“I'm not getting any younger,” he said, catching his breath, and laughed. “I'll be black and blue in the morning. Shouldn't try that without body armor.”

“You could have dipped out after a few minutes,” Fi said. He handed him a cloth. “We wouldn't have minded.”

“But I would have. I can't ask a man to do what I can't or won't do myself.”

“You never have.” Fi noted that a small silence had formed around the doorway—and its cause was Besany Wennen. She walked in, looking around, then spotted Ordo and went over to him.

“I'm going out on the balcony to get some air,” Skirata said.

The last thing Fi saw before Obrim led him away to meet some officers who were very keen to buy him more drinks was Besany Wennen dabbing at Ordo's split lip with a handkerchief and berating a visibly surprised Captain Maze.

“Hello,” Skirata said. “I didn't realize you were out here, ad'ika.”

Etain looked up. She had been peering over the balcony at the lane upon lane of airspeeder traffic below. Nightscapes on Coruscant were as entertaining as a holovid. “It's too noisy for me in there. You look like you've been having fun.”

Skirata joined her and rested folded arms on the safety rail. “Been showing CSF the Dha Werda.”

“I bet that was painful.” He seemed a fundamentally good man. She adored him, even if he scared her sometimes. “It's good to see everyone relaxing. It's been tough, hasn't it?”

“We did it, though. All of us. You too, ad'ika. Well done.”

She was blissfully certain of life now. She felt good. She was also certain that Skirata was a man who understood love and the risks people would take to make those they loved happy. He defied generals and anyone who stood in his way to make sure his soldiers—his sons, for that was what they were—got what was rightfully theirs.

There was no reason not to tell him her wonderful news. She should have told Darman first, but she wasn't quite sure how. And—anyway—Skirata was Kal'buir. He was everyone's father.

“Thank you for being so understanding about me and Dar,” she said.

Skirata rubbed his forehead. “I'm sorry for lecturing you. I'm very protective of them all. But you're both happy, and I'm glad to see that.”

“I hope you'll be glad that I'm having a baby, then.”

There was a moment's silence.

“What?” said Skirata.

“I'm pregnant.”

She watched his face harden. “Pregnant?”

She hadn't expected that. An unpleasant coldness spread up from her stomach into her chest.

“Whose is it?” Skirata asked. His voice was level, controlled, distant. It was a mercenary's voice.

That hurt. “Darman's, of course.”

“He doesn't know, then. He'd have told me if he did.”

“No, I haven't told him.”

“Why?”

“How could he cope with that? It's hard enough for a normal—”

“He's not abnormal. He's what you people made him.”

“I meant …” Etain struggled. “I meant that he has no experience to enable him to cope with being a father at a time like this.”

“Nobody ever has.”

“I wanted him to have some kind of future.”

Skirata's face didn't change. “You planned this? How can he have a future if he doesn't know he has a son? Genes don't count for everything.”

“If anyone finds out that I'm expecting a child, I'll be thrown out of the Jedi Order and I won't be able to serve. I have to carry on. I can't let the men down.”

Skirata was furious. She felt it. She could see it, too. And if she thought that was bad, it would be nothing compared with how the Jedi Council would react. She'd be kicked out of the Order. She'd no longer be a general, no longer able to play her part in the war.

But you knew that.

You should have thought that through.

The reality felt very different. And yet she didn't regret it one bit, and that was why she hadn't thought about the Jedi Council's reaction. It was right. The Force had guided her to this point.

“And how are you planning to disguise this fact?” Skirata asked, still cold calm. “It's going to be pretty visible.”

“I can go into a healing trance and accelerate the pregnancy. I can bear this child in five months.” She put her hand on her belly. “It's a boy.”

That was probably the worst thing she could have told Skirata. Etain should have known Mandalorians better by now. The father–son bond was paramount. Every scrap of warmth that he had ever shown her had evaporated: and it devastated her. She had grown to love him as a father, too.

And a good Mando father put his son first.

“In this great plan of yours, then, this plan to give my lad a future, what did you think his son might become? A Jedi?”

“No. Just a man. A man with a normal life.”

“No, ad'ika.” Skirata's hands were thrust in his pockets now. She could see the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing labored with suppressed rage. A little black vortex in the Force opened up around him. “No, Darman's son will be Mandalorian, or he has no son at all. Don't you understand? Unless the kid has his culture and what makes him Mandalorian, he … he has no soul. That's why I had to teach them all, all my boys, what it was to be Mando. Without it they're dead men.”

“I know how important it is.”

“No, I don't think you do. We're nomadic. We have no country. All we have to hold us together is what we are, what we do, and without that we're … dar'manda. I don't know how to explain it … we have no soul, no afterlife, no identity. We're eternally dead.”

Etain repeated dar'manda to herself. “That's how he got his name, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

It began to dawn on her why Skirata and Vau were both so obsessed with teaching their trainees about their heritage. They weren't just giving them a cultural identity: they were literally saving their lives, their very souls. “He'll be a Force-user. That will make him—”

“Are you insane? Do you know what that makes him worth to creatures like the Kaminoans? Do you know how very interested people will be in his genetic material? He's in danger, you di'kut!”

The value of her son's unique genetic heritage had never crossed Etain's mind. She was appalled. She struggled to cope with the hazards that sprang up around her as if from nowhere. “But how can Dar raise him?”

“You didn't ask that question when you started all this? Do you really love him?”

“Yes! Yes, you know I do. Kal, if I don't have his child and he dies—”

“When he dies. He's designed to die young. I'll outlive him. And you're built to live a long time.”

“You said it yourself—just one broad generation of men. Then there's nothing of the clones left eventually, nothing to show they ever lived and served and died. They all deserve better than that.”

“But again, Darman isn't given any choice,” Kal said. “No choice about fighting. No choice about being a father.”

He lapsed into silence, walking to the far side of the balcony and leaning on it, just as he had when she'd seen him agonize over whether he had been a monster, a man who turned small boys into soldiers and sent them to fight the aritedise's war.

Etain waited. There was no point arguing with him. He was right: she took choice out of Darman's hands just as every Jedi general did.

“Kal,” she said.

He didn't turn.

She put a cautious hand on his back. She felt him tense. “Kal, what do you want me to do to make this right? Don't you want at least one of your men to leave something behind him, someone who'll remember him?”

“You can only remember what you know.”

“I'll keep the child safe—”

“You've got a name for him, haven't you? I know it. You know you're expecting a boy so you'll have thought of a name. Mothers do that.”