6

In five millennia, the Mandalorians fought with and against a thousand armies on a thousand worlds. They learned to speak as many languages and absorbed weapons technology and tactics from every war: And yet, despite the overwhelming influence of alien cultures, and the absence of a true homeworld and even species, their own language not only survived but changed little, their way of life and their philosophy remained untouched, and their ideals andsense of family of identity, of nation, were only strengthened. Armor does not make a Mandalorian. The armor is simply a manifestation of an impenetrable, unassailable heart.

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

RAS Fearless, upper dock, Fleet Support Depot, Coruscant, 370 days after Geonosis

The ramp went down, and for once the scene that greeted Fi wasn't hostile droid-infested territory and red blasterfire.

But Coruscant—impossibly high towers and deep canyons of skylanes—was every bit as alien as Geonosis. Fi had seen it once before, all too briefly, on the way to break a siege at the spaceport. It had been an exotic, exciting lightscape at night, but in daylight it was breathtaking in a totally different way.

“Can we have a run ashore?”

Niner stood with his hands clasped behind him, with his Deece slung across his back. “Not my call. I'm not the sergeant now.”

Boss and the rest of Delta had formed up behind Omega in a neat line, presenting a more orderly rank. They were on the same comlink. Niner said it was ungrateful to block them out, seeing as they'd ridden to the rescue. But Omega would never hear the end of it, Fi was sure of that.

The Forty-first Elite were disembarked first.

Scorch leaned a little closer to Fi. He was right behind him. The nice thing about Katarn helmet comlinks was that you could switch between circuits and have totally private exchanges without any external sign that you were talking—or even having a stand-up fight, come to that. “So you want a run ashore?”

“What's that?” Sev said.

Fi enjoyed Skirata's wide-ranging and often bizarre language. No other squads talked quite like Sergeant Kal's. “A night out on the town. Dinner at a fine restaurant, perhaps take in a Mon Cal ballet …”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Don't, Fi,” Niner said. “You're just being cruel to the Weequay team here.”

“Okay, ale and warra nuts. No ballet.”

“And maybe a little shopping with your spook squad buddy?” Scorch said. “New kama, maybe?”

Ah, news did travel, then. “Don't let Ordo hear you say that,” Fi said. “He'll rip your leg off and hit you with the soggy end.”

“Yeah? ARCs are all mouth and kamas.”

“Ooh, hard man, eh?”

“I've seen Twi'lek dancing girls tougher than you,” said Scorch. “How many times are we going to have to save your shebs, then?”

“Probably as many times as we have to clean up your osik,” said Niner. “Can't you two talk about blowing stuff up and play nicely?”

“Where's the general?” Fi said.

Darman interrupted. “Saying good-bye to Gett.” He seemed to be taking a keen interest in Etain's whereabouts. “Can you see Sergeant Kal yet? She said he was meeting us.”

“So … you've been ordered around by a geriatric and a child, have you?”

Darman's voice frosted over. “Scorch, do you like medcenter food?”

“Touchy, touchy …”

There was a faint click on the helmet comlink.

“Delta! This is the geriatric. Get down and give me fifty, now!”

“Fierfek,” Sev sighed.

Omega parted ranks to give Delta the room to perform fifty press-ups in full armor, with backpacks. Fi watched appreciatively. He didn't care for Sev at all.

But he was also scanning the landing platform for Skirata, desperate to see his real sergeant again: when Skirata was around, Niner ceased to play the senior NCO. Generals tended not to get much of a look in, either. Skirata was his own command chain.

“That was forty, not fifty,” Skirata said from somewhere behind them. “I hate innumeracy almost as much as I hate cracks about my personal state of disrepair.”

Skirata just had a knack for sliding around unnoticed. There had been times when Fi had wondered if he was a Force-user, because only Jedi were supposed to be able to pull those kinds of stunts. But Kal'buir was adamant that he was simply good at his job, because he'd been doing it since he was seven years old.

That made him a late starter—by clone standards.

He appeared suddenly from between a knot of Forty-first men and ambled over to Omega, not limping quite as badly as usual and looking rather dapper in a smart leather jacket. In rough working clothes, he could disappear, but the jacket changed him utterly. Yet there was always something about the man that inspired relief and confidence. Fi felt instantly ready for anything, just as he had when Skirata had been the highest authority in his limited world on Kamino.

Skirata paused for a moment in front of him. He didn't seem worried whether Delta had cranked out the extra ten press-ups or not. He just clutched Fi's arm, and hugged Darman, and slapped Niner across the shoulders, and grabbed Atin's hand. He never seemed to have the slightest trouble now in showing how much he cared about them. Over the years he'd changed from shielding his emotions behind a veneer of good-natured abuse to abandoning the pretense altogether.

Nobody had ever been fooled by it anyway.

“Don't scare me like that again, ad'ike.” He turned to Delta, easing themselves up from the floor. “And you bunch of di'kute, too. I'd better keep a tighter rein on you.” He watched the last of the Forty-first men disappearing into transfer vessels, presumably for return to barracks, and something appeared to amuse him. “Scorch, if you're not a good boy then I'm going to make you wear a kama.”

“Sorry, Sergeant. Is it true that Sergeant Vau's back?”

“He's back, but he's not a sergeant. I'm your sergeant now, 'Scorch.”

“And General Jusik?”

“He's not your sergeant, either.” Skirata looked past Scorch and seemed suddenly startled. Fi turned and saw what he was staring at: Etain Tur-Mukan walked across the huge landing platform hauling the LJ-50 as if it were putting up a fight. “That has to be General Tur-Mukan, yes?”

“That's her,” Darman said. “She's very keen to meet you.”

Fi was distracted by a blip of movement in his HUD. A scruffy civilian air taxi had risen over the parapet of the landing platform. And it shouldn't have been able to do that.

His unconscious brain said danger and reacted a split second before his ingrained training reminded him that unidentified civvie vessels shouldn't penetrate the Fleet base cordon. He was on one knee with his Deece charged and aimed before he even noticed from his HUD that Omega and Delta had both formed up into a single front contact formation.

The taxi stopped dead in midair.

“Check!” Skirata stepped in front of them. Fi froze but Delta aimed around the sergeant. “Stand down!” One fist held up clenched to hold off the squads, Skirata signaled vigorously to the taxi with his other hand held flat, slapping down on the air. Drop.

The taxi settled slowly on the platform.

Omega stopped dead at the check command; Delta took a second longer. Maybe it hadn't been drilled into them as it had Skirata's batch. But all of them still had their rifles trained. Fi's heart pounded. They were all wound tight and still alert to any threat, alert enough to let hard-trained reactions take over. It was what kept you alive. You could never switch it off. Your muscles learned to do things and then stopped asking your brain's permission.