“Ordo, I'll deal,” Skirata said. “Stand down.”

Ordo simply raised the Verp and held it back against his shoulder without hesitation. Etain imagined he would need to be coaxed into withdrawing: she'd seen the potential violence swirling within him constantly. But he obeyed Skirata without murmur.

The sergeant prodded Jinart with his boot. “You tell me, then, shapeshifer.”

“I observe,” Jinart said. “I watch to see when you move troops to and from Qiilura and how much you send to the farmers by way of aid to keep them loyal. All the things you never tell us, but that show your true intentions. I spy on you.”

“Let me explain something,” Skirata said. “I'm not the Republic. The work I do for them is actually for my own people—these lads here. So if you're not helping me keep my people alive, I'll make certain that Qiilura gets reduced to molten slag. And that's a promise. I'm not a Jedi and I'm not a politician, so I can do pretty well what I like. Your whole species is expendable. Understand?”

Jinart managed to get to her feet, or at least raise herself on her front legs.

“I will identify the people you want. But the Republic must agree to withdraw from Qiilura and remove the colonists within a year.”

“Okay, let's get hold of Zey now,” Skirata said. “If he doesn't agree, we move on and I'm not letting you melt back into the city.”

“Do you know how many of us there are, or where we are?”

“I don't care. Zey might.”

“My people are here, on Coruscant itself. You'll never track us down and we can be far more damaging than bombs.”

“Look, the logistics leaks are a sideshow right now. Save it for Zey.” Skirata opened his comlink. If the general was sleeping, then someone could go and wake him. War didn't keep office hours. “Supervisor Wennen, why don't you make us all some caf?”

He expected some complaint, but none came. She stood up, still clutching her ribs, and made her way unsteadily to the kitchen area.

“It's Besany, Sergeant,” she said.

Yes, she's on our side. Result. “Okay, I'm Kal.”

“Who likes it sweetened?”

“All of us,” Skirata said. “Two big spoonfuls. It's going to be a long night.”

Operational house, Qibbu's Hut, 0200 hours. 385 days after Geonosis

Darman sat cross-legged on the floor next to Jinart, hands clasped in his lap, as if he was watching her. Jinart watched him in return, orange eyes closing occasionally, her legs tucked under her.

Etain sometimes had to look closely to see if Darman was just thinking or actually asleep, because the impression he was making in the Force was so ambiguous. When she knelt beside him to check, though, his eyes were closed. For a brief moment she wondered if Jinart could make telepathic contact with him.

His eyes opened. He glanced behind Etain and then brushed his lips against her cheek.

“No word from Zey yet?”

Etain shook her head. There was nothing to hide any longer and she rested her forehead against his, not caring what anyone else thought: it was impossible to hide their relationship in a tight-knit group of soldiers living in one another's pockets. “He's got to consult people. Even Zey can't make those decisions on his own.”

“You should have been a healer, you know. You're good at it.”

“Well, let's see if I'm any good at healing rifts. I need to clear something up with Kal.”

“Problem?”

“Nothing to worry about.”

Etain knelt back on her heels and stood up in one movement. Skirata was talking to Niner and Ordo by the flimsi sheets on the wall, cleaning his beloved Verpine gun with slow care while they discussed the concentration of Separatists in various locations on the brightly colored 3-D grid of the holochart.

She caught Skirata's eye and beckoned him to follow her. He inclined his head in mute agreement and laid the dismantled Verpine parts on the table beside him, where they sat wrapped in distorted lines of colored light from the holo-chart projection.

They walked onto the landing platform. The strill was asleep on its stomach, all six legs spread out like an ill-shaped furry insect.

“I did something very foolish,” Etain said.

“Again?”

“Ordo.”

Skirata looked stunned then balanced on the brink of anger. “Ordo?”

“No, nothing like that … I used a command that I heard you use. It upset him. I called check to stop him from killing Jinart outright. He told me why I should never use it.”

Skirata blew out a long breath. “And you understand now?”

“Yes. I'm sorry. He … he said he'd shoot me if I ever did it again.”

“He would. Don't ever doubt it.”

“I believe you!”

“I never taught the Nulls that Jedi were their betters, you see, and I never taught them to obey the Republic, and no Kaminoan engineered them to be more cooperative than Jango. But they obey me for some reason, and even then I encourage them to question everything.”

“Is he programmed?”

Skirata looked at her with sudden disgust. Then he simply swung his fist at her without warning, a savage punch, a street brawler's punch. She leapt back and drew her lightsaber in one movement, but his fist went past her head. Deliberately. She could see the calculation on his face. She held her breath, waiting for him to lash out again.

“So are you programmed?” he said.

The blue blade of energy thrummed as she brought the Lightsaber down from a raised position and then thumbed it off, feeling stupid and ashamed.

She was also shocked at Skirata's reflexes: he could have landed that punch, and he clearly wasn't afraid of her lightsaber skills. She would never take him for granted again.

“No. I'm sorry.”

“You should know better than anyone. You've been drilled in weapons handling from the same age that those boys were. Do you think? Or are you so well trained that your body just reacts”—he snapped his fingers—“like that?”

She had reacted all right. Her muscles remembered years of light-saber practice. Her Masters taught her to rely on instinct, on the Force, and not to think.

“I said I'm sorry.”

“And so you should be. I taught all my boys that command from the very start. I drilled them over and over and over until they'd stop whatever they were doing instantly. And I did it for them, for times when it was needed to save them from something.”

“I swear I'll never do it again.”

“Ordo will never trust you now.”

“But it only stopped him for a—”

“—a fraction of a second that could get him killed. You just used him. Like all the aruetiise do.”

Skirata was furious: even in the dim light on the platform she could see that the skin of his neck was flushed, that telltale sign of strong reaction. In the last few weeks Etain sometimes felt that he saw her as the personification of the Republic, using his men for their own agenda, and that she was a handy target on which to vent his spleen. He didn't seem to view Jusik the same way, though.

Exploitation was a raw nerve in Skirata. Etain desperately wanted him to like her and make her feel like family, the way he did everyone else.

“I'll apologize to Ordo.”

“Yeah, it really is him you need to make your peace with.”

She wondered why she hadn't realized that to start with. Do I really see them as men? Do I regret angering Ordo, or do I just want to be Skirata's little girl? She turned on her heel and decided to confront it.

Ordo was having a tense conversation via his bead comlink, forefinger pressed to his ear. Jusik fiddled with some piece of circuitry, glancing up at him from time to time. The side of the conversation that Etain could hear suggested that someone on Zey's staff wasn't moving as fast as Ordo wished.