Darman just burst into tears. Etain did too.

There wasn't a lot to say, just a lot to feel, so neither of them tried to rationalize it. They spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening playing with Kad and pretending that there wasn't a war outside waiting for them, that they were just any ordinary young family. They even recorded a family holoimage for the years to come. It was an exotic, heady fantasy for people who were anything but ordinary, and wouldn't be allowed to be ordinary without a fight. Etain pondered the irony of desperately wanting not to be special.

"I'm glad you called him Kad," Darman said at last.

"Are you happy that he's growing up as a little Mandalorian?"

"Will he be able to use the Force?"

"Jusik and I are starting to show him how to control it. Well, to hide it, really. I don't want the Jedi Order taking him."

Darman's expression hardened a little. "Would they do that?"

"With a benign smile, but yes. They would." "It's not all nice, the Jedi Order, is it? It's not quite the image we were given on Kamino." "Not all Jedi are the same." "I still want Kad to be Mandalorian." "So do I."

Etain held Kad's hands and walked him to Darman, but he pulled away and tottered toward his father with a big adoring grin on his face. Darman let him clamber over him, looking equally besotted.

"He looks like you," Darman said, ignoring the fact that Kad was the spitting image of himself. Kad had wide dark eyes and black hair, like Darman and all his brothers. But his nose was narrow and slightly upturned, like Etain's. "I should have been there when he was born, shouldn't I? I've seen it in the holodramas."

"Real life isn't as tidy as that," Etain said. "And I'm glad you weren't there, in a way. It wasn't my finest hour."

"Did it hurt?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

It was funny how physical pain could be completely forgotten. As Etain watched Darman coming to terms with a baby son when he was no more than a kid himself in so many ways, she was struck by how much he reminded her of Skirata as he handled Kad and talked to him, even down to the faces he pulled to make him laugh. Humans did some things instinctively, and not even cloning and the heartless regime on Kamino could suppress that, but the rest of parenting-they had to learn the hard way.

She'd never known Jango Fett, but his genome hadn't dictated everything in Darman. Skirata's influence was plain. In every sense of the word Skirata was Dar's father, and had laid down the foundations for the kind of father that Darman would be.

Aliit ori'shya tal'din. Family was definitely more than bloodline-and more than midi-chlorians.

Chapter 11.

The Mandalorian language has more terms of insult than any of the more widely spoken galactic tongues. But whereas most species choose insults that are based on parentage or appearance, the majority of Mandalorian pejoratives are concerned with cowardice, stupidity, laziness, dull conversation, or a lack of hygiene. It reveals the preoccupations of a nomadic warrior culture where bloodline matters less than personal qualities, faces are largely masked, and a clean, efficient camp is crucial to survival.

-Mandalorians: Identity and Language, published by the Galactic Institute of Anthropology.

Besany Wennen's apartment, Coruscant, 999 days ABG "I can't carry on like this, Ordo."

Besany hadn't slept well. She'd woken and started tidying her apartment in the middle of night. Ordo had no idea what was normal for a human female, but it made sense to him that if you couldn't sleep, you used the time productively. Tidiness was essential to good discipline.

She was very upset, and she seemed more upset that he'd carried on sleeping while she couldn't.

"I know it must be very stressful," he said watching her scrubbing frantically at the breakfast dishes. "But I don't think you should stay here. It's too dangerous."

She whipped around so hard that her hair flew. "I meant Jilka. She's under arrest, and terrible things might be happening to her, and it's my fault. Ordo, sweetheart, I know this is daily routine in your job, but it's not everyday in mine."

Ordo was still unsure what evidence might link Jilka to Besany. The woman had no idea what was going on. I low-ever hard RDS tried, they couldn't beat out of her what wasn't in there to be revealed, although beings said all kinds of things under torture just to get it to stop. He poured himself another cup of caf, and wondered where Mereel and Jaing had got to. Watching his brothers come and go reminded him how tied to Coruscant he was most days.

"Ordo, are you listening?"

"Yes, it's a pity about Jilka."

"Pity? Pity?" Besany was strikingly beautiful, with a bone structure so perfect that it seemed manufactured; but when she got angry, it all turned to ice, tight-lipped and unforgiving. "I'm the guilty party. My friend's in some RDS prison cell in my place. I can't let that happen. I just can't."

"So what do you plan on doing?" Ordo didn't think the two women were that close, but Besany seemed to have no friends at all other than Jilka. "Turn yourself in, and tell Palpatine's minions the whole story? Implicate Kal'buir? Bring down the escape plan?"

"But she's innocent."

Besany wasn't a soldier, and she wasn't used to the idea of expendability. Ordo wasn't completely inured to it, either, but he accepted there was sometimes a call to be made between doing the right thing in the short term, and making a bigger difference in the longer run. It was a call he hadn't had to make at that level of personal involvement-yet.

And there was the small matter that he was besotted with Besany, and didn't know Jilka at all.

He tried hard to experience his beloved's anxiety for her friend, but he knew he was like Kal'buir: there was a circle of those he would sacrifice everything to save, and anyone outside that had to save themselves.

