"I'll bet." It was as good a time as any. "And anyway, I need to talk to you without the squad around."

"I don't mind. I don't have any secrets."

"It's private. Really private."

Darman's grin crumpled for a moment and what returned was an anxious smile. "Okay. Am I going to need a few ales to sustain me?"

"No." Oh, fierfek. Yes, you will. "You don't like ale anyway."

Etain turned and walked away before she ended up blurting it out there and then in a busy transit area. The last thing she needed was half the galaxy knowing she had a child. The urge for confession burned her up. Every moment she didn't come clean with Darman made it worse.

It shouldn't have been this way. It was all her fault, all her doing, but there had to be something wrong with a system that put two people in the positions that Etain and Darman were in.

She found Callista pacing around in a quiet corner of the med deck, one level below.

"Sorry if I kept you, General," she said. "I was just seeing if I could help. Quite a few wounded troops passing through."

It took Etain a few moments to realize she meant medical help. "Doing a bit of healing?"

"I'm not a good healer, but I try. A little bit of mind influence to lift their spirits seems to be what I do best."

"Do you ask their permission?"

Callista looked faintly offended. "Of course."

"Yes, you would." Etain's question had already been answered but she went on anyway, because she needed to talk to another Jedi who wouldn't make pious noises about helping her get back on the right path. "I've come to see you about your funny little ways, as you put it."

"Something tells me you're not here to lecture me on our deviance."

The two women looked at each other in silence for a moment or two, tasting the subtle ebb and flow of the Force around them. "Not exactly," Etain said. "I'm not the kind of Jedi the Council wants as its arbiter of adherence to the tenets." Go on, say it. "I have a child they don't know about, and a lover I shouldn't have. I'm still serving in the Grand Army, but I can't carry on like this. Before I give up being a Jedi completely, I want to know if I can salvage any of my calling."

Callista put her hand on Etain's shoulder. "You want to join us? You know what'll happen if you do. We're effectively the lunatic relative that they don't talk about."

"Would I be accepted? What do you expect of your adherents?"

"Well, your family's welcome. You never need live a lie, for a start."

"You have a lover?"

"Of course. What's life if you shun the most powerful influence for good that any being knows?"

Etain wondered how Darman would fit in as the non-Force-using other half in a community of Jedi. Then she realized she was making yet another decision for him, assuming control, assuming that she knew best-just as she had when she decided to conceive.

"If I were to come to you, would we be obliged to live in your community?" Etain asked. Callista leaned her head as if she was struggling to hear her. The idea was already beginning to look like a bad one, and Etain's voice dipped accordingly. It was ludicrous to think that she could think of being a part-time Jedi, occasionally popping in to do a bit of Jedi work with Master Altis and his sect. "The father of my child might have to be based elsewhere."

Callista looked bemused. "I can't speak for Master Altis, but I can't imagine him turning you away if you wanted to spend any time at all with us."

Etain found it almost shaming that Altis and his people would throw their lot in with the Jedi Order to fight alongside them when they were effectively shunned by it the rest of the time. She was also shamed that the Order was happy to have them back on board when it suited them. She was starting to think like Jusik.

"I think I shall spend some time with you one day," she said. A few weeks was all she had in mind, just to be certain that she wanted no more to do with the Jedi path. "If you'll have me."

"This is very sad you know."

"What is?"

"That you have to be so miserable simply for being a normal human being, Force-user or not. Master Altis says the Jedi Order has become more like a corporation than a spiritual body, all rules and infrastructure and committees. To continue the analogy, he says that the Order has lost sight of its core business, which is simply doing the right thing for others."

Etain thought of the Jedi Temple and its vast Archives, technical facilities, and apparently limitless budget. Yes, it was hard to see where it had all started.

"I wish I could say we're stagnant," Etain said, preparing to leave before she poured out all her frustration and resentment on this woman. "But I feel we're decaying."

Callista gave her a polite nod. "One day, come visit us and bring that baby of yours. We'd love to see him."

