He shifted in the pilot's chair, the cords and tubes connected to the spine of his suit moving to accommodate him.  He saw her give a signal with her paw at where she must know the viewing 'camera' was and he nodded, despite knowing that she couldn't see him do so.

Leaning over the chair, he peered down into the exposed machinery and tubing of the cockpit's wiring.  "Joey!" he called, muting the speakers so he wasn't shouting into Nova's ears through her comms.  "Reconnect the core cylinders, like Mommy showed you!"

Down below, a furry, frazzled head poked up from between the opened metal plates.  Joey gave a yowl of acknowledgment and then disappeared back down into the hull.  There was a short delay and he watched the readout of the engines on a different panel.  The same alien code flashed across the screen, accompanied by a visual of the drive core still being disconnected.  He knew it was through no fault of Joey performing the task wrong, however.

Over the last week or so, the white-furred lunkhead had begun to display a serious knack for the machinery and engineering of their family warship.  Much like Chandler, an adept at piloting the ship even despite being smaller than even Kenny, or Phoebe who had discovered a love of tinkering with making weapons (much to Kenny's alarm when she had easily assembled some sort of attachment for his arm-cannon from scrap material), the cubs all had various talents when it came to interacting with their mothership.  They seemingly needed no training other than mild corrections here and there; it came to them as if second nature.

"Try it again," he called down at his son, making an adjustment on his end.  "But this time, reroute the existing modules!"  He almost sounded like he even knew what he was talking about.  Granted, his limited knowledge of the terminology, jargon, and workings of Nova's advanced tech came entirely from what she had taught him of it, but even so, he couldn't help but feel pleased knowing a possible solution.  The complexity of this kind of technological advancements over what Humans considered 'top-tier' often left him awestruck and frazzled.

Joey chirped up at him distantly.  A second or so later, the display abruptly lit up, all lights turning green.  He beamed as he saw the capacitors readjusting their energy output and the drive core surged to life again.

"Nova!" he cried out in delight, unmuting the Mother Alien.  "Joey got the repairs done here on our end.  How's it looking?"

Nova, currently reattaching the open panels of plating, gave him another nod and a thumb's up with one huge, six-fingered paw.  He giggled at the absurdity and cuteness of a creature like her performing a gesture like that.  It seemed he had taught her a few things too.  She made a rolling gesture with the same paw and hunkered down.

He guessed she meant for him to test out the engines.  "Okay, hold on!" he called to her despite the fact that she already was.  "Joey, climb on up out of there.  We are going to start it back up again and I don't need a fried furball for a cub."  He laughed as he said it.

Joey returned with yet another yowl and emerged only a second or so later.  He had some singes to his fur tips but looked very pleased with himself as he nestled in onto a foot pedal like he usually did when 'Daddy' was driving.  He reached down and vigorously petted the big male's ears, eliciting a heavy purr from the boy.

It always amused Kenny when any of the cubs would purr like that to show their affection and excitement.  Big cats back on Earth, the ones the cubs and Nova most closely resembled, anyway, did not typically purr.  Tigers couldn't purr at all.  Snow leopards could not roar.  Lions were, to his knowledge, unable to make mewling sounds.

Then again, these were alien creatures: exotic hybrids of feline and reptile physiology melded with biomechanical cybernetics beyond any kind of scope a Human brain could comprehend.  They conversed with emotions through empathic links, knew music without ever having heard it before, and grew to sizes that staggered belief for any biological being able to grow so large.  The universe could make up its own laws.

With Joey firmly wedged between his legs, he lifted his hands then to the joysticks and toggles and slowly whirred the engines to life.  The hull rumbled around him in a satisfyingly energetic way and he saw everything slowly lighting up, signaling that they were once again good to go.  He glanced back at the sensor that fed him the direct video feed from outside, grinning at Nova who appeared pleased as well, if her flashing bio-lights were any indicator.

"Okay Nova," he said.  "Climb back inside and we can..."  Kenny's voice fell slowly away as something directly behind Nova, off in the distance, caught his eye.  He was well trained to be on the lookout for storm clouds in space, the telltale sign of Lord Darken's deathship having arrived in their current system.  This...wasn't that.

It started as a strange ripple effect, the lights of the stars and swirling colors all around distorting around whatever it was.  He even thought he saw the same shapes being reflected off of something.  It was big, metallic, and rather ominous in appearance, especially since he had no idea what it could be.  And it was getting closer.

