Mereel laughed and strode off toward the brightly lit sign. "I'll only blow it all on fast speeders, slow women, and overpriced candy . . ."

Skirata sat in the driver's seat and waited for Mereel to return with his booty, checking the messages on his comlink to pass the time. No, he didn't have to worry about Mereel. The lad was sociable, confident, and guaranteed to find a way of fitting in wherever he went. Of the six Nulls, he was the one best able to deal with the demons the Kaminoans had forced on him. But the others-A'den, Kom'rk, Jaing, and Prudii kept Skirata awake at night to varying degrees. And Ordo ...

I'm too protective. Ordo can cope. He's a grown man. And he's got Besany.

Skirata stared at the comlink's miniature screen without really seeing it. He tried not to have favorites, but from the moment two-year-old Ordo had aimed a blaster at a Kaminoan to try to save his brother Nulls from termination, the kid had been his heart and soul.

And now he'd sent Skirata the usual stack of sitrep text comms. There was a file of budget data, with a note that there appeared to be some big procurement projects due to deliver around the third anniversary of the war. That time slot appeared to be increasingly significant. Ordo had added a terse line: I disposed of a rep intel agent tonight, he was trailing BESANY. I suggest we persuade her to leave for mandalore before something serious happens to her. I also married her.

Skirata read the last terse line a couple of times. He'd raised his boys as good Mandos, and the pressure to marry young must have seeped in deep without Skirata noticing he'd even put it in their heads. The Nulls were late starters by Mando standards. Marrying at sixteen was common.

My boy's grown up and left home.

It was a private deal between a couple, nothing to do with anyone else, but Skirata felt a little excluded by the suddenness of it, and scolded himself for feeling that way.

Ordo was still playing the big brother to everyone just as he had in Tipoca City, but Skirata shared his worries; trouble was coming. They could even guess at a possible date for it. All that mattered now was getting out in one piece with as much capital as possible and a method for reversing accelerated clone aging. Skirata's priority was his underground escape route for clone deserters-something that had started with his Nulls, then spread to include his commando company, and now extended to any white job-the ordinary clone trooper-who wanted something else out of life.

It was Skirata's sacred mission. He was wedded to it.

But how many of the white jobs want to leave the army? How many of them can even conceive of the life they've been denied?

He couldn't save one million men, let alone three. He'd save as many as he could. They had after all, saved him in a way that went far beyond stopping him from getting killed in combat.

Come on, Mer'ika. You buying the whole store or something?

Skirata scrolled through the remaining messages. Most were business; fencing all the valuables that Vau had stolen from the Mygeeto bank vaults was taking time, as was laundering the bonds and credits. Then there were updates from Rav Bralor on Mandalore, letting him know how the construction of the bastion in Kyrimorut was going.

He almost missed the last message. It was very short.

...dad, ruusaan's missing. we haven't heard from her in months. we need to talk. yours, Ijaat.

It was from one of his sons.

Not his clone sons, the kids he put everything on the line for; it was his biological son, Ijaat, whom he hadn't spoken to in many years and-with his other son, Tor-had declared him dar'buir, no longer a father.

Aruetiise didn't understand Mando family law, but to be divorced by your own kids was one of the worst disgraces for any Mandalorian.

Ruusaan . . . Skirata hadn't seen his daughter in years, either. But she hadn't signed the dar'buir declaration, and that had always given him some hope that she didn't hate him for the divorce.

My little girl. She's missing.

The hatch opened and Mereel slid into the passenger's seat, pockets bulging, but the grin died on his face.

"Buir?" He stared into Skirata's eyes. "Buir, what's wrong?"

Skirata hadn't realized his shock and fear were visible. He hadn't realized tears were running down his face, either.

"My daughter," he said. "My girl's missing."

Skirata had two families, both in need, and no Mandalorian could ever turn his back on his kids forever, even if they'd disowned him.

"We'll find her, then, Buir" Mereel said, matter-of-factly. "After all-she's family."

Skirata hoped she was. Family took a lot more than genes to hold it together.

Chapter 4.

No, I'm not going to play Mand'alor. Okay, you can tell everyone I'm Fett's son if that makes them happy, but you can keep the politics. And I want payment. It'll crimp my mercenary earnings.

