Lana the bobcat needs to get off Earth and meet her sister on a colony on Europa. Unfortunately, her only way there might involve taking a very unorthodox job for the good of the colony.

Technically a commission for  kairyu-shin but he gave me free reign beyond some certain details, so I almost consider it just an original story. Writing science fiction stuff is so much fun, I should do more on here.

Enjoy! Comments are appreciated!

Part 1: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27272910/
Part 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27283967/
Part 3: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27296027/
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FTL travel was revolutionary and cut long trips into fractions of their length, but those inside the ship sill experienced their own passage of time while traveling in slip-space. The ship’s travel from the outer orbit of Mars to Europa would have taken years in real-time, but would only last a month to the passengers on the ship. This meant Lana had roughly that much time to adjust to her new-found pregnancy and the teeming litter inside her.
She and the other surrogates had been provided with identical rooms on the medical level of the ship, which were simplistic but surprisingly comfortable. Lana suspected that the rooms on the ship were modular additions, premade cubes snapped into place in between trips depending on the needs of that voyage. It was why all but the largest rooms seemed to be self-contained and compacted to take up as little room as possible. This didn’t really combine well with Lana’s increasingly more pregnant body, which seemed to have the opposite philosophy to take up as much room as possible.

This was why she liked to spend much of her time in the arboretum gardens, a privilege given to her by the first-class upgrade. It was the only place on the ship that actually felt spacious enough to move with her bulging stomach not getting in the way. She’d grown up in the city and hadn’t spent much time in parks, but being on the ship made her surprisingly miss the touches of nature and natural beauty she’d taken for granted on earth. It felt good to lay in the grass and find a private, secluded spot in the bushes to think about her new life on Europa and absentmindedly explore the swelling growth in her middle.

She’d tried to initially think of her surrogacy as just a means to an end, an unorthodox method of paying her passage off of Earth. But as she felt the kittens inside her start to move and kick and explore the confines of her crowded womb, it was hard not to feel affectionate for them. Lana had no idea if she ever wanted children and simply hadn’t had a stable enough life to think about it, but the maternal affection she had for the litter in her care, nestled inside her body and growing by the day, was unexpected and powerful. Maybe it was just hormones or biology, but the feeling were there, all the same.

It was partly the reason she felt so invested in keeping herself healthy. Lana already expected to be on a strict diet and exercise regimen, but with the health of so many kittens on the line, she felt obligated to keep her body in as good shape as she could manage. It was exhausting trying to move her already heavily pregnant body around the ship, so at the suggestion of Dr. Schafer, she started her exercises in the outer-ship health centers that rimmed the ships gravitational generators and had intentionally lowered gravity. While initially embarrassed to be seen working out with such a round and swollen body, especially around the groups of playing children, Lana found the lower gravity to be a blessing and the only time she felt like she could really move around her pregnancy. At the suggestion of the doctor, she only worked out there long enough to build her muscles to exercise at regular gravity levels. Her body was designed to function on Earth, so the gestation of the litter would have been affected if she spent too much time outside of Earth-level gravity.

In between huge meals and afternoons at the gym, Lana found her time surprisingly free and the ship sufficiently filled with distraction and entertainment. Movie theaters, arcades, restaurants, night clubs (for whatever counted as ‘night’ in the darkness of space), and amusement parks were within walking distance at any given point on the ship, even more so on the higher, first-class levels. The bars and more strenuous activities were off-limits, of course. Out of curiosity, Lana tried to buy a beer from a vending machine using her ID card, only for the card itself to be declined for anything with the slightest amount of alcohol.

With such a large ship and such a dense number of passengers, Lana expected to find herself lost in the crowd and lonely, but more often than she expected, she would spot the bright-pink jumpsuits and eye-catching bellies belonging to one of her fellow surrogates through the mass of people. She passed Angie often settled into a seat in the casino, her vast belly settled into her lap as she gambled with ship-specific tokens and drank non-alcoholic cocktails. Rita was usually found near the pools and artificial watering holes, immediately recognizable by the round belly bulging from her otherwise slim and lanky body. Hana made a point to visit a different restaurant every single day and it was common to see her devouring something delicious and exotic, either by herself or with another surrogate. Lana even saw a pair of pink jumpsuits entering the mating center, which was something she considered trying out once or twice, but was ultimately too shy to go through with it.

