Planning. It was all about planning.
But there was always a surprise, always one more factor you hadn't allowed for or didn't see.
Fi planned for that, too. They all did, deep down.
Operational house, Qibbu's Hut, 1530 hours, 385 days after Geonosis
Etain knew.
She had known it would happen in time, but it had happened now, in two brief, wonderful weeks. The Force landscape that surrounded her had changed subtly and she felt strangeness and purpose within her, purpose that was someone else's.
It was said that Force-sensitive females could often detect the moment that they conceived. And it was true.
Etain stood on the landing platform for a while, searching for the fear she always imagined might come with taking that irrevocable step and not knowing its full consequences. But there was no fear. There was simply a pleasant sensation of certainty, almost like hands pressing on her shoulders.
And a clear vision, in the part of her brain that saw the universe without images, showed a new path through trails of webbed, colored light. In her prosaic way, it reminded her of a holochart, but it was less solid, its threads and lines shifting.
The new path that was marked through the tangle of colored threads was pale, silver, and thick, and from it sprouted silver tendrils that snaked into the tangles of the rest of the image. This new life she carried would be significant, and it would touch many others. The Force was clear if you listened carefully to it: and this time it said This is not wrong.
On Qiilura, I envied Jinart her certainty. I envied Master Fuller that quality, too. And now I have it at last.
It was almost blissful. She savored the warm sun on her face, eyes closed for a few moments, and then walked back into the main room. It seemed oddly empty: Delta and Omega were catching up on sleep, doors shut. Ordo had disappeared with Mereel, and Corr had left a datapad running to log movements of suspects on the holochart while he went for a meal.
Vau stretched out in one chair with the strill on his lap while Skirata sat opposite him, boots up on the low table, eyes closed, hands clasped on his chest. Etain watched him, knowing that she might need to tell him even before she told Darman: she would need Skirata's help, his list of contacts and places to disappear.
Darman would be overwhelmed by it all when he needed to keep his mind on fighting. But Skirata was a man of the world, never fazed by anything; he would understand what she was giving Darman, and want to help.
Not yet, though.
While she watched Skirata, Niner wandered out of his room in his red fatigues, scratching his head with both hands. He poured a glass of water and walked across the room in slow silence to stand contemplating the sleeping Skirata with a slight frown. Then he went back to his room. He emerged a few moments later with a blanket and eased it over his sergeant, tucking it around him carefully. For once the man didn't stir.
Niner stood over him for a while, simply looking down at his face, lost in thought.
“He's okay,” Etain whispered.
“Just checking,” Niner said quietly, and returned to his room.
Etain defocused for a few moments and sought Darman in the Force: as ever, he was a well of calm and certainty, even while sleeping. When she focused on the room again, she realized Skirata had opened his eyes.
“You okay, ad'ika?” he said. “Was that Niner just now?”
“I'm fine.” He was in a better mood now. Perhaps he regarded the matter between her and Ordo as closed. “Yes. He was checking on you.”
“He's a good lad. But he ought to be getting some sleep.” He raked his hair with his fingers, yawning. “Fatigue affects your judgment.”
“But not yours,” Vau said quietly.
Skirata was alert in a heartbeat and swung his legs off the table onto the floor. Vau could wind him up as surely as a mechanical toy. “If I don't move fast enough when the shooting starts, that's my problem. I'm used to it.”
“Yes, we all know.” Vau turned to Etain. “This is normally where he starts lecturing me on his ghastly childhood as a starving war orphan living feral on some bomb site, and how I just ran away to become a mercenary because I was bored with my idle, rich family.”
“Well, that saved me some time,” Skirata said irritably. “What he said.”
“You have a family, Vau?” Etain was suddenly mesmerized by people who had lives and parents. “Are you in contact with them?”
“No. They cut me off when I declined to choose the career they wanted for me.”
“Wife? Children?”
