Darman ventured into territory he was reluctant to even think about. "Kal'buir knew."

"Yeah, but you said Etain would be in serious osik if the Jedi Thought Police caught her." Niner seemed to be going for mitigating circumstances. "And don't they take Jedi babies? She had her reasons."

But she had told him, and Kad wasn't any less at risk. The assumption was that the baby was Force-sensitive, or whatever they called it. That didn't make him a Jedi. Darman longed for a few sensible words from Jusik. He'd have the answers, and if he didn't, he'd still have some wise words on the situation that might make Darman see the positive side and a way of picking up again from here. It struck him that his first thought wasn't to pour his heart out to Skirata.

"Dar," Corr said carefully, "don't you want the kid?"

"Yes, I do." It just slipped out. "I didn't think I'd be interested but he's mine. It means there's more to me than just what's sitting here. I can't explain it very well. All I know is that it matters. It makes me someone different."

Regular humans grew up knowing what families were, what parents did even if they didn't have one. In Darman's wholly artificial world on Kamino, during the years that mostly shaped him, Darman had worked out something vital; that there was such a thing as a father, and Kal Skirata filled that gap in his life. He'd seen Jango Fett from time to time-and his son-and known that he was grown from the man's cells, but he never felt the connection with him that he felt with Skirata. Humans were just like any other creature in the galaxy. Their instinct was to breed and look after their young, and cloning humans and growing them in vats didn't change that one bit.

"I bet Ko Sai would have been shocked that her predictable clone units had such messy lives," Corr said. "She wouldn't have liked that at all."

"Shame she's dead, then. Would have been great to see her reaction."

Niner clicked his teeth in annoyance. "Well, you can forget the practical problems, and we can get you through the bad feelings. We always have. Vode An, right?"

Actually, Niner was wrong. He was very wrong. Darman was in a place he'd never been before, and it was about more than suddenly finding he had a child out there somewhere. It was about trust. The galaxy was all lies, and even his job was built partly on deception, but as long as there was one area that he knew was real and that wouldn't crumble under him, he felt safe.

That part wasn't Etain. It was Kal'buir.

"He knew," Darman said "and he never told me."

"Kal?" Corr asked.

"Why wouldn't he tell me?"

"Because he knew you'd go off the deep end like this."

"Don't I have a right to know? I mean, he always told me I was a man with the right to control my own life, but now he decides what's good for me and what isn't."

Niner cut in. "Give him a break. Kal'buir wasn't the one who got pregnant and kept quiet about it."

"Well, if he had a reason for not telling me, it's either because he thought I was too stupid to handle it, or that Etain's problems were more important. I mean, it's not like I'd tell anyone else, is it?"

"Or," said Niner, "maybe he decided that because you and Etain are two adults, he was staying out of your private business."

It made sense. Niner always did. But it didn't placate Darman one bit. He was starting to find definite thoughts solidifying in the fog of painful emotions, and three of them loomed like rocks: that he wasn't trusted by people he loved and trusted that he wasn't sure now if he could trust them, and that he had a nameless, formless, desperate animal need to see his kid even if he wasn't sure what a father in his position was supposed to do.

Well, he could hang on to that. And he knew what a father's job was. He'd had what he thought was the best role model in Skirata, although doubts about that now gnawed at him.

He checked the incoming transmissions on his HUD. If he chose not to answer on the voice channel-or couldn't-the data could be stored as text to be read later. Skirata had been trying to raise him on the secure link. Etain had just left a reminder that they were embarking for Triple Zero-Coruscant, Corrie, Trip Zip, whatever she wanted to call it, because he didn't care right now-at 0600 GST.

He wasn't snubbing either of them. He just hadn't worked out what he wanted to say, let alone how he was going to react to the answers.

"It'll be all right, Dar," Atin said quietly. "Ups and downs of being with females. We'd have learned all this by stages if we'd been born the regular way on Corrie."

Darman was inclined to listen to Atin. Niner was just Master Theory about women, and Corr's romances lasted as long as he was in town, thanks to Mereel's influence. Atin had Laseema, and he knew the score even if he never had to worry that there was a kid out there he didn't know existed.