-Spar, formerly ARC-02, to Fenn Shysa, unconvinced that Mandalorians need him to masquerade as Fett's legal heir Kragget restaurant, lower levels, Coruscant, 938 days ABG "Hi, sweetie." The Twi'lek waitress greeted Etain with a big smile. "The usual?"

"That'd be great," said Etain. "Thanks."

Nobody wandered into the Kragget by chance. It was a place for regulars, a greasy-looking diner right on the edge of the lower levels, and so it was popular with those who spent a lot of time in the lawless neighborhoods nearby-the Coruscant Security Force. Jedi general Etain Tur-Mukan was now a regular here, too, but it wasn't the Kragget's lavishly greasy all-day breakfast that lured her. It was brief and secret visits to see her son.

She'd named him Venku, but now he was known as Kad-Kad'ika, Little Saber.

Kad was now nearly a year old and Etain's heart broke anew each morning at the prospect of being separated from him for another day. The fact that he had a small army of doting babysitters did nothing to dull the pain of having to keep her motherhood secret from everyone, including Kad's father.

The longer this went on, the harder it would be to tell Darman that he had a son.

Etain settled at a corner table and got a nod from CSF officers she knew by sight but not by name. Her brown Jedi robes gave her a kind of anonymity, much like the clones' armor; nobody asked why she was slumming it down here, because Jedi often did marginal jobs, and anyway-she was Kal Skirata's buddy. CSF, and Captain Jailer Obrim in particular, were very chummy with Skirata and his boys.

One of the officers paused in midchew as Etain sat down at a nearby table. "General, have you heard from Fi lately?"

"He's doing okay," she said. The CSF officers knew Fi wasn't dead. They'd helped Besany rescue him. Etain was comforted to know she wasn't the only sane woman who did crazy, dangerous things for the welfare of clone troopers. "He's even got a girlfriend now."

There was a ripple of approving comments from surrounding tables. The cops liked Fi. Everyone did because he was a funny, friendly guy, but he had legendary status within CSF; he'd once thrown himself on a grenade to shield CSF officers, and that bought a man serious respect. Katarn armor had saved him that time. It hadn't saved him from brain trauma on Gaftikar. Even Fi ran out of luck sooner or later.

"If he ever comes back here," said the officer, "tell him to drop by the social club, won't you?"

"I'll do that."

Soronna, the Twi'lek waitress who managed the Kragget day shift, sidled over to Etain and put a cup of mild-brew caf in front of her.

"Laseema's running a little late," she said.

"Anything wrong?"

"No, she's been out buying baby clothes." Soronna gave her a knowing wink. She was getting on a bit, as Darman put it, but still magnetically glamorous, with the flowing walk of the dancer she'd once been. "Kad'ika's outgrowing everything. That's a baby in a real hurry to grow up. Takes after his grandfather for sheer impatience."

My baby.

That's my baby. I'm not the one choosing his clothes. I'm not the one who feeds him and puts him to bed each night.

Did Soronna know he was really Etain's? She hadn't shown the slightest hint that she did. But Skirata tended to surround himself with people who knew the rules and kept their mouths shut. The stakes were high.

So what? So what if the Jedi Council kicks me out for fraternizing with Darman?

She was on the point of comming General Zey to confess, as she was at least once a day. But she'd lose her rank and command. She couldn't turn her back on the Grand Army now, not when they needed every Jedi officer they could get.

Bardan's not a Jedi anymore, though, and he's still making himself useful. . .

Her whole reason for keeping her child a secret had evaporated when Bardan Jusik turned his back on the Jedi Order. It hadn't changed a thing. He was as deeply involved in the war and helping clone troops survive as he'd ever been. Etain stared into her mug of caf and wondered if she'd just become too comfortable with her rank, or even if she was more worried about what the Masters of the Jedi Council thought of her.

They say that however old you are, you still want your parents' approval, deep down.

The doors opened. Laseema walked in carrying Kad'ika on one hip and a shopping bag in her free hand looking the part of the busy young mother. Etain couldn't pretend it didn't hurt. She tried to look casually interested, as any woman might when admiring a friend's child, but it was hard; when he started crying it tore at every nerve in her body. She wanted to grab him. It was an urgent, primal instinct.

Several cops stopped Laseema to coo over Kad'ika. His crying was a halfhearted grizzle, more a long complaint than anything, and he squirmed in Laseema's grip.

