Now she fully understood the term collateral damage.

Arca Barracks, Coruscant, later that day There was something going wrong; Darman knew it.

"Shouldn't we be out hunting bad guys by now?" Niner leaned against the transparisteel wall that ran the length of the recreation area overlooking the parade ground. He rested his forehead against the clear sheet, hands in the pockets of his red fatigues. "No briefing? What's happening, d'you think?"

Darman, boots up on the low table opposite his chair, was psyching himself up to finally face Skirata, and he couldn't put it off any longer. But when he returned the comm call, Skirata didn't respond. Darman shoved the comlink back in his pants and rehearsed a long monologue to Etain in his head for the umpteenth time.

I can't sulk about this forever. I have to see Kad. He's mine.

"Dar?"

"Don't ask, At'ika."

"I thought we were meant to be deployed with Delta. Where are they?"

"Look, we can't do anything until they get some leads for us to follow. You want to kick down every door on Coruscant?"

"Okay, Dar. Just asking."

"Why would I know? I'm just the coolie labor. I don't get told anything."

Corr didn't join in. He was examining one of his prosthetic hands, the synthflesh covering peeled back while he tinkered with the miniature servos. He'd lost both arms just above the elbow, and seemed to need to confront the loss head-on. Sometimes he dispensed with the synthflesh and went with the bare-metal look, even sharpening his vibroblade on the durasteel fingers the way some females filed their nails? for diversion when bored. Darman took it as bravado; losing one hand seldom bothered anyone in a society that had good medical care, but losing both somehow stripped you of a touchstone of humanity. Besany had been very distressed by it. Corr was the first trooper she'd got to know personally.

"Dar," Corr said at last, "do you want me to come with you?"

"Where?" Darman knew exactly where he meant. Clone brothers knew each other so well that they could think like one another, which was usually a comfort, but Dar felt more like he was under siege. "Why?"

"Because you shouldn't face this on your own. Let's go see your kid."

"I don't know where he is. I walked out before Etain explained any of that." "Well, ask her."

Darman wasn't sure what he'd do when he saw his son. He'd been trying hard to recall his face from when Skirata had laid the baby in his arms-oh, now he understood now he knew why Kal'buir looked so tearful-but the kid wasn't going to look like that now. They grew fast, babies. Clones were surrounded by their brothers at every stage of development in Tipoca City, because the Kaminoans didn't bother to hide the transparisteel gestation tanks. Darman felt he knew enough about baby boys to handle seeing his own.

"Okay," he said. He commed Skirata again.

Niner didn't need to be told what Darman was doing. He walked over to his brother and stood watching.

"Son." Skirata's voice sounded a bit breathless, as if he'd been pulled away from some crisis. Yes, he was really was Darman's dad now: it was official, legal, at least on Mandalore. "Son, I was worried about you. Are you okay?"

"Yeah ... Kal'buir, where's my son?"

"He's with Laseema at the moment. You want to see him, don't you? He's a lovely kid."

"Yes."

"Etain's been trying to talk to you." "I know."

"Don't shut her out, son. This is my fault. I'll put it right."

Darman heard Ordo say something to Skirata in the background but he didn't quite catch it. "I can't bring him to the barracks while Zey's there. Jedi fake Force-sensitive babies. But not on my watch. Look, we've got a few problems at the moment, but I'll be at the barracks in twenty minutes or so, and we'll work something out."

Darman had a long list of questions to ask Skirata, and had been able to ask none of them. He put the comlink away and couldn't marshal his thoughts. He knew what he wanted to do now; he was calmer, still shocked at the enormity of the news, but if there had been no constraints, no duties, he would have gone to Etain, picked up Kad and walked out of the GAR to . .

. well, wherever. Mandalore, probably. He didn't know where Kyrimorut was, and Fi said the location was secret because a haven for deserters and renegades had to show some discretion.

Darman missed Fi. His dream, which was a fancy word for the ideal he'd come to measure his current existence against, was having all his brothers around and Etain, and Jusik, and all the other people he could trust, and now he added Kad to that-seeing Kad grow up with all these friends and family around him. It had to be all of them. He didn't want to be on the run, cut off from most of them forever.

"Better armor up," he said. "Can't loaf around in my reds all day."

Arca Barracks was eerily empty much of the time, with most of the commando squads deployed and only a handful there between missions to debrief, recuperate a little, and pick up any necessary retraining and new kit. Omega had the whole floor to themselves. Darman took a shower and washed his fatigues, then armored up and sat in the locker room, helmet on his lap, waiting. The other three ventured in. They seemed to be expecting him to explode if they said the wrong thing. It was a long twenty minutes.

"Here he comes," said Atin.

Two sets of boots clattered along the corridor, not GAR issue: Mandalorian cetare, definitely, from the sound. Skirata's gait had changed since his ankle was fixed. Now his walk sounded like any other soldier's except for the occasional scuff because he was still getting used to not limping. He wore full beskar'gam in the barracks, as if he was weaning himself off the aruetyc ways of Coruscant and its civilian fashions.

