By this time next year, Fi decided he would be the man he was before the explosion. He picked up his mug of ne'tra gal and tilted it slightly in Parja's direction, managing not to spill any, and forced a grin.

"I'll paint my armor specially," he said. Maybe it was time he stopped looking like the ghost of Ghez Hokan, whose red-and-gray armor he'd scavenged. "Any color you like."

But Parja was looking past him toward the doors of the cantina, and her expression had taken on that tight-lipped narrow-eyed I'm-going-to-punch-your-head-in look that he found oddly endearing. He turned carefully to see what she was scowling at.

A man in green armor swaggered up to them and looked down at Fi. Then he lifted off his helmet, releasing wavy blond hair in need of a good trim, and extended a gauntleted hand.

"Well, look at you," he said. "Chip off the old block, or at least what the old block might have been if he'd had your start in life. You doin' all right, ner vod?"

Fi didn't have a clue who he was. He seemed to be the only one who didn't, though. The cantina was silent, one communal held breath.

Parja stared the man in the face. "You weren't just passing," she said sourly, and put her hand on Fi's forearm in a grip that said keep off. "So before you even ask-my old man's not available. Can't you see he's injured?"

The blond man didn't seem remotely offended by the rebuff. He just smiled, all charm-not that it worked on Parja-and clasped Fi's other arm Mando-style.

"You look baffled, soldier," he said. "The name's Fenn Shysa. How'd you like to do your bit for Mandalore?"

Omega Squad observation point above the Hadde-Rishun road, Haurgab, Mid Rim Darman had never been a gambling man. Now he knew why; he watched his creds disappearing as Atin's racing beetle powered to victory, unchallenged and unstoppable.

The bug wasn't exactly greased lightning. But at least it knew where it was going, a skill that seemed in short supply among the local insect life. As the rest of the squad's beetles scuttled around chaotically, Atin's trotted on a straight, determined course toward the finish line-a strip of detonite tape stretched across the upturned ammo crate that formed the makeshift racetrack.

The others rushed back and forth, buffeting the walls and bouncing off them time after time as if they might eventually batter an escape route through the side of the crate. They just didn't have that single-minded focus that made a winner. Darman gave them five points for sheer persistence.

"Kandosii!" Atin cheered. Sound carried for kilometers on the still air here, but inside a soundproofed helmet, a commando could yell to his heart's content. It had taken Omega Squad days to find the path up to this vantage point, and they wanted to lie low. "Go on, ner vod, show 'em what you're made of... that's my boy ..."

Omega had time on their hands while they waited for Separatist rebel convoys passing through Haurgab's Maujas desert, and beetle racing was literally the only game in town. It was a blistering noon, one of those days when climate-conditioned Katarn armor was a cool haven from the killer heat outside. Maybe it was too hot today even for the local insect life.

Darman reached out to put his beetle back on course with a careful forefinger. Its iridescent scarlet wing cases reminded him of the daywings that he'd seen on Qiilura, flies that lived for one frantic, gloriously colored day and then died. Darman had once thought that going out at the top of your game was a noble exit for a commando, but after a couple of years exploring the wide world beyond Kamino, he'd worked out that it wasn't glorious at all. It was unfair.

Life was short-especially for a clone-and increasingly depressing.

Daywings just showed you in fast-forward what was going to happen to you all too soon. Darman sometimes felt just like the racing beetles, too: trapped, shunted from location to location without really knowing what the greater plan might be, and banging his head against the wall of a war that seemed neither winnable nor losable.

He was fed up finding things in common with insects. He was a man, and he missed his girl. He wanted to go home-and he had no idea where home was.

Fi said it was Kyrimorut. Darman decided it would be wherever Etain wanted it to be.

Sometimes she touched him in the Force to let him know she was thinking of him, a distant and almost disturbing sensation as if someone was creeping up behind him. Dating your Jedi general was a very bad idea, and he knew it, but the war had to end sometime; and then he would have what Sergeant Kal called a normal life. What normality might turn out to be for a fast-aging clone and a prematurely retired Jedi he had no idea, but he was willing to give it a go.

He prodded his racing beetle back on course again. "Get a move on, di'kut. It's that way."

