Imrhien's not pregnant: Lily is.

There are some things you just never see coming: The battle for Shadow going nuclear. Royal Oak winning the Osirus cup in '32. The loss of the Johnson MacDuff to catastrophic drive failure. Lily getting pregnant. All things you'd never have bet on in a million years.

But each happened.

We all should have known that Lily's transformation and not merging with Blue wouldn't have been the end of the show. We should have seen there was more coming. With Lily's fixation on mating and having a cub even before she was organic, we should have seen that somehow a new life would be involved.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Again.

I don't pretend to understand the entire chain of events that led to where we are now with Lily. I've got a decent education and a background in technology. Hell, my Masters from Feynman University was in Applied Tech and I've had to stay sharp though my career. But polymorphic synthetics, artificial life, and Artificial Intelligence that thinks it's god? Nope. Not something I pretend to understand. Even running it by some of the smartest heavy brain types I know came back with a cumulative "shouldn't be possible." But it was possible. Lily was proof.

The social side was a little easier to fathom. The motivations of a baka like Ben were easy to understand. He never saw Lily for what she really was. He had his image of her, brought about by an overdose of testosterone and angst, and that was all he could see. It might be easier to forgive him if he wasn't such a self centered teinousha. Anyone who goes on about how everyone assumes he's got nothing but good intentions, then goes on to show everyone that his intentions are anything but, deserves a boot to the head. Honestly. Boot to the head. Not that he'd actually understand. Not that beating the crap out of him would have helped any, except maybe the catharsis of breaking a few of his facial bones.

Next time.

Of course, if he's smart, there won't be a next time. He and his "apprentice," as he called his pet stripper, would both have to tread lightly in our little slice of heaven. But again, I digress.

The first we realized anything was wrong was when Lily started to complain she wasn't feeling well. With Belize and Gallagher off world at the time, I was the nearest thing we had to a doctor available. Not my best skill by a long shot, but I'd have to do. Fortunately, we'd uprated a lot of the medical kit recently and the scanner was enough to let me know Lily was functionally ovulating. Never mind the biology. Lily was, somehow, fertile.

Considering how much she'd been talking about him, I wasn't surprised when Mindo showed up looking for her. Getting the promise out of him to spend his time working on a way for Lily to survive wasn't easy, though seeing him cry was gratifying on a deep, deep, level. Only wish it was because of something I'd done to him, directly, with force.

What I hadn't counted on was him impregnating her, probably with that yarichin as the donor.

I didn't know he'd done it until hours later, and, by then, the cub had already developed to roughly the three month stage. By evening, it was roughly six months and she was exhibiting 'nesting' behavior, which meant we had until maybe mid day tomorrow. Shiny. Just shiny.

Leave it to Blue to throw his own take on things. While I'd managed to lock him out of the boat and my office, with the Sheriff's office and infirmary under way, he still had some kind of implant in Lily (probably Krenshar too, and who knew what portable devices), which meant that where she was, he was.

Still don't want to fight you Blue.

Just want you the hell out of my kit.

By Blue's take, Lily's child, that he claimed as his own, was the key to a peaceful future between Organics and Machines. Would be a great thing, assuming I could believe him. Blue knew I wanted a peaceful end game and it would be far too easy for him to play into that hope. I wanted to believe Blue was telling the truth. I'd thought myself Lily could be the bridge. It wasn't a stretch to think her daughter (as we found out after Gallagher pulled amniotic fluid) would be the one.

But what if I was wrong? What if Blue was bullshitting us and Aurora (Lily's chosen name for her cub) was the key to our undoing? Blue'd accused me of not showing wisdom, that Grandfather would be disappointed. Playing to my emotions, no doubt. But Grandfather understood that Passion sometimes had to override Wisdom. It was part of what made us Human. Lily's survival, Humanity's survival, was a passion.

For the sake of everyone involved, I hoped I was doing the right thing.

We would know soon.

Too soon.