He was a whirlpool of balanced conflict—truly cold black violence shot through with deep red passionate loves and hatreds. It marked him out as a complex man who had built a warrior elite. If she looked at him another way, though, he was very much the dark side—everything she had been taught to shun.

Yes, he reminded her of a gdan, the nasty little carnivores that hunted in packs on Qiilura and would take on any prey; small by comparison with his strapping troops, but ferociously, tenaciously aggressive.

And he wasn't quite the elderly man the squad had first described, either. To twenty-year-old boys, he must have seemed ancient. But he was about sixty standard years—just middle-aged—and obviously fit except for his tendency to drag his left leg.

And he looked armored.

He was only wearing a civilian jacket—polished tan bantha leather with a high black collar—and plain brown pants, but he had that same presence that all the commandos had. He was ready for something. Given that he was a head shorter than his squad, had a pronounced limp, and yet still looked like trouble, Etain decided he must have once been a formidable soldier. She realized he still was.

“In here, ma'am.” He could make ma'am sound like girl somehow; he could do the same with General. But as a Jedi she had no right to feel affronted by lack of deference. She realized that she simply wished he would like her. “Just a little chat and then you can find General Jusik and catch up on events.”

Yes, Skirata gave the orders.

He ushered her into a side room that turned out to be a cabin with a table, a chair, and narrow bed with a half-packed carryall sitting on it. There was a neat pile of clothing, military-grade fabric equipment cases with unidentifiable lumpy items in them, and a set of sand-gold, battle-scarred Mandalorian armor.

The Force told her this was a tidy room filled with the wretched chaos of broken lives, pain, and misery. She wondered if it was entirely his, but she stopped herself from probing further in case he felt it and reacted. He was a dangerously perceptive man. She had no sense at all of any animosity directed at her.

“That's a fine helmet,” she said. It had detailed crimson and gold sigils, and the alloy section that formed the eyepiece T of the visor was jet black. There were telltale scrapes and gouges as if some huge creature had clawed at it. “Does Fi still have Hokan's armor?”

Skirata nodded. “Certainly has. Niner said he could have it, and he keeps it stashed in his locker.”

Etain thought of Ghez Hokan, and how she had first mistaken Darman for Qiilura's brutal enforcer simply because of that sinister helmet with its T-shaped slit. Fi had the helmet now. And that was because Etain had taken Hokan's head off with her lightsaber, nearly a year and a lifetime ago when she was still not used to killing.

It was red armor with a distinctive gray trim. She recalled that vividly.

Mandalorian helmets didn't look half so fearsome now. The shape was familiar: it was even welcome. But she had somehow forgotten that Skirata, and most of the training sergeants who had been recruited to forge boys like Darman into elite commandos, had been Mandalorian mercenaries handpicked by Jango Fett.

She wondered if she would have seen Skirata the same way nine months earlier, had he been her enemy on Qiilura. “Packing or unpacking?”

“Packing.” He lifted the fabric bags carefully and they made a metallic clunk: weapons. “We can't operate out of here. Officially we're off duty and on indefinite leave.” He laid the armor plates in the bag and layered the clothing between them, then slid in the fabric-cased weapons. It occurred to her that this was probably all he owned, the nomadic mercenary ready to move on to the next war. “Are you squeamish, General? I mean ethically squeamish.”

“I'm a Jedi, Sergeant.”

“Well, that answers a lot of questions I didn't ask.”

“Ask me a specific question.”

“Do you know what black ops means?”

“Oh yes …”

“I thought you might. I had no idea you would be coming back with Omega right now, but you spent four months with Zey on Qiilura turning the locals into guerrillas to fight the Seps, right? And before that you survived when Master Fulier didn't. So I reckon you're pretty handy in a scrap.”

“I know my weaknesses.”

Skirata paused and looked up from his packing. “Best knowledge of all.”

“Just tell me what's at stake,” Etain said.

“Now, there's an interesting request from a Jedi.” He put his hand carefully in the side of the carryall and withdrew a small cloth-wrapped package. When he unwrapped it and held it out in his palm, she could see it held small scan bars mounted on fragments of white plastoid alloy. “For me, stopping more of these. For the Republic, stopping activity that limits the ability of the Grand Army to deploy. For the Senate, showing the Seps that they can't strike here at will. Take your pick!”

She knew what the objects were now: she'd seen them on hundreds of chest plates. They were armor tallies, the identification devices all clone soldiers wore.

“I'll take the first option.” She thought of the other Fi, the one who was no longer alive to be boyishly excited like his namesake at the prospect of seeing the Coruscant that lay beyond the barracks. “You believe I'll be of some use?”

“In urban operations, a woman is always useful, Jedi or not. Another aid to invisibility—old di'kute like me and females like you.”

Skirata smiled and rewrapped the armor tallies. Etain reached into her bag and realized that she had even fewer possessions than this nomad. “And General Jusik is part of this operation? What about Master Zey?”

“General Zey is not officially aware of this.”

“If we're not operating out of here, then where?”

“Oh, somewhere interesting. Give me a couple of days and then we can relocate. Besides, the boys need some rest.”

So he wasn't going to tell her. Fine. “Delta seem a little … different from Omega. I take it you have confidence in them?”

“Oh, they're good lads.” He fumbled in his jacket pockets and pulled out credit chips, scraps of flimsi, and a nasty-looking metal device crested with a row of short, savage spikes and that appeared to have holes for four fingers. She stared. He placed it on the table. “The hormone that makes them hard fighters is the same one that makes them a bit of a handful, too.” The contents of Skirata's jacket continued to pile up on the table. A coil of thin wire, a fifteen-centimeter knife with a tapering three-sided blade, a stubby custom blaster, and a length of heavy, sharp-edged chain joined the cache. “Not that the poor ad'ike are ever off duty, of course. But when you say the word, they're on the case like that.” He snapped his fingers to make the point of immediacy. Yes, she'd seen that.

Skirata took off his jacket, revealing surprisingly broad shoulders and an underarm holster holding what looked like a modified Verpine shatter gun. He hung the garment over the back of a chair. Etain estimated he was still exceptionally fit in the wiry way of small men and continued to revise her view of him as a man who could only train others to fight.

And she had never seen so many instruments devoted to injury and destruction in one man's possession—not even a Republic commando. She indicated the weapons with a cocked head and waited for a hint of why he was carrying them.

Skirata paused, one hand raking his short gray hair.

“What?” he said, looking bemused.

“The … kit.” He was a walking armory. “The weapons.”

“Oh, don't worry.” He clearly didn't understand. “I don't carry many tools when I'm in civilian areas. Don't want to be too conspicuous. Ordo looks after the rest of it. We'll be properly cannoned up when we deploy. Guess what? Got six Verpine sniper rifles. Custom-made and EMP-hardened. Exquisite. Not really rifles, 'cos they don't have rifled barrels, but …” He grinned suddenly, apparently distracted by a thought, and she had a brief and vivid vision of another man entirely. “You haven't met Ordo yet, have you? He's a fine lad. Pride of my heart, really he is. Him and his brothers.”