"Nova...?" he said warily.  She eyed the camera oddly, cocking her head to the side.  The cubs around him stirred, Chandler and Phoebe having rejoined them in the cockpit from wherever they had been lurking while he and Joey had been making the repairs.  "Turn around..."

Nova did so, rising to a half-crouch and immediately on guard.  She spotted what he had in an instant.  Her whole body went stiff.  He knew enough about her to know her emotional reaction to most things.  Nova's lights had gone all yellow and pink, flashing in striated patterns up and down her armored frame.  She stared, disbelieving, at what she was looking at.

The dark shape slowly brightened more and more.  Polished plating of a pointed prow revealed itself, emerging from underneath a cloaking system almost identical to theirs.  The siding was nearly golden in color, now seeming to emit light rather than just reflecting it.  It was sword-shaped but massive, not quite as much as Darken's vessel of nightmares, but also more blocky in shape and design.  It almost resembled something out of Star Wars, with widely flanged wings on either side.  Lights flashed all along the sloping curves and ridges.

Then, ominously, a porthole opened on the side.  From it emitted a ray of golden luminesce that reached out from that massive ship and grabbed hold of Nova even as she finally seemed like she was recovering from her shock.  The reaction was immediate.  Nova flailed and clawed wildly with her four arms, trying to maintain her grip on the side of the ship.  Kenny watched in horror as, one by one, the paw pads were forced to release their hold.  The Mother alien was plucked up off of the ship as if by the hand of God.

"NOVA!" he screamed in terror as he watched her forcefully yanked up and away from their ship before begin rapidly drawn back up towards the much larger one that had its tractor beam squarely locked onto her.  She whirled and spun with no self control, her boosters firing rapidly but affording her no momentum other than straight toward that open maw of a porthole.  In an instant, she was gone.  The porthole closed after her.

For a moment, Kenny could do nothing but stare, completely frozen in shock.  This couldn’t be real.  Nova was just there, right there outside the ship.  Then he noticed another porthole opening, this one much larger, already starting to glow.  His brain snapped back into action and he grabbed for the controls, punching them and gunning the engines hard.

The warship pivoted sharply and shot forward at his command, just barely evading the second tractor beam before it snagged their vessel as it had Nova.  There was a muted rippling roar and he glanced behind them even as he sped off.  The ship was following them.  It was just as fast as they were and not losing ground at all.  Kenny's broken heart hammered so loudly against his chest that he felt it pounding in his teeth, knuckles white on the controls.  In fact, the ship was gaining on them with that much more engine strength and their ship not having been fully warmed up for a boosted run like this.

His worst nightmares had seemingly come to fruition.  It wasn't Darken but something else had found them out here in the vastness of the cosmos.  It had taken Nova.  They had spoken at great lengths, during their nightly slumbering and otherwise not-slumbering activities, of what should be done if she was ever taken, by any means.  

He was to pilot the ship and escape with the cubs.  Her safety was not his priority, she had made herself clear in telling him.  Kenny had of course objected.  She had come back for him.  He loved her.  He could not, would not let her be taken away.

Her words had broken his heart.  "Kenny.  You must.  Protect.  Our Family."  Her eyes had been soft but firm, her own tears barely held back behind them.  She had become more eloquent and spoke in actual audio more easily now, instead of just through the empathic sensor.  Not because he understood her better but because she wanted to speak to him in his way, because it meant so much to her he knew.

She had been insistent, making him promise to do whatever he had to do to protect their cubs.  The cuddle session that followed had been one of their most intense ever, mind-melding so deeply that they had remained so even after falling asleep holding each other.

He would never have that again.  No.  He just couldn't think like that right now!  He had promised Nova.

Kenny felt, rather than heard, the buzzing hum of the tractor beam firing again and he jerked the controls hard to the side, sending them spinning off at a sharp angle and once again just barely escaping its clutches.  He felt all four engines blazing to life fully now and he began to finally put some distance between themselves and their pursuer.  It was now or never.

With a heavy heart, tears streaming down his face and the cubs yowling in confusion, fear, and grief of not understanding what was happening, just like him, Kenny reached for the slipspace generator.  He had to get away.  He had to keep their family safe.  He saw the pocket sleeve open before the prow of his ship.  100 meters.  They would be inside it within a few heartbeats.  70 meters.  He had no idea what coordinates this place was.  30 meters.  Coming back would be impossible.