What became more obvious as time went on was that, as Dr. Schafer said, Lana and the eleven other surrogates were the only pregnant women on the ship. This didn’t sound strange at first, but it didn’t prepare Lana for how much the round belly she carried made her stand out among the rest of the passengers. She caught looks and stares wherever she went, but also smiled and nods of encouragement. She began to realize that the surrogacy program, the ‘baby bomb,’ was an open secret with the passengers, who would sometimes even approach Lana to ask how she was feeling, how many she was carrying, which colony she was going to, and other light questions. One instance she remembered fondly was the day a little feline girl approached her with wide, curious eyes while staring at her belly. Lana, feeling generous, let the girl feel the kittens moving inside of her and explained the basics of what was going on, leaving the juicy details to her parents. It was a strange experience, but not an unpleasant one.

Over time, maternity ward they’d woken up in became one of Lana’s favorite places on the ship. The cryo-beds had retracted into the floor and made room for soft, foam furniture to be brought in and made the room into a sort of lounge, encouraging the surrogates to socialize. Artie taught her blackjack, amusingly using the surface of her belly as a makeshift dealer’s table. Rita told stories from her time in the military. Hana was a surveyor for an off-world building contractor and told all of them what it was like overseeing projects on almost every settled planet and moon in the solar system. Sofia was a hologram artist and, as it turned out, the only lesbian out of the group. This didn’t stop her and Rita from spending time together in her room, it turned out.

Though above all, Lana spent the most time with Layla, who was taking to pregnancy more naturally than all of them. She wore her jumpsuit with pride, but more than often was seen wearing dresses and clothes that accentuated the swell of her middle proudly. She was overjoyed to be carrying a litter of pups and scarcely spent more than a few minutes without a hand on her belly. Layla seemed made for the task, her body filling out beautifully and naturally to accommodate her round belly. While the rest of them struggled to even stand, Layla found her favorite activity to be the automated dance classes, and she was often seen twirling happily on the tips of her paws in spite of her heavy middle.

On top of her maternal nature, Layla was also a kind and understanding woman that, while alluding to the hardship of her past, never seemed to have lost the her youthful joy in life. It was something Lana envied and hoped she could regain with her new life on Europa.

Layla was also the only person Lana had told the truth to about her immigration off-world.
“Why do you want to get to Europa so badly?” Layla had asked as they sat in Lana’s small bedroom, eating snacks and gently kneading their sore, rounded middles. The bobcat hesitated long enough for Layla to follow up with, “Is it really just to see your sister? Do you just miss her that badly?”

“I…I do. I miss her and it’s been so long, that…I just want to see the only family member I have left.” She set down her bag of chips and rested her hands over her stomach. “But…the reason I wanted to get off Earth…” Lana took a deep breath, and clasped her hands together. “…My husband.”

“Husband?” Layla repeated, her eyes widening. “You’re married?”
“Not anymore,” Lana shook her head. “My ex-husband. But even after the divorce, he…he just wouldn’t…” She swallowed and said, “He isn’t the same man I married. He would drink, he would get angry, he would…hit me. He stalked me, followed me, wouldn’t leave me alone. Poisoned everyone I knew against me. My friends were all his friends, after all. After a while, I didn’t really have anybody. Mom and Dad were gone, Ariel was off-world, and I was stuck with…him.”
“Couldn’t the police do something?” Layla asked, to which Lana snorted cynically.

