"Yes. I'm recalling Omega and Delta from Haurgab, and not just to stop General Tur-Mukan from nagging me to death about the fruitlessness of the operation. They've both done urban ops here and they know how to hunt operational terror cells. Apparently Intel were involved in something at the Treasury that didn't pan out, and to which I'm not privy, so word's come down from the Chancellor's office that they want the job done right."

"Nice to see they have faith in Special Operations."

So now Skirata knew something that Zey didn't: that Intel had sent some hapless spook after Besany, a spook who never made it home again. Skirata, proud of his well-honed paranoia, juggled a range of scenarios in his brain that began to feel like the hall of mirrors at the Republic Day carnival. Was Zey shoving him into this position to force a confession, knowing about Besany's and Jaing's involvement? Or was he an unknowing instrument of Intel, and they knew now what was happening? It had the whiff of a technique that Jailer Obrim favored-breaking down family murder suspects by getting them to do a news conference begging for their loved one's safe return.

And Jailer says he's amazed how often they can sail through it. . .

There was always the possibility that it was an honest and logical coincidence. Jaing and Mereel were the best at slicing. Besany was the senior agent for defense budget investigation, and if the Seps wanted to glean any information, it wouldn't be data about street cleaning in the lower levels. And yes, Omega and Delta had operated undercover on Coruscant, the only Republic commandos who had and they were way better at it than Intel's bantha-brained operatives.

It made sense, but Skirata's gut said that setups always did.

How could he refuse?

He couldn't. But he could shake Zey a little and see what fell out. Pretending that Besany knew nothing of the Nulls would be too big a cover story to maintain. The operation at the GAR procurement center was too easy to check out.

"I know Wennen," Skirata said. "She was on an undercover op and my boys crashed into it. Bit of an awkward moment, but it all ended friendly enough. Not a face any man would forget, either."

"Oh, she won't mind the Nulls trampling all over her turf, then." Zey betrayed no reaction. He really did sound as if it was just an annoying concession to keep the Treasury quiet. "Some civilians can be very judgmental about clones."

And Jedi can't of course. "Yeah, I hear Master Vos is judgmental about our lads, too." Skirata seethed; come the glorious day, arrogant shabuire like that would be the first up against the wall. "I'll get right on it."

"Do you really think of them as your boys?"

It was one of those out-of-the-blue questions that Zey was increasingly prone to. Skirata couldn't work out if he used it as a tactic, or if his job had become so stressful that he had a million things buzzing around his head the whole time.

"They're my sons," Skirata said. So what if the man knew he'd adopted the Nulls? It was Mando business, outside the petty rules of aruetiise, and nothing Zey or even Palpatine did or said could change the fact. "And I'd die for them."

Zey refilled his caf and didn't look up. "That's very moving. I realize how much you care for them."

"No, I mean they are my sons. Legal heirs. I adopted them under Mandalorian law and custom."

Now that caught Zey with his kute around his ankles. He blinked a couple of times, seeming lost for words. Skirata noticed how gray he was looking now, and not just his hair.

"Well, I can't think of a regulation that prohibits it," Zey said at last, and winked. "And if I could, you'd just ignore it."

"I'm glad we understand each other, sir," Skirata said, and left.

Covering his tracks by randomizing his route back to the apartment had become routine for Skirata now, which was a bizarre irony in itself. He changed speeders, took different skylanes, and even walked. As he set the speeder of the day to pick up the skylane's automated control, he commed each Null and summoned Besany. Maybe Jusik would make it back from Mandalore in time, too. This wasn't quite a crisis meeting, but it was definitely more than keeping up to speed. He had to implement the standby for ba'slan shev'la now-the Mandalorian tactic of strategic disappearance, vanishing to regroup and pop up again when least expected.

No, this is making a run for it.

I'm going to need to break it to Omega now.

Who else? Who else can I safely tell now that there's a safe haven for them if they want to desert?

Skirata's mind raced. Omega had a vague idea that there would be a future for them, but they didn't know the full story of the hunt for gene therapy, and Skirata had never actually spelled out that he wanted them to desert, to do a runner. He had no idea how they'd take it.

And Zey ... he wanted to hate the man as easily as he'd hated other Jedi, but it was impossible not to see Zey as a man stuck in a system that stank, trying to influence it from the inside, and who'd never chosen his path in life any more than the clones had.

Don't go soft on them. A Jedi can walk out. A Jedi can say no. Bard'ika did.

After a fuel-wasting detour or two, noting the extra clone troopers on duty outside public buildings, Skirata landed close to the Kragget and walked the rest of the way. It was like going home. Home was something he hadn't defined for many years, not even narrowing down a planet, but the Kragget and the apartment now felt almost as safe a haven as Kyrimorut, maybe more so; the bastion on Mandalore wasn't full of armor noises, cooking smells, and boisterous conversation-yet.

He cut through the restaurant, scanning quickly to see who he didn't recognize, a Mando habit that had stood him in good stead. He knew all but three of the diners, and two of them were in CSF uniform, cops on their meal break.