He closed his eyes, unable to handle having to open them in a world, in a universe without her until it was too far gone for him to stop himself.  Slipspace hummed around his ears as the prow just pierced the opening.

'Kenny!'

His eyes jerked open and he hauled back on the controls of the ship, causing them to perform the space-travel equivalent of a skidding stop, right before they vanished into the pocket of space-time.  He blinked in shock at the words that had so vividly blazed themselves into his mind.

"Nova?" he asked out-loud, barely able to believe, to have any hope of what he had heard.

'Kenny!' came the voice again.  It was slightly garbled and distant, as if spoken over a walkie-talkie, but there was no mistaking it.  That was Nova!

He spun the ship around.  The other vessel loomed in front of them, barely a few ship lengths away.  It also had come to a dead stop when he had.  It hung there before their eyes like some golden-painted trireme from Ancient Greece.  Even as he watched, several more panels lit up on the sides.  Bright-blue colors flashed on and off alongside the blunt-tipped nose.  Like eyes.

'Kenny.'  Nova's voice was calmer now but she sounded half-irate.  He briefly wondered if it was directed at him for some reason.  'It is okay.'

He let out a shuddering breath that he had been keeping pent up.  "Oh thank God..." he breathed.  The cubs cuddled close to him, confused and still terrified.  "Mommy is okay," he told them, which made them settle down but only a little.  "Mommy...is okay, right?" he asked her then, extending his mind to that familiar if now distant warm cadence of her voice.

'Nova is furious,' she responded curtly then amended her statement quickly as if able to sense his immediate worry.  'But not at Kenny.  It is safe.'

"Where are you?" he demanded, still nearly hysterical.  "How are you speaking to me?"

'The comms of this ship.  Trust Nova, would not ask if it was not safe for my Kenny and Cubs.'

He was ready and willing to agree to anything if she said so but a nagging suspicion wormed its way into his mind.  Nova had warned him before that Darken would try any ruse to achieve his conquest.  Would it truly be inconceivable that he might fake using Nova's voice somehow?

"B-before...I agree.  What is the name of my niece on Earth?"

'Emily.'  Rather than annoyed, she sounded approving of his wariness.

"Who is Phoebe named after?"

'Phoebe Jacqueline Tills.  Kenny's first mate.'

He breathed out, relaxing a little bit more.  "Ok.  It is you."

'It is.'  Her voice was warmer now.  'Do not move.  We are pulling Our ship into the docking bay now.  Nova will see you soon.'

He nodded.  He knew he could trust her judgment much better than his own.  He warily relaxed his grip on the controls as that large porthole opened again.  Even with every instinct screaming at him to gun the engines once more, he made himself sit still as the tractor beam of golden light reached out and grabbed hold of the ship.  There was a soft shuddering as they began to move back the way they had come.  The slipspace rupture closed shut.

They slowly slid across the space between themselves and that massive coronal vessel.  He expected at any second the gold-tint to fade to lusterless black and to hear Nova's voice turn to screams of pain or howling laughter.  All matter of horrible images flashed through his mind as they kept drawing closer and closer.

With a final sounding slam of the porthole doors behind them, their ship was swallowed by the larger one.  It turned, engines roaring to life again, and blazed off slowly but surely, gaining speed, before it boosted away into its own slipspace corridor.  Nothing of the ships was left behind.

***Inside the Voyager***

Nova saw the video feed show that her family had been successfully pulled inside the Voyager starship.  She relaxed, but only slightly.  Her crushing grip did not slacken upon the grey-furred throat of the massive Male kneeling, half-suspended, in front of her.  His savagely scarred face was twisted in pain and nervousness, contained behind a steely determination and well-trained mind.

She recognized this one, from after the Darkened Days.  His stormy pelt was covered in long scars and his lower jaw had been entirely replaced by a cybernetic one.  The same could be said for one of his arms, the lower left one, severed neatly at the elbow.  A crude device had been implanted to replace the limb, consisting of four intersecting claws on a rotating wrist mount, not unlike Nova's tentacles.

