The birth went as well as these things can go. Dr Shawn assured Ames and that being cussed out quite horribly by the laboring woman was normal, she would forgive him for the pain when she had the babies and that at least she had not punched him into oblivion. Apparently she had seen that happen too on occasion or two.

The Tamare doctor who had been requested to participate in delivery just in case as complications were always a risk was privately amazed that humans had not gone extinct yet with such an inefficient and dangerous method of reproduction.

When now a family of four returned to their compartment Stella had seen to it that all the gifts where in their proper places and the small room ready for it's new occupants. The twin girls were named Klia and Kleo Storm honoring the naming traditions of both parents. By the time they docked at the half way station life had settled to a steady rhythm. Ames was now a full time dad taking care of the babies when Ktak was on duty. Ktak found the pauses in her day she took to nurse the babies to be quite rewarding.

They had just docked when panicking Ames contacted Ktak. Klia was missing. Ames had left them with some crew members in the Officers mess and on return found that nobody had her and she was not in her pram.

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Ktak immediately used her overrides to lock down the ship and ordered a search fighting the panic in her. Nobody had managed to leave the ship yet, so finding her was only a matter of time... Ktak was not sure she could restrain herself with whoever had taken her if they did not find her unharmed.

Klia was found crying on third maintenance deck next to a dead Tamare by the maintenance crew doing a sweep few hours later. The tamare had taken her own life, when she realized that there was no way off the ship with the baby. Search of her cabin and her communications log revealed encoded messages exchanged with someone who had taken pains to hide their identity on Tamare homeworld plotting to kidnap her. Someone in Tamare Central thought they had a claim on her children. Ktak was furious. She sent the body and evidence to Tamare officials and kept all crew on board for their three day docking to minimize risk of further attempts.

Stella had her own suspicions about who exactly was behind the kidnaping attempt, but kept them to herself. She had been afraid something like this would happen. When they were on their way to to Earth again she visited Ktak and Ames in their quarters to discuss what they could do to protect her children from these unknown Tamare.