“Dear girl, we're Cuy'val Dar. People who have to disappear for eight years or more aren't the family kind. Except Kal, of course. But your family didn't wait for you, did they? That's all right, though. You've got a lot more sons now.”
If Etain had known nothing of Skirata, or even Vau, it was the kind of jibe guaranteed to start a fight. Skirata was absolutely and instantly white with anger. One thing she knew about Mandalorians was that clan was a matter of honor. Skirata walked up to Vau very slowly and the strill woke, whining.
Etain checked that Skirata's jacket with its lethal array of blades was still hanging over the back of the chair.
Skirata shook his head, slow and deliberate. Vau was much taller and a few kilos heavier but Skirata never seemed to worry about that kind of detail.
“But that's the good thing about being Mando. If you don't get the family you want, you can go and choose one yourself.” He looked suddenly older and very sad, small, crushed by time. “You going to tell her? Okay, Etain, my sons disowned me. In Mandalorian law, children can legally disown a parent who's shamed them, but it's rare. My sons left with their mother when we split up, and when I disappeared to Kamino and they couldn't locate me, they declared me dar'buir. No longer a father.”
“Oh my. Oh, I'm sorry.” Etain knew how serious that would be for a Mando'ad. “You found that out when you left Kamino?”
“No. Jango brought the news back that they were looking for me about … oh, four years in? Three maybe? I forget. Two sons and a daughter. Tor, Ijaat, and Ruusaan.”
“Why were they looking for you?”
“My ex-wife died. They wanted me to know.”
“Oh …”
“Yeah.”
“But you could have told them where you were at the time. Jango could have talked to them.”
“And?”
“You could have made your peace with them.”
“And?”
“Kal, you could have explained to them somehow and stopped it.”
“And reveal we had an army in training? And compromise my lads' safety? Never. And not a word to any of the boys, you hear? It's the only thing I ever kept from them.”
He'd sacrificed his good name and the last possibility of his family's love and forgiveness for the men he was training. It hit Etain hard in the chest like a blow.
She turned to Vau. “Do you see your men as your sons?”
“Of course I do. I have no others. It's why I made them into survivors. Don't think I don't love them just because I don't spoil them like kids.”
“Here we go,” Skirata said, all contempt. “He's going to tell you that his father beat the osik out of him and it made a man of him. Never did him any harm, no sir.”
“I've lost just three men out of my batch, Kal. That tells me a lot about my methods.”
“So I lost fourteen. You making a point?”
“You made yours soft. They don't have that killer edge.”
“No, I didn't brutalize mine like you did yours, you hut'uun.”
Etain stepped between them, arms held out, pieces of old conversations falling into place with awful clarity. The strill began rumbling in its throat and dropped to the floor to pace protectively in front of Vau.
It was just as well the bedroom doors were shut.
“Please, stop this. We don't want the men to hear you fighting right now, do we? Like Niner says—save it for the enemy.”
&nb
sp; Skirata turned his head with that sudden total focus that left Etain tasting a ripple in the Force. But it wasn't the angry reaction of a man who had been stung by painful observation. It was genuine anguish. He glanced down at Mird as if considering giving it a good kick, then limped off to the landing platform.
“Don't do this to him,” she said to Vau. “Please. Don't.”
Vau simply shrugged and picked up the huge strill in his arms as if it were a pup. It licked his face adoringly. “You can fight ice-cold or you can fight red-hot. Kal fights hot. It's his weakness.”
“You sound just like an old Master of mine,” Etain said, and went out to the platform after Skirata.
Coruscant's skylanes stretched above and below them, giving an illusion of infinity. Etain leaned on the safety rail with her head level with Skirata's as they gazed down. She searched his face.
“Kal, if you'd like me to do something about Vau—”
He shook his head quickly, eyes still downcast. “Thanks, ad'ika, but I can handle that heap of osik.”
“Never let a bully manipulate you.”
Skirata's jaw worked silently. “I'm to blame.”