All around her were the wide, bright eyes of the ship's crew.  Pelts, manes, scales, and tufts of every color imaginable hummed, bristled, or swayed as their owners stood stock still.  Their gazes were locked squarely on the armored warrior currently holding their captain by the jugular.  None of them seemed willing to do more than twitch at her command.

She fixed the Officer with a deadly glare before she finally, reluctantly, released him.  He dropped the foot or so down onto his knees fully from his half-kneeling position and gasped for a breath of air.  Several sparks and thin trails of biofluid trickled from the light cuts and abrasions her crushing grip had caused in his fur.

Without a word, Nova strode away from the bridge, snarling at anyone who even looked her in the eye.  Everyone made room for the warrior queen immediately, not wanting to anger her further.  She was at her most furious as she had been in a long time.  Her fears and worries about being plucked out of space and deposited here in the Voyager star-vessel had caused her eyes to almost Darken again.  The crew were lucky that they’d surrendered immediately, or bodies would have littered the ship.  She heard the doors hiss closed behind her and she took a deep breath.

There was too much information to process right then.  All of it had happened too quickly, too suddenly, for her, making her mind reel at the close proximity of nearly a hundred of her own kind.  Their minds and empathic signatures drifted all around her like scents in the air, distorting her hardened and carefully cultivated senses.  In the space of a breath she had gone from her and the cubs being the only known survivors of Planetfall, and now she was upon a Voyager class starship, usually normally for colonization.

There were more important things to ponder and focus on, she told herself.  Kenny and the cubs.  They must be terrified.

Her eyes snapped back open and she was abruptly charging down the hallway towards where her ship would be docked, not needing directions as she knew the construction of such vessels by heart.  She had overseen the tractor beam personally but she would not risk being unsure of her family was not as perfectly healthy and safe as they had been when she had gone outside to fix the wing.  Everywhere she strode, she saw the flashing shapes of various other denizens of the ship.  Wide eyes, growls, exclamations, and noises of alarm followed her but she cared not.

She half-hammered down the doors to the docking bay before they slid open on their own, revealing the cramped area within.  The warship was nestled securely in a magnetic locking pad.  There were a handful of Engineers around, surveying the vessel with awe.

Their eyes turned, as the others had, to look up at the new arrival.  One, about to try and open the door, immediately leaped back with her paws up when Nova bristled and drew her cannon arm in a flash.  Every crew member froze in place, not even daring to move even a paw as she leveled her fearsome weapon around at all of them.

Nova wasted no time and snarled at the room at large, green light sensors clicking open at her throat, teeth bared.  'OUT!'  They followed her orders without delay, scooting along the walls away from the armed, armored Queen.  As soon as the last of them had exited, she lowered the weapon and hurled herself over the railing to land on the floor with a muted thud.

The doors opened at her touch and immediately she barged inside.  Her eyes swept wide from side to side, seeing no one yet.  She let out a roaring call, which echoed both inside the warship and around her in the hangar.  She paused, listening then, for an answering sound.

To her unending relief, it came.  Almost immediately, three furry shapes hurtled themselves from the other end of the bay and raced toward her.  Phoebe was at the front, Joey and Chandler tying one another, maybe a pace behind their sister.  She dropped all pretenses and opened her arms wide, catching the furry cannonballs in them and holding their mewling forms close.  They growled and sniffled against her and she hummed a lullaby that Kenny had taught her to calm them down.

A rustling bump alerted her and she looked up from the three quivering balls of fur and scales in her grasp.  Kenny had just come into view.  His face was red, his chest heaving with panting for breath, and he was actually limping.  Immediately her eyes went wide and she put down the cubs to race over to him.

Her Earthling had barely a second to respond before Nova had swept him up in her grasp and thrown off her helmet.  She shoved her forehead against his, barely remembering to soften the blow and not knock him senseless from the impact.  His arms immediately wrapped around her in response and he sobbed against her cheek, stroking her fur over and over.

'Kenny...' she breathed out through their mental link, a whisper of thought to achieve now.  Her armored paw stroked up and down his spine soothingly.  'Nova is here.  Nova is here.'  She frantically searched his memories for the reason behind his limp and was consoled that he had dropped a bit farther than he usually did down the hallway in his excitement.  It was a mild sprain and would heal quickly.

"I thought..." he gasped out, at last, still not having let go of her.  "I thought you...that you were..."