“On Earth? No way. The best they could do was keep him away for maybe six months at a time, but there wasn’t any way to fix what he’d already broken. He used to be a cop, too. When it came down to it, there just wasn’t anything they could do. Or would do. So I just…” Lana shrugged. “I cut out the rotten parts of my life and just decided to start over somewhere else. Earth is a shit-hole, anyway. I was going to get out sooner or later.”
“I’m glad you did,” Layla said, smiling gently. She glanced down at the bobcat’s belly and giggled. “Though you probably didn’t expect it to be like this did you?”
“No, not really,” Lana laughed. “But I don’t think I mind it so much, after all. The immigration agent had it all wrong. He said we were going to be more like cargo than crew.”
“Well, he’s not technically wrong, is he?” Layla shrugged, patting her belly. “We just have some very, very special packages.”

As the ‘month’ wore on, the passengers and crew were given daily updates at how much longer the trip through slip-space would be. The 24 hours before exit, Lana and the other surrogates reported to the maternity ward for Dr. Schafer to give them more shots and pills to prepare them for the last half of their trip.
“Now, I’m going to warn you all,” she explained to the group of pregnant women, “you’ll be waking up full term. If you thought it was a shock the first time, just be prepared. You’ll be ready to pop by the time you come out of cryo-sleep again.”
“We’ll try to hold ‘em in, doc,” Artie joked.
“You got any duct tape?” Rita asked. “Make sure everything’s sealed up down there?” A chorus of groans and laughs followed, earning Rita a sharp punch on the arm from Artie.
“Well, with that imagery all in our minds,” Dr. Schafer said, “does anybody have any other questions?”
“When will they actually be born?” Layla asked, her hands wrapped around her belly.
“Not until we get to the colony. Hopefully.”
“Hopefully?” Carla asked, nervously.

“Well, its not uncommon for waters to break once coming out of cryo-sleep. We can handle it if it happens, but it’s preferable to get to the colony medical centers where they’re better equipped for it.”
“We’re not gonna have to squeeze them all out, are we?” Sofia asked nervously.
“Cesareans are usually the safest method for delivery, so no. You won’t be asked to birth seven children unassisted.”
“Or ten,” Lana added, her hands on her belly. She was already visibly larger than the others, if only by a slight amount.
“Or ten, that’s right,” Dr. Schafer nodded. Suddenly, a loud beeping noise far down the hall drew their attention. “Well, that’s our cue.” The deer took out the same syringe she’d used a year ago to put them all to sleep and went around the room to administer the last injection.

“This is…this is all safe for the babies, isn’t it?” Layla asked.
“Of course,” Dr. Schafer said over her shoulder. “Everything we give you is safe both for the surrogate and the fetuses.”
“Okay…” the collie sighed, glancing down at her belly. “If you say so…”
“Don’t be nervous,” Lana said, reassuringly. “Think about how strong they’ll be when you get up and they’re almost ready to be born.” Layla paused, then smiled to herself and started wagging her tail.
Once Dr. Schafer had put the others to sleep before her, Lana pulled down her sleeve and waited for the injection.
“I’m a little nervous, actually,” Lana said, gesturing to her belly. “If I’m already this big right now…”
“I won’t lie to you,” Dr. Schafer said, “you’re going to be carrying large. But it won’t be anything you can’t handle, I’m sure of it. I’ll be here to help you all along the way.”

“Sure, sure,” Lana sighed, biting her lip and the needle pierced her skin and injected her with the sedative. She immediately climbed into the bed right after, knowing she might not have the energy to lift her pregnant body in a few seconds.
As Lana lay down on the soft padding and felt her head getting drowsy, she pulled the blanket up to her her chin and felt it stretch over her already impressive belly.
No turning back now, was her last thought before instantly dropping off to sleep.

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Lana woke up just as groggy as the last time, but her body felt strangely cold. Before her vision adjusted to the orange glow of the cryo-bed, she blinked up at the light and wondered, blearily, where her blanket was. Rolling her head onto its side, she watched the IV tubes retract from her arms, leaving the bio-foam to seal the wounds they left. As warmth crept back into her arms, she flexed her fingers and groaned quietly as her body came back under her control. Coming out of suspended animation was like waking up in stages at a very, very slow pace. She’d heard more than enough horror stories about it in the past, but it wasn’t anywhere as bad as she thought it would be. Of course, the surrogate beds were calibrated differently, so there might be some kind of reasoning for it.