"They all want to be uncles," she said dragging herself away from the chorus of oohs and aahs. She held the baby out to Etain as if she had to persuade her to take him. "Here. Want to hold him?"

Etain scooped Kad'ika up in her arms. He became instantly quiet, and everything around her suddenly ceased to exist. He smelled clean and wonderful and hers. The cop at the next table put down his caf and leaned across to make faces in the way people did when in the presence of infants. Etain wiped dribble from the baby's chin as he stared mesmerized at the officer with huge dark eyes-Darman's eyes.

"Who's gorgeous? Who dat gorgeous baby?" The cop was a big, square man who looked as if he spent his days kicking down doors, but now he was reduced to sentimental mush. He glanced at Etain. "You look like that comes naturally," he said, with no idea how deep the comment cut. "You've definitely got the secret of calming babies."

"Jedi mind influence," Etain said, forcing a smile. It was time to move somewhere more private before the pretense crumbled. Jedi or not, her hormones seemed still to be in disarray, her emotions made more erratic by the strain of being separated from those she loved most. "I think he needs changing. Come on, Laseema. Let's do the necessary, or Kal will complain that we're neglecting his grandson."

Laseema's apartment-the one Skirata had bought to get her out of Qibbu the Hutt's clutches, and provide them all with a base away from the barracks-was part of the same grim permacrete complex that housed the Kragget. By slipping through the rear doors and into the kitchen, Etain could reach the apartment via the turbolift and a flight of stairs. The place had the feel of a fortress, and that was probably why Skirata chose it. It occupied a whole floor.

Laseema followed her. The apartment doors opened into a big living room that had probably once been a warehousing area, and that bore all the signs of three very different people trying to coexist there with a small baby. It smelled of cooking, laundry, and air freshener. On a subtler level, the Force told her that Jusik was scared but more content than he'd been in years, that Laseema spent sleepless nights fretting about Atin's safety, and that Skirata . . . Skirata wasn't the swirling darkness Etain had first sensed. The pit of violence and anger was still there alongside the selfless passions, but there was also a small deep pool of profound contentment, a softness she hadn't sensed before. On the table was a chaotic pile of electronic circuits and mechanical servos that had to be Jusik's latest project. Skirata tended to leave no physical traces, as befitted a man who lived up fully to the nomadic side of Mandalorian culture.

"How long can you stay?" Laseema asked.

Etain settled down on the nearest chair and let Kad'ika totter around the room by holding on to furniture. He landed on his backside with a bump, giggling. "Two days."

"Oh."

"I'm doing Bard'ika's old job now. Two days is a long period of leave when you're looking after a commando group." Etain checked Kad'ika over and saw how much he'd grown. "I ought to sleep, but I don't want to waste a moment."

Controlling nearly five hundred commandos was an impossible task. They were almost entirely self-directing, and the most she could do was pass them their objectives, deal with their requests and problems, and visit them in the field. There were too few Jedi to go around.

So there's one more reason why you stay . . .

And the commandos were all so different. Apart from the men trained by Skirata, their cultures seemed to vary from squad to squad, even those trained by Walon Vau and Rav Bralor, whose style she knew, and who were now among her band of unlikely friends.

"I talk to Kad'ika about you," Laseema said suddenly. "Even if he can't understand. I always say Mama's coming home soon, and things like that. You never know how much they take in."

Etain looked up. Laseema was a typically pretty Twi'lek, a young woman with a wretched past who had been used just as callously as the clones she'd found kinship with. Now she looked anxious, as if she felt guilty for looking after Kad'ika.

"It's okay," Etain said. "I'm grateful to you. It's my fault we're all in this mess. Without you . . . well, I know he's loved and well cared for."

"I'm not trying to take your place." "I never thought you were, but I could hardly complain if you did."

Laseema looked at her with a slightly baffled expression for a moment. She looked very different these days. She'd taken to wearing very sober, high-necked clothing, not the usual low-cut, tight-fitting cropped tops that most Twi'lek females wore. It was as if she was making it clear that she wasn't the unwilling entertainment at some sleazy Hutt cantina any longer. Etain decided she would remind herself of the average Twi'lek girl's lot whenever she felt tempted to complain about her own restricted life.

"Kal absolutely adores him," Laseema said, as if trying to make harmless small talk well away from the minefield of absentee parents. "He's very good with babies. You wouldn't believe it, would you? Mandalorians look so hard-bitten."

