Etain was totally disarmed by his candor, which seemed both incongruous and yet in keeping with a man who had gone to such extraordinary lengths to equip his young charges to survive.

She knew he was a killer. She knew his people had a long history of killing Jedi, even fighting for the Sith. She knew exactly what he was, but she couldn't help liking him and knowing that he would be very, very important to her for the rest of her life.

Her certainty was in the Force. And she knew what was coming in the days and months ahead would take her beyond her limits, and would bring her no sense of peace or understanding as a Jedi. But the Force would show her what it intended her destiny to be.

7

I think it's significant that the casualty rate among commando squads trained by Mandalorians is lower than those trained by other races. Somehow, Mandalorians imbue their charges with a sense of purpose, self-confidence, and almost obsessive sense of clan– of fancily—that gives them a genuine survival advantage. Let us be thankful they're on our side this time.

–General Master Arligan Zey, Director of Special Forces, officer commanding SO BDE, addressing the Jedi Council

SO Brigade HQ Coruscant, briefing room 8, 1500 hours, 370 days after Geonosis

“I thought we'd have a chat,” said Skirata. He turned a chair around and swung his legs astride it, folding his arms on the chair back and resting his chin on them. “Just us Mando boys. No aruetiise present.”

Delta Squad had settled in seats on one side of the briefing room and Omega on the other, with the table between them. Skirata could have sliced through the atmosphere between Atin and Sev with a vibroblade: how could they think he hadn't noticed? He knew how to read every nuance of cloned men like a book, even if they weren't the ones he knew intimately. In fact, he could read most species now. So they either thought he was stupid, or they were so at ease in his company that they felt no need to disguise their feelings.

And the Delta boys—like Omega—were painfully loyal to their sergeants. They sat around in dark red fatigues, looking disturbingly young without their armor and weapons.

“You don't see Tur-Mukan or Jusik as traitors; do you?” Darman said.

“I was using aruetiise in the general sense of non Mandalorian.” Oh, Darman was fond of Etain, wasn't he? He'd have to keep an eye on that. “What I've got to say is just squad business, not the officers'.” Skirata dropped his knife from his sleeve and fidgeted with the blade, running his fingertip carefully along the honed edge. “I hope you're listening to this, Delta.”

“Yes, Sarge.” Boss was watching him intently.

“And you, Sev.”

Sev glanced at Atin for the merest fraction of a second, but enough to confirm Skirata's hunch. “Yes, Sergeant.”

“Okay, number one—any bad blood between me and Vau is our business, not yours. If any of you want to fight about it, I'll personally make you regret it. Save it for the bad guys.”

The silence was almost solid. Atin stared ahead of him, unblinking; Sev compressed his lips as if choking back protest and flicked a glance at Niner. Darman and Fi simply looked baffled.

“No, Sev,” Skirata said. “Niner didn't say a word to me, but I've got eyes in my backside and a very good memory. You do not have a grudge against Atin, do you understand me? If you want to argue the toss about my little altercation with Vau, then you have it out with me.”

“Understood, Sergeant.”

“Good. Prove it.”

“Sorry?”

“You two.” Skirata motioned to Atin and Sev with the point of his blade. “Get up and shake hands.”

Neither Atin nor Sev moved for a moment.

“I said get up and shake hands. Now.”

Skirata wondered if he'd lost them, but then Atin stood just a heartbeat before Sev did. They leaned across the table that separated them and shook hands as ordered.

“Now do it again and mean it,” Skirata said quietly. “You have to be one team now, one big squad, and when I tell you what we're up against you'll understand why. Boss, I expect you to keep your boys in line.”

Boss leaned forward and shoved Sev in the back. “You heard the sergeant.”

Atin held his hand out again. Sev took it and shrugged.

“Good,” Skirata said. “Because we're off the charts now. What we're about to do has no official authorization from the Senate or the generals, so if we screw up, we're on our own.”

“Ah,” said Scorch. “So Jusik and Tur-Mukan don't know about this.”

“Oh yes, they do.”

“Then who's we?”

“You, our young generals, Ordo, Vau, and me.”

Scorch raised his eyebrows. “You're operational again?”

It was time for a little theater. “Yes.” Skirata hurled his knife with the exquisite accuracy born of decades of surviving by it. It embedded itself in the wooden paneling behind Sev, half a meter to his right. “Bet you can't do that with a vibroblade, son.”

“He can if I pick him up and throw him,” said Fi.

They all laughed. Skirata wondered if they'd still be laughing in a few minutes. Ordo was due back soon. With any luck, he and Vau would have beaten some information out of Orjul; the Nikto were probably too tough even for Vau to crack in that time.

In the end it might not matter. He had his team ready to deploy on Coruscant now—his team, not the Republic's—and they could do things that CSF either wouldn't or couldn't. Obrim had his hands tied by laws and procedures, and maybe he even had a mole among his own comrades.

But this strike team had no laws at all: it didn't even exist. On Triple Zero, it was … zero.

Skirata hadn't asked Zey what would happen to them if they got it wrong. They could end up dead, all of them. It was an academic detail.

Scorch got up, pulled the knife from the wall, and handed it back to Skirata with a grin. Fixer applauded.

“Remember all that dirty black ops stuff that me and Vau taught you way back?” Skirata slid the blade back up his sleeve again. My dad's knife. All I have of him. I took it off his body. “Or did you file it with the boring stuff on contingency orders and emergency procedures?”

“I think we recall it, Sarge.”

Skirata remembered it, and didn't want to. It was training that had to be done. It broke his heart, but it was going to be all that stood between those boys and death sooner or later. They had to be able to face the unimaginable, and—yes, there were even worse things than charging a line of droids with your comrades.

There were the things you might have to face alone, in a locked room, with no hope of rescue.

Maybe Vau was right. Perhaps trainees needed to be brutalized beyond the point where they were just brave, pushed into a state of existence where they became animals intent only on survival. That was how Vau had nearly killed Atin. It was why Skirata had then gone after Vau and nearly killed him.

“I'm not proud of what I did to you,” Skirata said.

“You crawled through the nerf guts first, Sarge. It looked like so much fun that we followed you in.” Fi roared with laughter and leaned back in his seat. “And then you threw up.”

The Sickener, they called it. One more endurance test to make sure they could face conditions that would break and kill lesser men, crawling through a ditch filled with rotting nerf guts.

But there were more tests to come. A night out in Fest-like temperatures; no sleep for three days, maybe more; scant water, a full sixty-kilo pack, and blistering heat; and a lot of pain. Pain, pitiless verbal abuse, and humiliation. A captured commando could expect brutal interrogation. They had to be able to cope without breaking, and it took some imagination to test that to the limit.