But Skirata walked through the 'fresher doors in his civilian rig-brown bantha-hide jacket and brown pants-which was slightly at odds with his heavy Mando boots. Vau stood behind him in his black beskar'gam with his helmet under one arm, Mird at his side.

"Dar'ika," Skirata said. "Come here, son."

And Darman did despite himself. He stood up and let Skirata throw his arms around him. Kal 'buir thought a manly hug sorted a lot of problems, and generally he was right. This time, though, it was going to take more than affection to fix things.

"I'm sorry," Skirata said. "I know you're upset."

Atin, Corr, and Niner leaned against the lockers, moral support for their brother. "Why didn't anyone tell me, Buir?" Darman asked. "Why did Etain lie to me? What did she think I'd do? Is she ashamed of me?"

"Shab, no, son." Skirata's face was anguished and exhausted. "She adores you. It was me-I stopped her telling you. She wanted to, right from when she knew she was pregnant, but I threatened I'd take the kid away from her if she didn't do as I said."

Darman didn't believe him. Skirata might have been a pitilessly hard man, no stranger to violence, but he was the kindest of fathers. He'd never have threatened Etain.

"Don't cover for her, Kal'buir."

"I'm not. It's true. Ask Ordo-he walked in on the row, and I'm not going to dress it up. I stopped her telling you, and that was wrong, whatever the circumstances."

Darman didn't like the feeling growing in his gut right then. Skirata had been the sole anchor in his childhood the only adult he trusted, his shield against the Kaminoans and everything that scared him. He wanted this not to be true. Etain-Etain was a Jedi, and as much as he loved her, she wasn't a foundation in his life like Skirata had been.

"You put my son in my arms," Darman said, "and didn't tell me who he was."

"I swear to you, son, ori'haat, we were going to tell you then. But you said that you weren't ready For babies. So we decided against it."

"We."

"All right, me. Leave Etain out of it. She's a kid like you, never had the chance of a normal life, and she did her best-because she needed something to love when she wasn't allowed to, ever. She loves you, and she loves Kad. I'm the one who should have known better."

Darman knew what was happening inside him now. He recognized it. So did Niner; he moved a little closer, as if he was going to take Darman's arm and tell him it was okay, and things would be better now.

Darman was angry and hurt. He knew he had to let that steam vent out carefully. "Why did you stop her the first time?"

"I thought it would distract you when you were fighting, and you'd get yourself killed," said Skirata. Vau was still silent. In a room full of soldiers, there was now really only Skirata and Darman. "And I didn't know if you could take it emotionally. A lot of men with more life experience than you run away when they find out they're going to be a dad."

"So am I a man, like anyone else, or am I always going to be a kid who needs everything done for him?"

"Look, I was wrong." Skirata looked rough now; his eyes glazed with unshed tears, and his voice was shaky. "You should have been told. You should have been there when Kad was born. I took that from you, and I'll never forgive myself."

Yeah, this wasn't about Etain. Somehow, for all the knowledge he lacked of normal family life, Darman knew-felt-that she was in as big a mess as him, but Skirata was the grown-up, the seasoned warrior, the father, the veteran sergeant, the one who should have taken the situation in hand.

"I want to see Kad," Darman said. "When we go off duty tonight, I want to see my son."

"And Etain?"

Darman thought. Yes, he could face her now. He nodded. But he wasn't satisfied. The floodgates had opened, and he couldn't close them. He had to know everything. "What's happening, Kal'buir? I mean-the rest of it? We know we don't get told everything, but you're always up to something, and you don't tell us. You said problem when I commed you."

Skirata looked at Vau, who shrugged and went to stand guard at the doors with Mird. Skirata held out his hand. "Come on. Buckets-show me all your helmets are offline."

"Don't you trust us?" Corr asked.

"Of course I trust you. I just don't want any potentially live links while we talk. I'm getting paranoid about security breaches and the tech the aruetiise can get hold of. Things are not going great."

"Terrific," said Atin sourly, flipping his helmet upside down between his palms and showing a totally unlit interior, all systems down. "We're not amateurs."

"Neither is Jaing," said Skirata, "but some Republic jobsworth knows someone's been in their network."

"What network?" Niner asked.

"Treasury."

Darman knew that Besany had slipped codes to Skirata from the start. He could guess what was coming, or at least he thought he could. "Jaing's been caught slicing? Or was it Besany?"

"Neither. Her friend Jilka's been picked up by the RDS bully-boys instead, and even Jailer Obrim can't make that problem go away. Jilka knows one thing too many. It might put Besany in the frame."

"But what's she done?"

"First things first," Skirata said. "I need to go in and shut Jilka up before she tells Palpatine's heavies too much."

