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  “What’s it like being a soldier?” he asked.

  Munin shrugged. “Often boring. Sometimes scary. You travel a lot. You make the best friends you could ever have. You really live. And sometimes—you die too early.”

  “Do I have to follow orders?”

  “Orders keep you alive.”

  It wasn’t quite dusk, but Falin could hardly keep his eyes open, and he sank into a delicious numb fatigue as the world receded. He tried to stay in that twilight state because sleep inevitably brought the dreams; but he was just too tired. At one point he was aware of being picked up and carried, but he didn’t wake fully and the last thing he felt was settling into a pile of warm blankets in one of the shelters that smelled of machine oil, smoke, and dried fish.

  It was then that the dream started again. He knew he was dreaming, but it didn’t help. He walked through the front doors of the house on Surcaris, all the walls shattered and fallen with just the doors left intact, and he didn’t recognize what he stepped on as his mother until he saw the blue fabric of her favorite tunic. He looked around for his father.

  Papa was lying by the remains of the window, and Falin knew something wasn’t right, but it took him a few moments to work out that most of his father’s head was missing. He knelt down to take the knife from his father’s belt and thought he saw him move.

  It was always then that he woke up. It hadn’t been like that in real life—he’d huddled next to the bodies for ages before he decided he had to run and hide, and took the knife to defend himself—but in the dream, it was all faster, different, more horrible. He jerked awake, heart pounding.

  “Papa’s head…,” he sobbed. “Papa’s head’s broken.”

  Munin Skirata hugged Falin to his chest. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m here, son. I’m here. It’s just a bad dream.”

  “I want it to stop. I want to stop seeing Papa’s head.”

  Munin didn’t yell at him for crying. He just held him until he stopped. Falin clung to him and sobbed until he couldn’t get his breath anymore. He realized that the three-sided knife was on his belt now, in a new leather sheath, and he didn’t know where that had come from.

  “It’ll stop, Kal,” Munin said. “I promise. And nobody’s ever going to hurt you while I’m around. You’re going to grow up strong, and you’re going to be happy.”

  Falin decided he didn’t mind being called Kal if it made the nightmare go away. Somehow, the two things were now connected: if he stopped being Falin, he stopped seeing his parents’ bodies. Munin Skirata sounded so certain and felt so strong and solid that Falin believed him. You could change if you wanted to. You could do anything if you wanted to.

  “I’m not really a nibral, am I?”

  “’Course not, Kal,” Munin said quietly. “I shouldn’t have said it. There’s no word for what you are in Mandalorian.”

  Falin—Kal—didn’t understand. He looked up into Munin’s face for an explanation.

  “Hero,” Munin said. “We don’t have a word for hero. But you’re a real little hero, Kal Skirata.”

  Kal Skirata. It was who he was going to be from this moment onward. He fell asleep again, and when he woke the next morning—no dreams, no nightmares—he saw that the world was a different place.

  Chapter Two

  Arca Barracks,

  Special Operations Brigade HQ, Coruscant,

  736 days after the Battle of Geonosis—second anniversary of the outbreak of war

  Ba’jur bal beskar’gam,

  Ara’nov, aliit,

  Mando’a bal Mand’alor—

  An vencuyan mhi.

  Education and armor,

  Self-defense, our tribe,

  Our language and our leader—

  All help us survive.

  —Rhyme taught to Mandalorian children to help them learn the Resol’nare—the six tenets of Mando culture

  Scorch raised his rifle and sighted up on the two sergeants on the parade ground below the window.

  The DC-17’s upgraded optics were a definite improvement on the last version. The reticule settled on Kal Skirata within a narrow imaginary band level with his eyes and the indentation at the base of his skull; a perfect cranial vault shot, the ideal for instant incapacitation. Scorch could see the Mandalorian’s mouth moving as he spoke to Walon Vau.

  Yeah, it’s getting like downtown Keldabe around here. It’s not as if I don’t like the guy. But…

  Sergeant Vau—and he would always be Sergeant Vau, civilian or not—was the nearest Scorch had to a father. Vau and Skirata seemed to be deep in conversation, both talking at once while they stared down at the ferrocrete surface of the parade ground, no eye contact at all. It was a weird thing to be doing at daybreak.