Skirata typified the Mando ideal of responsible fatherhood and devotion to his clan. He was a sucker for helpless kids. "And Bard"ika?"

"Loves being an uncle. He plays little Force games with Kad'ika so that he gets used to his abilities."

"Really?" Etain was instantly worried but it made sense; the baby's Force powers were as much a part of his development as learning to walk, and he would have to learn not only to use them but also to conceal them. "I'd better talk to him about that..."

Laseema looked as if she wished she hadn't mentioned it, and changed tack. "He's such a gorgeous baby. Rarely cries, smiles at everyone. Kal says he's exactly like Darman was at the same age."

And I'm missing it all. I'm not seeing him grow up.

Etain was hardly the first mother to have duties that took her away from her child. It was just something that no Jedi was supposed to experience, and she understood the ban on attachment better now than she ever had. It was a harsh rule, and she worried that Jedi raised other Jedi in a constant soulless cycle of detached cold indifference, but at times like these she understood how disruptive it was to have someone whose welfare mattered so much to you that it clouded your judgment.

But if we don't experience this ... how can we possibly sit in judgment on non-Force-users? How can we understand why they do the things they do?

Etain wondered what suppressing natural emotions did to Jedi in the end. She rearranged Kad'ika on her lap, but he could sit pretty well on his own. She realized she just wasn't used to doing this, and that she should have been. Kad'ika turned his head to look into her face with intense curiosity, then grinned again and said what sounded like, "Ka! La!" They weren't quite words, but Etain squealed with delight and surprise. The baby stared back into her face with wide-eyed shock at the reaction.

"He's talking!" she said. "Clever Kad'ika! Who's Mama's clever boy? Say Mama. Can you say Mama?"

Kad gurgled as if he was going to break into laughter. It dawned slowly on Etain that her son was probably trying to say Kal and Laseema. It was logical, because those were the names he heard every day. But she couldn't deny that it hurt.

"Mama!" he said suddenly. "Mama-mama-maaaal"

He laughed obviously delighted with himself, eyes locked on hers. That was all Etain needed. It was a moment of perfect connection between them, and she would treasure it for the rest of her life. She nuzzled him and rocked him to make him laugh more.

"Clever Kad! Yes, it's Mama!"

Kad pointed at Laseema. "Lala! Lala!"

Laseema beamed at him and got a heartbreaking smile back. "He's growing so fast."

For any other parent it would have been a source of pride, but for Etain it simply rekindled the fear that her son might have inherited his father's accelerated aging. Mereel had reassured her that the Kaminoans had made sure the trait wasn't passed on. She wondered why they didn't just make clones sterile, but it could have been anything from complications with gene expression to simply seeing what happened if clones reproduced. Kaminoans didn't think like humans, and they didn't see clones as anything more than product, just organic droids. She hoped Mereel was right about inheritance. She'd read far too much about epigenetics during her pregnancy, and now worried that Kad's genes were somehow undetectably tainted by whatever had happened to Darman.

Kad babbled incoherently and made a lunge for the hank of hair draped over her shoulder. Etain caught him as he rolled to one side like an amiable drunk and threw up.

Laseema rushed to mop up, but Etain was determined to do the messy work herself. Babies were always getting sick, the experts said. "I hope this is normal development."

"Every mother worries about everything," Laseema said. "Not that I know, but they said my sister did."

There was a whole world of misery wrapped up in those two sentences. Etain realized how very little she knew about the Twi'lek. Maybe Laseema's family stayed in touch, but the way she said it made Etain think that she was alone, sold into the awful servitude that awaited most Twi'lek girls with more looks than family connections, and as long as she intended to stay with Atin she could never bear children of her own. And here she was having to look after someone else's baby. That must have rankled. Mandalorians might have been hardwired to take in any needy kids as their own at the drop of a hat, but Etain didn't feel that way at all.

He's mine. Kad'ika's mine. I want to be with him.

She was a second away from grabbing an air taxi, storming into Zey's office at Area Barracks, and telling him she was giving up her Jedi status. The thought was becoming ever more frequent and feeling like a rehearsal. Kad looked up as if searching her eyes for something. Then his face crumpled; he let out a small wail that tailed off into a whimper, and flooded her with his unhappiness. He was reacting to her anxiety.