As Etain walked back to the main mess deck, she couldn't recall mentioning that she had a son. It might have had no significance, just a better pronoun to use than it, but perhaps Callista was sufficiently Force-sensitive to tell.

She suddenly craved Darman's company. Nerrif was a huge station, a docking platform and resupply base for a quarter of the Mid Rim, and when she finally reached the mess, Omega weren't around. The deck was a sea of strangers, mostly clone troopers, with a scattering of gray-uniformed nonclone officers and a couple of Jedi Padawans. When she reached out in the Force, Darman felt peaceful and distant. He almost always did; sometimes it was hard to tell if he was awake or not from his impression in the Force. She commed him. It took him a few moments to respond.

"Dar, where are you?"

"'Freshers, K-deck."

"The steward droid booked me into the officers' quarters, not that I asked for that. Private cabin, not a mess deck, so find cabin seventeen sixty-one, N-deck. I'll meet you there."

Darman's voice sounded suddenly husky and self-conscious. "I've missed you, too."

Etain could be slow on the uptake, she knew. Poor Dar; he was expecting a little diversion by way of romance, not the biggest shock of his short life. She'd have to play this carefully. "Talk first," she said. "Catch up on lost time afterward. Deal?"

"Okay."

She got to her cabin before him and waited trying to meditate. Being a Jedi required maintenance. It was a set of skills, she realized, and once she stopped using them, they went off tune. She spent so long now in the mundane world that she rarely meditated and even her kinetic skills needed sharpening up. Her duties were much less combat-oriented now. She had to get up to speed again, if only for basic survival purposes.

She could still sense Darman's presence long before he rapped on the doors, though. She kept that skill very sharp indeed. He still felt remarkably innocent in the Force, not exactly the child she'd first mistaken his presence for on Qiilura, and the bright optimism had definitely tarnished but it wasn't shot through with dark vortices of anger and passion like Skirata's yet.

Scorch, though . . . she thought of Scorch, quiet despite the raw blazing fear and anger that she'd calmed at Hadde, and hoped the Force would spare Darman that. The war was grinding down even these soldiers, despite a genome selected for its potentially abnormal resistance to stress.

"Et'ika?"

"Good navigation. Come in, quick." She could sense nobody nearby, but the last thing she needed was to be spotted inviting one of her men into her cabin. "Did you get something to eat?"

"I lost the GAR record for bolting down ten roba sausages washed down with half a liter of caf," he said, setting his helmet and rifle down on the upper bunk. The cabins were cramped, the kind with washing facilities that folded up into the bulkhead. "Corr trounced me. The man's a sarlacc on legs. I hung on to the SO.

Brigade All-Comers' Pie-With-Unidcntified-Fruit-Mush-Filling record though. You can still be proud of me, Et'ika."

Darman had an utterly disarming smile. It made Etain feel worse, because the trust just shone out of him. She would be contrite. She would beg forgiveness. And he had to be told, but she worked up to it gently.

"I really like Corr," she said. "I'm astonished how political he is, how much he thinks. He's really rather subversive."

Dar began detaching his pack and armor, stacking the plates beside his helmet. There was no such thing as a quick change for a commando kitted out the way the RCs were. "Yes, us simple clones can even count, and we is happy to be dumb, yes sir, just churn us out and line us up in the shooting gallery, because we don't feel a thing..."

Etain was mortified. She hadn't meant it like that. It was simply admiration of Corr's ability to shake off the indoctrination that told him the only purpose of his life was to lay it down for the Republic. "Dar, you know I'd never even think anything so disgusting." She grabbed his hand. "You believe me, don't you? I'm not a bigot. I meant that-"

"I know. It's okay. Sorry. Just a bit fed up."

Darman was the most laid-back of men, so some mongrel must have said something out place to the squad. If she found out-well, if she found out it was a Jedi officer, she'd go and give them a very un-Jedi bawling-out they'd never forget.

