Mereel sat at the scratched, battered table unwrapping packs of thermal plastoid and working a colorless liquid into them. Fi wanted to get up and look but he was simply too tired. He could see Mereel pressing a hollow into the cakes of brown plastoid with his thumb, pouring in a few drops of the liquid from a small bottle, and then kneading it in with a steady folding motion.

“Ah,” Fi said, remembering.

“Got to add the stabilizer compound before we put it back into stores or else this is going to kill a lot more vode than the bad guys ever could.”

“Want a hand?”

“No. Get some sleep.”

“Where's Sergeant Kal?” Fi had quite enjoyed calling him Kal'buir. But he donned old habits along with his armor. “I hope he hasn't knifed Vau.”

“They're liberating a speeder on behalf of the Skirata Retirement Fund.”

“Come on, he'll never retire.”

“He still wants the speeder. Merc habits die hard.”

Fi found it hard to think of his sergeant as having any interest in a life beyond the army. He spent a while wondering what the man might really want, and apart from a wife to look after him, Fi had problems imagining what that might be. It was the same problem he had with his own dreams. They were intrusive and insistent—but they were limited. He only knew there was something missing, and when he looked at Darman and Etain, he knew what it was; he also wondered how it could work out even if he got it. He wasn't stupid. He could count and calculate odds of survival.

“Good night, ner vod.” He left Mereel to his task and wandered around, unclipping his armor plates as he went and stacking them in a pile by the bedroom door. Black bodysuits and briefs hung drying on every peg and rail. However exhausted they were, the squads still washed their kit conscientiously.

Fi glanced into some of the rooms to check who might be awake and willing to chat, but the Delta boys were all out cold, not even snoring. Niner and Corr slumped in chairs in one of the alcoves with a plate of half-eaten cookies sitting on the small table between them. Darman was stretched out on his bed in the room he shared with Fi, apparently none the worse for his ordeal, and Ordo was curled up in the next room with a blanket pulled over his head. Odd: he always seemed to do that, as if he wanted total darkness.

There was no sign of Jusik or Etain. Farther along the passage, Fi struck lucky. Atin was sitting in the chair in his room, cleaning his armor.

“I'm on watch until Skirata gets back,” he said, without waiting for Fi's question.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“I'm sure Laseema will wait for you.”

“It's not about Laseema.”

“So it's something.”

“You never give up, do you?” Atin had always been the private type, even though he'd settled into a very different squad culture from the one he'd been raised in. There was always something new to learn about a brother who'd been trained in another batch. “Okay, now that the job's done, I've got matters to address with Sergeant Vau.”

“He's not a sergeant any longer.”

“I'm still going to kill him.”

It was just talk. Men said things like that. Fi closed the doors and sat down on the bed opposite.

“I'm supposed to be on watch,” Atin said.

“I made Sev tell me how you got the wound to your face.”

“So now you know. Vau gave me a good hiding for being whiny about surviving Geonosis when my brothers didn't.”

“It's even more than that. You know it. You wouldn't be the first commando to get in a fistfight with his sergeant.”

“You know, I like you better when you're being mindless and funny.”

“We need to know.”

“Usen'ye.” It was the crudest way to tell someone to go away in Mando'a. “It's none of your business.”

“It is if you pick a fight with Vau, and he kills you and we have to get a replacement.”

Atin laid the back plate he was cleaning on the floor and rubbed his eyes. “You want to know? Really? Look.”

He hooked his fingers inside the neck of his bodysuit and jerked down the front panel. The gription seams yielded. It was nothing Fi hadn't seen before in the refreshers: Atin's shoulders and arms were laced with long white streaks of scar tissue. It was common in the GAR. Men got injured in training and in the field, armor or not. But Atin seemed to have acquired more spectacular ones than average.

Scars happened, especially if you didn't get bacta on a wound fast enough.

“Vau gave you those, too, didn't he?”

“Vau nearly killed me, so when I finally got out of the bacta tank, I said I'd kill him one day. Fair enough, yes?”

No wonder Corr said he found commandos a little “relaxed.” They must have seemed dangerously chaotic to a clone trooper raised and trained by sober Kaminoan flash-instruction and simulation.

“Kill is a bit strong,” Fi said. “Break his nose, maybe.”

“Skirata did that already. Look, if Vau felt you lacked the killer edge, he'd crank it up a little. He'd make you fight your brother. We had a choice. We could fight each other until one was too badly hurt to stand up, or we could fight him.”

Fi thought of Kal Skirata, as hard and ruthless as anyone he had ever known, making sure his squads were fed and well rested, finding illicit treats for them, teaching them, encouraging them, telling them how proud they made him. It seemed to work pretty well.

“And?” said Fi.

“I opted to take on Vau. He had a real Mando iron saber, and I was unarmed. I just went at him. I never wanted to kill so badly in my life and he just cut me up. And Skirata beat the osik out of Vau when he found out. They never did get on, those two.”

“So … the thing with Sev. You told Skirata.”

“No, Skirata just found out. I didn't even know he knew me until we met at the spaceport siege.” Atin picked up his plate and started cleaning it again. “So now you know.”

Fi thought that a quick swing at Vau might purge Atin's hatred. Then it occurred to him that his brother was absolutely literal.

“At'ika, ever thought what's going to happen to you if you do kill him?”

“I've killed people outside my legitimate rules of engagement tonight. One more won't make a difference. And I'll die soon enough anyway.”

“Yeah, but there's Laseema.”

Atin paused, cloth gripped in one hand. “Yes, there is.”

“And how are you going to kill Vau anyway?”

“With a blade.” He picked up his right gauntlet and ejected the blade with a loud shunk. “The Mando way.”

This isn't bravado. Fi struggled for a moment, wondering what the right thing to do might be. He's really going to do it.

Fi decided he'd wait near the doors to the landing platform, ready for the moment that Vau walked through them.

Etain found sleep impossible. She sat out on the landing platform with Jusik, meditating. For all the violence of the day she had put behind her, she found a serene core within her that had never been there before, the inner calm she had sought so many years through study and struggle.

All I had to do was have a life beside my own to care for. That is the true detachment we ought to seek, putting another person above ourselves—not denying our emotions. The attachment to self is the path to the dark side.

The intricate silver threads of her child in the Force were more complex now, more interconnected. She sensed purpose and clarity and passion. He would be an extraordinary person. She could hardly wait to get to know him.

And when it was the right time, she would explain what she sensed to Darman. She imagined the joy on his face.

She brought herself out of the trance and Jusik was standing a few meters away, looking out over the ravine of towers in the direction of the Senate.