  “I thought you said you could lip-read,” Sev said, munching on a handful of spiced warra nuts.

  “I can, but he’s not making sense.”

  “Maybe they’re talking Mando’a.”

  “I can lip-read Mando’a just fine, mir’sheb…”

  “You’d think they’d have the sense to wear their buckets and use the internal comlink.”

  “Maybe it’s nothing confidential.” Scorch could smell the pungent spice on the nuts from across the room. “Look, you know what happens when you stuff your face with those things. You get indigestion and wind. And I’m not going to put you over my shoulder and burp you.”

  Sev belched. “You’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

  “Make yourself useful and take a look, will you?”

  Sev made a long, low rumbling noise at the back of his throat, finished the handful of nuts, and sighted up with his own Deece. He was a sniper. He spent even more time staring through optics than Scorch did.

  “They’re reciting something,” he said at last, and leaned his Deece against the wall again to sit on his bunk and resume munching. “They’re both saying the same words.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “Don’t know. Can’t make it out.”

  For as long as Scorch could remember, Skirata and Vau had been at loggerheads about everything from tactics and how to motivate troops to the color of the mess walls, sometimes to the point of fistfights. But the war seemed to have softened their outlook. There was no affection between them—not as far as Scorch could see—but something kept them together as brother warriors, tight and secret.

  Neither of them needed to be here. Vau’s bank raid—and they didn’t talk about that, no sir—had probably netted millions. They were men with a mission, driven by something Scorch didn’t quite understand.

  He cranked up the magnification. But it didn’t help. “Maybe they’re having a really boring conversation.”

  “It’s names,” said Sev at last. “They’re reciting names.” Scorch sighted up again, transfixed. “How old is Skirata?”

  “Sixty, sixty-one, something like that.”

  “What’s that in clone years?”

  “Dead.”

  It was a sobering thought, and Scorch wondered why it hadn’t struck him that way before. He’d never worried about getting old. He never thought he’d survive, for all Delta Squad’s general bluster that the Separatist hadn’t been born who could kill them.

  “You think the crazy old barve is going to find his magic cure?” he asked.

  Sev tossed a nut in the air and caught it in his mouth. “For what?”

  “Our premature exit from this life. He is always talking about it.”

  Sev rumbled again. “I still reckon he killed Ko Sai. And I still reckon he got her research, and that’s why he killed her, to shut her up. So yeah, I’d bet on him finding a way to stop us aging so fast.”

  Scorch suspected that Vau was as deeply involved in the death of Kamino’s renegade cloner as Skirata; he was still fiercely loyal to Vau, because the man was the reason Delta were all still alive today, one of a handful of squads that had survived intact since the Kamino days. Vau raised survivors. “You’re not going to mention that to Zey, are you, Sev?”


  “Nah. I hate giving him sleepless nights.”

  “But if Sergeant Kal’s got Ko Sai’s research, why hasn’t he started dishing out the cure? It’s been nearly six months since he gave you her head.”

  “You make it sound like a birthday present,” Sev said. “Maybe he can’t make some of the formula work. Or he’s just milking the Republic for all he can get before he bangs out with his stash.”

  “Kal wouldn’t leave without his precious Nulls.” Scorch turned to look at Sev and met a raised eyebrow. “Would he?”

  “If they deserted, would you shoot them?” Sev asked.

  Scorch shrugged, trying to look disinterested, but the idea of putting a round through a brother clone didn’t sit well with him. The Nulls were Skirata’s adopted sons, too, his precious little boys even if they were grown men—big men, dangerous men—and if any barve so much as looked at them the wrong way, Skirata would have his guts for garters.

  Even us.

  “We wouldn’t have to,” Scorch said. “You heard all about Palpatine’s death squad standing by if we step out of line.”

  “Don’t avoid the question. Would you shoot them if ordered?”

  “Depends,” Scorch said at last.