“For what?”
“Sending boys to their deaths.”
“Kal, don't do this to yourself.”
“I took the credits, didn't I? Jango whistled and I came running. I trained them from boys. Little boys. Eight, nine years of nothing but training and fighting. No past, no childhood, no future.”
“Kal …”
“They don't go out. They don't get drunk. They don't chase women. We drill them and medicate them and shunt them from battle to battle without a day off, no rest, no fun, and then we scrape them off the battlefield and send what's left standing back to the front.”
“And you alongside them. You gave them a heritage, and a family.”
“I'm as bad as Vau.”
“If you hadn't been there, your place would have been taken by another like him. You gave your men respect and affection.”
Skirata let out a long breath and folded his hands, elbows still braced on the rail of the balcony. A speeder horn blared far below them. “You know something? Live-fire exercises. They started five years into their development. That means I sent ten-year-old boys to die. And eleven, and twelve, and right on up to the time they were men. I lost four of my batch in training accidents, and—some of those were even down to me, my rifle, my realism. Think about that.”
“I hear that happens in any army.”
“So ask me the question, then. Why didn't I ever say, Whoa, enough? I've had some unkind thoughts about you, ad'ika, why your kind never refused to lead an army of slaves. And then I thought, Kal, you hut'uun, you're just the same as her. You never stood up against it.”
“Your soldiers worship you.”
Skirata closed his eyes then screwed them tight shut for a moment. “You think that makes me feel better? That stinking strill loves Vau. Monsters get loved irrationally all the time.”
Etain wondered whether to soothe him by judiciously influencing his mind that he would not feel guilty. But Skirata was his own man, tough-minded enough to spot her mind influence and shrug her manipulation aside. If she asked him for his cooperation … no, Skirata would never take the easy path. She had no comfort to offer him that wouldn't make matters worse.
That was part of his unique and appealing courage. Her first impression was that he would be a man whose bluff exterior was simply embarrassed machismo. But Skirata wasn't embarrassed about his emotions at all. He had the guts to wear his heart on his sleeve. It was probably what made him even more effective at killing: he could love as hard as he could punch.
Force, stop reminding me. Duality. I know. I know you can't have light without dark.
Her spiritual struggles were irrelevant now. She was carrying Darman's child. She longed to tell him and knew she had to wait.
“You love them, Kal, and love is never wrong.”
“Yes, I do.” His hard, lined face was an icon of passionate sincerity. “All of them. I started with one hundred and four trainees, plus my Null lads, and now I've got ninety commandos left. They say parents should never have to outlive their kid. But I'm outliving them all, and I suppose that punishment serves me right. I was a rotten father.”
“But—”
“No.” He held up his hand to stop her, and she paused. Skirata was benign but absolute authority. “It's not what you think. I'm not using these lads to salve my conscience. They deserve better than that. I'm just using what I've learned—for them.”
“Does it matter, as long as they're loved?”
“Yes, it does. I have to know that I care about them for who they are, or I've consigned them to being things again. We're Mandalorian. A Mandalorian isn't just a warrior, you see. He's a father, and he's a son, and your family matters. Those boys deserve a father. They deserve sons and daughters, too, but that isn't going to happen. But they can be sons, and the two things you have a duty to teach your sons are self-reliance, and that you'd give your life for them.” Skirata leaned on folded arms and gazed down into the hazy abyss again. “And I would, Etain. I would. And I should have had that degree of conviction when I started this sorry mess back on Kamino.”
“And walked out? And left them to it? Because it wouldn't have shifted the clone program one bit, even if it made you feel like you'd taken a brave stand.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“That stalking out and refusing to lead them is more for my comfort than theirs?”
He lowered his head on his folded arms for a moment.
“Well, that answers my question.”