Something was different. Lana peered up through the glass canopy, but found something was blocking the light and casting a shadow over her face. She tried to pull her blanket up to her chin, but couldn’t reach it. As she attempted to lean forward or sit up to find it, she found the action completely impossible. As she lifted her hand, her finger brushed against the firm, sensitive shape of her belly. Lana’s eyes widened as she realized what was blocking the light and why the blanket no longer reached her chest. While she slept, her stomach had reached its full term size, rounded out to an incredible globe protruding from her middle. As she shakily explored it with her palms, she found it impossible to wrap her hands fully around her pregnant belly and could no longer reach her navel. The litter of ten kittens inside her had grown to the point that Lana was more belly than woman.

The bed shuddered beneath her and began to rise, the gears groaning and straining more than they had the last time. She must have put on an extra thirty or forty pounds in her sleep, just from the weight of her belly alone. That time, her stomach did bump against the lid of the cryo-bed before it swung open, the cold air making her shiver.
The moment she could, Lana tried to crawl back toward the wall and sit up. As if in response to her movement, the bed beneath her tilted up to meet her and she was able to sit up and fully examine the enormous size of her pregnant stomach. Her legs and paws were completely hidden underneath it, and if she was lying down, her vision of the room around her would be totally eclipsed by her belly. The generous extra fabric on the front of her jumpsuit had split open as she grew, exposing some of her spotted belly fur to the open air. She reached down and touched her fur between the torn fabric, feeling the warmth of her belly against her fingers.

“Lana,” breathed an amazed voice to her left. The bobcat, still drowsy from sleep, glanced over to see Layla gaze at her belly with amazement. The collie had grown as well, her rounded, full term middle sitting in her lap as she stroked it with absentminded affection, but it was dwarfed by the size of Lana’s.
“Holy shit,” breathed a groggy Rita from across the room at the sight of Lana’s belly. Her stomach was also rounded to full-term, protruding from her lanky body, but at least her pink jumpsuit was still holding together. “I think we’ve got a winner.”
“Are you alright?” Layla asked, shifting slightly under her heavy belly to get comfortable.

“I…I think so,” Lana breathed, her voice quiet from not speaking for so long. She looked up around the room and watched as the other surrogates awoke and gazed down at their bellies in shock. “I guess this is why they call it a ‘population bomb.’”
“How the fuck are we going to get off the ship?” Sofia lamented, turning to the side and being the first to sit up, her legs dangling over the edge of the bed while resting her hands on her stomach. “I don’t even know how to stand with all this.” She suddenly winced, then gasped and pressed both hands to the side of her belly. “Jesus Christ, is that a kick?” Her reaction drew the stares of others, who watched in amazement as Sofia’s white-furred belly visibly shifted from the moving rabbit babies inside her.

“This…this is…I…” Layla began to mutter to herself, her face hidden behind her long ears.
“Hey…are you alright?” Lana asked, wishing she could move to her friend, but was pinned beneath the enormous weight of her pregnant middle. “Should I call Dr. Schafer?”
The collie shook her head, her ears flopping to either side as she did. When she glanced up at Lana, she had tears streaming down behind her glasses that matched her wide, toothy grin.
“This is…amazing…” she breathed, rapturously.

The lights above them brightened and the door slid open to find Dr. Schafer walking in with two medical carts behind her, one the normal apparatus she used each checkup, the other a larger, more intricate machine.
“Rise and shine!” She called out, with bags under her own eyes. “How are you all feeling?”
“Huge,” said Hana, her large hands roaming her own belly.
“Well, you look it, too,” Dr. Schafer smirked. “Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. It means you’ll be right on time to give birth once we reach Europa.”
“I feel like I’m about to fucking pop in the next ten minutes,” Sofia groaned, leaning back on the bed. “Doesn’t help that I’ve got seven pairs of feet trying to kick their way out.”
“That’s a good sign, too,” Dr. Schafer nodded as she primed the medical cart.

