"I'm not much of a father if I can't make my kids feel secure, am I?"

"You're a terrific father. It's just been a very traumatic time. Not even Ordo's immune to that."

"No, I'm not a good buir buir, because I make decisions for my aliit aliit without asking their opinion," Skirata said. " without asking their opinion," Skirata said. " Bard'ika Bard'ika, I owe you an apology. I made a decision for you. I shouldn't have."

"It can't have been that bad," Jusik said. "But tell me anyway."

"I turned down an offer to put you out to stud."

Jusik burst out laughing. "But I'd sire winners, Kal'buir Kal'buir. We'd make a fortune."

"I wish it was a joke. Shysa got an idea into his head that Mando'ade Mando'ade would benefit from your abilities. He even mentioned a genetic line." would benefit from your abilities. He even mentioned a genetic line."

"I suppose I'm the worst-kept secret on Mandalore."

"Sull's probably told him all about you."

"Does Shysa realize midi-chlorians show up when they feel like it? And even if we could could breed for it, it'd take-wow, breed for it, it'd take-wow, centuries centuries to populate the place with Force-users. to populate the place with Force-users.

And-"

"Yes, yes yes, he does. I told him so. And that it was unMandalorian anyway."

Jusik was speechless for a moment. He'd never seen himself as a strategic resource. He wasn't wasn't: he was only one Force-user, and one against an army of millions was useless. But he understood what Shysa had been thinking, and why, and suddenly he felt guilty. He had a duty to his adopted people.

"Put your trust in trained troops and reliable weapons, because an army of better Force-users than me couldn't take Palpatine," Jusik said. He could feel the doubt radiating from Skirata. "But if you want me to step up, Kal'buir Kal'buir, just say."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I thought you'd say."

"And you feel guilty for saying no."

"Got it in one. Shysa's recruiting. You and the boys have enough of a struggle ahead without getting into a new war. Am I a bad Mando'ad Mando'ad for saying so?" for saying so?"

Jusik tried to lighten the mood. He had a duty, all right, but he'd think of better ways to fulfill it that wouldn't upset Skirata.

"Never," he said. "And for all Shysa knows, Mandalore's full of Force-sensitives anyway, but they don't know it. They'll just seem unusually athletic, or perceptive, or lucky. If the Jedi hadn't signed me, I'd probably be a professional gambler or sports star now."

Skirata looked grim for a moment. Then his face split into a wide grin and he ruffled Jusik's hair. "It's never too late. Break out the pazaak cards."

"Never play cards with Force-users."

"I like a challenge." Skirata looked up. "Scout? Kina Ha? Can you play pazaak?"

It was an unusual peace gesture for Skirata. He seemed to be bending over backward to treat the ancient Jedi as a guest. Jusik felt Skirata's painful memories of Kamino and the resentment on behalf of his clones crashing up against a strange sense of bewilderment, as if he still didn't know where Kina Ha fitted into all this.

"Why do you care if the Jedi are happy?" Jusik asked.

"They're going to be here for a long time, and I don't want to turn this into a prison camp. It's not good for anyone. And we've never been much interested in taking prisoners."

Jusik considered what no prisoners no prisoners actually meant. It was pretty final. "And she's not like the aiwha-bait you knew, right?" actually meant. It was pretty final. "And she's not like the aiwha-bait you knew, right?"

Skirata got to his feet and set up a small card table. "She had nothing to do with the Tipoca government or the cloning program."

"You don't have to feel guilty, Kal'buir Kal'buir."

"Who said I did?"

"You feel you're going soft on Kaminoans, and that it's letting the clones down."

"Maybe I'm just asking myself if I am."

"We should judge others by what they do, not by what they are. That's the Mandalorian way. You taught me that."

Skirata pulled up seats as the Jedi joined them, and laid the pack of cards on the table.

"Usually," he said.

Scout obviously disturbed him, and she seemed to know it. She kept looking at Jusik in a mute plea for explanation, but that would have to wait. She knew about Etain. That was explanation enough. She didn't need to know that Skirata was in constant torment about the way he believed he'd treated her.

"Do you know exactly where you are?" Skirata asked, not looking up from his cards.

"A long way from anywhere," Scout said.

Jusik knew why he was asking. If they could pinpoint Kyrimorut precisely, then they were a security risk if they ever left. Everyone had known that from the start. It was just one of the things that had to take second place to getting a look at Kina Ha's genome.

But anyone could guess that Skirata had fled to Mandalore. It was just a big, wild planet to search, and the natives kept their mouths shut. That bought time.

Kina Ha checked her cards with an expression of baffled amusement, then peered at the hand Skirata had laid down.

"I do believe I've lost, Master Skirata," she said. "So you see that Jedi are neither omniscient nor invincible."

Scout laid down her hand. "Count me in the vincible camp, too."

