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  They were singing, in the privacy of their own helmet comlinks, retreating into their world, like Omega Squad did from time to time. She could hear nothing outside the helmets, of course, and she felt oddly excluded. But they were not her brothers all, however much she wished to be part of something greater than herself, even more than the Jedi Order. They were gearing up for battle.

  Bal kote, darasuum kote,

  Jorso’ran kando a tome…

  It sounded less martial and more of a lament to her ears right then.

  She’d have to ask General Jusik for a translation. He was very much the Mando’a speaker these days.

  She handed Gett his helmet back and gave him a nod of thanks. “It’s not just the Force we need with us today, Commander,” she said. “It’s reliable kit and accurate intel.”

  “Always is, General,” he said. “Always is.”

  He slipped his helmet back on and sealed the collar.

  She knew without asking that he had started singing, completely silent to her, but one voice with his brothers.

  Special Operations Brigade HQ, Coruscant, twenty minutes after the explosion at Depot Bravo Five, 367 days after Geonosis

  Captain Ordo needed General Bardan Jusik, and he needed him fast.

  He wasn’t answering his comlink. That irked Ordo because an officer was supposed to be contactable at all times. And this was precisely the kind of emergency that proved the point.

  Ordo settled the two-seater Aratech speeder bike outside the main doors—far enough to one side not to obstruct them, as safety precautions dictated—and strode down the main passage that led to the briefing and ops rooms.

  “Location for General Jusik, please,” he said to the admin droid that was operating the comlink relays in the lobby area.

  “Meeting with General Arligan Zey and ARC Trooper Captain Maze in the CO’s office, sir, discussing the incontinent ordnance situation—”

  “Thank you,” said Ordo. Just say bomb, will you? “That’s why I’m here, too.”

  “You can’t—”

  But he could; and he did. “Noted.”

  The red light above the office doors told Ordo that the general didn’t want to be interrupted. He expected the Jedi’s Force sensitivity to detect him coming and open those doors, but they remained closed, so Ordo simply made use of the list of five thousand security codes that he had memorized for an eventuality like this. He would never trust them to a datapad alone. Skirata had taught him that sometimes you could only take your own brain and body into battle.

  Ordo took off his helmet first, a courtesy Skirata had also taught him, and tapped in the code on the side panel.

  The doors parted and he walked up to the meeting table, a pool of dark blue polished stone where Zey, Jusik, and Zey’s frankly surprised ARC captain sat staring at him.

  “Morning, sir,” said Ordo. “My apologies for interrupting, but I need General Jusik now.”

  Jusik’s thin pale face with its straggly blond beard was the picture of horrified embarrassment. Ordo thought all Jedi could sense him coming, but that never seemed to buffer their surprise when he arrived on urgent business.

  Jusik didn’t move fast enough. Ordo made a gesture toward the door.

  “Captain, it’s not customary to interrupt emergency meetings,” Zey said carefully. “General Jusik is our ordnance specialist and—”

  “That’s why I need him now, sir. Sergeant Skirata sends his compliments, but he would like the general to join him at the incident scene, seeing as he’s the explosives expert and his skills would be best spent on practical matters rather than discussion.”

  “I think your sergeant should be leaving all that to Coruscant Security,” said Captain Maze, who clearly didn’t understand the situation well enough.

  Typical ordinary ARC. Typical stubborn ARC.

  “No,” Ordo said. “Not possible. If I could hurry you a little, General Jusik, I have a speeder right outside. And please remember to leave your comlink active in the future. You must be contactable at all times.”

  Maze looked at Zey, and Zey shook his head discreetly. Ordo caught Jusik by his elbow and hurried him down the passage.

  “Sorry about reprimanding you in front of Zey, sir,” Ordo said, scattering droids and the occasional clone trooper as they hurried back up the passageway. “But Sergeant Skirata is livid.”

  “I know, I should have left it on—”

  “Like to pilot, sir? I know you enjoy it.”