"Hey, no cheating." Corr turned to Niner for adjudication as course steward. "Disqualify the unsporting bounder, Sarge. His beetle's doped."

"Okay, I know I've lost already." Darman tossed a credit chip at Atin to pay the bet, then picked up his beetle and turned it toward the finish line. Comic relief had been Fi's job, but he was gone; Corr, his replacement, did his best to fill the role of squad wise guy and general cheering-up operative. "I just hate to see the poor thing bumbling around like that, all confused and pathetic."

"You'll never be a successful trainer if you get sentimental about the bloodstock, Dar..."

Niner edged across the ground on his belly and peered into the box, his shadow falling across one of the beetles. It paused to wave its antennae and tested the suddenly cool air before trotting over to Corr's chosen creature-brilliant turquoise, very shiny-and making amorous advances to it.

"I don't think its mind's on the race, somehow, ner vod," said Niner, getting back on all fours. Atin's beetle pottered on, as steady and single-minded as its temporary owner, and crossed the finish line. "Yeah, Atin's done it again. Drinks in the winner's enclosure . . ."

They were on self-recycled water now. Darman fantasized about fresh cold water from a faucet, and however much the procurement techies insisted that the filter system guaranteed that the recovered water-"personal" water, they called it-was as pure as a Naboo spring, he still didn't like the idea that he'd drunk it and excreted it several times before. It was unsettlingly warm in his mouth as he sucked the tube from the reservoir inside his armor.

Still, it beat drinking someone else's.

A big jug of iced water, a shower, and a nice soft bunk. . .

Atin made a discreet fist, victorious. "Oya! Pay up, losers." He held out his palm. "That's eight straight wins."

"We'll make you a little trophy, At'ika." Darman picked up a cup-like desiccated husk from some long-dead plant. "You can put the winner out to stud now. Breed thoroughbreds."

"Will I get striped ones or mauve ones if I mate it with Corr's?"

"It's not like mixing paint. You don't know much about genetics, do you?"

Niner scooped up the beetles in his hands and tossed them into the air. They scattered in a dazzling display of gem-like wings, vanishing into the heat haze.

They could fly just fine. Why did they never try to escape from the racetrack? Why did they keep buffeting their stupid little heads against the sides of the ammo crate when they could just look up and fly away?

Niner repositioned the blaster cannon on its tripod with its muzzle nestled discreetly in a cleft in the rock and fidgeted with the optics. He seemed increasingly restless and withdrawn these days, as if he had doubts about everything and couldn't discuss them with the squad. Maybe it was Fi; not just his absence, which was hard enough to take, but what had happened to him. If Fi had died, they might have handled that better than knowing he was brain-damaged. They hadn't seen him since Sergeant Kal whisked him away to Mandalore. Sometimes he sent comm messages, but apart from mentioning some Mandalorian woman called Parja, who seemed to be a permanent fixture in his new life, he told them little.

Jusik said he was improving, though. Darman recalled just how much Fi had wanted a girlfriend, and now that he had one, Darman had no need to feel guilty about Etain. Most human beings seemed happier when they had something that someone else didn't, but Darman-like most clones, he realized-was uncomfortable when he had some advantage over his brothers.

As far as General Zey was concerned-not that Zey believed a word of the cover story, of course-Fi was dead. He was so far away now in every sense that he might as well have been.

Jusik was gone, too. The whole team was drifting apart.

Darman settled down in prone position and sighted up on the dirt road below, the only open terrain for kilometers, to wait for their target. Atin made a faint slurping noise as he sipped from his water supply. A shadow cast from the remains of an ancient fortress, three crumbling walls of baked mud bricks, provided some cool spots in their laying-up position. A lot of battles had been fought at this pass.

"Speaking of genetics," Atin said, "what really did happen with Ko Sai?"

Darman shrugged. "When Kal'buir wants us to know, he'll tell us."

"I heard some weird stuff." "How weird?"

"That Kal took her research and killed her."

"Who told you that?"

"Sev."

Atin had been one of Vau's trainees, like Delta Squad, and Darman knew they still gossiped despite old feuds. "Sev's talking through his shebs as usual," he said. "Ko Sai got what was coming to her, either way."