“Maybe to you,” the rabbit sniffed, making a face as she poked a finger into her belly button, protruding outward from her stomach from the pressure of her womb.
“This checkup is going to take a little longer, since we have more to go over,” the doctor explained. “Most genetic issues would have been engineered out of the embryos before they were implanted, but we should make sure none of them developed any other problems. So please don’t get up until we’re finished.”
Lana suddenly made a loud yelp as something enormous and strong stirred inside her. The other women glanced at her as she blushed quietly at her reaction. Suddenly, a hard, sudden kick from one of the kittens in her belly made her jump again and split another rip in the middle of her jumpsuit. The bobcat breathed as she slid a hand over her fur poking through the hole and looked up helplessly at Dr. Schafer.
“We’ll…we’ll make sure to get you some more clothes,” the deer said, clearly just as amazed at Lana’s size.
“Can we eat, soon?” Angie asked. “I’m feeling kind of…I don’t know…faint.”

“Oh, I have protein packs for all of you before we get to the actual meals,” Dr. Schafer explained. She tapped on her tablet with a finger, sending the second medical cart around the room to each bed in turn, a robotic arm handing out small semi-liquid packs with built-in straws. Lana took one and carefully sipped from it, noting that it tasted somewhat like bread.
She winced again as another baby inside her kicked out hard enough to shake her whole belly, which already felt as taut as a drum under her hands. Lana took deep, deliberate breaths as she drank her protein pack, watching and feeling the crowd of kittens in her belly begin to wake up and stir around one another. She could feel heads, shoulders, arms, legs, even tails of the ten kittens she carried in her womb, and was amazed at how much they’d grown in just a few months of suspended animation. Despite the sheer volume of her pregnant belly and the weight inside of it, she wasn’t uncomfortable. The shots, pills, and injections from the cryo-bed must have made her body more receptive to a high-yield pregnancy.

“Doctor…D-Doctor Schafer…” gasped a voice from the end of the room. The deer, who was performing an ultrasound on Sofia, glanced around to find Carla waddling away from her bed, one hand held out to balance her and the other wrapped around her belly.
“Carla, please get back in bed,” Dr. Schafer said, approaching her cautiously. “Is there something I can get you?”
“I-I don’t…I think I…I think I’m in-” Carla’s clenched her fist and groaned, her body tightening suddenly. A dark, wet stain began to seep from between her legs as her water broke, amniotic fluid puddling between her paws on the floor. Dr. Schafer darted forward and held Carla upright, talking quickly into a device on her wrist. She tapped the other device on her waist and the second medical hovered over and ejected a plastic square that quickly unfolded into a wheelchair.

“You’ll be alright, it’s okay, it’s okay,” the doctor said reassuringly as she lowered Carla into the wheelchair. “Keep breathing, keep breathing. You’re in labor now, it’s alright. I’m here.” She drew something on her tablet and the wheelchair set off toward the door under its own power, with Dr. Schafer following closely behind.

The room of eleven surrogates, formerly twelve, stared at one another in stunned, anxious silence.
“Well…fuck,” Rita said, blinking at the empty doorway. Lana swallowed anxiously and glanced down at her belly, acutely aware at the pressure inside of it.

“Alright,” Dr. Schafer sighed as she returned to the room without Carla. She stopped at the table in the middle of the room and took a deep breath before clasping her hands. “So. You’ve all been given inhibitors to labor to prevent this kind of thing from happening, but they don’t always ‘take’ when you factor in the shock of waking up from cryo-sleep. Sometimes one of the surrogates will ‘pop’ as soon as she wakes up. Our medical bay is equipped for this and we have great doctors, so Carla and the pups will be fine.”

“Labor inhibitors?” asked Lana. She didn’t want to carry a litter of ten longer than her body could handle.
“Just for the trip. They wear off once we get to Europa, I promise.”
“As long as they come outta there without blowing me up,” Rita said with a nonchalant shrug.
“So…do we have to do a C-section, Dr. Schafer?” Layla asked.
“I think that’s a question for the colony doctor,” the doctor answered, raising an eyebrow at a question she’d clearly never been asked.