She leaned back only enough to lick his cheek, his forehead, and his temple again and again, kissing away each tear before it had the chance to fall.  'Nova knows,' she told him, not able to concentrate enough just yet to get the words out audibly.  'Kenny did exactly what he promised.  Nova is so proud. '

He leaned back eventually as well, looking up into her eyes.  His own, just as brightly shining as hers were, were red-rimmed and still teary.  He sniffled in that horrible-sounding, utterly adorable way he always did when he got this upset about something.  "I didn't...I didn't want to leave you behind," he mumbled.  "I didn't want to..."

She sighed and sank down to her knees, still holding him.  A second later, her cubs were crawling up into her other arms once again.  Without a single worry she held them all.  Her family.  Worries and fears, wrath and terror, all of it fell away again just to have them in her arms.

After a long few moments of just snuggling together, Kenny finally seemed to have calmed down, as had the cubs.  She let them all lean back, still securely in her grasp and easily able to hold them all up.

"So...where are we?" Kenny asked.

Nova was about to respond when she heard a soft, hesitant thudding of paws on the hangar floor behind her.  She turned to glare over her shoulder at whoever dared enter her home and intrude further upon her family.

The Gray-furred Officer and several subordinates stood there in the entrance to the warship hangar, all of them looking suitably nervous.  No one would have guessed they had once been a universally feared warrior race.  All of them were scarred, almost withered in some way or another.  Many had crude replacements for eyes, ears, and limbs.

There was a startled gasp as Kenny, the highest up out of all of them, saw who lurked at the entrance to the hangar bay from over her shoulder.  His eyes were wide and disbelieving.  "Oh...my...god..." he whispered just loud enough for Nova to hear.  "Nova...they're..."

The cubs had noticed them by then too, although they did not seem as pleased or amazed as Kenny was.  They narrowed their eyes and hissed in response at seeing the newcomers.  They slid out of their Mother's grasp and planted themselves at her side, claws bristling, tails lashing, and eyes glowing brighter.

For their part, the other Aliens just stared, as if dumbstruck, at the three tiny-seeming Royal children.  Several of them took in sharp breaths.  One quivered from head to tail.  The leader, the Grey-mane, visibly shook all over before, with a happy yowling cry, he planted himself on his knees and abased himself.  He bared his throat and splayed all four arms out wide.  Taking his queue, the others behind him did the same, averting their eyes and presenting themselves.

Nova snorted and gently turned, still holding Kenny in one arm but slightly behind her and hiding him from view, and faced her despondent people with wary eyes.  Now that her rage and fear had subsided, she recognized the gesture they were all making.

Grey-Mane met her eyes then.  She felt him attempting a mental link and she allowed it but hesitantly.  His voice was a bass tenor but scratchy and modulated by the damage he had suffered and had repaired with substandard materials.  'My Queen.'

She flinched immediately.  'General,' she shot back.  She was unable to keep her emotions from her meaning.  'Light shine on you.'

'Light shine on us all,' he responded immediately.  'We are overjoyed, to have found you again, my Queen.  We barely dared to believe what we were seeing on our sensors.  But no one could fail to recognize the King's vessel.'  He looked around more openly then, awed at the advanced construction.  'This ship.  It is a marvel of his brilliance.'  Their eyes met again.  'He is...?'

'Gone,' snapped Nova.  'Slain by my Sire.'

Grey-Mane's eyes fell to the floor.  The others, whose muted voices she could hear in the background of her mind, did so as well as they all shared in that moment of grief.  'The Destroyer has taken much from us all.  It is a blessing to know that our King has returned to the Light at least,' the veteran said.  'But we are filled with hope anew, regardless.'  His face was stony but set, smiling as much as he was physically able.  'For we have found our Queen again.  We have...found the Heirs.'

As one, the group's eyes fell onto the three still growling, uncertain cubs.  Coos and soft sounds came from the adults.  It occurred to Nova then that she remembered seeing no cubs while making her way here.  These might very well be some of the only children her people had seen since their homeworld was destroyed.  They had effectively neutered themselves to better control their population while also terraforming their planet to sustain life.

One female even sniffled, tears brimming her glowing eyes.  She met Nova's and then quickly looked away sheepishly as if scared to be thought weak.  The Queen sighed.  Leaning down, she lightly tapped the backs of her cubs.

'Children,' she told them privately.  'These are our people.  Not your grandfather.  You may relax.'