  “Yes please—”

  It was the rapid thud of boots behind him that made Ordo stop and turn just as Captain Maze put his hand out to tap him on the shoulder. He deflected the ARC’s arm and brushed it aside.

  Maze squared up. “Look, Null, I don’t know who your sergeant thinks he is, but you obey a general when he—”

  “I don’t have time for this.” Ordo brought his fist up hard and without warning right under Maze’s chin, knocking him against the wall. The man swore and didn’t go down, so Ordo hit him again, this time in the nose—always demoralizing enough to stop someone dead, but nothing seriously damaging, nothing to cause lasting pain. He would never harm a brother if he could help it. “And I only take orders from Kal Skirata.”

  Jusik and Ordo sprinted the rest of the way to the speeder to make up lost time.

  “Ordo…”

  “Yes?”

  “Ordo, you just flattened an ARC trooper.”

  “He was delaying us.”

  “But you hit him. Twice.”

  “No permanent harm done,” Ordo said, lifting his kama to slide over the pillion seat behind Jusik. He sealed his helmet. “You can’t convince Alpha ARCs of anything by rational argument. They’re every bit as obtuse and impulsive as Fett, believe me.”

  Jusik looked perplexed as he started up the drive. He took the speeder bike into a straight vertical lift and spun it around at the top of the climb. His hair, tied back in a bunch, whipped across Ordo’s visor on the slipstream, and the ARC brushed it aside in irritated silence. It was high time the boy braided it or got it cut short.

  “Where to, Ordo?”

  “Manarai.”

  “Brief me,” Jusik said.

  “CSF is struggling with this. If you get in right now and use the Force while the incident scene is fresh, we might get a break.”

  Jusik banked right to avoid a slim spire and chewed his lower lip. He seemed to be able to fly without thinking. “I’ve been over the data six or seven times and I can’t see any consistent pattern in any of the devices. Not the materials, not the method of construction, nothing. Just that they’re all very complex devices, and hard to set.”

  Ordo blinked to switch his helmet audio to filter out the wind noise. Next time, he’d commandeer an airspeeder with a canopy. “Always explosives.”

  “Say again?”

  Ordo adjusted his volume. “I said always explosives.”

  “Chemical and biological ordnance has limited use on a planet with more than a thousand different species. Things that go bang, though, are guaranteed to hurt every race.”

  “I’d buy that if these devices were being used randomly. They’re not. It’s all Grand Army targets. Humans.”

  “Are you sure it’s me you need for this?” Jusik asked. “I’m not as adept with the living Force as others.”

  “You want to go back and have a nice meeting?”

  “No.” Jusik looked back over his shoulder with a big grin. Ordo had learned not to tell him to keep his eyes straight ahead, but it was still unnerving to watch a Jedi navigate a craft by his Force-senses alone. “I’ve never seen anyone walk over Zey like that.”

  “I simply had to get the job done, sir. No offense.”

  “Do you mind my asking you something, Ordo?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why do you tolerate me? You don’t take the slightest notice of Zey. Or Camas. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

  “Skirata respects you. I trust his judgment.”

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nbsp; “Oh.” Jusik didn’t seem to be expecting that answer. “I—I have a very great regard for our sergeant, too.”

  Ordo noted the word our. And that was what made Jusik different, as far as Kal’buir, Papa Kal, was concerned: he had thrown in his lot with his men. But, as Kal’buir said privately, you could stick a Weequay officer in front of the clone army and they would still fight well. An army of three million men with very few Jedi officers had to be self-directing.

  Ordo was well used to directing himself.

  Jusik never asked if Ordo thought of him as his commanding officer, though. He probably knew, and didn’t need to be reminded that Ordo answered only to the one man who had stepped physically between him and death once, twice, more times than was decent to count: Kal Skirata. And while Ordo knew intellectually that a detached, unsentimental officer was the kind who won wars and saved the most lives, his heart said that a sergeant who was ready to die to protect his men got the very last drop of sweat and blood from them, and given gladly.