"It happens all the time," Ordo said. "We had to let a company of troopers get creamed because we couldn't alert them to an attack without letting the Separatists know that we'd cracked their encryption."

"We? Personally?"

"No." Would I have done that? Ordo didn't know.

"Then you don't know what it's like to be in my shoes."

Besany's problem was that she was very moral. He liked that about her. It was why she refused to turn a blind eye to the exploitation of clones; it was why she put her own safety on the line. But it was also why she couldn't handle seeing Jilka arrested in her place. And apart from rescuing Jilka, there was no way of easing Besany's conscience.

Ordo was more worried about what Jilka might feel forced to say to the RDS interrogators. Skirata was supposed to have done something about that, if it wasn't already too late, and now Ordo had his own moral dilemma: should he tell Besany that Jilka might be silenced for good by the very people Besany had taken the crazy risk for in the first place?

He needed to say something tactful. He racked his brain for the kind of words Skirata would use in these circumstances.

"This might sound harsh," he said carefully, "but you wanted to do your bit in a war. This is what war is like. The consequences cost lives, our friends might suffer unfairly, and it's not like any other job. It's as extreme as life gets. There arc no rules, and you don't go home at the end of the day with your life set back to normal for another day in the office tomorrow."

It was all true. Ordo was quite pleased that he had managed not to say it was tough luck, and that in the time that Jilka had been detained, thousands of clone troopers had been maimed or killed, also without deserving it.

"Yes." Besany let out a breath through her nose, a resigned sigh. "But if it was me in there, I'd want to think someone was going to try to do something to help me."

"Maybe they will" Ordo said. "And if they do, we won't know the result until later."

She could make what she wanted of that. If he lied to her, though, could he live with it any more than she could? Would she hate him when she found out?

There was a knock at the door, and Besany jumped.

"I'll handle it," he said and drew his sidearm.

Any routine callers-she didn't have many, mostly delivery droids with groceries-would use the door-comm from the ground level. To knock on the door, they had to be in the building already, and Besany wasn't someone who mixed with the neighbors.

Ordo motioned her to stay away from the window, then moved silently down the short hallway to the front door. He checked the security cam, but could see nothing except the smooth velvet pile of the carpet stretching down the corridor to the turbolift, and the spotless cream walls. That was what he expected. He flicked the power setting on his blaster to maximum, and then something caught his eye.

For a split second, his mind said oil leak, but the black tarry liquid issuing from the ventilation panel just above the floor level was one he'd seen before. He held his blaster on it anyway while it settled in a pool with an odd almost domed meniscus.

"At least you knock now," he said.

The pool re-formed itself into a large predator like a dire-cat, with a glossy black coat and long double-tipped fangs. It blinked orange eyes at him.

"That's so you don't get agitated and shoot again," it said in a rich, liquid male voice. "But that was Jinart who you shot last time. I am Valaqil."

Besany appeared in the doorway. She should have stayed put until Ordo had told her the apartment was secure. "I thought you said you were leaving the last time we met."

"I've come back," Valaqil said. "Not that we owe your kind anything, but Qiilura is now recovering from the human occupation, and your nasty little sergeant has kept his word to leave us in peace. So I keep my side of the bargain. Run while you still can."

"Could you be more specific?" Ordo didn't like Gurlanins all that much, although he accepted it was as an irrational prejudice. He had no reason to distrust them, because they did exactly what they said they would but shapeshifters made him uneasy. "We've got a lot of things to run from at the moment."

"Very soon, Palpatine will unleash a huge clone army, the one he's been building on Centax Two."

"We worked that out," Besany said.

"He's not preparing to use it against the Separatists."

Now that was a fascinating twist. "What makes you say that?" asked Ordo.

"Because I have been to Centax Two, and I have seen deployment plans, to ensure that Qiilura wasn't on the list."

A shapeshifter was the most feared spy of all. Gurlanins could assume any shape, stow away on any ship, and infiltrate anywhere. They communicated telepathically with one another. They might not have had a civilization with weapons and technology, but they were very bad enemies to make.

"Want to expand on that?"

"Soldier, you can't even see what's in front of you, can you?"

Ordo wasn't used to being told he wasn't smart enough to understand. He wasn't so much offended as shocked. "So what troop strengths are we talking about? What targets?"

"Enough to occupy thousands of worlds."

"Separatist worlds?" Ordo was thinking hard. If Palpatine wasn't planning a massive assault on the Seps, which worlds would he be targeting? Ordo decided to look for some economic angle when the Gurlanin left. "I know this war has been engineered carefully for some other ends, and many wars are, but what does he want out of it? Which worlds?"

"Lots of worlds. That's all you need to know. I think I know what your plans are, more or less, and so I advise you to put them into effect sooner rather than later. Agent Wennen will be the next Treasury employee who vanishes into RDS cells, and then it's only a matter of time before Palpatine hunts you all down. Go now."

"You know about Jilka, then," Besany said.

"Of course I do," said Valaqil. "That's how we bought you time."

Ordo got there a moment before Besany did. "You set her up, then?" He put his arm out instinctively to block Besany's line of fire before she did something rash, but he also registered the word we. "That wasn't very helpful, actually. She's a little too close to us for comfort."

