Everyone's friends and families were invited to come along. Since the departure time was set for a couple of years from now, there was no real rush for them to make a decision. I also extended it to all the refugees from the Fogaris System, including teachers, rescue personnel, military people, and anyone else that wanted to start over in another system, with the caveat that the journey was going to take a couple of hundred years.
To my surprise, when they heard about everything I was taking with me and what the ship was going to be like, they readily agreed and even asked to move in as soon as possible. That made me laugh, considering most of them wouldn't be alive by the time we reached our destinations. I even managed to snag Admiral Shanifra that used to run the entire system's military.
Once I knew there was over a hundred thousand people that wanted to start over and come with us, some of the internal construction changed. Businesses, restaurants, transient housing, shopping, and everything else that could be found on a normal space station was added. Security stations, vehicles, parks, recreational areas including resorts, beaches, and exercise areas. I even had ten million cleaning and maintenance droids purchased to take care of everything.
Of course, my family and I still had our own separate living area away from everyone else, since we all liked our privacy and could choose to mingle with others if we wanted or stay in our own area and relax. Zoe's delight over her ever-expanding body and field of responsibility was evident as she took on new tasks with enthusiasm and I created dummy AIs to help her run everything.
It wasn't surprising that it was becoming a colony ship with everything that was going on. My orders for basic items increased exponentially, since most of the new population was going to need the essentials for normal life and fully furnished family sized apartments. Zoe and I had a thousand floors to play with and I used their previous living areas on the planet as a model for the living areas on the ship. I wasn't stupid enough to try and homogenize everyone, because that would just create unnecessary tension and strife that could easily be avoided.
We had stored hundreds of thousands of reactors of all different sizes that could be used to build anything from a small shuttle up to a large troop transport. I also had a hundred copies of all the automated factories that the Bogorim Corporation had the plans for. I also had a thousand asteroid smelters in storage, because they were so useful. With a crew of semi-autonomous robotic drones to set it up, you could park one on any random asteroid and it smelted and sorted the materials for you.
The best part about what I was doing, was that we didn't have to abandon our businesses. We could run everything through the satellite network. Thanks to my miniaturization technology, and my pet work crew, we successfully made interactive holograms. We could 'appear' at any place that had a satellite and no one could tell that it wasn't us.
The satellites the factories made were only a quarter of the size, too. They would also last a hundred times as long with all of the extra redundancies and self powering mechanisms. I even started adding a repair droid to each one, just because I could and it would extend the satellite's life by a factor of ten. There was no longer any worry about having to replace them.
The biggest thing I had been collecting the last ten years was all the focusing crystals from three sacred sites, two of which that Zoe had discovered hidden in plain sight. That was the thing about galactic maps that were provided to you, they sometimes weren't complete and there was no way to find out that they weren't... unless you had a computer system so powerful that it could model a galaxy so well that it could tell you where a system was supposed to be that wasn't on the map.
With 'The Wise One' to give us an introduction into the systems, we easily took the sacred sites over. They were renovated within a month, including their food growing areas, and their crystal production was increased by a hundred times. The prisoners there actually refused to be rescued and demanded that I turn the place over to them.
I wasn't someone to stand in the way of another person's ambitions, especially if it benefited me, so I let them have the mines and evacuated the staffs instead. That really put me on their good side and by the end of the next month, they had doubled production. Now imagine ten years of thousands of crystals a month, times that by three, and that was what I had been harvesting.
Mind you, I was using the things up like crazy as I reloaded the automated drone warships. I had been tempted to try and only use missiles; but, the black barrier machines were too versatile. They were also reusable most of the time if you were careful, so the ammunition lasted a very long time. Sometimes it was better to fire them in expansion mode and let them blow out, though. It was the easiest way to destroy a station or a troop transport, because you didn't have to worry if anyone escaped.
Our work continued and the ship was slowly filled out as everything was constructed and added in the allocated spots. One of the largest things on the ship were the hydroponics bays. I allocated several floors to it, each one about forty-five hundred square miles in area. Since I had a hundred foot height on each of the floors, I filled ninety feet of them with dirt and soil that was unceremoniously collected from hundreds of worlds.
I knew that ninety feet of dirt seemed like overkill; but, it had to last for up to two hundred and fifty years. At least. It was better to have more than I needed than not having enough. Plus, with Presence use, I could keep the plants healthy and full of life and it wouldn't strain the dirt or reduce the nutrient content.
Even with everything planted with crop rotation again and several large yields of crops the last two years, I still ordered a long haul transport full of rations and another with ration flavor packs. Those things were worth their weight in gold. There was no such thing as having too much food, especially since they were quick frozen and would last almost indefinitely.
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Six months after the invitations were sent out, people started arriving on the transports I had sent out for them. One of which was the customized cruise liner that carried all of the friends and extended family members of the people in my family. I even invited all the people that had been the healed children from the same hospital that I had met Hailey. Most of them had familes of their own and brought them, too.
To my surprise, a very large contingent of fish people also came onboard seeking asylum. There were about ten thousand of them, so it wasn't even a spit in the bucket compared to the planetary population of over a billion. Once I thought that, I wondered why more didn't come and then laughed.