  “I think you might really be in trouble with Zey this time, Ordo.”

  “And what do you think he’s going to do about it?”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Not since Kamino.”

  If Jusik understood that, it didn’t show. “Is it true that your brother Mereel hijacked a transport to Kamino?”

  “It’s known as hardening targets, General. Challenging security to improve it. We do that.”

  It was a lie, but not entirely: the Nulls tried not to remove GAR assets from the battlefield unless it was absolutely necessary, but in this case Kal’buir had said it was. The Jedi command turned a blind eye to the irregularities if they detected them because the Null squad produced unparalleled results. No, Zey wouldn’t touch him. If he was foolish enough to try, he would learn a hard lesson.

  “General, do you remember being taken from your parents?”

  Jusik glanced to his left and a few moments later a CSF patrol appeared on their flank, dipped a wing in acknowledgment, and dropped away below them again.

  “They’re just pinging us to be sure we are who they think we are,” the Jedi said, evading the question. “Can’t trust anything to be what it seems these days.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I hope CSF aren’t offended by our intervention.”

  Ordo tightened his grip. “It’s not their fault they can’t handle this.”

  “They’re very competent.”

  “They’re competent at defense. They’re not used to attacking. We can think like an enemy better than they can.”

  “You can. I fear I never will.”

  “I was trained to kill and destroy by any means possible. I suspect you were trained to obey some rules.”

  “I do actually.”

  “What? Obey rules?”

  “No, I remember being taken from my family. Just being taken. Not my family, though.”

  “And what makes you so attached to us?” Ordo chose his words precisely, knowing what attachment meant to a Jedi. He knew the answer anyway. “And doesn’t that worry you?”

  Jusik paused for a moment and then turned with an anxious smile. Jedi weren’t supposed to feel powerful emotions like vengeance or love or hate. Ordo could now see that conflict on the boy’s face daily.

  And Jusik was a boy: Ordo was the same physical age as the general—twenty-two—but he felt a generation older, despite being born only eleven years ago. And the Jedi drew strength from the things that tore up his heart, just as Kal Skirata did.

  He and Jusik were opposites in so many ways and yet so very similar in others.

  “You have such a passionate sense of belonging,” Jusik said at last. “And you never complain about the way you’re used.”

  “Save your sympathy for the troopers,” Ordo said. “Nobody uses us. And a clear sense of purpose is a strength.”

  The southern side of the logistics depot was a wasteland of shattered metal and rubble. From the air, it looked like an abandoned construction site with a brightly colored perimeter fence. As Jusik dropped lower, the perimeter resolved into crowds held back by a CSF cordon. The GAR supplies base was right on the boundary of a civilian area, separated only by a strip of landing platforms, with levels of warehousing operated by droids below it.

  It had obviously been a big device. Had the same bomb exploded in the civilian heart of Coruscant, the casualties would have run to thousands.

  “Whatever do they find to look at?” Jusik asked. He had trouble finding a space to set down and had to land outside the security cordon. He was clearly offended by the sightseers and didn’t wait for Ordo to clear a path through the crowd for him. For a quietly spoken man, Jusik could certainly make himself heard. “Citizens, unless you have contributions to make here, can I suggest you clear the area in case there’s a second device still set to detonate?”

  Ordo was impressed at the speed with which most of the crowd melted away. The resistantly curious hung around in small groups.

  “You don’t want to see this,” Jusik said.

  They paused, and then walked away. A CSF incident support vessel skimmed across the strip and hovered for a moment beside Jusik. The pilot leaned a little way out of the hatch. “Never seen mind influence in action before, sir. Thank you.”

  “I wasn’t using the Force,” Jusik said.

  Ordo found a new reason to like this Jedi every day. He took the war as personally as Kal’buir did.