The deer rounded the room with the carts, performing more ultrasounds, including stress tests and contraction measurements on the surrogates themselves. Instead of the excited mumblings of last time, the women sat in awe at the sight of the babies inside them, now almost fully grown. Layla actually guided Dr. Schafer’s hand around her belly and tried to point out which breed of canine each puppy inside her was. In the face of such uncertainty, the collie’s enthusiasm and joy were welcome distractions and made her seem all the more endearing to Lana.

“Alright, ready to see your big crowd?” Dr. Schafer asked Lana with the ultrasound wand in hand.
“I…I think so,” Lana sighed, leaning back. As the doctor peeled back the opening on her jumpsuit, the bobcat’s spotted belly spilled out, protruding far above her. Dr. Schafer whistled while gently resting both hands on Lana’s stomach.
“Well, you’re certainly…healthy,” the doctor said with a smile before touching the wand her belly.
The screen above the cart lit up and Lana’s eyes widened at the sight of countless, nearly fully-grown kittens, no longer the vague shapes of babies from before. She saw tigers, jaguars, cougars, cats, and a more feline kittens inside her than she could identify, watched them kick on the screen at the same time as she felt the kicks inside of her.
“I feel like a queen ant or something,” Lana breathed, rubbing the sides of her belly.

“You should be proud,” Dr. Schafer beamed. “They’re all healthy and fully developed. You might have a knack for this.”
“Just don’t count on me doing it again…” Lana sighed, squirming underneath her enormously pregnant body and watching the beginnings of an entire generation teeming inside her.
***************************************************************************************************

After coming out of cryo-sleep, the ship was only days away from Europa, so the surrogates were taken back to their rooms in their wheelchairs. In between instructions of what to do when departing the ship, Lana spent much of her time eating and sleeping while trying to get used to her overly fertile body. She talked over the cross-room intercom to Layla, who was more active and joyful for the upcoming birth.

“I had no idea you’d be so into this,” Lana said to the video screen, shifting under her belly as another flurry of kicks started low, near her hips.
“Me either,” Layla breathed, leaning back to lovingly stroke her belly. “I…I would do it again, if I could. Maybe for my own pups, maybe not. I don’t know. I just…I don’t want this to be the only time I get pregnant.”
“Well, the colony needs people,” Lana shrugged. “You’ll find somebody to knock you up again, trust me.”
“I hope so,” Layla sighed before giggling again and pointing to the tiny lump pushing out against the tight fabric of her jumpsuit. “Look, he’s awake again…”

A few days later, Lana and the other surrogates were lined up with the rest of the medical staff, all seated in wheelchairs as they waited for the ship to touch down. She tried to keep her breathing steady and calm, her hands resting atop her belly (because they didn’t have anywhere else to rest).
“I’m gonna miss all that first class shit,” Rita said to Sofia, who sat next to her. “I just hope we won’t be living in fucking holes in the ground or something.”
“I’ve lived in worse places, I’m sure,” Sofia shrugged, reaching beneath the flap on her jumpsuit to scratch her rounded belly.
The entire ship trembled as it began to come under Europa’s gravity. Lana glanced at Layla with an eager smile and the two of them clasped hands eagerly.
As the rushing sound began to die down, Lana’s ears twitched as she heard muffled crying behind her. She turned around as best she could and found Angie, the bulldog, sitting behind her and softly crying into her sleeve with her other hand stroking her belly. She looked up, red-eyed, into Lana’s face and sniffed.

“I-I want them,” she said, quietly. “I love them…Th-They’re my babies…I wanna…I wanna keep them…”
Unsure what to say, Lana gave Angie a gentle smile and made a mental note to check up on her later.
The ship began to shudder again and a yellow light blinked on to indicate that docking had begun. In the dim light, Lana glanced to Layla and leaned over, holding up her droopy ear to talk directly into it.
“I’m going to find my sister once we get off,” she said. “Let’s get meet up again when we aren’t packed full of babies.”
“Don’t be surprised if I’m carrying a few more by then,” Layla said, winking.

