They all stopped in midcrunch. Fi noted Jusik wasn't eating, just watching the sergeant with a rapt expression. The young general had a very bad dose of the Skiratas. As diseases went, it was one of the best to catch.

“So do we get to drop them, or do we have to do the boring thing and let them stroll off?” Boss asked. Niner gave him one of his funny looks, the kind that said he thought a bit of quiet contemplation was called for. Niner and Boss didn't see their newly reduced roles in quite the same way: Niner liked to lead by being certain, and Boss seemed to like being first. “This is a tracking job, right?”

“Vau made you into very impatient boys,” Skirata said. “Yes, this is where it gets boring. And you know what? You won't be any less dead if you get it wrong.” He picked up some shuura fruits and lobbed one each to the Delta team. “And I really hope Vau schooled you well in this, because I'll be pretty hacked off if you get trigger-happy and blow this op.”

Boss looked hurt. Fi didn't think Delta ran to such delicate emotions. “We're pros, Sarge. We know how to do this.”

“What did I tell you?”

“Sorry. Kal. It's just that we haven't even seen the enemy yet.”

“Welcome to anti-terror ops, hotshot. They aren't droids. They don't line up and march at you. Didn't you listen to any of my lectures?”

“Well—”

“They can kill you and not even be on the planet when it happens. But you can track and kill them the same way. This is about patience and attention to detail.”

“Delta's really good at that, so I hear,” Fi said. Sev gave him that blank cold stare. It simply provoked Fi all the more. “That's why they do their op planning with finger paints.”

Skirata lobbed a rolled-up ball of flimsi at Fi and it hit him in the ear—hard. “Okay, Ordo is going to score some credible explosives over the next few days, because that's going to be handy if we need to infiltrate the cells. And we'll start surveillance of the drop point now because we don't have a time window when the explosives were due to be picked up. Four shifts—Fi and Sev as Red Watch, relieved by Dar and Boss as Blue Watch, relieved by Niner and Scorch as Green Watch.”

Fi noted Atin's process of elimination. He looked as if he'd been doused in cold water. Fi suspected he'd wanted to be paired with Sev, and for all the wrong reasons.

“That leaves you and Fixer as White Watch, so you stay focused,” Skirata said, giving Atin a friendly prod in the chest. He'd spotted it, too. But then, Skirata spotted everything. “One watch on observation, one on intel collation, and two stood down.”

“What about everyone else?”

“Ordo's going undercover to find our mole, and Bardan and Etain will join the normal shift rotations until we need to break into a new phase. If needed, Vau and Enacca will turn to as well, and give us a hand.”

Jusik—looking convincingly unsavory in ordinary clothing and with his hair unbound—checked his snazzy S-5 blaster. Yes, Zey would go nuts when he saw the bill for this op. “Can we use the Force, Kal?”

“ 'Course you can, Bard'ika. As long as nobody notices. Or as long as you don't leave witnesses, anyway. Same goes for lightsabers. No witnesses. Might look a bit obvious.”

“When do we start?” Boss asked.

Skirata looked at his chrono. “Three hours. Time to eat, I think.”

Sev elbowed Fi, a little too hard to be friendly but not hard enough to start a fight. “So, you and me. The brains and the mouth. Don't get me killed.”

“I'm slumming it. I usually work with ARC captains.” Watching normal people leading normal lives? I'd rather charge a droid line. What happened to my certainty? Do the others feel like this? “But there's a war on, so sacrifices have to be made.”

“Can you do the dumb-trooper act?”

“You mean you're not doing it now?”

“I hope you're as good as you talk, ner vod.”

“Count on it,” Fi said, and noted that Darman had wandered off in the direction of Etain's exit. “Sometimes I'm not very funny at all.”

* * *

Etain felt she had held out pretty well, all things considered.

It was only when she closed the refresher door that she let herself vomit uncontrollably until tears spilled down her face and into her mouth. She ran water into the basin to cover the sound, and choked on her sobs.

She'd been so convinced she could handle it. And she couldn't.

Ripping into Orjul's soul had been even harder than outright physical violence. She had stolen his conviction from him, which was no great evil until set in the context of the fact that he would, she knew, die very soon without even the comfort of his beliefs, broken and abandoned and alone.

Why am I doing this? Because men are dying.

When do the ends cease to justify the means?

She vomited until she was convulsed by dry heaves. Then she filled the basin with cold water and plunged her head into it. When she straightened up and her vision cleared, she looked into a face she recognized. But it wasn't hers: it was the hard, long face of Walon Vau.

Everything I've been taught is wrong.

Vau was all brutality and expedience, as clear an example of the dark side for a Jedi as any she could imagine. And yet there was a total absence of conscious malice in him. She should have sensed anger and murderous intent, but Vau was just filled with … nothing. No, not nothing: he was actually calm and benign. He thought he was doing good work. And she saw her supposed Jedi ideal in him—motivated not by anger or fear, but by what she thought was right. She now questioned everything she'd been taught.

Dark and light are simply the perpetrator's perception. How can that be right?

How can Vau's passionless expedience be morally superior to Ski rata's anger and love?

Etain had struggled for years with her own anger and resentment. The choices were to be a good Jedi or a failed Jedi, with the assumption—sometimes unspoken, sometimes not—that failure meant the dark side awaited.

But there was a third path: to leave the Order.

She wiped her face on the towel and faced a hard realization. She remained a Jedi because she knew no other life. She pitied Orjul not because she had tortured him, but because he had been robbed of the one thing that held him together, his convictions, without which he had no direction. The truth was that she pitied herself—devoid of direction—and projected it onto her victim by way of denial.

The only selfless thing I have ever done that was not centered on my own need to be a good, passionless, detached Jedi was to care about these cloned men and ask what we're doing to them.

And that was her direction.

It was so very clear; but she was still raw and aching within. Revelation didn't heal. She sat on the edge of the tub with her head resting on her knees.

“Ma'am, what's wrong?” It was Darman's voice. It should have been the same as every other clone's, but it wasn't. They all had their distinct nuances in accent, pitch, and tone. And he was Dar.

She could sense Darman across star systems now. She'd wanted to reach out to him in the Force many times, but feared it might distract him from his duty and endanger him, or—if he knew it was her and didn't welcome it—annoy him.

After all, he'd had the choice of staying on Qiilura with her. And he had opted to stay with his squad. What she felt for him now, the longing that had developed only after they parted, might not be mutual.

He called out again. “Are you okay?”

She opened the doors, and Darman peered in.

“I don't want to be ma'am right now, Dar.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt—”