The meaning had now sunk in with Besany. She was white-faced with anger. "You-you--" She didn't seem to have a term of abuse for a predator. "I trusted you! You've been prowling around my office? How could you do that? Why Jilka?"

"Why anybody?" said Valaqil. "Why us? She ran record searches on that bogus company you were looking for, and that was recorded on the system, and so it was a short step for us to print flimsi copies of information that pointed to an interest in Centax Two."

"She's innocent. Do you know what they're probably doing to her now?"

"Would you rather they were doing it to you?" Valaqil turned in an elegant circle as if he was going to settle down, but he was simply heading for the ventilation grille. He sat down on his haunches, gazing at the plate as if some prey might emerge from it. "You should have been more discreet about your affair with the gallant captain here. It's a very short step to connect you with excessive curiosity about Centax."

Besany turned to Ordo. "You said there was nothing on file about me."

"He was right, there isn't," said Valaqil, "but there are too many beings now who have come into contact with Skirata's gang, and there comes a time when you can no longer operate covertly because too many know you, and you have crossed too many. That time is very close. You'd better hope that your enemies spend more time with Jilka before they realize she's useless to them and start looking again."

The Gurlanin blinked a couple of times as if waiting for thanks or at least a reaction. He hadn't been wrong the last time; Ordo, cautious as he was, believed Valaqil now. The creature became a slick of black liquid before flowing back through the ventilation plate, and then vanished forever.

Laseema's apartment, Coruscant, Cuy'val Dar emergency planning session "You can't slot her," Skirata said, putting his comlink back in his pocket. "That was Ordo. The Gurlanin framed the woman to throw RDS off the scent."

"Then that's her very bad luck." Vau was getting annoyed. Mird whined at his feet, gazing up at him, always sensitive to its master's moods. "This isn't like rescuing one of our own. Get Jilka out alive, and we have to find somewhere to stash her. She won't just say, 'Thanks for saving me, I'll just forget all that happened, and vanish of my own accord.' She'll be a liability for as long as she lives."

"Then we hide her," Tay'haai said. "I'll find some way of getting her off the planet if you can't."

"If she's been framed and has nothing to reveal," Vau said, "then the urgency to shut her up recedes somewhat, except for the fact that she knows Besany's boyfriend is called Ordo. Do I have to draw you a picture, Kal?"

"And we've already got two retrievals to do." Gilamar sounded resigned, and that worried Skirata. He didn't usually agree with Vau even about the time of day. "All the intel says we don't have much time left, and we just can't wander around collecting waifs and strays forever."

"Is this to spare Besany's conscience?" Vau asked. "Because if it is, let me remind you that it's one more problem caused by sentimental attachment, all because your lads don't think before they drop their plates for the first girl who smiles at them."

"You chakaar." Skirata tolerated no slight against his boys or their womenfolk. "Besany's earned the right to be one of us. And there's the small matter of this being the right thing to do."

Vau raised an eyebrow. "I hate it when you get moral."

"This whole operation is about being moral. We're in it to save those who've been screwed over by the Republic." And we were getting on so well. But Vau was right. If they thought Jilka was going to bring down the weight of the Chancellor's personal police on Besany-and that would mean on them all-then she had to be silenced kindly or unkindly. He'd been ready to do it himself until he faced up to the effect it would have on Besany, and so on Ordo. It was also hard to forget the look on Niner's face when he worked out what Skirata was considering. "We get her out. We get Uthan out. And we get my daughter out."

"Jilka may already have given up Ordo and Besany without even knowing she's done any damage. Let's just grab Uthan and bang out now."

Vau always had a point. Omega and Etain were still on Coruscant, Besany was on her way to the safe house-Laseema's apartment-and Jusik was due to land at any time with the two ARCs, even if he might get tied up keeping an eye on Fi. They had their trillion-credit haul, and more cloning data than even Arkanian Micro could dream of. Now was a good time to go. Jilka could tell RDS everything, but it would be too late to stop them getting away.

Somehow, though, Skirata had to try for Jilka. He hated himself for not automatically putting Ruu at the top of the list.

"We spring Jilka," Skirata said. "And we get her to Mandalore."

"Oh, and you think she'll be grateful to be stuck at the shebs end of the Rim for the rest of her life?" Vau said. "Now I know why Omega make a habit of abducting prisoners and not slotting them like they should."

"Walon, let's at least try. We're not savages."

"Exactly, we're soldiers, Kal. And we've forgotten this is a war."

The four Cuy'val Dar stood pondering the holoschematic of the Republic security building and the service delivery schedules. They had a portfolio of bogus ID chips and could walk in with the catering, the sanitation crew, or even the droid that maintained the office machinery. It was just a case of finding the fastest route, and locating Jilka. It wasn't a huge prison. There were just twenty cells.

The doors opened; Ordo ushered Besany inside. She was clutching a large holdall, and her face was grim. The conversation about Jilka's fate stopped abruptly.

"Bes'ika can't go back to her apartment," Ordo said. "No telling who'll show up next."