It didn't take Zoe and myself long to reconfigure one of the unused levels near the water reclamation facilities into a large water reserve. Hen had the medical specs for them and the specific water soluble content they needed for proper breathing and to remain healthy. Luckily, they had brought along a lot of the things they had on their home world to make them feel at home, and they were quickly installed and living areas were built for them.
Work continued on for another six months as more people showed up and then another large transport appeared. This one was a ship that no one had ever seen, because it was from the Aviatoma. I sat down in the command chair on the bridge and winked at Shanifra, because it was her normal seat, and she shook her head and laughed at me.
“I'm just borrowing it, I swear.” I said and pointed to the communications officer. “Send the greeting.”
“Yes, sir.” The woman said and sent the greeting that was automatically set for Aviatoma because of their ship transponder. “They are initiating contact.”
“Put them on the wall screen.” I said and the view out the front of the bridge was replaced with three faces that I hadn't seen in two years. I immediately stood and bowed to the First Avian woman. “Honored Matron, I am humbled at the pleasant and unexpected visit.” I chirped and tweeted to her. “Please accept my apologies for not having an appropriate greeting for someone of your stature.”
The first avian woman warbled her amusement and spoke in common. “I sincerely doubt that you would coat yourself in the sacrificial blood of a (tweet warble) to make yourself presentable.”
“Do you have one onboard?” I asked in my normal voice and not her native language.
Every Aviatoma on the screen and everyone on the bridge on my side of the screen made a disbelieving sound. Surprisingly, the squawks almost sounded the same.
“I... do.” The first avian woman said.
“Then please dock your ship inside the main hangar bay and send a (scout) out to me with the (tweet warble). I will be waiting in the main air lock for you.”
She gave me a discerning look for a moment, then nodded. “We will arrive in half an hour.”
“I am (chirp chirp warble) in anticipation, Honored Matron.” I said.
She let a small smile touch her lips and the screen returned to the view out the front of the bridge.
“Thanks for the loan of the chair.” I said to Shanifra.
“If you didn't own everything, I'd restrict your access to the bridge.” Shanifra said with a grin.
“You're just upset that I won't let you play with my hair.” I said in a haughty voice.
Shanifra chuckled and pointed to the large blast door. “Get off my bridge, sir.”
“Only if I get a kiss.” I said and made my lips look like huge fish lips.
“You can definitely kiss my ass!” Shanifra said and laughed.
“Don't tempt me.” I gave her a wave and walked to the blast door and it opened for me. “See you later.”
“Bye, Hunter.” Shanifra said.
I used Presence Run to go all the way down into the central shaft of the ship. The huge transport ship easily fit into it, just like the cruise liner had, and it docked to one of the many docking rings. The central shaft was still completely open, because we needed easy access to all the main parts of the ship as it was being constructed. Once we had the main parts built around the end of the shaft, we could install the force fields that let the atmosphere stay inside.
I ran over to the proper exit point to meet the (scout) that was bringing out the (tweet warble). The hatch opened and a young avian woman stepped out and held a cage for me. I gave her a slight bow and opened the cage, grabbed the snake with a lizard head, and my bodysuit sunk into my body.
The female Aviatoma stared at my featherless state and then she squawked loudly as I bit into the snake's neck and tore it with my teeth. She had expected me to cut it with a knife or something, then she shivered as I tore it apart with my bare hands and caught all of the blood with Presence and rubbed it all over my body.
I had been the recipient of Hen's Blessing technique dozens of times and I used a similar technique to make my penis tingle and made myself hard. That really surprised the female Aviatoma and she started to warble in pleasure at the sight of me. After a few moments and a quick fantasy of me taking her while covered in the ceremonial blood of death, she let out a sharp chirp and stepped aside.
The first avian woman came around the corner with the second avian woman and Val, as well as a huge entourage, then they stopped dead at the sight of me. They had only expected a small smear on my cheeks and perhaps a broken neck on the creature, not a full adornment like I was showing them.
I knelt on one knee and held the remains of the (tweet warble) out to her and spoke in her native language. “I greet thee with honor, a fresh kill, and my readiness, as is your right as Honored Matron.”
Every pair of eyes, both male and female, dropped to my erect penis and were just as surprised as the (scout) was.
The first avian woman opened her mouth to speak and the second one touched her arm. She nodded and they both looked at me.
“False Tiercel, I accept your honorable gesture, your appropriate gift, and...” The first avian woman's eyes dropped to my penis again. “...if you had a nest nearby...”
I pulled out the one I had made for them back on the prison planet and set it in the hallway between us.
“HE KEPT OUR AIRIE NEST!” Val squawked loudly.
“All these years, you kept it.” The first avian woman said and pulled off her clothes that seemed to only be held on with thin pieces of thread. They broke away and the (scout) caught the articles of clothing before they fell to the floor. The first avian woman stepped into the nest and assumed her proper position.
I had a lot of practice with her in that position and I climbed into the nest. I gave her the pieces of the creature I had killed and she took a bite out of it, laid it to the side, then kissed me. We had sex right there, in front of everyone, and I used Presence to let her enjoy it and then finished inside of her. The first avian woman warbled in pleasure, then she reached up with her hands and plucked two small feathers from just behind her ears. She tucked them into my fluffed up hair behind my ears and kissed me again.
I retreated, as was appropriate, and stepped out of the nest. I stood up to my full height and held a hand out to her. “Honored Matron, welcome to The Ark.”