Abahia floated in the bacta tank like a child in the womb, hearing much the same sounds. She was fed by umbilici as she had once fed her child and as she had once been fed. Fading in and out of awareness of her condition, she made periodic attempts to repair the damage. The events on Angel's Wings were blurred both by the drugs and the cranial injury.

She did, however, remember one thing.

Her master had given the lives of her people to Naum Koghan in return for her life. How Vader had known she had no clue, but her people would be safe and free with Naum to care for and guide them. They had a chance to escape Illoni and run so far that Perran Jasc would never find them.

Now all that remained was to eliminate Perran Jasc and his scum. With any luck, she would be able to make her grandfather pay in pain for every injury, every death, every traumatized woman and child

::: Heal and grow strong, my apprentice. Vengeance will be yours. :::

Vader's touch on her mind still made her feel like she had jumped into a lift tube without waiting for the platform. It took an act of will to answer him – he might harbor some hard feelings for the headache she gave him.

::: My Master, even with my skills, these injuries will take much time to heal. What if :::

Vader's reply was firm. ::: Heal well, Abhaia, and take the time to do it. Your training will be demanding enough. :::

::: But, Master ::: What if Perran was able to gather the remnants of his forces? What if he took his case to other Jedi? All anyone had to say was 'Sith' and the elders all but frothed at the mouth and howled at the moons.

Her master had other ideas. ::: Sleep. :::

It took much effort to push the suggestion/order away and gather her arguments. ::: But :::

::: Sleep, my Stubborn One. :::

A wave of lassitude rolled down her body and wrapped her mind in a peaceful fog.

~

Vader watched as Abhaia's body slowly relaxed into sleep, shaking his head at the blurred protest she made when he put her under. She could be bone-headed stubborn, not to mention impatient, hasty, precipitous

The dead man laughed until Vader squelched him once more.

The patience of a healer was much in evidence; even the scant training she possessed had been complex and lengthy. Healer training took decades, even when it started in adolescence. Abhaia had apparently been trained from early childhood – one of the reasons that he had thought her to be much older than she actually was.

Eyeing the readouts from her telemetry, he could see the areas of damage were considerable. He would need a safe place to keep her while she healed, but still have her to hand for training.

A thought popped into his head.

He considered it.

He visualized it.

He quickly suppressed it and denied its existence.

The idea refused to be banished. For every reason against, his mind produced three in favor. It would either be one of the best ideas that he ever had or one of the absolute worst - but in the end, he could see no other alternative.

All but growling to himself, Vader stalked to the comm to place a holotransmission to his nemesis, his enduring aggravation, his opinionated, annoying, impudent, egotistical and long-term generalized pain in the rump – his Archivist.

~

Perran Jasc moved through the forms of saber combat in his private quarters aboard the abandoned intel platform. Sheer rage sent scarlet bolts across the perfection of the Force and only the ancient discipline allowed him to gradually calm himself.

A rout. A bloody, costly rout with thirty-eight men dead and all because of a girl he should have disposed of years ago. When Perran had tried to get a feel for where she might be, he had slammed headlong into a cordon of Dark power – the Sith whore was with her master now, Vader's signature proclaimed ownership.

Brilan had dispatched probe 'droids to Illoni. Small ships had been sighted skipping in and out before they had left. Brilan wanted to be sure that the small and tattered armada was not returning to an armed welcome.

Perran finished his form and folded to rest on the mat, at peace in his own mind once more. He would gather his scattered forces and return to Illoni to retrieve his genestock. They would find another world on which to complete the work.

~

Some fancy flying had been required to get him in, but now Naum was close to the ending of a part of his journey. The landing beacons of the colony below were active and there was no defense grid lighting up his sensor array. Some barely adolescent boys had challenged him, making grandiose threats that were quickly silenced when Naum put a plasma torpedo onto the peak of a mountain nearby.

The 990 was a large ship, but it fit comfortably on the landing pad. A crowd of boys awaited him in the cold of new dawn, sabers at the ready, their bravado like banners against the brightening sky.