  A thickset man in gray tunic waved to them from the inner cordon, where a large group of civilians and hovercams waited. Captain Jaller Obrim wasn’t wearing his Senate Guard finery any longer. Ordo knew him well: since they’d worked together with Omega Squad on the spaceport siege, Obrim’s time had been increasingly taken up with counter-terrorism duties. He was seconded to CSF now, but they still didn’t seem able to persuade him to wear the blue uniform.

  “Can you influence the media to go away, General?” Ordo said. “Or shall I do it manually?”

  The CSF forensics investigation team was still picking a slow and careful path through the debris of the entrance to Bravo Eight when Ordo and Jusik reached the cordon. Set back ten meters from the inner cordon was a screen of white plastoid sheet with the CSF badge repeated across its surface: the worst debris had been screened from the cams and prying eyes.

  It was grim work for civilian police. Ordo knew that they had neither the expertise nor the numbers to handle what was happening lately. And how did they cope with the things they saw if they hadn’t been trained to deal with them from childhood, as he had? For a moment he felt pity.

  But there was work to do. Ordo flicked on the voice projection of his helmet with a quick eye movement. “Mind your backs, please.”

  An HNE crew and a dozen other media representatives—some wets, as Skirata called organic life-forms, some tinnies, or droids—formed a cautious audience for the grisly aftermath of the explosion. They parted instantly, even before they looked around and saw Ordo striding toward them. Then they gave him an even wider berth. An ARC trooper cut an imposing figure, and a captain—marked in the brilliant scarlet that subconsciously said danger to many humanoid species—cleared a big path.

  Obrim deactivated a section of the cordon to let Jusik and Ordo pass.

  “This is General Bardan Jusik,” Ordo said. “He’s one of us. Can he wander around and assess the site?”

  Obrim looked Jusik up and down with the air of a man who believed more in hard data than the Force. “Of course he can. Mind the evidence markers, sir.”

  “I’ll be cautious,” Jusik said, meshing his fingers in front of him to do that little Jedi bow that Ordo found fascinating. Sometimes Jusik was one of the boys, and sometimes he was ancient, wisely sober, another creature entirely. “I won’t contaminate evidence.”

  Obrim waited for him to walk away and turned to Ordo. “Not that it’d matter. The forensic is getting us nowhere. Maybe we need the Mystic Mob to give us a break. How are you, anyway?”
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  “Focused. Very focused.”

  “Yes, your boss is pretty focused, too. He can curse the slime off a Hutt, that man.”

  “He takes all casualties personally, I’m afraid.”

  “I know what you mean. I’m sorry about your boys, by the way. They catch it coming and going, don’t they?”

  Skirata was bent deep in conversation with a CSF officer, their heads almost touching, talking in low and agitated voices. He swung around as Ordo approached. His face was gray with suppressed anger.

  “Fifteen dead.” Skirata clearly didn’t care about civilian casualties, traffic disruption, or structural damage. He gestured toward a large fragment of white leg armor in the rubble of what had been a security post. “I’m going to rip some chakaar’s guts out for this.”

  “When we find them, I’ll make sure you’re first in line,” Obrim said.

  There wasn’t a lot any of them could do at that moment except to allow the largely Sullustan scenes-of-crime team to do their work. Skirata, chewing vigorously on that bittersweet ruik root that he’d recently taken a liking to, stood with his fists in his jacket pockets, watching Jusik stepping delicately between chunks of debris. The Jedi occasionally stopped to close his eyes and stand completely motionless.

  Skirata’s expression was one of cold appraisal. “He’s a good kid.”

  Ordo nodded. “Do you want me to look after him?”

  “Yes, but not at the expense of your own safety.”

  After a few minutes Jusik made his way back to the cordon, arms folded.

  “You didn’t pick up anything?” Skirata said, as if he expected Jusik to bay like a hunting strill latching on to a scent.

  “A great deal.” Jusik shut his eyes for a second. “I can still feel the disturbance in the Force. I can sense the destruction and pain and fear. Like a battlefield, in fact.”