"Things used to be simple," Niner said but it sounded as if he was talking to himself.

Things did. But life wasn't simple now, and Darman understood the occasional bliss of being ignorant.

Growing up at twice the speed that nature intended hurt in more ways than he first thought. It hadn't given him time to toughen up his heart.

Arca Barracks gymnasium, Coruscant, 0630 hours, 997 days ABG Vau seemed to be in his element again. Scorch hesitated to use a word like radiant for a hard old chakaar like his sergeant, but the man looked like he had some blood in his cheeks for the first time in ages.

"You think that hurts?" Vau grunted. He had an unlucky trooper in an eye-wateringly painful grip on the floor. The di'kut should have known better than to volunteer for the demonstration, but he obviously didn't know Vau, and thought he was dealing with an old guy. He was. But Vau was an old guy who kept fit and knew plenty about pain. "No, this hurts."

The trooper squealed. It took a lot to get a reaction out of a man like that. They might have been meat-cans, but they were as hard as any ARC or commando. Scorch couldn't watch any longer. He called to Vau, more for his own peace of mind than the urgency of Zey's summons or to end the trooper's agony. Vau's technique was known as a Keldabe handshake, but hands didn't have a lot to do with it.

"Sarge!" he yelled. "Sarge, General Zey sends his compliments and wants to see you right now."

Vau let go of a delicate part of the trooper's anatomy and the guy rolled over onto his side, out of action for a few moments. Well, at least he knew how to stop a human adversary with one grip now. Mird watched from the sidelines, yawning occasionally, with the air of having seen it all before.

"Get yourself off to medbay and have that looked at, ad'ika," Vau said, tidying his rumpled fatigues. He didn't look half as scary out of armor. His looks lied. "Mird, watch them and make sure they don't slack off. You lot-by the time I come back, I want you to be able to make each other's eyes water. Got it?"

It was a weary chorus. "Yes, Sarge."

"Great Darakaer of Irmenu, I've been struck deaf for my sins. I said, got it?"

"Yes, Sergeant!" they barked.

Vau seemed temporarily satisfied. He accompanied Scorch through the corridors to Zey's office, smelling faintly of fresh sweat and bacta ointment.

"Are you on brigade strength again, Sarge?" Scorch asked.

"No. Still civilian status." Vau wore a slightly preoccupied frown that didn't seem to have anything to do with the business at hand. "That way I can tell Zey where to stick his orders without feeling I've lost my military self-respect. An army that refuses orders is a rabble."

Scorch had heard it all before. It was like a litany, and he knew his lines. "An army that refuses orders is a danger to its citizens."

"An army that refuses orders is dead."

"You ever disobeyed an order, Sarge?"

"Only when it was unlawful. And that's not always an easy call, not when the bolts are shaving your nose hair. I'll leave that wisdom to the lawyers sitting on their padded shebse years after the event." Vau had never been a chatty man at the best of times; maybe this was the private Vau, the one his squads rarely saw. "How are things with you?"

"Sorry, Sarge, say again?"

"I hear and see all. There's no shame in losing it from time to time, not in a fools' war like this."

Nobody could keep their trap shut, it seemed. But it was probably Etain who blabbed not the squad. None of them would have told Vau they thought Scorch needed a bit of help. The old Vau would have given him a thrashing for what he'd done at Hadde-stupid risks, emotional outbursts, generally not being ice when it mattered. Today's Vau seemed a little more tolerant, and that was unsettling in itself. Scorch wondered if his own grip on reality was in a worse state than he thought.

"Bit tired" Scorch said. "That's all. Shipping out to Kashyyyk some time soon. We'll be there awhile..."

"I know, but I want to see you in my quarters at eighteen hundred okay?"

Scorch's gut churned. "Right you are, Sarge."

There was always a chance this wasn't really Vau but a shapeshifting Gurlanin. Sometimes, Scorch heard, they didn't quite manage to get in character. Scorch felt fine now. He couldn't see what the fuss was about. He was just reacting to being surrounded by chakaare who enraged him. He had bad dreams, too, but everyone did. He'd tell Vau as much.