And now she had to tell him. "Dar, I love you. You know that, too, don't you?" "Are you working up to telling me something bad?" "Not exactly bad"

"Because that's how Sergeant Kal used to start when he had to scold us as kids. You know I love you, son, but you mustn't do that again. But he does love us, so it's okay."

Etain knew now why Jedi-her brand of Jedi, anyway-feared attachment. She was now totally out of control of the situation, unable to be serene. Love messed you up something rotten. But she still wouldn't trade it for anything, including her next breath. It was the peak of her existence.

"Dar, I need you to listen to me." Etain took his arm. She wanted to grab him by both shoulders to keep him facing her, but he was too tall. "Dar, I'm going to tell you something I should have told you a long time ago. Please don't be angry with me, even though I deserve it."

That got his attention. "Is it Mereel?"

"What?"

"When I'm away."

Etain was shocked silent for a moment. "Fierfek, Dar, never! No, nothing of the kind. I'd never betray you like that." She'd been at this point so many, many times, and she hovered on the brink again. It was agony. Do it. Tell him. Do it. Stang, did he really think she'd cheat on him? "Dar, the reason I was away on Qiilura for five months was ... I was pregnant. I had a baby."

As soon as the words escaped her lips, she could almost see them hanging in the air. They had a life of their own, form and meaning, reality and potency. However many times she'd picked up Kad and held him, he had never been more real than at this moment, even light-years away in someone else's care.

Darman just looked at her. She felt him: he was suddenly as blank as his expression. It was a bombshell. It had stripped all thought from him.

"What?"

"I had a baby."

They were the wrong words, but that was how they came out. Darman was struggling, blinking as if he was trying to process an alien language, looking her straight in the eye but not connecting with her. A vast chasm had opened up between them.

"It died?" The words escaped in a breath. "Oh, Et'ika..."

She wasn't expecting that. He'd totally misunderstood. She'd used the past tense, and it had thrown him. He didn't even ask if it was his. It was as if he didn't connect their relationship with the possibility of a child.

What did I expect him to say, after what I've done?

"No, Dar, he's fine. He's beautiful. He's yours. He's ours."

Darman's eyes never left hers. He stopped blinking and drew in a breath with his lips parted, like someone about to sneeze or cough. Etain couldn't even feel which way he was going to jump. She was now terrified. She knew it would shock him, but it had completely winded him.

"You never told me?" he said at last. "You never thought to tell me?"

It was far worse than that, of course. Did he even need to know she had planned it? Yes, he did because she couldn't live with any more lies. He and Kad were her whole life now. There could be no secrets.

"I realized that if I told you I was pregnant, you'd fret, and you don't need any more worries when you're at the front." There was no purpose to be served by telling him Skirata had stopped her. She'd deceived Darman from the start, planning to conceive, making him think there was no risk of pregnancy. It was her fault: she would face the consequences alone. "And then I didn't know when to tell you. And I was scared of the Jedi Council finding out, for all kinds of reasons-they'd kick me out, they might take Kad away from me-"Is ... is that his name?"

"Yes. Kad. I named him Venku when he was born, but then you said you liked Kad as a name for a son, remember? When ..." Etain trailed off. She remembered when that conversation had taken place, and wished she hadn't reminded him. The eruption was coming. "We were talking about names."

Darman had superb recall. Not perfectly eidetic, like the Nulls' enhanced memories, but he could remember just fine. When. When Skirata had introduced Kad to the squad as his grandson. Now Kal'buir was in it up to his neck, too.

"That was my son," he said. Etain could hardly hear him. He was almost saying it to himself. "My son."

"It's okay, Dar." She reached out again and tried to take his hand but he didn't grip hers in return. She was too scared to try to hug him now, although she wasn't sure what she was scared of. He now looked like a spring about to uncoil. "We'll make it work now, Dar. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have done any of this, I know it, but I so wanted you to have a son, to have some kind of future. That's what Mandalorian men want, isn't it? Heirs."