"Shut Jilka up." Niner did his conscience-of-the-GAR act, that resigned expression that said he'd follow orders but he didn't have to like it-and he'd argue. "As in slot her."

"If need be, yes."

Atin looked at Darman. "She's Besany's buddy." "And it's Besany she'll implicate." "In what?" Niner asked.

Skirata was talking about something to thwart the Chancellor. It was the first explicit proof Darman had that he was running his own operation-not in parallel with the Republic's interests, or outside them, but against them. Darman loved and respected Kal'buir, but he was under no illusions about his methods. He'd been up to something dodgy for a long time; Fi's extraction, the base on Mandalore, Ko Sai, the bank job on Mygeeto with Vau that Delta didn't talk about-something major was happening. Skirata was well off the chart.

And so were the Nulls.

"Just tell us," Darman said. "We're big boys now. Put your credits where your mouth is, if you meant what you said to me a minute ago."

Skirata paced slowly around the 'fresher with his head lowered, staring at the gray tiled floor as if he was working up to saying something awful. Vau was getting impatient at the doors, doing that sigh and head shake that meant he was going to cut in and tell them if Skirata didn't. But Darman wanted to hear it from Kal'buir.

"For shab's sake tell them, Kal," Vau said.

Skirata let out a long breath. "Ad'ike, what I'm going to tell you must not, absolutely not, go beyond us. Do you understand? Not even if the Chancellor orders you to answer. Especially not then." He looked at Niner. "That means you, too. You're as straight as a die, son, but this isn't the time or the place for being Master Ethical."

So A'den had told Skirata about Niner's row with him over letting Sull desert and walk free. Niner drew his head back slightly as if he was hurt by the suggestion. "We're not going to like this, are we, Kal'buir?"

Skirata was all business again, eyes dry, as if they hadn't had the conversation about babies and lies at all. "This is a need-to-know job, not because I don't trust you, but because what you don't know usually can't drop you in it. Usually."

"We get it," Atin said. "Just tell us."

"It's not Jilka who's been mining the Treasury's data. It's Besany. And I got her to do it. We don't live in a world now where you get a lawyer and a trial-you end up committing suicide whether you want to or not, like that HNE hack." but nobody, has been told about it scares the living osik out of me. So . . . okay, I'll blurt it out. When the big red button gets pushed we get out. And I mean we."

Darman heard Niner fidgeting. His armor rustled against the fabric of his bodysuit. They'd all talked around the subject, about what would happen after the war ended and now-they knew.

Was the war going to end though?

"Shouldn't we be there for the final big push?" Corr asked. "Do our bit? Seems a shame to leave the party early."

"Son, I don't know the full details, and it's not for want of trying." Skirata fastened his jacket, looking as if the snatched discussion was coming to an abrupt end. "But the more I find out, the less I think this is going to end well for the likes of you and me. I-The Nulls, Vau, and me, we've been getting an escape route together, and a refuge for any man who wants to leave the GAR without a body bag. And we're getting close to finding out how to stop your accelerated aging. It's a whole new life, ad'ike, a long one like any other human's. Are you in? Will you come with me when I say it's time to run?"

There was another communal silence.

Drip ... drip ... drip. Another leaky faucet joined the first in a quietly insistent chorus.

"So it's true about Ko Sai," Niner said at last.

"We didn't kill her, son, but we've got her research."

Every being needed some certainty in their life. Darman knew that some needed more than others, and he didn't need as much as Atin seemed to, but one thing he did need was to know that Kal Skirata was the honest foundation stone of the clones' sense of identity. Right now, there was nothing solid left under Darman. He was adrift. He couldn't rely on Kal'buir to level with him. The unknown and invisible was worse than incoming fire you could see.

"You never told us," Darman said quietly. "Again, you decide what we get to know."

"Dar, leave it," said Corr. "Soldier's lot in life, that is."

"Kal'buir, you kept us in the dark. Like you kept me in the dark about Kad." Darman found himself looking down into It was a tough line to follow. But Niner, being Niner, tried.

"So you slot Jilka to save Besany."

"If you knew what Besany had found, Ner'ika, you'd understand. And it's not just about Besany."

"What the shab is it?" Darman snapped. "Come on, Kal'buir, spit it out."

Skirata dropped his voice almost to a whisper. "Palpatine's developing a new clone army. A big one."

It shouldn't have felt like a slap in the face, but it did. It was reinforcements, but it didn't feel like it. "What, you mean more of us? Well, that's-"

"More Fett clones, yes, but not from Kamino. He's fallen out with Lama Su. Got his own production plants, and building lots more ships. I think the clones from the Fourteenth are the vanguard. And the guys we're seeing around the city."

It was all getting too messy for Darman. There was something wrong. It was the kind of strategic information that special forces needed to know. If reinforcements were coming, they should have been told just like he should have been told he had a son.