CHAPTER 45: VENTRESS ASCENDANT
POV: Asajj Ventress
The encrypted datacard had arrived through channels so convoluted that even Ventress couldn't trace its origin completely. But the intelligence bore Dooku's subtle signature—information too precise to be coincidental, too dangerous to share openly. Twenty Force-sensitive children. A Project Shadowfeed facility on Zygerria. Horrific experiments designed to extract and weaponize Force potential.
Ventress stared at the holographic facility schematics, her emerald lightsaber hilt rolling between her palms in a nervous habit she'd never quite eliminated. The location made perfect sense—Zygerria's slaving infrastructure provided both cover and test subjects for whatever monstrous science was being conducted.
"You don't have to lead this one." Ahsoka's voice carried genuine concern as she reviewed the tactical data. "We could send someone else."
"No." The word emerged with more force than Ventress intended. "These children are like I was. Taken, broken, used. If anyone understands what they're experiencing, it's me."
And if anyone has debts to pay, it's me.
The assault team consisted of six Gray Order members, each chosen for specific skills rather than raw power. Maris Brood brought her expertise with stealth and infiltration. Ahsoka provided tactical coordination and lightsaber support. The others—Jex, Mira, Denn, and Corso—were solid fighters who could follow orders without hesitation.
Zygerria's crimson sky burned overhead as their shuttle settled into a ravine three kilometers from the target facility. The planet's oppressive heat carried the stench of industrial processing and something worse—the psychic residue of prolonged suffering that made every Force-sensitive member of the team flinch.
"Remember," Ventress addressed her team as they checked equipment one final time, "we're not here for revenge. We're here for rescue. Anyone who surrenders lives. Anyone who fights dies quickly and cleanly."
The words tasted strange in her mouth. Six months ago, she would have slaughtered everyone in the facility and counted it a mercy. But standing here, preparing to face the kind of horror that had shaped her own youth, the old bloodlust felt... insufficient.
Killing them won't undo what they've done. But saving the children might prevent them from doing it again.
The facility perched on a mesa like a technological tumor, its walls designed more for containment than defense. Guard towers watched empty approaches, but the designers had assumed attackers would come openly rather than through the maintenance tunnels that honeycombed the mesa's foundation.
Ventress led the infiltration with predatory grace, her Force presence masked by techniques Kael had taught her. Behind her, the team moved in perfect silence through passages barely wide enough for human forms. The building's foundation thrummed with the power of active machinery—life support, containment systems, experimental apparatus she didn't want to identify.
The first guards died before they could raise an alarm. Not from malice, but from tactical necessity—their positions commanded too much of the infiltration route to bypass safely. Ventress's emerald blade found throat and heart with surgical precision, quick deaths for men who might have been conscripts rather than volunteers.
But when they reached the main laboratory levels, everything changed.
"Drop your weapons! Surrender and you'll be treated as prisoners of war!"
The Zygerrian technician spun toward Ventress's voice, his hand moving toward an alarm panel. She could have killed him in the time it took to speak—should have, by the tactical doctrine that governed her past life. Instead, she extended her off-hand, Force energy pinning him against the wall without breaking bones.
"I said surrender."
Three more guards burst through side passages, weapons raised. Ahsoka and Maris moved to flank them while Ventress held position, her lightsaber casting emerald shadows on laboratory walls lined with containment chambers.
"Stand down! This facility is under investigation for crimes against sentient beings!"
Two of the guards looked uncertain, weapons wavering as they processed the offer of mercy. The third opened fire, forcing Ahsoka to deflect bolt after bolt while closing distance. But even in the chaos of combat, Ventress noted how her protégé sought to disable rather than kill—a restraint that would have been weakness in her Sith days but now felt like strength.
The firefight lasted ninety seconds. When silence fell, two guards lay dead and three others knelt with their hands secured behind their backs. The survivors would face Republic justice, but they would face it alive.
"When did I start caring about the difference?"
The containment chambers lined the facility's lower levels in sterile rows that reminded Ventress of Dooku's training facilities on Serenno. But these held children instead of combat droids—young beings of a dozen species, their Force signatures dim with exhaustion and trauma.
The sight broke something in Ventress that she hadn't known was still intact.
The youngest couldn't have been more than six years old, a Togruta girl with montrals just beginning to develop. Electrodes protruded from her skull like obscene jewelry, connected to machines that monitored and manipulated her neural activity. Her eyes tracked Ventress's approach with the wariness of an animal that had learned the difference between pain and worse pain.
"Hey, little one." Ventress knelt beside the containment chamber, her voice softer than she remembered it could be. "We're here to take you home."
"Home?" The word came out cracked and uncertain. "The doctors said I don't have a home anymore."
Rage threatened to consume Ventress's carefully maintained control. Not the wild fury of her Sith training, but something colder and more focused—the anger of someone who had experienced similar horrors and refused to let them continue.
"The doctors lied. You have a home now, with people who understand what you've been through." Ventress began disconnecting the monitoring equipment with gentle precision. "People who will never let anyone hurt you like this again."
As she worked, other team members moved through adjacent chambers, liberating children whose conditions ranged from traumatized but functional to barely clinging to sanity. The experiments had focused on Force extraction and amplification, attempting to create artificial conduits for dark side energy.
They were trying to make weapons. Like Dooku made me.
"Are you a Jedi?" The Togruta girl's question stopped Ventress mid-motion.
The honest answer would have been complicated—former Sith assassin seeking redemption through acts of mercy. But looking into those haunted eyes, Ventress found a simpler truth.
"No. I'm something better—someone who understands darkness and chose light anyway."
The evacuation required three shuttle runs to transport all the survivors safely. Twenty children, ranging in age from six to fourteen, each bearing the psychological and physical scars of systematic abuse. The medical bay at the Gray Order sanctuary worked overtime to address their immediate needs while Ventress coordinated longer-term care.
But that night, as she sat with the children during their first meal as free beings, Ventress made a decision that surprised even her.
"Kael." She found him reviewing the intelligence data recovered from the facility, his expression grim as he processed the scope of Project Shadowfeed's operations. "I want to establish something new. A division of the Gray Order specifically for children like these."
"A training program?"
"More than that. A healing program. These children have been broken by people who understood the Force's power but not its purpose. They need teachers who've experienced similar darkness and found their way back to light."
Kael studied her face, recognizing the resolve there. "You want to become their protector."
"I want to become what I needed when I was their age. What Ky Narec tried to be before they killed him." Ventress's voice carried the weight of decision. "I can't change my past. But I can make sure what happened to me never happens to them."
"The Gray Guardians." Kael's approval was visible in his slight smile. "Children training under someone who understands both the darkness they've experienced and the light they can still choose."
"Someone who won't lie to them about the cost of power or the reality of evil in the galaxy." Ventress looked through the medical bay's viewport at the children settling into their first night of safety in years. "Someone who will teach them that survival and compassion aren't mutually exclusive."
As the sanctuary settled into sleep around them, Ventress remained in the children's dormitory, telling quiet stories about Ky Narec and the difference between strength and cruelty. Some of the children cried—the first tears many had shed in years. Others laughed cautiously at her gentle humor.
All of them learned, for the first time in their young lives, that Force-sensitives didn't have to choose between victim and victimizer. There was a third path, harder than either extreme but infinitely more rewarding.
From the doorway, Kael watched the transformation with something approaching awe. The woman who had once spread suffering across the galaxy now dedicated herself to healing it, one broken child at a time.
The circle was closing. Redemption was possible, even for those who had believed themselves beyond saving.
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