Darman didn't seem to pick up that it was deliberate and Force-shaped on her part, but that was like failing to notice the snowstorm when the avalanche had brought down half the mountainside. He simply took a step back from her, and cupped both hands slowly over his mouth and nose, as if he was trying to avoid inhaling something.

"Dar?"

He straightened up with his arms at his side. "Am I the last to know that was my son?" He looked as if he was replaying all the conversations from that day when they stood around in Besany's apartment admiring the new addition to Skirata's family. Skirata had even formally adopted Darman, in that on-the-spot, one-line, instant Mandalorian way. And Darman had told her he wasn't ready to be a father. If he was recalling all that, he must have been in turmoil now. But she could sense almost nothing from him. "Etain, did everyone know except me?"

"No. Just those who needed to know for Kad's safety."

Darman paused, staring at the bunk in defocus, and then began reattaching his armor plates. "Everyone except me and the squad then."

Etain had no reason to think he would ever hurt her, but in that way of all very strong, very muscular men, he had a presence that could either be reassuring or menacing, and right now he scared her inexplicably. It was the silence-both kinds, the lack of sound and the lack of emotion in the Force. He fumbled with his helmet, and then seemed to give up on sealing it, tucking it under one arm.

"Dar, when you're ready to talk about this ..." she said.

He turned to the doors. "I just need to walk for a while," he said voice hoarse. "Clear my brain a bit."

She listened holding her breath until she couldn't hear his boots in the corridor any longer. Then she opened her comlink, and called Skirata to let him know what she had done.

Chapter 8.

Of course clones suffer. What makes you think they don't? They've been at war continuously for more than two years without a break, and it's been a hard war. Battle stress isn't an if, it's a when; if the GAR were made up of average humans, you would simply not have a functioning army now. Clone troopers are optimized humans, and only two percent of the population could ever he as tough, resilient, and aggressive as these men are. But grind them daily like this, give them no respite, deprive them of sleep, give them no outlet or support-and even they will break down eventually.

-Dr. Mij Gilamar, Cuy'val Dar and medical adviser to Special Operations Brigade, assessing the Republic Department of Defense claim that clone troops would not suffer battle stress like other humans because they knew no other kind of life, and were bred for it.

Transit mess deck N, GAR Station Nerrif, 1910 hours GST, 996 days ABG The benefits of a fully enclosed helmet had never been more apparent to Darman than now. He could sit and rage in full sight of any passing trooper, and as long as he didn't move, nobody would be the wiser.

There was little privacy in these temporary barracks. Omega Squad huddled in an open four-berth cabin area, icons of relaxed calm to anyone watching, but inside their buy'cese was a private arena for a painful conversation. The only drawback was that body language had to be suppressed; but that was a skill all clones learned the moment they realized they could retreat inside their armor and create a private space that the Kaminoans couldn't enter. Darman wondered how many Jedi generals knew that the familiar Copy that... was nothing like the comments shared between brothers on private circuits out of officers' earshot.

"Shah, Dar, what are you going to do?" Atin asked.

"I don't know." Darman hadn't managed much more than that in the past hour. He didn't even know yet if he was angry. The closest comparison he had to this feeling was when Jay, Vin, and Taler got killed once the immediate blind struggle to survive had passed-disbelief, numbness, a physical ache in his chest, and a complete inability to think straight. "I just don't know."

"He doesn't have to do anything." Niner fell into sergeant mode, trying to be the voice of reassurance in a crisis. "There's nothing he can do. The baby's a fact. It's being looked after. There are no regs that say he can't father a child. And Etain isn't going to sue him for child support credits, is she? So all he has to do is come to terms with the fact that she kriffing well had his kid and didn't bother to tell him."

"Nothing major, then," Atin said arms folded tight across his chest. It was a good way to avoid making gestures that would give outsiders any clue to what was going on. "He can just feel betrayed. He can manage that."

Corr had kept his mouth shut throughout the argument. He might have been annoyingly gabby on less personal topics, but he knew when to butt out. Dar felt he glimpsed the real man at those moments. He liked him all the more for it.