  “Orders are orders.”

  “Depends who’s giving them.”

  “The longer this war goes on, the less I feel the Nulls are on the same side as us.”

  Scorch knew what Sev meant, but he thought it was a harsh judgment all the same. He couldn’t imagine the Nulls siding with the Seps. They were crazy, unpredictable, even Skirata’s private army, but they weren’t traitors.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing his helmet and heading for the doors. “Let’s see what the old guys are up to. I can’t stand the suspense any longer.”

  The parade ground was a platform edged with a low retaining wall and a border of manicured bushes, all trimmed to regulation height—there was such a thing, Scorch was certain—and it didn’t see many parades. More often than not these days, it stood empty except for the occasional impromptu game of bolo-ball. The two veteran sergeants stood in the center of it with heads slightly bowed, oblivious of the commandos approaching.

  But Skirata was never really oblivious of anything. Nor was Vau. They had eyes in their backsides, those two. Scorch still hadn’t worked out how they’d managed to keep such a close eye on their respective training companies back in Tipoca City. To a young clone, they’d seemed like omniscient gods who could not be deceived, evaded, or outsmarted, and they still came pretty close now.

  Scorch could hear the mumbling rumble of low voices. It had a sort of rhythm to it. Yes, they were reciting a list. Now that he could hear, he caught sounds he recognized.

  Names.

  They were reciting names.

  Sev was the first to hesitate. He caught Scorch’s elbow. “I don’t think we should interrupt them, ner vod.”

  Skirata turned slowly, lips still moving, and then Vau looked up.

  “You want to join in, ad’ike?” Vau said kindly, and he was not a kindly man. “Just commemorating brothers gone to the manda. You forgotten what day it is?”

  Scorch had, although it should have been etched in his memory. Seven hundred and thirty-six days ago, all ten thousand Republic commandos had been deployed to Geonosis with the rest of the Grand Army at zero notice, a scramble to board ships that left no time for farewells to their training sergeants. Of the ten thousand men who shipped out, only five thousand had come back.

  Scorch felt like a fool. He knew what the two sergeants were doing now, and why: they were reciting the names of fallen clone commandos. It was a Mandalorian custom to honor dead loved ones and comrades by repeating their names daily. He wondered if they went through all those thousands every single day.

  “You didn’t memorize every name, did you, Sarge?” Sev asked.

  “We remember every lad we trained, and we always will,” Skirata said quietly, but Scorch saw that he kept glancing down at a datapad clutched in his hand. Five thousand names—plus those killed after the Battle of Geonosis—was an impossible feat of memory even for Skirata’s devotion. “The rest… we only need a little prompting.”

  Scorch couldn’t now name half the squads in his batch at the Tipoca training center, let alone the men in them. He felt ashamed, as if he’d betrayed them. Vau gave him a nod and gestured with his own datapad, indicating he was transmitting, and when Scorch checked the ’pad clipped to his belt the list was there, highlighted at the company currently being recited. He joined in the reading obediently. So did Sev.

  There were many clones with identical nicknames based on their numbers—a lot called Fi, or Niner, or Forr—and it gave Scorch a shudder to say the name Sev more than once.

  It probably didn’t do much for Sev’s morale, either. Scorch glanced at him, but he looked unmoved as usual, eyes fixed on his datapad.

  “Baris, Red, Kef…”

  “…Vin, Taler, Jay…”

  “…Tam, Lio…”

  The list went on. After a few minutes, their voices synchronized; there was a strange hypnotic feel to it, like an incantation, a rhythm and pitch that left Scorch almost in a trance. It was just the effect of simple repetition, but it still unsettled him. He wasn’t the mystic sort.

  Behind him, he heard the faint crunch of boots, but he didn’t dare break the spell and turn to look. Other commandos were joining the ritual. There were never many men in the barracks at any one time, but it seemed like they were all turning out to pay their respects.

  So many names.

  Is mine going to be on that list this time next year?