Boss, Fixer, and Sev were already waiting in Zey's office when Scorch opened the doors. There was no sign of Captain Maze. Zey had both elbows on his fancy blue lapiz desk, arms crossed a sure sign that he was crawling the walls instead of just being extra-agitated.

"Gentlemen, this is a confidential briefing," he said. The doors snapped shut from the control on his desk. "What's discussed here goes no farther."

Scorch was offended. Every shabla job they did was top secret. He noted Vau's jaw take on a more set angle; definitely not a Gurlanin, then. The old martinet Vau was still in there.

"I think you can trust us to be professionals," Vau said. He adjusted the collar of his fatigues, probably ill at ease out of armor or formal clothing. "Whatever it is, how bad is it?"

"It's about the compromised computer networks."

"I know. You've already briefed us on that. We need some leads from the Nulls and the Treasury techs before we can get on with it. Shouldn't Omega be in on this, too?"

"That's the nub of the problem, Walon." Zey had the air of a man edging his way across a rickety bridge. "I need someone to keep an eye on Skirata and his Nulls. And I don't mean checking they've got enough caf and cookies to keep them happy."

- "What are you asking me to do, General?" Vau's expression was set in granite now. "You'll have to be explicit for once."

It wasn't the first time that Zey had kept Skirata out of the loop on an operation. He hadn't wanted him to know about the mission to locate Ko Sai. But it was the first time Zey had asked anyone-anyone in this room, anyway-to treat him as potentially hostile rather than just prone to slicing up Kaminoans that the Republic wanted alive.

"Much as I respect the man as a soldier, I want to be sure that he's not misusing his position," Zey said. "I want you to observe what he and his little private army are up to."

"You want me to spy on a comrade. Yes?"

"I want to be sure he isn't harming the Republic, Walon. That's all. I know how much he cares about his troops, and I know he bends the rules past breaking point, but I don't begrudge him whatever he creams off the budget-I know it'll be for the clones' benefit. And I can't argue with the Nulls' record on black ops. I just need to know Skirata isn't sabotaging the war effort, deliberately or otherwise."

Vau looked as if he was chewing it over before spitting it against the wall. Delta Squad just sat there and said nothing; the conversation was being conducted over their heads, as it often was, and Scorch wondered if Zey just had them sit in on these sessions so he could try to sense from their reactions in the Force if they knew anything. Scorch felt increasingly uncomfortable with that idea. It was like the constant monitoring by the Kaminoans to check for deviance, reminding him of all the subtle ways that clones presented a nice, tidy, unremarkable facade to avoid reconditioning. Some never returned from that. You had to try to be as unindividual as you possibly could in case the aiwha-bait spotted you and carted you off.

"You must have some evidence of dodgy behavior to try to enlist me," Vau said at last. "I don't like flying blind. Level with me. Tell me where you think I should be looking, or he'll completely bamboozle me-or cut my throat for betraying him when I'm least expecting it." "So that's a yes, then."

"No, it's a tell me what I'm getting myself into before I say anything. I'm too old to play guessing games."

Zey leaned back in his seat. "I have no doubt he's stealing."

"Well, they say that's what Mandalorians are like, after all... all the same ..."

Zey ignored the barb. "But even Skirata couldn't purloin enough to put a dent in the conduct of the war. I'm looking for active sabotage of missions, withholding of information, unhealthy contact with Separatists, that kind of thing."

Scorch knew Skirata got up to all kinds of mischief, and he'd even taken part in some of it. So did Vau, come to that; but that was why the Special Operations Brigade had them on the payroll. It wasn't Junior Scout-Ranger work. They had to mix it with the lowest forms of life in the galaxy.

Vau was now a statue of self-control. Etain said he always seemed utterly calm in the Force, even when he was shoving a vibroblade down someone's gullet. Zey looked none the wiser.

"I've known Skirata for some years," Vau said. "He's a criminal by Coruscant standards. So am I. But an outright traitor-no. He's a professional."

