“Four.”

“Four? You said there were millions of you! What use is four going to be?”

“We’re commandos. Special forces. You understand that term?”

“Obviously not. How are four ten-year-olds going to storm Uthan’s complex?”

It took him a few moments to realize she was being sar­castic. “We fight differently.”

“You’re going to have to be very different indeed, Dar­man.” She looked absolutely crushed, as if he’d let her down simply by showing up. “Are you really ten years old?”

“Yes. Our growth is accelerated.”

“How can we possibly train competent soldiers in that time?”

“It’s very intensive training.” He was finding it hard not to say ma’am each time. “They created us from the best genetic stock. From Jango Fett.”

Etain raised her eyebrows, but said nothing else. Then she stood up, reached for a basket balanced on a low beam, and handed it to him. It was full of odd round items that smelled edible, but he thought he’d check anyway.

“Is this food?”

“Yes. The local bread and some sort of steamed cake. Nothing exciting, but it’ll fill you up.”

Darman bit into a lump that yielded slightly in his fingers. It was glorious. It was strongly flavored and chewy and among the most satisfying meals he had ever eaten: not quite on the scale of uj cake, but so far from the odorless, tasteless, textureless field rations that it might well have been.

Etain watched him carefully. “You must be starving.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“That doesn’t say much for army food.”

Darman reached into his belt and pulled out a dry ration cube. “Try this.”

She sniffed it and bit into it. The expression of vague dis­belief on her face changed slowly into one of revulsion. “It’s appalling. There’s nothing in it.”

“It’s the perfect nutritional profile for our requirements. It has no smell, so the enemy can’t detect it, and no fiber, so we excrete minimal waste products that would enable us to be tracked, and—”

“I get the idea. Is that how they treat you? Like farm ani­mals?”

“We don’t go hungry.”

“What do you like doing?”

He really didn’t know what answer she was after. “I’m a good shot. I like the DC-seventeen—”

“I meant in your free time. Do you get free time?”

“We study.”

“No family, of course,” she said.

“Yes, I’ve got squad brothers.”

“I meant—” She checked herself. “No, I understand.” She pushed the basket of bread closer to him. “My life hasn’t been that much different from yours, except the food was better. Go on. You can finish the whole lot if you want.”

And he did. He tried not to watch while Etain wrung water from her robe and shook out her boots. She made him feel uncomfortable but he didn’t know why, apart from the fact that she wasn’t quite the Jedi commander he had been so thoroughly trained to expect.

The only females he could recall were Kaminoan medical technicians whose quietly impersonal tones intimidated him more than a yelling drill sergeant. And his platoon had once experienced an unpleasantly memorable lecture in encryp­tion techniques from a female Sullustan.

He feared females. Now he feared his Jedi officer and was also agitated by her in a way that he didn’t even have a word for. It didn’t feel acceptable.

“We need to move on,” he said. “I have to make the RV point. I’ve been out of comm contact with my squad for nearly two days, and I don’t even know if they’re alive.”

“This gets worse by the second,” she said wearily. “First we have four. Now we might be down to one.”

“Two. Unless you have other duties.”

“You’ve seen me fight.”

“You’re a Jedi. A commander.”

“That’s a title, not an assessment of my ability. I’m not exactly the best of the best.”

“You must be. I know what Jedi can do. Nobody can de­feat you as long as you have the Force.”

She gave him a very odd smile and picked up the holo-chart sphere. She seemed to be struggling to find her thread again. She swallowed a few times. “Show me where your RV point is—that’s right, isn’t it? RV? Show me where it is on this chart.”

Darman took out his datapad and linked his mission charts with the image projected from the sphere. He pointed to the coordinates.

“It’s here,” he said. “Before we set out on exercises or mis­sions, we agree where we’ll meet up if anything goes wrong. We had to bail out when our transport crashed, so we’re scat­tered, and the procedure is that we go to an RV point for a set time window.”

He zoomed in on the area northwest of Imbraani. Etain tilted her head to follow.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Primary target. Uthan’s facility.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Intel said—”

“No, that’s the Separatist base. Their garrison.” Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning the chart. She pointed. “This group of buildings is the facility. You can see. Look.” She su­perimposed the floor plans of the facility with the layout of the farm buildings and shrank the image to fit. They lined up perfectly.

Darman’s stomach knotted. “My squad will be heading for the Separatists, then.”

“We’d better make sure we intercept them,” Etain said. “Or they’ll run smack-bang into a hundred droids.”

Darman was suddenly on his feet in one move, even be­fore he’d realized that he’d heard someone coming.

“I don’t think so,” a woman’s voice said. “Because the droids are all heading for Imbraani.”

Darman’s sidearm was out of his belt and aimed before Etain could even turn her head.

There is something very touching about them. They look like soldiers; they fight like soldiers; and sometimes they even talk like soldiers. They have all the finestqualitiesof the fighting man. But behind that is nothing–no love, no family, no happy memory that comes from having truly lived. When I see one of these men killed, I weep more for him than for any ordinary soldier who has lived a full and normal life.

–Jedi General Ki-Adi-Mundi

Darman had flattened Jinart’s face against the wall and put his blaster to her head in the time it took Etain to jump to her feet.

“Steady there, boy,” Jinart said quietly. “I mean you no harm.”

He had her pinned securely. The expression on his earnest face was entirely benign, so far divorced from the potential violence he was ready to mete out that Etain shuddered.

“Let her go, Darman,” she said. “She’s a fellow Jedi.”

Darman stood back instantly and let Jinart go.

“I’m not a Jedi, I tell you,” Jinart said irritably. She looked up into Darman’s face. “So you’d shoot an old woman, would you?”

“Yes ma’am,” Darman said. Etain stared, horrified. “Threats come in all guises. Not all soldiers are young males, and not all soldiers wear uniforms.”

Etain waited for Jinart to aim a kick at his groin, but the old woman broke into a satisfied grin. “There’s a sensible boy,” she said. “You’ll do well. Trust this one, Etain. He’s very good at his job.” She peered at the blaster, still firmly in his grip. “DC-seventeen, I see.”

“There are four of them,” Etain said, expecting Jinart to react with the same disappointment she had.

“I know.” The woman handed Etain a bundle of rags. “A complete squad of clone commandos. Here, dry clothing. Nothing chic, but at least it’s clean. Yes, I know all about them. I’ve been tracking the other three.”

“They’re okay?” Darman was all anxiety again, still emit­ting that same sense of child that Etain found hard to bear. “I’ve got to rejoin them. Where are they?”

“Heading north.”

“To RV Gamma.”

“Whatever you say, lad. You’ve all led me on something of a dance. You’re a challenge to track.”

“That’s how they trained us, ma’am.”