As a Jedi, Etain had never known a real father any more than a clone had, but in that moment she knew exactly who she wanted him to be. She moved closer to Skirata to let her arm drape on his shoulder and rested her head against his. A tear welled up in the wrinkled corner of his eye then spilled down his cheek, and she wiped it away with her sleeve. He managed a smile even though he kept his gaze fixed on the traffic far below.
“You're a good man and a good father,” she said. “You should never doubt that for a moment. Your men don't, and neither do I.”
“Well, I wasn't a good father until they made one out of me.”
But now he would also be a grandfather, too; and she knew it would delight him. She had given Darman back his future. She closed her eyes and savored the new life within her, strong and strange and wonderful.
Qibbu's Hut, main bar, 1800 hours, 385 days after Geonosis
Ordo shouldered a space for himself at the bar table between Niner and Boss and helped himself to the container of juice.
Corr was showing Scorch a dangerous trick with a vibroblade that required lightning reflexes to withdraw his hand before the blade thudded into the surface of the table. Scorch seemed wary.
“But your hand's metal, you cheating di'kut,” he said. “I bleed.”
“Yaaah, jealous!” Corr jeered. His blade shaved Scorch's finger and went thunnkk in the table to cheers from Jusik and Darman. “You shiny boys always did envy us meat cans.”
The two squads seemed in good spirits, good enough to be telling long and elaborate jokes without the usual competitive edge of bravado between Sev and Fi. They had a task to complete in thirty hours and it seemed to have focused them completely, erasing all squad boundaries. It was what Ordo had expected. They were professionals; professionals put the job first. Anything less got you killed.
But now they were having fun. Ordo suspected it was the first time they'd ever let their hair down in an environment like this, because it was certainly a first for him. Skirata looked as happy as he had ever seen him. And Jusik sat among them, wearing of all things a chest plate of Mandalorian armor under his jacket.
“We presented it to Bard'ika as a souvenir,” Skirata said, rapping his knuckles on the plate. “In case we don't manage to have that fancy dinner.”
In case some of us are dead by the end of tomorrow.
That was what he meant, and everyone knew it. They lived with it. It just seemed the more poignant now for knowing that a rare bond had been formed between unlikely comrades: two Jedi who openly admitted they struggled with the disciplines of attachment—and Ordo was sure now that he understood that—and a very mixed bag of clone soldiers from captain to trooper who had abandoned rank to answer to a sergeant who didn't answer to anyone.
Fi, with his uncanny talent for spotting a mood, raised his glass. “Here's to Sicko.”
The mention of the pilot's name brought instant reverence to the noisy table.
“To Sicko,” they chorused.
There was no point grieving: settling a score with Separatists was a far more productive use of their energy. Jusik winked at Ordo, clearly happy in a way that reached beyond noisy laughter in a crowded bar. Whatever moat of serenity and separateness surrounded men like Zey, Jusik's had vanished—if he had ever had it. He was daring to feel part of a tight-knit group of men. Whatever brotherhood was like within the Jedi Order, it didn't appear to be like this.
Mereel, his hair rinsed clean to its natural black, was now holding court and reciting an astonishing list of obscenities in forty different languages. So far he hadn't repeated himself once. Fi was bent double over the table, roaring with laughter.
Even Niner was enjoying it, contributing the odd word of Huttese. “It's nice to know that your advanced linguistic skills were devoted to something useful.”
“Urpghurit,” Mereel said, deadpan.
“Disgusting,” said Fi.
“Baay shfat.”
“What does that mean?”
Mereel whispered a translation in Fi's ear and his face fell slightly. Mereel frowned. “Don't tell me you've never heard that one.”
“We were raised to be polite boys,” Fi said, clearly aghast. “Can Hutts really do that?”
“You better believe it.”
“I'm not sure I like civilian society,” Fi said. “I think I felt safer under fire.”
Coming from Fi, it would usually have been a joke. But like all his jokes, bitter reality lay not far beneath. Fi hadn't adjusted gracefully to the outside world. There was a moment of silence as reality intruded on all of them.
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