They were unamused and indignant when he fired a tangle-web gluing them to the spot and snatched their lightsabers away. Part of him felt badly about using his powers on children, but a more rational side told him that he did not have much time before unfriendly someones showed up in the Cluster.

"Where is everyone else?" he asked the nominal leader of the would-be-warriors.

The dark-eyed lad's retort was a sneer and a comment about Naum's sexual proclivities.

Naum put one hand on his saber and looked at the boy. Whatever the expression was on his face, Naum wished very much to see it as the boy turned several shades paler and stammered out the information.

Without a word, Naum turned on his heel and walked toward the 'Quarters' to which the boy had referred. More boys attempted to engage him in combat, but with the Force, Naum simply stuck them to the walls of the surrounding buildings. The boys could break the bindings only by becoming one with the Light side of the Force, it saddened Naum to think that some of them would be there for a very long time.

'The Quarters' was a line of drab blown-plascrete buildings behind energy fencing. He could see women and mostly female children behind the transparent violet curtains of power. They took one look at him and ran.

"Wait! Wait, please!" The fear on their faces pulled a response from him. "Please! Abhaia sent me!"

One heavily pregnant woman stopped and turned, shaking off her companion's plucking at her sleeve and walked toward Naum. She stopped an arm's length away from the shimmering purple power field and looked him up and down. Her presence was strong in the Force, but at the same time vague – as if she had never learned to use her power.

"The Healer sent you?" The hope in those words brought tears to his eyes. "Where is Abi? Is Neve with her?"

"Abi" All the words he wanted to say slammed into the lump of shame and grief in his throat, choking him. "She wanted you all safely out of here out of reach"

" 'Abi wanted' " The woman was now joined by other women, creeping up to them like feral felinids.

"Is she"

"Oh, Light"

"Abi's dead"

"Neve must be, too"

Someone in the back started crying quietly - the kind of crying where one must weep but knows no solace with come after it.

"How many are you? I have a ship" Not one. He refused to leave so much as one behind even if he had to cold-sleep them in the escape pods.

A tall woman with a child on one hip and a swollen belly spoke. "Three hundred and three women. The crèche has about one hundred and fifty children between the ages of three and nine, and we have ninety infants under the age of two in the quarters."

"There are still sixty-odd in the slave pens," called another. "Perran damn-him-to-Sith-hell didn't get a chance to load them up before they all ran out of here."

"What about the boys?" The crowd was growing larger by the moment.

"Leave them!"

"Torturer's apprentices!"

"Their mothers would tell you the same."

"We are their mothers!"

"I'm going to take the fence down. You'll be able to come and go as you please, but I do need your aid." Naum held up his hands and the women quieted. "We will need food and a full load of water. Do any of you have experience with environmental systems?"

Hands went up.

"I know environmental"

"I was a navigator for the Saphrine Line"

By nightfall, the freighter's holds were filled with food and clothing. The Healers had inspected the cold-sleep chambers and had lists of volunteers. Naum had three shifts of crew picked out had appointed a quartermaster to assign compartments. Most of the boys were staying behind; those who wanted to come were on probation.

By the grace of the Force, cold-sleep and a shoehorn, everything and everyone would fit.

Sometime before dawn, he sat in the cockpit and watched the moons fall below the horizon. Total darkness descended on the landing grid before Naum registered a sight that literally took his breath away. From deep in the heart of the Illoni Cluster bands of glowing gases and heated particles lit the night sky. From some of these bands, dark fingerlike projections extended upward, the tips glowing with the brilliant blue of hot, young stars. These new stars would burn hot and fast, blowing apart in wild novas when other, calmer stars were contemplating middle age. But in that dying, these stars made the elements of life – minerals and compounds found in being after being in race after race from oxy-breathing humans to the complex methane exchanging silicate creatures of Iis. These young ones would die so that unimaginable eons into the future, some other life might come into being.

It should have been of comfort to him, but instead he could only remember the blue of her eyes and beg the gods he did not believe in for something he could not name.

~

End

~