Journey to the half way station would have been almost boring, if Kleo and Klia would not have been on board. They were growing, developing, and finding new ways to get in trouble. They werent identical twins so telling them appart was not an issue and their natures were very different as well. Klia was more like Ames, inclined to quietly tinker and mess with things she wasnt supposed to. Keeping her in a playpen had turned out to be impossible. She would find most creative ways to escape and when they started attending the onboard kids playgroup this ability extended to the whole group. Klio was very much like her mother and ended up leading Klia and later whole group of kids into various forms of trouble, often utilizing Klia's ingenuity in getting out of places they were supposed to be and into places they werent.

Their accustomed life was however upended completely when they reached the station. A delegation of Council representatives of many council species was waiting for them at the station.

"Commander Ktak, I am relieving you temporarily from the command of X509 and placing you in custody of Galactic Council representatives." announced the Tamare of the group.

"You are to remain in their custody until inqury into violation of Juntion 3478 of the Galactic Council on Unethical Practices of Reproduction is complete. The ship will continue to homeworld under temporary command. Your consort is free to choose his actions on his own." he continued.

Human representative turned to Ames, "We can provide transport back to Earth for you and your children if you wish."

"Where my wife goes, we go," said Ames stressing the word wife to a breaking point. The human reprasentative looked at him with a surprise. She wondered if perhaps legends surrounding their elopment had some truth to them. She herself had found them hard to belive.

Ktak looked like she wanted to argue and Ames quieted her with a gentle touch of her hand. They had discussed this possibility many times wondering when Counsil would make their move. They had also discussed this particular scenario many times and Ames had always stood his ground. They would stay together.

The human representative noted this unspoken communication as well. She had been convinced that Ames was forced or very least coerced into this situation but was now slowly starting to doubt her perdjudiced conviction.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They packed up their things, said their farewells to the crew and boarded the sleek passenger transport to Council Base.

Council Base was an enormous space station orbiting a planetless star in uncontested space. Diplomatic missons of all the races belonging to the Council were permanently residing there. Any disputes, investigations and crimes crossing species and territories eventually ended up there. The place was big and busy.

The Council had tried to allocate them separate living quartes - Ames into human section with kids and Ktak into Tamare section - along with separate lawyers. Ames had immediately used his to contest this separation as human children were not supposed to be separated from their parents, specially the mother, at this age and this separation was violation of their rights. He won and they were allocated a bigger compartment they could share in the Tamare section as human spaces were smaller and Ktak would be constantly at risk of contusion there.

Ames's lawyer, Susan Hawk, had been also convinced that Ames was not acting out of his free will, but soon came to understand that they had misunderstood the situation and set up a meeting with her Tamare counterpart whom she had expected to oppose in council but now found herself in need of seeking collaboration instead.

The Tamare Legal Representative Rtan had also expected the humman lawyer to be an opponent rather than an ally and was therefore somewhat unprepared for the way situation was unfolding, but quickly saw the value of setting up a common defence.

Investigators had collected statments about the situation from various crew members, both human and Tamare about Ktak's relationship with Ames and the birth of their children. They went through them together and selected the ones best suited to be presented to the Council Hearing.

The obviously biased ones, like Stella's and Sarah's they discarded. Counclil would not take them seriously. But they selected the statments of both Tamare and human doctors about how much of a suprise Ktak's pregnancy had been to everyone, including the parties involved. They also kept Tomas's profanity ladden description of how he accuired a flat nose, for comic relifef if nothing else. Second in command Gmar's account of their relationship as he knew it after elopment was also kept.

They could show everything was done lawfuly and honorably. Ames had married her willingly and then additionally gone through the trouble of becoming a consort. There was video recordings from both events. The children were registred as Earth citizens at first opportunity. The only loose end in the whole thing was the kidnaping attempt and while the perpetrator was Tamare it had nothing to do with Ktak, who had foiled the attempt with a prompt lockdown.

They were as ready as they could be.