Begrudgingly, the three small cubs did as she said, lowering their hackles and allowing their claws to retract.  They gazed around at the large crowd of adults staring at them.  Phoebe was unimpressed.  Chandler was twitchy and wary, ready to bolt or fight at a moment's notice.  As always, it was Joey who, upon dropping his guard, proceeded to cautiously approach the new beings.  His rosettes were brightly lit up and his tail waved behind him, bottle-brush thick.  Even so, he sniffed curiously at their assembled scents.

One of the males bent down, kneeling before the child, and extended a paw out, wrist up, for Joey to take the scent of.  Joey did so, sniffing lightly.  The larger one smiled broadly, teeth flashing, and his zigzag pattern of fur markings lit up in a rainbow of colors.  His eyes became solid color as well, flashing in all manners of shades and hues.  Joey's did the same as they shared their minds, learning one another's voices.

The connection faded and Joey took a few steps back.  He looked at his family, wary but obvious joy stretching his features.  'Mother...' he told Nova, voice emotional.  'They are like us.'

Even with her trepidation, Nova was unable to keep up her sternness.  She smiled and blinked.  Phoebe and Chandler, upon seeing that these new creatures meant no harm, did their best to overcome fear and apprehension enough to approach as their brother had.  They shared their minds and colors similarly and had much the same reaction.  One of the females, a lanky figure with cyan-colored fur, dropped to the ground and even started to play with them, once Nova had allowed it.

The hangar was soon filled with joyful growls and mewls.  All save Gray-Mane shared in the play-fights and wrestling, even with one another.  The rapture they felt spilled out of them in radiant hues and distortions of the air around them as if from heat.  Nova felt a soft smile gracing her features.

In her arms, Kenny stirred, trying to lean around and see what was going on.  All at once, the playing stopped.  All eyes fell upon the strange figure being held by their Queen.  Some stared openly.  Some sniffed or made rumbling sounds of confusion.  Grey-Mane himself looked nothing short of perplexed, even a bit reticent.  The colors in the room faded to wary oranges and yellows predominantly.

Glowering, Nova turned more fully around to face her people, pointedly placing Kenny down in front of her and rolling her shoulders.  'Kenny,' she told him, getting his attention as he had otherwise said and done nothing but stare around at all the various furry faces.  She turned her attention onto them as well, opening her voice and mind once again.  'This is Kenneth Sissom of Earth,' she explained to them.  'My mate.'

With those words, the mood in the room changed.  Perplexed stares turned to sullen growls.  Grey-Mane looked irritated.  Kenny shrunk back a bit against her.  The cubs immediately broke away from the crowd and returned to their parents, forming a shield between him and them with their bodies.  This, more than anything else, helped probably deter the angry energy building in the room as the adults all stared down at their Royal Heirs defending such an odd and out of place being.

'He is our Daddy,' growled Phoebe.  Even despite being a child, her voice was strong and fierce.  Chandler and Joey joined in, adding their similar words and rumbling tenors to her cadence.

To hear their Royal children defending Kenny must have been humbling as the others appeared slightly mollified.  Only Grey-Mane remained scowling.  'He is...Alien,' he objected.

'And without him,' growled Nova, getting everyone's attention, even Kenny's.  'Your King's Heirs would never have survived landing and being discovered on his planet.  Kenny kept them safe from even his own people.  What is more,' she drew herself up proudly, now turning Kenny more directly towards the group as if displaying him.  'He is the only one who has stood up to the Destroyer in combat, besides myself, and lived.'  She said this knowing that her people would not find any shred of duplicity or doubt in what she said.  As amazing and impossible as it sounded, she spoke the truth, and they saw that.

Open mouth gapes and wide-eyed stares returned to the small, sheepish Human who was currently trying to hide himself anew.  He seemed slightly overwhelmed by all the attention.

"It...really wasn't anything special," he objected nervously, voice quavering.

There was a momentary pause.  Then, one younger Warrior in the back of the group piped up.  ‘Tell us how you fought him.”  The group chorused the request with heavy growls.  All eyes fixated upon the Human.

Kenny’s face might as well have been one solid bio-light for how it turned bright red under all the attention.  He seemed about to clam up entirely but Nova made a point to plop him down on his feet and nudge him forward, if only slightly.  She shot him an encouraging blink and a small purr.