Skirata looked at Jusik and tapped on the cards. "Can you beat those?"

"No," Jusik said. "See? You don't need midi-chlorians."

Gilamar wandered over. "Never play for creds with Kal," he said to Scout. "Want me to show you how to beat him, kid?"

"Are you getting me into bad ways?" she asked.

"No point coming to Mandalore if you don't pick up a few useful vices. Think of it as survival training."

Kad was asleep on Laseema's lap. Skirata got up and let Gilamar have his seat. "Time to put Kad'ika Kad'ika to bed," he said. "I don't think I'll have to tell him a story this time." to bed," he said. "I don't think I'll have to tell him a story this time."

Maybe Skirata had had all he could take of diplomacy for the evening. Jusik stayed to play a few more hands of pazaak. Scout seemed a lot more relaxed with Gilamar than with Kal'buir Kal'buir.

"You don't know what to do with us, do you?" she said. "You don't know how long we'll have to stay here, or if there's going to be anywhere else safe for us."

"That's about the size of it." Gilamar picked a card from the top of the pack and grimaced. "But we're not going to kill you, if that's what you're worried about."

"Even in these terrible times," Kina Ha said, "it gives me hope when beings like us, who should be at one another's throats, can sit down, cheat at cards, and unite against a common threat."

"I'm not cheating," Jusik said.

"But I I am," said Kina Ha. am," said Kina Ha.

Jusik didn't ask her to define unite unite, but he was pretty sure that Skirata didn't see it that way. He was simply suppressing his prejudices, which was as much as anyone could be expected to do. You felt what you felt. There was no conscious will involved in hatred, or in love come to that; it couldn't be taught, unlearned, or reasoned with. Only the visible reactions that sprang from it could be changed. Skirata would never love Kaminoans, or see the Jedi as anything but a troublemaking sect like the Sith, but he'd decided not to take a blaster to them.

And Scout couldn't help being scared of clones after what happened on the night of Order 66. She'd just have to stop feeling and start thinking.

The game broke up around midnight, and eventually only Gilamar, Jusik, and the Nulls were left in the karyai karyai. Skirata wandered back to join them again. The season had started to change that day, and now Jusik had the feeling that everyone at Kyrimorut had reached a watershed, too.

"They'll always be a risk, you know that, don't you?" Gilamar said. "They might not have the coordinates of this place on a holochart, but any competent Jedi could find us again."

"Yes, I know," Skirata said. "But I had to do it anyway."

"Then we need to have a plan for relocating this whole setup at a moment's notice,"

Jusik said. "Just in case."

Skirata smiled indulgently. " Ret'lini Ret'lini. Yes, we have to be ready for ba'slan sheu'la ba'slan sheu'la."

Mandalorians were good at that-strategic disappearance. They could scatter and vanish at a moment's notice, Vau had told Jusik, leaving no trace, to regroup later and strike back. It was like trying to crush mercury, he said. You could smash it as hard as you liked, but it would only disperse in a mass of droplets to coalesce again later, all shiny and renewed, as if nothing had happened. It couldn't be broken. Jusik rather liked that, because it reassured him that nobody could ever wipe out Mando'ade Mando'ade. Many had tried. They'd all failed.

Skirata's comlink chirped. He checked the display, frowned slightly, and answered it.

Jusik sensed his mood change even before he saw the expression on his face settle into dismay.

"Where are you?" Skirata put one hand slowly over his eyes as if he was shielding them from the light, trying to concentrate. He didn't seem to be talking to anyone, but his lips were moving slightly as if he was repeating a chant or trying to make sense of something. Eventually, he hit one of the keys as if he was cutting short a transmission. The lost, wistful look that had been there for the last few days had left him, and he was the old Kal'buir Kal'buir again: focused, alert, a fire blazing within. again: focused, alert, a fire blazing within.

Ordo moved in immediately, always the first to go to Skirata if he thought there was something wrong. "So what was that, Buir Buir?" he asked.

"Someone worried enough to send me a one-way message in dadita dadita." Skirata got up.

"And how many aruetiise aruetiise know that?" know that?"

It was an ancient code system of long and short tones that spelled out words or numbers, transmitted by just about anything that came to hand, from banging on a metal hull to flashing a lamp. It was so low tech, so obsolete, and so peculiarly Mandalorian that few if any outsiders even knew it existed.

"Jaller Obrim," Mereel said.

"Got it in one." Skirata scribbled something on his forearm plate. Even when he took off the rest of his armor, he still wore the plate to keep his comm and recording devices close to hand. "He says Niner got a computer chip that he can't read, but it could expose us."

"Time I called Gaib and Teekay-O," Mereel said. "In fact, time we pulled our brothers out, whatever's keeping them there."

Special Operations Unit barracks, 501st legion HQ, Imperial City Niner now knew what it felt like to walk around with a live grenade in his pocket. Niner now knew what it felt like to walk around with a live grenade in his pocket.