  Fi was on it; Fi, RC-8015, Omega Squad’s sniper. Skirata didn’t even blink when he said the name, and neither did Vau, even though word was getting around that Fi wasn’t dead. It was a strange moment, repeating the mouthy little di’kut’s name as if he were gone. Scorch, feeling suddenly guilty at escaping so much personal bereavement, saw Sev take a slow look to his left as if he’d spotted someone. Scorch didn’t want to break his concentration. He didn’t look to see what had distracted Sev.

  Reciting the list of the fallen took well over an hour. Eventually, when the last name was read, Skirata and Vau stood silent for a moment with their heads bowed. Scorch felt he’d been woken abruptly, suddenly aware of sound and harsh sunlight as if he’d stepped out of a dark room, and he was almost expecting some momentous end to the ceremony; but in typical Mandalorian style, it simply ended because all that needed to be said had been said.

  Skirata looked up. A couple of hundred commandos had assembled, some with helmets and some without, each man in individual painted armor that looked incongruously cheery for such a solemn event. But that was very Mando, too. Life went on and was there to be lived to the full, and constant remembrance of lost friends and family was an integral part of that. Aay’han. That was the word for it: a peculiarly Mandalorian emotion, a strange blend of contentment and sorrow when safely surrounded by loved ones and yet recalling the dead with bittersweet intensity. The dead were never shut out. Skirata’s DeepWater-class submersible was called Aay’han. That said a lot about the man.

  “What are you waiting for, ad’ike?” Skirata asked. He always called them that: little sons. Scorch wondered if he’d formally adopted all his squads. That was Skirata all over. “Just make sure I don’t have to add any of your names next year, or I’ll be very annoyed.”

  “You reckon there’ll be a next year, Sarge?” The commando who asked wasn’t a guy Scorch knew, but then Delta kept to themselves. His armor was decorated with navy-blue and gold chevrons. “I like to plan ahead. Who knows, I might have a social engagement…”

  Skirata hesitated for a moment. “You know how the war’s gone so far. Maybe we’ll all be here in ten years.”

  “Your grandson will be big enough for full armor by then.”

  There was a ripple of laughter and Skirata smiled sadly. Scorch expected him to be happier at the mention of the baby boy that one of his
kids—his biological kids—had dumped on him. He certainly seemed to dote on the child. But it looked as if something had taken the happy grandfatherly gloss off the situation.

  “My dearest wish,” Skirata said, “is that you all get to see him grow up.”

  Well, it wasn’t a day for hilarity anyway. They’d just stood there on a big, empty parade ground and recited the names of thousands of dead brothers, so Scorch felt it was a suitably downbeat note to end on. Nobody was singing much about darasuum kote—eternal glory—these days, although Scorch thought a verse of Vode An might have been appropriate.

  But the impromptu assembly broke up in silence, and Skirata walked off with his usual limp, Vau ambling beside him. Out of curiosity, Scorch kept an eye on the two sergeants all the way to the hangars on the far side of the barracks.

  “Come on,” said Sev. “Can’t hang around all day. Got a mission briefing before lunch. I need to calibrate my HUD.”

  “What do you think they’re up to?”

  “Getting old and working out how to spend Vau’s bank haul.”

  “No, they’re up to something serious. I can tell.”

  “Mind-reader now, are we?”

  Scorch couldn’t understand why Sev never saw what he saw. They’d grown up with those two old shabuire, and when either of them had some scam running, they had this look about them, subtle but discernible to clones who relied on subliminal detail for recognition in a sea of near-identical brothers. Skirata had his scam face on, for sure.

  “He definitely knows something we don’t,” Scorch said.

  “Whatever it is, then, it won’t hurt us.”

  Skirata and Vau paused at the entrance to the armory. Then Scorch saw something that vindicated his paranoia. Two familiar figures that he hadn’t seen in a couple of years—figures in beskar’gam, traditional Mandalorian armor—emerged from a side door and greeted the two sergeants with that distinctive hand-to-elbow grip. Mandalorians shook hands by mutually clasping above the wrist. Vau said it was to prove you had a strong enough grip to haul a comrade to safety.