Kal remembered, all right. “Yeah, if I'd known then that I'd need him I'd have been a little more careful.”

“I think I can propose an idea he might find attractive.”

“Would that involve leaving bruises?”

“I wasn't planning to injure him. Just point out that if troopers were actually allowed leave in considerable numbers, it would reassure the public, too. Eventually we become invisible.” Ordo pondered, that tell tale little frown creasing his brow. Sometimes his staggering intellect and perfect recall didn't help him process the real world one bit, at least not where Skirata was concerned. “Let me try, Kal'buir. I promise I'll be more diplomatic.”

“It was a joke, Ord'ika. I think you'd probably stand as much chance of charming him as I would right now.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

It wasn't a rhetorical question. Skirata was mortified. It was all too easy to swagger out of the meeting full of aggressive confidence and forget that Ordo—muscular, lethal, the ultimate soldier—was vulnerable to the approval of one person alone: him. It was as if Ordo became that literal, trusting child again, the one who had decided that the only person in the galaxy who would ever look out for him and his brothers was a down-on-his-luck mercenary who didn't much like Kaminoans.

“I didn't mean it literally.” Skirata reached up and ruffled his hair just like he'd done when Ordo was a scared little kid, terrified by the lightning on Kamino, except he hadn't had to reach quite so far in those days. “You're my pride and joy. You couldn't be smarter or better or braver, any of you.”

Ordo looked blank for a moment and then managed a smile, but it was the placatory gesture of a child under threat. “I know I have gaps in my knowledge.”

“Oh, son … I'm going to change that. For all of you.”

“I know, Kal'buir” His trust was transparent and absolute. “You're our protector and we'll always serve you.”

Skirata winced. Faith was devastating if you weren't up to being a god.

But I don't regret it. No, not a second of it.

Logistics center, Grand Army of the Republic, Coruscant Command HQ, 370 days after Geonosis

“You're not on the authorized personnel list for this center,” said the security droid at the doors.

Ordo reached past it and tapped a memorized code into the door panel. The sentry was a solid block with four arms, a head shorter than he was. “Well done. You're right to challenge me.”

“Sir—”

Ordo reached into his belt and took out a stylus probe. The droid was fast, but not fast enough to avoid the probe Ordo slipped silently into the command port in its chest. There was a chack-chack-chack of memory drives and motors stalling for a moment, and then the droid seemed placated.

“You appear to be on the authorized personnel list,” it said. “You have access to all areas including those restricted to staff officers, without on-site security tracking.”

“Excellent,” Ordo said, walking through the doors into the polished white marble lobby. “I'm a very private person.”

And it was easy to be private when you were in armor. Nobody took much notice of a clone inside the GAR complex, not even one wearing an ARC trooper captain's livery.

It was simply a matter of looking as if you had every right to be going about your business. And the Null squad's proper business was anything Kal Skirata deemed it to be. Right now that meant identifying a method of inserting covert surveillance into Logistics, the most likely place for a mole who could relay very precise information on transport and contractor movements to the Separatists.

Ordo took out his datapad and consulted it frequently as if he were here for a routine visit. Without the possibility of eye contact, none of the civilian staff seemed even to register his presence. The white armor here was usually clone troopers who were physically unfit for front-line service, Engineer Corps, or ARC troopers carrying out occasional inspections for their generals.

After striding into a few offices, startling the droids and getting an occasional glance from civilian technicians, Ordo walked into the operations room at the heart of the logistics wing, and struck gold.

It was a large circular room with walls that were covered in live holocharts of troop and materiel movements. It danced with brilliant light and color, a HUD on a grand scale. At the room's heart was a large multistation desk staffed by two droids, four humans, six Sullustans, three Nimbanese, and …

… one clone trooper, minus his helmet.

“Excellent,” Ordo said aloud.

The clone trooper jumped to his feet and saluted, even though it was technically a poor example of protocol to do so without his helmet in place. Ordo returned the salute anyway.

“Problem with your helmet, trooper?”

The man lowered his voice. “It makes the civilians edgy, sir. They prefer to see my eyes.”

Ordo bristled. He would never defer to civilians' whims. “I'm carrying out a routine survey for General Camas.” He didn't give the man his designation. Alpha ARCs rarely bothered to identify themselves to the lower ranks. He glanced at the civilians: one of the Nimbanese and a human female looked up at him. The pale reptilian Nimbanel was interesting as a detail, but the human female was enough to make him stop, stare, and note her as suspicious. She smiled at him. He still had his helmet on, but she smiled at him, and she was shockingly beautiful; both those facts were, worrying in an administrative department. She looked down at her data console, lost in her work again, and flicked long pale blond hair over one shoulder.

“Trooper,” Ordo said. He beckoned the man to him. “I'd like you to brief me on the operation of this unit.”

They walked outside the main doors, and Ordo removed his helmet to look a brother in the eye and give him due respect. His glove's tally scanner told him the man was CT-5108/8843, an EOD operative: a bomb disposal expert, the kind of man who disarmed booby traps and UXBs so that other troopers could advance, the kind of man who could do work that even droids could not.

The explosives connection wasn't lost on Ordo for one moment.

“What's your name?”

The trooper hesitated. “Corr, sir,” he said quietly.

“And what brings you here?”

Corr paused and then pulled off his gauntlets.

He had no hands.

They had been replaced by two simple prosthetics, so basic that they didn't have a synthflesh coating, just the bare durasteel mechanism. Ordo didn't even have to ask how he had acquired them. Somehow losing both hands was shocking in a way that losing one was not. Hands defined humanity.

“There's a parts shortage, sir, what with there being so many men injured and needing prosthetics,” Corr said apologetically. “And these aren't good enough for me to do my job in the front line. As soon as the parts come through, I'll be back, though.”

Ordo knew what Kaibuir would have said then, and he was moved to do the same, but this wasn't the time or the place. He held back. “Do they treat you properly here?”

Corr shrugged. “Fine. Actually, sir, the civilians tend not to speak to me that much, except for Supervisor Wennen. She's very kind to me indeed.”

Ordo could see it coming. “Wennen would be the blond woman, yes?”

Corr nodded, his expression noticeably softened. “Besany Wennen. She doesn't approve of the fighting, sir, but she doesn't let it affect her work and she's looking after me very well.”

Poor naïve trooper. “How well?”

“We have lunch together and she's taken me to visit the Galactic Museum.”

Fascinating. Ordo had learned the wisdom of mistrust at a very early age. Glamorous woman, EOD expert, logistics hub: he could work it out. Not starting his observation here would have been stupid, but there was little to be gained from crashing in yet.