When Captain Obrim had pressed the salvaged datachip into his palm as they shook hands, he knew the thing was vital and dangerous. He also knew that he had to keep it to himself, and in the tight-knit world of the squad, that was hard.

It was harder still now that Bry's replacement had been picked. He wasn't a former Republic commando, or even a white job like Core. He was one of the new clones, the ones grown on Centax 2 in a year by Spaarti process from second-generation Fett genetic material.

Niner couldn't imagine how anyone like that could handle special operations. The Spaarti stormtrooper couldn't possibly assimilate all the training he needed-the real real stuff, the hands-on stuff-in less than a year. stuff, the hands-on stuff-in less than a year. Shab Shab, that wasn't even enough time to learn the classroom component, or anything about the outside world. Flash learning was standard on Kamino, but it still took time. That poor little shabuir shabuir must have had his head pumped full of basic propaganda and all kinds of shallow, undemanding must have had his head pumped full of basic propaganda and all kinds of shallow, undemanding osik osik. Not training, not education: indoctrination.

It would make him a dangerously weak link.

His name was Rede. Niner wasn't sure if that was a name he'd chosen, been given at birth, or had pinned on him instead of a number so that he'd fit in better with the Tipoca-raised clones. They'd find out soon enough.

"We've got plenty of experienced commandos," Darman said. "If they wanted to backfill posts, then a regular Five-oh-first trooper could be cross-trained. But not a Spaarti Spaarti clone." clone."

"It's just an experiment to see how they cope."

"When we've got our hands full with real missions. Great."

"Can you think of a better time to test a guy?"

"Ennen's pretty hacked off about it."

Niner searched for clues to Darman's state of mind today. "He just misses Bry."

"Seriously-what do you you expect from a Spaarti job?" expect from a Spaarti job?"

"Probably the same as mongrels expect from us. And just as wrong."

Dar grunted, but didn't seem convinced. "Okay. Point taken."

Niner tried to treat Dar gently these days. Sometimes the old sergeant habits got the better of him and it turned into a rebuke he didn't intend. He watched Dar cleaning his rifle, its parts spread out neatly on the table, and pondered on two things: exactly what information the datachip contained, and how he would get it to Jaing or Mereel. He understood where his loyalties lay. He wasn't any more anti-Empire than he'd been anti-Republic, or even anti-Separatist, because the politics were meaningless to him. He had no stake in whatever any of those regimes wanted to do with the galaxy. All he had was his brothers, one of them here and badly in need of his care, the others light-years away in a place he hadn't even seen and couldn't locate on a chart.

But the stormtroopers around Niner, even former Republic commandos like Ennen, were almost aruetiise aruetiise in the most benign sense: in the most benign sense: not us not us. While he watched Darman reassembling his Deece, he wondered why he hadn't bonded with them as easily as he'd expected. They were all soldiers, just like him. They faced the same threats, and looked out for one another in the same way, but somehow Niner didn't feel at home or safe here.

It was the most corroding thought he'd ever had. He could almost understand the gulf between him and the regular stormtroopers, the clones raised in a brief year by Spaarti methods and who had never seen Kamino, but men like Ennen-and poor old Bry-were still his comrades. They'd all been hatched at the same time in Tipoca City. Even though they'd been trained by different sergeants-not Mandalorians, but Cuy'val Dar Cuy'val Dar nonetheless-they still should have felt like nonetheless-they still should have felt like brothers brothers.

It wasn't about them. It was about himself, and he knew it. It was the first time that he'd started to realize that Darman wasn't the only one succumbing to stress.

And I was the one who thought desertion was a bad idea. I was, wasn't I? The others had to talk me into it. had to talk me into it.

Darman looked up at him as he calibrated the rifle's optics. "What's wrong with you?"

"You really want to know?"

"That's why I'm asking, ner vod ner vod. You're not yourself."

"I was thinking the same thing about you."

Darman just looked at him for a moment, staring past him as if there was something far more interesting on the wall of their quarters, "I'm fine," Darman said. "I can keep going like this."

For a moment, Niner saw another glimpse of self-awareness there. Darman knew he was a mess. He was lying to himself, playing a mind game simply to put one foot in front of the other enough times each day to function. Medication would have been more effective, but how did he report sick in this army, and how the shab shab did he explain why he felt the way he did? did he explain why he felt the way he did?

It's like this, Doc, I was having an illicit relationship with a Jedi general, and she had a baby and never told me until a year or so later, and then we tried to desert and she got a baby and never told me until a year or so later, and then we tried to desert and she got killed by another Jedi, and I can't see my son anymore, so all in all, Doc-I'm not feeling killed by another Jedi, and I can't see my son anymore, so all in all, Doc-I'm not feeling so great. so great.