“Try thinking about your fear next time there's lightning,” Kal said. “Use it.”

He went back to the kitchen area and rummaged through the cupboards for some other snack to keep them going, because they seemed ravenous. As he stepped back into the main room with a white tray of sliced food-board that looked even less appetizing than the tray itself, someone buzzed at the door.

The Nulls immediately went into a defensive pattern. Ordo and Jaing flanked the door, backs hard against the wall, and the other four took cover behind the sparse furniture. Skirata wondered for a second what flash-learning program had taught them that—or at least he hoped it was flash-taught. He waved them away from the door. They hesitated for a moment until he took out his Verpine shatter gun; then they appeared satisfied that he had the situation under some sort of control.

“You scare me,” Skirata said softly. “Now stand back. If anyone's after you, they've got to come through me first, and I'm not about to let that happen.”

Even so, their reaction prompted him to stand to one side as he hit the panel to open the doors. Jango Fett was standing in the corridor outside, a small sleepy child in his arms. The boy's curly head rested on his shoulder. He looked younger than the Nulls, but it was the same face, the same hair, the same little hand clutching the fabric of Jango's tunic.

“Another one?” Skirata said.

Jango glanced at the Verp. “You're getting edgy, aren't you?”

“Kaminoans don't improve my mood. Want me to take him?”

He shoved the shatter gun in his belt and held out his arms to take the boy. Jango frowned slightly.

“This is my son, Boba,” he said. He pulled his head back to gaze fondly at the dozing child's face. This wasn't the Jango that Skirata knew of old; he was pure paternal indulgence now. “Just trying to settle him down. Are you sorted now? I've told Orun Wa to stay away from you.”

“We're fine,” Skirata said. He wondered how he was going to ask the question, and decided blurting it out was probably as good a way as any. “Boba looks just like them.”

“He would. He's been cloned from me, too.”

“Oh. Oh.”

“He was my price. Worth more to me than the credits.” Boba stirred, and Jango carefully adjusted his hold on the kid. “I'll be back in a month. Orun Wa says he'll have some commando candidates ready for us to take a look at as well as the rest of the Alpha batch. But he says he's made them a bit more … reliable.”

Skirata had more questions than seemed prudent under the circumstances. It was natural for a Mando'ad to want an heir above all else, and adoption was common, so cloning was … not that much different. But he had to ask one thing.

“Why do these kids look older?”

Jango compressed his lips into a thin line of disapproval. “They accelerate the aging process.”

“Oh, fierfek.”

“You'll have a company of a hundred and four commandos eventually, and they should be less trouble than the Nulls.”

“Fine.” Did he get help? Were there Kaminoan minders to tackle the routine jobs, like feeding them? And how would the non-Mandalorian training sergeants deal with them? His stomach churned. He put on a brave face. “I can handle that.”

“Yeah, and I'll be doing my bit, too. I have to train a hundred.” Jango glanced at the Nulls, now watching warily from the couch, and began walking away. “I just hope they aren't like I was at that age.”

Skirata pushed the controls, and the door sighed shut. “Okay, lads, bedtime,” he said. He dragged the cushions off the couch and laid them out on the floor, covering them with an assortment of blankets. The boys gave him a hand, with a grim sense of adult purpose that he knew would haunt him for the rest of his days. “We'll get you sorted out with decent quarters tomorrow, okay? Real beds:”

He had the feeling they would have slept outside on the rain-lashed landing pad if he'd asked them to. They didn't seem at all unmanageable. He sat down in the chair and put his feet up on a stool. The Kaminoans had done their best to provide human-suitable furniture, something that struck him as a rare concession given their general xenophobic arrogance. He left the lights on, dimmed, to soothe the Nulls' fears.

They settled down, pulling the blankets over their heads completely. Skirata watched until they appeared to be asleep, laid his Verpine on the shelf beside the chair, and then closed his eyes to let the dreams overwhelm him. He woke with an explosive jerk of muscles a couple of times, a sure sign that he was past the point of tiredness and into exhaustion, and then he fell into an unending black well.

He slept, or so he thought.

A warm weight pressed against him. His eyes jerked open and he remembered he was stranded on a perpetually overcast planet that didn't even seem to be on the star charts, where the local species thought killing human kids was merely quality control.

Ordo's stricken little face looked up into his.

“Kal…”

“You scared, son?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, then.” Skirata shifted position and Ordo scrambled up onto his lap, burying his face in his tunic as if he had never been held or comforted before. He hadn't, of course.

The storm was getting worse. “The lightning can't hurt you here.”

“I know, Kal.” Ordo's voice was muffled. He wouldn't look up. “But it's just like the bombs going off.”

Skirata was going to ask him what he meant, but he knew in an instant that it would make him angry enough to do something stupid if he heard the answer. He hugged Ordo to him and felt the boy's heart pounding in terror.

Ordo was doing pretty well for a four-year-old soldier.

They could learn to be heroes tomorrow. Tonight they needed to be children, reassured that the storm was not a battlefield, and so was nothing to fear.

The lightning illuminated the room in brief, fierce white light: Ordo flinched again. Skirata laid his hand on the boy's head and ruffled his hair.

“It's okay, Ord'ika,” he said softly. “I'm here, son. I'm here.”

Eight years later: Special Forces SO Brigade HQ Barracks, Coruscant, five days after the Battle of Geonosis

Skirata had been detained by Coruscant Security Force officers and for once in his life he hadn't put up a fight.

Technically, he'd been arrested. And now he was the most relieved man in the galaxy, as well as the happiest. He jumped out of the police patrol speeder and winced at the sharp pain in his ankle as he hit the ground. He'd get that sorted out sooner or later, but now wasn't the time.

“Wow, take a look at that,” the pilot said. “They're holding off special ops squads there. You sure there's only six of 'em?”

“Yeah, six is overkill,” Skirata said, discreetly patting his pockets and sleeves to make sure the assorted tools of his trade were in place and ready for use. It was just habit. “But they're probably scared.”

“They're scared?” The pilot snorted. “Hey, you know Fett's dead? Windu topped him.”

“I know,” Skirata said, fighting the urge to ask if he also knew what had happened to little Boba. If the kid was still alive, he needed a dad. “Let's hope the Jedi don't have a problem with all of us Mando'ade.”

The pilot closed the hatch, and Skirata limped across the barracks landing pad. Jedi general Iri Camas, hands on hips with his brown robes flapping in the breeze, watched in a way that Skirata could only describe as suspicious. Two clone troopers waited with him. Skirata thought the Jedi should get his long white hair cut: it wasn't practical or becoming for a soldier to wear his hair to his shoulders.

“Thank you for responding, Sergeant,” Camas said. “And I apologize for the manner of your return. I realize your contract is completed now, so you owe us nothing.”