As the ship groaned, shuddered, and trembled around them, it seemed like ages before the yellow lights suddenly turned green and the door to the crew bay cracked open, letting in natural light for the first time in almost two years. Of course, what became quickly apparent was that it wasn’t the same light Lana was used to.
The sky was mostly blue thanks to the terraforming process, but the first immediate difference was the huge, looming shape of Jupiter taking up most of the horizon, the eye of its enormous storm gazing down at them. Even beyond, the rim of the sky was a shade of orange, which Lana wasn’t sure indicated unterraformed landscape or not. A city stretched out beyond them, the synthetic materials and glass spires glittering in the artificial sun that had been constructed in orbit.

The walkway they traveled down touched a wide stretch of pavement packed with thousands upon thousands of people welcoming the new colonists to Europa. Lana’s heart sank as she quietly worried how she’d find her sister in a population of so many.
As they departed the ship, organizers directed the surrogates off to the side, their wheelchairs moving automatically, to the section of the dock marked off for colony LAT-49. Lana sighed as the surrogates wheeled past the meeting point for the colonists and they were taken to a special station for processing the surrogates.

The last thing she expected to find in the tent was a familiar face.
Standing in the back and watching the surrogates excitedly were a group of colonists, presumably waiting to hear about their yet-to-be-born children. Standing in front of them was none other than Huey, Lana’s lynx brother-in-law. The two locked eyes with one another in shock, his eyes migrating down to her enormously pregnant belly. Lana stared at him with her jaw dropped; he and Ariel had left Earth as soon as they turned eighteen, but Huey was at least in his early thirties by that point.

“Lana?” He shouted, stepping forward and running over to his pregnant sister-in-law.
“Huey?” Lana repeated, gazing up at him. “Wh-What are- What are you doing here? Where’s Ariel?”
“Waiting for you. What are you doing…” He paused, then glanced down at her belly. “Is this how you booked passage off Earth?”
“Uhhh… y-yeah,” Lana said sheepishly, rubbing her round stomach. “I guess the communications couldn’t really get through.”
“I guess not,” Huey snorted. “Hang on, I’m going to get your sister.” Huey backed away and ran toward the exit of the tent, shoving past people. Lana smiled, already satisfied at seeing a friendly face on such a strange new world.

Minutes later, Huey returned with Ariel in hand, the bobcat staring into her sister’s eyes with shock.
“Oh my God…” Ariel breathed, approaching her sister with tears brimming in her eyes. “Lana…”
“I’m here,” Lana breathed, her own tears falling as Ariel dropped and wrapped her sister in a hug. “I made it…I did it…” The two pulled away and stared at each other. “You look like Mom,” Lana said, noting how her little sister had out-aged her.
“And you…well, you look like a mom,” Ariel joked, gingerly patting Lana’s belly. “I didn’t know you were…doing this. I wish I had, I’d have tried to help you find another way.”

“There really wasn’t,” Lana sighed. “But what was Huey doing here? If you didn’t know I was going to be a surrogate, why was he waiting on me?”
“I wasn’t waiting on you,” Huey answered. “I was waiting on our baby.”
“We applied for the surrogacy program,” Ariel said. “We got put on a waiting list until they told us about three years ago…three of our years…that we’d have our baby. That one of the surrogates would be carrying them.”
Lana stared up at the two felines, processing the information she’d been told. She blinked, then stared down at her belly, realizing that she was more than likely carrying her own niece or nephew.

“Well uhh…” Lana swallowed before smiling sheepishly and patting her belly, “they’re probably in here somewhere. You’ll just…have to wait in line.”

Lana snickered at the shocked expression on her sister’s face, realizing that her family had been a lot closer than she’d realized the entire time. She looked down at her belly again, breathing a sigh of relief as she began to start her brand-new life alongside the children she would soon bring into this brave new world.