Nerves bolstered somewhat, he cleared his throat and addressed the hangar bay full of Aliens all nearly twice his height.  “Well I…I shot him with my…” he gestured at his hand.  The assorted crew members all registered the weapon attached at his wrist easily without it even needing to be deployed.  “And then he umm…chased me.  Across this frozen plain on a little planetoid about to be sucked into a black hole.”

Murmurs of approval ranging from slight to obvious came from them all.  The cubs preened themselves to hear everyone acknowledging their Daddy’s exploits and Nova grinned despite the harsh memories attached to his story.  Even now she could feel a pang in her replaced tentacle.

“So I led him to this big crevice, or a…chasm?”  Kenny scratched at his hair uncertainly.  “I couldn’t run anymore and I’d accomplished what I intended to.”  Curious glances and perked ears made him swell despite himself and he glanced up at Nova.  “I distracted him so Nova could escape.”

Silence greeted his words.  A deep rumble came then and everyone looked to Grey-Mane.  He stood, four arms crossed over his muscular chest, glittering eyes fixed upon the tiny Human.  ‘A brave deed, and reckless,’ he commented.  ‘Many have attempted to bar or slow the Destroyer’s warpath over the years.  None have ever survived.’

Kenny chuckled.  “Truth be told, I didn’t really expect or plan on that.  I just wanted to do my part.  The cubs and Nova…they’re my everything.”  He looked up at her again and she felt that glowing star inside her chest blaze all the brighter.

‘But how did you survive?’ questioned another voice.  More growls of curiosity rang out around them.

“Oh.  Right.  Honestly, I don’t really have an answer that’ll satisfy any of you,” Kenny chuckled, returning his gaze to the rest of the room.  “I…sort of dropped an avalanche on top of his head while he was gloating over catching me, and then jumped down into the canyon before it hit me too.”  He started counting on his fingers then.  “Then there was somehow surviving the fall, escaping a horde of big ugly bug things in an underground cavern, jumping a chasm, almost getting eaten by the mother of all Mantis Shrimp and nearly freezing to death…”  He shrugged.  “Just lucky I guess.”

His retelling of the story, sparse as it was made many in the crowd jerk in surprise.  Ears flitted and twitched, tails and tentacles waved or stiffened.  Multiple heads cocked to the side.  Even Grey-Mane looked flummoxed yet intrigued by the tale.  Taking a deep breath, the scar-faced veteran then kneeled down and faced Kenny directly.

He crossed his quartet of arms across his chest and lowered his eyes.  'Whether great luck, or great valor, you, Kenneth Sissom of Earth, are owed our endless respect for the trials undergone, battles waged, and the triumphs earned.  Kenneth Sissom has safeguarded the ones we hold most precious in all creation.  I, we, owe Kenneth Sissom more than any here can say.'  His people all mirrored the gesture then, falling to one knee

Kenny's face flushed bright red.  Several females actually blinked in surprise at the endearing gesture and then smiled at him with a new budding interest in their glowing eyes.  Nova was quick to glower hard at each of the guilty members of the group, causing them to avert their gazes again.  That was not going to be acceptable in any way, shape, or form.

"I'm...honored," Kenny said, once he had obviously gotten his nerves back under control.  He rubbed hard at his temples, where no doubt was forming an ache from all the stimulation and attention.  He shook a bit as well and Nova was quick to lean down and rub her cheek against his face to calm him.  "I just...did what any decent person would do.  But please, just call me Kenny."

'What a Father would do,' growled out the others, almost en masse.  They bowed their heads again.

Standing back up then, Grey-Mane uncrossed his arms and smiled, in his own way since physically he was unable to smile as the others were, given his missing natural lower jaw.  'It would be our Honor to escort our Queen, our Heirs, and her Mate Kenny, Destroyer-Bane, to our Safe Harbor.'

Nova's ears twitched and she looked directly at the Officer again with confusion.  'What is Safe Harbor?' she asked, still staying kneeling down and leaning over her Mate and cubs protectively.

The male signaled the others behind him.  'We have found a place, safe from the Destroyer's searching for us.  He has hunted us endlessly since Planetfall, seeking to harvest our bodies to add to his Dredges and help fuel his fortress.  But we have located Safe Harbor, at last.  A pocket of Slipspace big enough to form a colony of our kind, with enough solar energy to sustain our surviving people's remaining Voyager vessels indefinitely.'