Captain Jailer Obrim sat at his usual table, working through a pile of nerf strips. The two men exchanged casual pats on the back.

"What's up?" Obrim asked.

"That obvious, eh?"

"Yes, Kal. It is."

"Things are getting a bit warm." If Skirata couldn't confide in Obrim-a man who'd bent every single police regulation to help Skirata, not to mention the law itself-then he could trust nobody. "You know my vacation plan?"

"Winter sports, you mean?" Obrim knew about Kyrimorut, even if he didn't have the exact location. "Got a firm date in mind yet?"

"Might be earlier than expected. Before the big melt."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"Why don't we have a chat somewhere quieter, Kal? Maybe I can give you some skiing tips-"

A conversation interrupted them, and they both turned at the same time. Laseema had appeared with a tray of meals, working her shift even though she didn't need to. The Twi'lek insisted on earning her keep. At a table near the kitchen doors, a man-one of those Skirata hadn't recognized the one in civvies-said something to her. She put the tray on a vacant table.

Skirata only caught scraps of the sentence.

". . . hey, I was just being friendly. You Twi'lek girls . . . well, it's kind of nice for us patrons to see your-"

The man had his arm resting on the table. He didn't finish the sentence. Laseema drew a blade from nowhere and slammed it into the tabletop, pinning his sleeve with a loud thud. She reached forward with her free hand and grabbed his collar, almost pulling him out of his seat.

"Listen, shabuire" she hissed. "Us Twi'lek girls ... I'm not your entertainment, I'm not your sport, and I'm not for sale, understand? This Twi'lek girl can cut your gett'se off."

In the second's absolute frozen silence that followed, Skirata heard two things: the distance tuneless whistling of someone working in the kitchen, and the rasp and whir of a dozen blasters being drawn from holsters-CSF regulation-issue-and charged to fire. Every cop in the restaurant had drawn his weapon and aimed. Skirata had drawn, too, without even thinking.

"Is that the time?" said Skirata. "My, son, I think you need to get back to the office. Now."

Laseema pulled the blade out of the table and stepped back. The man got up and left, which was probably his only option under the circumstances.

"No tip?" Laseema called as the doors parted to let him escape intact. "Tightwad."

She picked up the tray as if nothing had happened and went on serving meals. Everyone resumed eating. This was no longer a restaurant for casual visitors. It was a CSF and GAR canteen by default, and it was a bad place to hit on the waitresses.

"Kal, you have some awe-inspiring daughters-in-law," Obrim said sliding his blaster back in its holster. He mopped up the sweet melted fat on his plate with a chunk of meal-bread. "To think that girl was too scared to speak when you first found her."

"I have an uncanny knack for helping folks realize their full potential," Skirata said. "I'll catch you later. CSF Social Club?"

"Eighteen hundred hours. See you then."

Skirata headed to the rear exit, the least observable route to the apartment. As he passed Laseema, she gave him a smile, and he paused.

"Besany's with Kad" she said anticipating a question. "He keeps saying Da-da. It's his word today. Etain sent a holomessage, and he was completely mesmerized by it."

"I was going to ask how you were."

"Never better, Kal'buir."

"You sure? That chakaar..."

"I've never had the choice of saying no to a man before." Laseema had the most beatific smile, as if she'd had some wonderful vision. Skirata knew all too well what happened to Twi'lek girls from poor families. They were for sale, and nobody lifted a finger to stop the trade. "It feels good."

Skirata was going to train her how to defend herself, but it looked as if Atin had beaten him to it. It wasn't the first time that he'd wondered why he was still fighting for the Republic, given how thoroughly corrupt it was to its core. If Zey and his Jedi pals thought that Grievous was evil, then they hadn't looked too closely under the Republic table at which they sat.

"Not long now," he whispered. "Before the year's out, we'll be gone. Chin up, ad'ika."

Tonight they'd finalize plans. When the time came to run, they'd have minutes-not days, maybe not even hours-to get out.

In the end it didn't matter if the Republic won or lost the war. The people Kal Skirata cared about most would be crushed between the warring factions either way.

GAR Station Nerrif, Mid Rim, 996 days ABG "I vote," Corr said, "that the minute we get back to Coruscant, we get the chiefs of staff, the defense committee, and that oily mirshebs Palpatine, line 'em up against a wall, and show them the business end of a Deece."

The transport waited to dock at Nerrif, maintaining a three-hundred-meter separation from the other transports waiting to land at the space station. Niner, arms folded across his chest and apparently asleep, creaked a little as he moved. Etain watched her squads with a concerned eye. Scorch's recent fall from the grace of his usual relaxed detachment had worried her.

"That's mutinous talk, Private," said Niner. "And you haven't got a vote."

Atin patted Corr's shoulder. "I'll hold your coat, Cor'ika."

"Well, it's dumb. It's just dumb."

Corr always had an opinion. Etain had learned fast that the commandos were freethinkers and pretty vocal, but the speed with which the rank-and-file troopers adapted to a less circumscribed life took her aback. She expected them to be like cage-farmed nuna, not entirely sure what to do when someone opened the cage and tried to shoo them out. White jobs, as the commandos called them, didn't take long to work out that they could fly when given the chance.