"I know, but what does Kal'buir want her data for?"

At least Atin wasn't feeling sorry for the aiwha-bait. Darman had built up a good solid hatred of Kaminoans since leaving his cloistered existence in Tipoca City, and sometimes wished he'd felt this way when he was close enough to settle a few scores. It was amazing how much human beings could accept as normal if they had nothing else to compare it with.

"I don't know," said Darman. "Maybe he's going to sell it to the highest bidder."

Niner locked a new power pack into his Deece. "Have you asked him?"

"No," said Atin. "Why don't you ask him, Dar? You're one of his favorites. Like Ordo and Fi. And maybe he wants a half-Jedi grandchild one day."

Corr laughed. "But he's got Bard'ika, so he's got a full-Jedi son, hasn't he?"

Darman felt uncomfortable. He didn't want to alienate his brothers, and he'd never thought of any one of them as being treated differently. "Kal'buir doesn't have favorites. He probably thinks I'm the idiot of the litter who needs looking after. You want me to ask him?" Darman didn't know how he'd broach it, but Skirata had infinite patience where his boys were concerned. "I'll ask him."

But now the question had started to bother him. It didn't make any difference how Skirata treated them, but the doubt had wormed its way into his head and it wasn't going to go away. He settled down into a more comfortable position, Deece resting in the crook of his arm and his visor's magnification set on maximum range, and waited.

"Which moron in Procurement ordered Deeces with the clip on the left?" Corr muttered. He'd never seemed to like the commando-issue DC-17 very much; the original brigades of commandos had been raised with the rifle since they were old enough to hold one, but cross-trained men like Corr came to it new, and they griped. "And on the sidearm, too. Can't holster it right."

"A moron who never had to fire it to save his life," said Niner. "Or thought that if you aimed right-handed then your left was free to reach for a reload..."

"What a bunch of useless bev'ikase."

"Did you make that word up?"

"That's the right word isn't it? It means-"

"Well, yes, but I've never heard it used as a term of abuse before...just anatomical."

"He's right," said Atin. "I reckon that's the real reason we were trained to be ambidextrous. To allow for those or'diniise in Procurement."

Darman liked his Deece. Okay, the clip was a nuisance, but the thing never jammed in heat, cold or dust, it was accurate, and even swapping out the attachments was no more trouble than reloading.

"I'd like a Verp," he said. "They're lovely. Remember when we went out tagging terrorists with them on Triple Zero?"

Atin rolled his head to ease his neck muscles. "That was you and Fi."

"So it was," Darman said missing Fi badly but careful not to hurt Corr's feelings by saying so. Corr was a good comrade. After a few weeks, it had felt like he'd been part of Omega forever. But if Fi could have come back as well, it would have been great.

The heat haze broke the ocher desert into shimmering mirages, dark pools that came and went as Darman stared at them; the Fleet Met forecast said there was an 80 percent chance of sandstorms. Haurgab was yet another backworld whose strategic value Darman couldn't work out. Yes, there was ore mining here, and the Separatists needed plenty of ore if they were going to keep churning out droids, but why didn't Palpatine concentrate on hitting the major population centers of Sep worlds? Why was the clone army spread so thinly?

Darman answered himself aloud. "All he's doing is stretching our supply chains." "Kal'buir?"

"Old Slimy. Palps. He should leave the military stuff to the generals. Typical shabla civvy. The strategic genius sitting on his backside in his nice safe office."

If there was anywhere that typified the thoroughly stupid strategy of this war, it was Haurgab. The GAR had too few resources to take the place, but too many to be so thoroughly defeated that the politicians took the hint and withdrew. It was a nicely sustainable operation. It could keep simmering at this level of grinding misery for years, and probably would.

Across a riverbed that hadn't seen flowing water in decades, about twenty klicks to the northeast, two companies of the 85th Infantry were shoring up the regional government at Hadde. A distant boomp-boomp-boomp like a slow heartbeat started up, answered by the higher-pitched and more rapid bark of cannon fire. Darman saw fresh palls of black smoke forming in the distance. He could almost set his chrono by the regularity of the bombardment; the local Mauja clans rolled out their collection of artillery pieces just after lunch, driving Hadde's population into shelters at the hottest time of the day, and made the city a miserable place to be until the wind picked up at nightfall and the Maujasi went home for the night. It was as if they were doing a day's work, using their contracted hours for a bit of bombardment, then heading home to watch the holovids.

