“Yes sir.”

Hokan lowered the shocker and the Weequay shot out the door, his enthusiasm for his career refreshed. Hokan prided himself on motivational skills.

It’s started, he thought. He shut himself in his room and switched on all the comlink screens. They’re coming to take Qiilura.

Hokan had some idea of what kind of deal Ankkit had with the Separatists. There had been a significant amount of construction work carried out to convert a grain store into the kind of building that had triple-sealed doors, and the type of walls that could be sterilized with extreme heat. Then he’d had to try to make credible bodyguards out of the rabble he employed because important Separatist scientists came and went, and the Neimoidians saw conspiracy everywhere they looked. They weren’t always wrong about that.

Then the Jedi came to Imbraani, and it all fell into place, as neatly as the arrival of the Republic forces now on the planet. There was a military target here.

I’m my father’s son, though. I’m a warrior. Hokan won­dered if all cultures separated from their heritage were un­able to move on, doomed to relive old glories. I’d rather be fighting a worthy opponent than terrorizing farmers who haven’t got the guts to stand up for themselves.

Fighting soldiers also commanded a higher fee, of course.

And the greater the fee, the quicker he would be off this planet and heading … somewhere.

There was no longer a home for him, and few of his kind left. But things could change. Yes, they very well might one day.

Hokan leaned back in the chair and let the chatter of com­links wash over him.

You want to know how clones tell each other apart? Who cares? They’re here to fight, not to socialize.

–Sergeant Kal Skirata

“Get out,” Birhan yelled. “Get out and don’t come back! You’ve brought all this on us. Go on, clear off.”

The farmer shied a clod of dirt at Etain, and she side­stepped it. It broke into dust behind her. The old woman—who wasn’t Birhan’s wife, she’d discovered—came up from behind and grabbed his arm.

“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “If we take care of the Jedi, then they’ll take care of us when the Republic comes.”

Birhan was still staring at Etain as if he was debating whether to go and grab his pitchfork. “Republic my rump,” he said. “Them’s no different to Neimies when it comes to it. We’ll still be bottom of the pile whoever runs the show.”

Etain stood with her arms folded, wondering how the old woman, Jinart, had managed to attach herself to Birhan’s sprawling family. She was an appalling cook and couldn’t have been much help with heavy farm labor. Etain imagined she earned her keep spinning merlie wool like the rest of the elderly Qiilurans she’d met.

But right now, Etain doubted even Jinart’s powers of per­suasion. She decided to try her own again.

“Birhan, you want me to stay,” she said carefully, concentrating as Master Fulier had taught her. “You want to cooperate with me.”

“I rotten well don’t want to cooperate with you, missy,” he said. “And say please.”

She’d never quite mastered Jedi persuasion when under stress. Unfortunately, that was always the time when she needed it.

Jinart nudged Birhan roughly, no mean feat for such a short woman. “If them Jedi have landed, fool, then she’ll bring them around here to sort you out,” she said. “This is no time to make new enemies. And if they haven’t—well, it’ll all blow over and then you’ll have someone who can make things grow. That’s right, innit, girl? Jedi can make crops grow?”

Etain watched the display of rustic logic with growing re­spect. “We can harness the Force to nurture plants, yes.”

That was all too true: she had heard the stories of Padawans joining the agri corps when they didn’t perform well during training. That was all she needed—life on a backwater planet, talking to fields of grain. It wasn’t just the intelligence data she had hidden in her cloak that made her want to get off the planet as fast as she could. Agriculture spelled failure. She didn’t need further reminding of her in­adequacy.

“Yah,” Birhan spat, and trudged off, muttering profanities.

“We all get nervous when Hokan’s thugs start burning down farms,” Jinart said. She took Etain’s arm and steered her back to the barn that had become her home. No, it wasn’t home. There could never be home for her. No loves, no at­tachments, no commitments except the Force. Well, at least it wouldn’t be hard to tear herself away from here. “And killing farmers, of course.”

“So why aren’t you nervous?” Etain asked.

“You’re a cautious child.”

“I have a dead Master. It encourages you somewhat.”

“I have a broader view of life,” Jinart said, not at all like a wool-spinning old woman. “Now you keep yourself safe and don’t go wandering about.”

Etain was developing a Neimoidian level of paranoia and wondered if even her own instincts were deceiving her. She had at least always been able to sense another’s emotions and condition. “So they know where to find me?” she said qui­etly, testing.

Jinart stiffened visibly. “Depends on who they might be,” she said, wafting the pungent scent of merlie as she walked. “I don’t care for urrqal much, and at my time of life there’s little left to covet.”

“You said they were coming.”

“I did indeed.”

“I have no patience for riddles.”

“Then you should have, and you should also be reassured, because they’re here and they’ll help you. But you also need to help them.”

Etain’s mind raced ahead. Her stomach knotted. No, she was falling for carnival fortune-teller’s tricks. She was adding her own knowledge and senses to vague generalities and seeing meaning where there was none. Of course Jinart knew strangers had arrived. The whole of Imbraani had known about Master Fulier, and it was very hard not to know some­thing had happened when vessels crash-landed on your farm, and when every hiding hole in the area was being searched by Hokan’s militia. For some reason or another, Jinart was playing a guessing game.

“When you specify something, I’ll take you seriously,” Etain said.

“You should be less suspicious,” Jinart said slowly, “and you should look at what you think you see much more care­fully.”

Etain opened the barn door and the scent of straw and barq tumbled out, almost solid. She felt suddenly calmer, and even hopeful. She had no idea why. Perhaps Jinart was natu­rally reassuring, as comforting as a grandmother, despite all her odd talk.

Etain couldn’t actually remember a grandmother, or any of her biological family, of course. Family wasn’t familiar or soothing because she had grown up in a commune of Jedi novices, educated and raised and cared for by her own kind, and by that she never meant human.

But family, even from what she had seen briefly of squab­bling farmers’ clans, suddenly seemed desirable. It was diffi­cult to be alone right then.

“I wish I had time to educate you in survival,” Jinart said. “That task will have to fall to someone else. Be ready to come with me when it gets dark.”

Jinart was becoming much more articulate. She was more than she appeared to be. Etain decided to trust the old woman because she was the nearest she had to an ally.

She still had her lightsaber, after all.

Darman came to the edge of the wood and found himself facing an open field the size of Kamino’s oceans.

It seemed like it, anyway. He couldn’t see the boundary on either side of him, just straight across where the trees began again. The rows of grain—steel gray, shining, sighing in the wind—were only waist-high. He was thirty klicks east of RV Gamma, desperate to reach it and get some sleep while waiting for the rest of the squad.