“Good grief, here comes the armored division,” said Commander Gett. He strode toward the Neimoidian vessel. Its casing was streaked and pocked with scorch marks. “RCs look like tanks, don't they?”

Republic Commandos did look fearsomely bulky alongside the clone troopers. The first four to clamber out of the seized Trade Federation craft were a riot of color, their battered armor daubed with green, yellow, red, and orange markings.

The second squad was armored in matte black, utterly featureless and grim. But Etain knew instantly who they were and which man was which. She needed no battle livery to distinguish them: their forms in the Force were almost like trails of phosphorescence in a tropical ocean, and they were instantly familiar, instantly old friends.

I was only with them for a few days and I haven't seen or talked to them for months. But it's as if we were never apart.

Fi—oh yes, she knew it was Fi even before he spoke—saluted, lifted his helmet, and winked.

“Ma'am, you look like the back end of a bantha,” he said sympathetically. “Are they looking after you properly here?”

“Fi!” She knew she was supposed to remain dignified and aloof, and she'd felt comradeship with many clone troopers in the intervening months, but her first reluctant command with Omega had utterly changed her. “Fi, I've really missed you. What happened to the gray armor?”

“You know how much Dar griped about being too visible on Qiilura. Anyway, he's brought you a present.” He gestured over his shoulder. Darman was helping a group of troopers haul the prisoners out of the Neimoidian landing craft while Gett examined it. “They're all in one piece, too. We've been really good boys this time.”

Delta Squad had simply disappeared. When Etain looked around, she saw they had settled in a tight knot in a corner of the hangar deck, helmets on, obviously talking intently. She knew the body language now. They didn't feel like Omega in the Force at all. They were a concentrated well, a bottomless pool of something unyielding, and totally enmeshed with each other. The general impression they made on the Force was one of triumphant high spirits.

Niner and Atin approached and clasped hands with her. It didn't feel at all inappropriate. They looked tired and anxious, and she wanted very badly to make things right for them. They were her friends.

“I bet you'd like something to eat,” she said.

“Any chance of a hot shower and a few hours' sleep first, please, General?” Niner looked apologetic and shoved Fi gently in the back. “Me first. I'm pulling rank.”

“He's not really a sergeant, General,” said Fi. “He just helps them out when they're busy.”

“Any news on our pilot?” Niner asked.

“Yes. I'm so sorry.”

It was never easy. She tapped her datapad to bring up the copy of the signal that Majestic had sent to Fleet and handed the 'pad to him. Niner glanced at it, blinked, and passed it to Fi. Fi parted his lips briefly as if to say something, and then his slight frown almost crumpled into grief. He composed himself and just looked down at the deck.

“He's not the first,” Fi said, suddenly grim, and Etain had never seen that aspect of him surface visibly before. “And he won't be the last.”

Etain watched them disappear through a hatch on the aft bulkhead, trailing after a trooper. Fearless shivered slightly under the soles of her boots, making top speed back to Coruscant, and she waited while Darman spent what seemed like an interminable time fussing about with the prisoner hand-over. She wondered if he was reluctant to talk after choosing not to remain on Qiilura with her. Perhaps he was just concerned that nothing else went wrong.

She gave up waiting and walked carefully between the troopers still trying to catch some sleep on the hangar deck, curled up wherever they could find a relatively comfortable space.

“Well done,” she said, hoping that some were awake to hear her.

Darman had changed.

He bent his head to ease off his helmet, popping the seal, and then shook his hair and smoothed it flat with one glove. And although he smiled, he wasn't the Darman she had been through hell with.

He looked older.

Clones aged faster than normal men. He was eleven going on twenty-two going on—fifty. When she had first sensed him as a child in the Force, his square, high-cheekboned face had been both man and boy, at the stage of life when—had she been able to manipulate time—the slightest push backward would have revealed the child he had so recently been. But now he was a man, quite solidly, and with no hint of the boy about him.

It wasn't simply that he had aged two years in one. The look in his eyes said he was much, much older, as old as the battlefield, maybe as old as war itself. She had seen it in the face of every clone trooper and commando and ARC she had commanded. She knew that she had that same look, too.

But Darman smiled anyway, and the smile broadened into a grin that made the rest of the ship—even the galaxy—utterly irrelevant to her.

“You always cut it fine, don't you, ma'am?”

“It's good to see you, Dar. Whatever happened to Etain?”

“She turned into a general and we're on the hangar deck.”

“You're right. I'm sorry.”

“Is it definitely confirmed that we're going back to base?”

“Unless you want to argue with the officer of the watch, I believe so.”

“Good. We need a break. Just a day or two, maybe.”

He never did ask for much. None of them did: she wondered if they didn't know what the world had to offer them or if they were just honed down to basic needs, too overwhelmed to think beyond recovering enough to do the job over again the next day.

She patted his armored shoulder and held her hand there for a few seconds. He looked as if he suddenly remembered something and was embarrassed by it in a way he quite enjoyed.

“It must be nice to be able to reach out to someone through the Force,” he said.

So he'd felt it. She was glad.

“Get yourself off to the 'freshers,” she said. “Come and find me afterward if you're not too tired, and I'll show you over the ship.”

“Have you met Sergeant Kal yet?”

“No.” Kal was always there for Darman, somewhere, even at times like this when she wanted to say so much to him. “When we dock, perhaps you could introduce me.”

Darman beamed, clearly delighted. “Oh, you'll like him, General. You'll really like him.”

Etain certainly hoped so. And if she didn't, then she'd try, for Darman's sake.

SO BrigadeHQ, Coruscant, 369 days after Geonosis

The smell hit Ordo long before he reached the meeting room. It was a familiar blend of wet wool, mold, and a pungent oily musk.

Skirata reacted visibly. He straightened his right arm by his side out of old, old habit and let the blade slide into his hand, fall a fraction until the handle touched his palm, and then snatched it.

“Kal'buir, it would be better if I shot it,” Ordo said. He put a restraining hand on Skirata's arm. “I won't let it near you.”

“I've often wondered if you're telepathic, son.”

“I can smell the strill, you have your knife ready, and we're meeting Sergeant Vau. Telepathy isn't required to work that one out.”

Ordo would have been quite content to shoot the strill without a second thought because it upset Kal'buir. But it wasn't the strill's fault that it stank, or that it had a master who cherished cruelty, or that it had become savage itself. It had been selected by nature and then trained by people to hunt for pleasure rather than for food, and nothing else had ever been allowed to cross its mind.

He felt some pity for it. But he would still kill it without a moment's hesitation.