Two companies: fewer than three hundred men. It was pitifully inadequate and there was little air support. The rest of the battalion was scattered across the region in platoons, taking ground one day and losing it again the next.

That was why the squad had been sent in. They had one target-a key Maujasi leader called Jolluc. Now they were waiting for him to show.

"You know," said Corr, "if we just committed a few more air assets to this and bombed the osik out of the settlements around this dump, nobody would have to boil their shebs off and we could all go somewhere with better nightlife. Look at the place. It's all mountains."

"Hills," said Atin.

"They're still in the way. Air assault."

Corr had started life as a bomb disposal trooper, so he was still learning Mando'a as he went along. Predictably, he picked up profanities and slang first, just like Etain had. He was even creating his own.

"Cor'ika, we'd be sent somewhere equally pointless to do it all over again," Atin said. "And we've been told to win hearts and minds. No obliterating civilian villages."

"Civilians, my shebs. They're all armed. They don't need a uniform to be hostiles. Why does every species with a grievance against its neighbor end up being classed as a Sep and added to our list?"

"They're not even a different species here." Darman joined in the grumbling. "Not like Gaftikar, where you could see who was who. They're all humans. They all look the same, too."

A tiny dust storm on the horizon indicated ground vehicles moving in their direction. Niner clicked his teeth, mildly annoyed. It was a habit he seemed to have picked up from Skirata. "I hate it when he thinks. Thinking just makes you dissatisfied."

"Yeah, that's my job," said Atin. "Heard from Laseema?" "Not yet, Sarge."

"She'll send a message. Don't worry." "I know she will," Atin said peevishly. "We're getting married." "What?" "You heard me."

The news didn't take their attention off the road, but it certainly diluted it. Darman's gut flipped over. This was a whole new world. This was-"Impossible," Niner said. "You can't get married. You're in the army."

Atin meant stubborn in Mando'a, but it wasn't a negative word to Mandalorians. It implied tenacity and courage rather than bloody-mindedness. Atin was quiet and relentlessly methodical until something really riled him, and then he reverted to type as one of Vau's men-fighting mad and unwilling to back down until someone knocked him down. Vau had beaten an animal reaction into them, a savage will that he said would keep them alive long after more reasonable men had given up and died.

"Show me the regs," Atin said. Darman could see his chin jut out in defiance, even with his helmet in place. "Go on. Show me the regulation that says we can't marry."

"We were never intended to have families."

"But there are no specific regs against it, are there?"

"No. But it's still stupid."

"Why?"

No clone needed to see his brother's face to know what was going on in his head. Darman could tell from the faint clicks and breaths over the helmet comlink that Niner was jumpy, as if he was panicking about something. But Niner was definitely not one of life's panickers. He was upset. He was trying to make an uncomfortable reality go away.

"Because you don't get a salary," Niner said at last. "So you can't support a wife and kids. There are no married quarters, either. There's-"

Atin dug in for the full argument. He sounded as if he'd clamped his teeth together. "Laseema's a Twi'lek. Twi'leks and humans can't interbreed. And she's got an apartment. Kal'buir paid for it. And she's got a job. So I don't need to support her. Bang goes your case, Sarge."

Corr muttered to himself. "Kept man, eh? Nice work."

"You're still crazy," Niner said. "And it's not my case. It just is."

Darman's plans for some kind of domestic happiness were now under threat. He pitched in to back up Atin. They were men, not droids; they had a right to expect more from life. Skirata told them so.

"You think we can't marry because we're property, Sarge?" Darman asked.

Niner's voice hardened a fraction. "I don't know. Go ask General Zey."

"Zey won't give a shab," Atin snapped. "And if he did, what's he going to do about it? How's he going to tell the difference between what we do now and what happens when I've exchanged vows with Laseema?"

"He's got a point," Darman said. "It's academic."