"Why's it dumb?" Etain asked. "Not that I don't agree with you."

"About giving the government a nice bracing volley of blasterfire?" Corr asked.

"Well, it was disapproval of the conduct of the war, actually, but..."

"It's not mutinous, anyway." Corr directed his ire at Niner. "Contingency rules. If they're not fit to retain command, we can boot them out. Even slot them."

Etain was mildly interested but she wanted to hear Corr's views on Haurgab. "Really?"

"Cor'ika, we've got a hundred and fifty shabla contingency rules, everything from arresting the Chancellor if he goes gaga to reducing key allied worlds to slag if they switch sides," Atin said. "Including shooting the whole Jedi command if they go over to the enemy. It doesn't mean you have to go out and do it now."

"Come on, Corr," Etain said. Contingency orders were long, tedious lists of worst-case scenarios, and she didn't want to hear all 150 again. "Spit it out."

"Well, if you want to make Haurgab people love us, then you can't just send in special forces to blow the osik out of the place, especially as the government there is as bad as the other side. They need AgriCorps Jedi and engineers. Give 'em a reliable water supply and some crops, and they'll all calm down."

"He's got a point," said Atin. "When did we ever try anything other than head-on confrontation? With anyone? All that happens is we end up fighting on more fronts and spread all over the chart. You don't believe me? Go look at the deployment schedule. Map it on a holochart, like the one they've got at HQ. Look."

Atin activated his holoprojector, and their small corner of the crew cabin filled with complex threads of light dotted with planets in three colors: red allies, blue enemies, and yellow neutrals. Then he changed the sort criteria, and the schematic of the galaxy became a totally different picture. The red dots showed deployed Jedi commanders, with purple dots indicating non-Jedi nonclone commanders-mongrels, as the squads called them-and green dots their forces. The pattern was very spread out, with a lot of dots in the Outer and Mid Rims.

"That's what's killing us," Atin said. "I know we've been banging on about it for a year or more, and so have the Nulls, but this is just keeping the war ticking over. If we concentrated on one strategic target at a time and really brought one theater under control before we moved on to the next, the war could have been over by now."

"Could have lost it, too." Etain suddenly felt them all staring at her, even though she couldn't see their eyes behind the helmet visors. "Just saying. Could have gone either way."

Corr snorted. "Yeah, and we might even be better off under the Seps."

"I agree that it looks flawed" she said.

"It's so flawed that it looks as if all they're trying to do is to maroon as many generals in as many stupid places with inadequate support as they can."

It didn't look good. It never had. All Etain could care about now was making sure that her boys-there she was, falling into Skirata's terms, Skirata's thinking-made it out alive. She thought about Commander Levet, and Bek, and Ven; she never forgot their names, and she reminded herself to check if Ven survived and how Levet was doing. Levet said he liked the idea of having a farm, having seen them at close quarters on Qiilura.

Clones could think outside the confines of their military world all right. Once they did, they weren't dumb and happy with their lot. She thought the only reason General Kenobi talked about them like a proud akk owner was that he couldn't admit even to himself that the Jedi Order was complied in a thoroughly evil thing. But at least he didn't refuse to use their names, like General Vos seemed to. Etain found it increasingly hard to find common ground with some of her fellow Jedi. She could see the Order foundering, unchanging over the centuries, hidebound by esoteric arguments about the unseen mysteries, and yet blind to its own moral decline in the real world.

Master Altis must think that way, too.

She thought of the very un-Jedi Jedi who had shown up to help the war effort, the ones like Callista, who had families and lived a life without a Temple or the rules of the Council. Mainstream Jedi regarded Altis's splinter group as dangerous. But for all their heresy, they didn't look remotely tainted by the dark side.

That was why she'd asked Callista to meet her here. There was a third way.

"Prep for docking," said the pilot's voice over the intercom. "You're off watch, and I'm not, you barves ..."

"Shower, food, sleep," said Darman, prioritizing.

Atin shook his head. "Food shower, sleep."

"Sleep," said Niner. "Then more sleep."

They looked at Corr. "Glorious revolution, then installing a military junta," he said. Etain stared, not at all sure about his hidden depths, but he laughed. "Or a nice big plate of minced roba patties. I'm easy."

The transport docked, sending a little shudder through the crew bay as it settled on its dampers on the hangar deck. Etain jumped down from the hatch and stood back to count out the squads-Omega, Delta, and Vevut. Vevut had been trained by Rav Bralor; it showed. They behaved like sons eager to please their mother.

"Come on, General, let's get you fed and watered." Dec, their sergeant, began steering her in the direction of the mess. "You won't be fit for much without some decent skraan inside you."

"I'll join you later," she said, checking her chrono. "Two standard hours, relief crew area, for briefing. I'll even stand you an ale in the mess."

Darman hung back. "When exactly are we shipping out again?"

"Tomorrow."

"Good."

"I told Zey that Triple Zero could do without you for another day, because I wanted you all to get a clear eight hours' sleep for once."

Darman just grinned. "I'll do my best."