"So Mandalorians never do double-agent work, Walon?"

"Not for the rates you pay, General."

Zey met Vau's unflinching gaze and looked away before reaching for a datapad tapping to select something, and pushing it across the polished desk. Vau picked it up to read.

"That's a list of Separatist combatants taken prisoner during the last month," Zey said. "Recognize any names?"

Vau was still totally unmoved. "Yes."

"When Skirata mentioned his daughter was missing, I felt sorry for him, so I ran some name checks on government databases just in case she showed up at a medcenter or registered for work somewhere."

"And you found her in a Republic prison."

"I assume it's the right woman. He didn't spell her name."

"R-U-U-S-A-A-N," Vau said. "Ruu, for short. And you think that having a daughter fighting on the other side would make Skirata put his beloved clones at greater risk than they already are."

"She's his flesh and blood."

"You still don't understand Mando'ade at all." Vau let out a long and weary sigh that sounded real. "Aliit ori'shya tal'din. Family is more than bloodline. And if you looked at any Mando working for you-and doing a solid job, might I add-you'd find some of their kin fighting for one of the Republic's enemies at any given time. We've worked as mercenaries for millennia. When you hire a Mando, you get professional loyalty as part of the deal. Funny how you see us as private contractors fighting for the cause of freedom when it's your credits, but as amoral scum when we get paid by someone else. Maybe we're like all your fine Jedi who come from non-Republic worlds, perhaps ..."

"I didn't call you in for a debate on the ethics of private military contractors, Walon."

"Yes, I realize this is one of those philosophical gray areas that you struggle with. But if you want me to slide a blade into a man I'd have to trust with my life in battle one day, I require grounds. Because clients come and go, but your professional community is with you forever."

"Very well," said Zey. "Intel says someone has been poking around in files and places that concern them greatly. They won't tell me exactly where, because apparently as Director of Special Forces I have no need to know. But I can watch the unseen by the shadows it casts, and I know this is Treasury, and I know this is Defense, and if there's anyone who has the wherewithal to get this far into Republic systems leaving no direct trace, it's Skirata and his very clever boys."

Vau still didn't move a muscle. Despite the office security soundproofing to thwart eavesdroppers and bugs, a sudden noise interrupted the hold-your-breath tension. It was the sound of claws scraping the doors. Mird had shown up.

"I can't argue with your logic," said Vau.

"In?" Zey didn't even ask Boss for Delta's position. It was irrelevant. "Or not in?"

Vau waited five beats. Scorch had seen him do that many times, and the longer he waited the more scared Scorch always got. Five beats was a warning of serious displeasure.

"You're paying me," Vau said at last. "If I find him doing anything to help the enemy, I shall give you full details. But only because he'll be in breach of his contract with you. Our word is our bond. It has to be, or we're just savages."

Wisely, Zey didn't come back on that last line, but Scorch was never sure if Zey shared the common view of Mandalorians. He might have been ignorant of the culture, but he was a pretty tolerant guy for a mystic.

"Remember, I expect discretion." Then Zey almost said dismissed. Scorch saw his teeth come together and the shape his lips were beginning to form. He stopped short. "Thank you."

The doors parted as Vau walked toward them, followed by Delta. Mird sat patiently at the threshold and made no attempt to bound into the office. The strill trotted ahead of them down the corridor, nose almost welded to the pleckwood floor in pursuit of fascinating scents. Scorch switched to his helmet circuit so that Vau couldn't hear.

"Skirata's going to cut off his kriffing gett'se and ram 'em down his throat if he finds out."

Sev snorted. "I told you it was getting a bit too much like Keldabe around here."

"Kal wouldn't scupper the Republic," Boss said.

"You sure about that?" Fixer sounded unconvinced. "More to the point, is Kal sure?"

Vau said nothing until they reached the doors leading to the training wing of the HQ building. He turned slowly, and stared at them as if their helmets weren't in place and he could see not only into their eyes but into their minds.

"In case you're wondering why, if, and when," Vau said "this is Cuy'val Dar business, and I will not involve you in it. Stand from under-stay away from it. Tayli'bac?"