"I sensed a bit of a problem up on the bridge." Ateia said as Joshua jogged through the hanger bay doors. "What happened?" "Peenk found out that I'd been less than truthful with her about my mother." "You lied to her?" She asked. "Just about my mother attending Starfleet Academy." He told her. "She was not allowed to enter the Academy because her parents were Followers Of Singhe." "As in Khan Noonien Singhe, the dictator?" "Yes." Kirk said with a nod. "They had a little set up in Orion space. A little commune with a dozen other couples. They were going to breed the master race." "You said that defectives don't give birth to defectives, that it's just a random mutation." Again, Joshua nodded. "But they were also unstable. They felt they could break the programming in our brains." He then waved his hand as if he were brushing something aside. "They were wrong, of course. Everyone of those thirty one children were normal. The oldest were about ten when they realized they'd failed. So they promptly told the children that they'd failed, and were going to kill all of them." "They were going to commit mass suicide?" The tall woman asked in horror. "Oh no! They viewed the children as failing them." He said with anger. "They were going to kill them, and try again." Kirk gave Ateia a half smile. "They locked them in a building to give them time to say goodbye to each other. But what the idiots didn't know was that the children knew the place better than any of the adults. You see, the facility where they lived used to be an Orion pirate base. And every building had an escape tunnel. They got out and made their way to the command center. They then made a call to Starfleet and told them what was happening." "As it would happen, the Andorians had several ships nearby patrolling for pirates. They were there in twenty minutes. But then the adults realized the kids had escaped and began to hunt them down. When they found them locked up in the command center, they decided to destroy it. That's when my mother and Cynthia opened all the bases airlocks, and shut down all the gravity plates outside the room. In minutes, it was over." "What did these Andorians do with them?" Ateia asked Joshua. "They called Starfleet and told them what had happened. Then they took them to Andoria amidst much celebration over the fact that those kids had given them an intact Orion pirate base." Kirk looked the woman in the eye, his brow lifting. "Orions do not allow themselves, nor their ships and facilities to be captured." "Is there bad blood between the Orions and the Andorians?" "Much bad blood. They've been going at each other for thousands of years. And they are still going at it." The Jedi nodded. "So that is how your mother and her sister came to be adopted by the Tanaka family?" "Yes." Ateia Marelli turned and retrieved a box that lay on the floor under Joshua's T-65. Returning, she opened it. Inside lay Pehn's rebuilt double bladed lightsaber. "I've talked it over with Pehn, Mulk, and Skywalker. They all agree with me that you should specialize with a double bladed weapon. And Mistress Orell has agreed to let you use her's until we can make the trip to Illum, where the Force will test you, and give you the crystals for your own weapon." The woman smiled at her Padawan. "And the Force tells me that your blades will not be a common color like blue or green."