Nova felt her eyes go wide at the news, a gesture that the cubs and even Kenny mirrored once he had caught up.  Could it be possible?  She looked at Kenny, at the children, and then back up to Grey-Mane.

'You would risk much bringing us there,' she warned him.  'He has hunted us relentlessly, always one step behind.  He has a tracker locked onto us somehow.'

The veteran actually laughed, letting out a rolling yowl that echoed around them all.  'No tracker can follow where we go.  It took much time, effort, and energy to find and anchor our navigational equipment to the pocket dimension.  Besides, any risk is worth it to return the Heirs of our King, and our Queen, to the hearts of our people.  You will bring the Light back to many who had begun to lose sight of hope.  You would all be safe there.'  His eyes fell back down onto Kenny, his expression now contemplative and unsure of something else now.  Kenny fidgeted underneath his gaze.  'Your Mate as well.  I suspect the tale of that would bring many smiles in its wake.'

Nova could not help a rush of desire to be reunited with her people, more than just this ship's worth at least, even despite her trepidation and blaming herself for a majority of what had befallen them all.  More than even that, the idea of a place where her Father could not hunt them, could not follow them to, where they could, at last, be safe and at peace...she wanted it more than anything else in the universe.  She cast an eye down at Kenny.  Well...almost anything.

He met her eyes and he smiled, soft and hesitant.  "What do you think?" he asked.  His eyes shone brighter with the same light as hers did.  Her people stirred softly at that, murmuring amongst themselves but she closed her mind briefly to their voices.  She only cared to hear his voice, the most wonderful voice, right now.  "It...sounds like a dream come true."

'Kenny does not mind?' she asked.

He shook his head.  "If it means having you and the cubs be safe for the first time in months...I'm willing to try anything.  Just so long as I also get to stay being with you."

Her eyes softened and she kneeled down to press their foreheads against one another fully.  More soft sounds came from the onlookers at that genuine and open display of affection and trust.  None of them could doubt they had a connection, as powerful as the fabric of the universe, as bright as the stars.  Not that she cared what they thought anyway.  He was her Kenny.  Her Mate.  Her love.

'Nova will always be with Kenny,' she mind-whispered to him.  'Our Family cannot ever be broken.'

He sniffed heavily and sighed, wrapping his arms briefly around her as much as he could reach before they opened their eyes and stared at one another.  He nodded.  She blinked once.

Standing up to her full height, the armored Queen faced her people proudly.  'Take us to Safe Harbor,' she commanded.

The crew immediately jumped to attention, letting out powerful roars in unison.  They were sounds of joy, of strength, of celebration.  Grey-Mane gave her another salute before he tapped a display at his throat.  'Would my Queen wish to come observe from the command deck?' he asked subserviently.  'Perhaps the Heirs and your...Mate as well?'  This time, he did not phrase Kenny's title as a derogatory or judgmental thing.  He seemed deep in thought about the Human, constantly staring at Kenny's glowing eyes.

Nova glanced down at Kenny and the cubs.  All of them could not contain their excitement over getting to see the much larger ship travel through the stars, so used to the cramped confines of their family warship.  She smiled at them all and nodded.

'To Safe Harbor!' roared Grey-Mane to the crew through his mental voice and comms.

Nova and family followed the bounding crew as they all burst out of the docked warship and along the winding passageways back to the central command deck.  While she had never spent much time in the Voyager starships, she recognized the basic design of the layout to be similar to that of Brighten’s personally crafted warship, if done on a much larger scale here.

Control consoles and multiple hanging chairs lined the room, manned by navigators, weapons specialists, and various engineers who oversaw the command suite.  All turned their gazes towards her with reverence, Grey-Mane even offered his own Commander's chair to Nova herself. She took it, if only to maintain her dignity but piling her family up onto her lap.  Then the commanding officer gave the command and the ship’s engines rumbled back to full power.  The blade-tipped prow slid forwards and, as if piercing the void, opened the tunnel to slipspace.

'To Safe Harbor...' she whispered as they entered the familiar, flashing sleeve of spacetime.  In her arms, Kenny snuggled in deeper against her and she nuzzled his hair with her nose.  A place where they might finally be free.  Was the Chase truly over?

She dared to hope.