Skirata nodded. “Certainly has. Niner said he could have it, and he keeps it stashed in his locker.”
Etain thought of Ghez Hokan, and how she had first mistaken Darman for Qiilura's brutal enforcer simply because of that sinister helmet with its T-shaped slit. Fi had the helmet now. And that was because Etain had taken Hokan's head off with her lightsaber, nearly a year and a lifetime ago when she was still not used to killing.
It was red armor with a distinctive gray trim. She recalled that vividly.
Mandalorian helmets didn't look half so fearsome now. The shape was familiar: it was even welcome. But she had somehow forgotten that Skirata, and most of the training sergeants who had been recruited to forge boys like Darman into elite commandos, had been Mandalorian mercenaries handpicked by Jango Fett.
She wondered if she would have seen Skirata the same way nine months earlier, had he been her enemy on Qiilura. “Packing or unpacking?”
“Packing.” He lifted the fabric bags carefully and they made a metallic clunk: weapons. “We can't operate out of here. Officially we're off duty and on indefinite leave.” He laid the armor plates in the bag and layered the clothing between them, then slid in the fabric-cased weapons. It occurred to her that this was probably all he owned, the nomadic mercenary ready to move on to the next war. “Are you squeamish, General? I mean ethically squeamish.”
“I'm a Jedi, Sergeant.”
“Well, that answers a lot of questions I didn't ask.”
“Ask me a specific question.”
“Do you know what black ops means?”
“Oh yes …”
“I thought you might. I had no idea you would be coming back with Omega right now, but you spent four months with Zey on Qiilura turning the locals into guerrillas to fight the Seps, right? And before that you survived when Master Fulier didn't. So I reckon you're pretty handy in a scrap.”
“I know my weaknesses.”
Skirata paused and looked up from his packing. “Best knowledge of all.”
“Just tell me what's at stake,” Etain said.
“Now, there's an interesting request from a Jedi.” He put his hand carefully in the side of the carryall and withdrew a small cloth-wrapped package. When he unwrapped it and held it out in his palm, she could see it held small scan bars mounted on fragments of white plastoid alloy. “For me, stopping more of these. For the Republic, stopping activity that limits the ability of the Grand Army to deploy. For the Senate, showing the Seps that they can't strike here at will. Take your pick!”
She knew what the objects were now: she'd seen them on hundreds of chest plates. They were armor tallies, the identification devices all clone soldiers wore.
“I'll take the first option.” She thought of the other Fi, the one who was no longer alive to be boyishly excited like his namesake at the prospect of seeing the Coruscant that lay beyond the barracks. “You believe I'll be of some use?”
“In urban operations, a woman is always useful, Jedi or not. Another aid to invisibility—old di'kute like me and females like you.”
Skirata smiled and rewrapped the armor tallies. Etain reached into her bag and realized that she had even fewer possessions than this nomad. “And General Jusik is part of this operation? What about Master Zey?”
“General Zey is not officially aware of this.”
“If we're not operating out of here, then where?”
“Oh, somewhere interesting. Give me a couple of days and then we can relocate. Besides, the boys need some rest.”
So he wasn't going to tell her. Fine. “Delta seem a little … different from Omega. I take it you have confidence in them?”
“Oh, they're good lads.” He fumbled in his jacket pockets and pulled out credit chips, scraps of flimsi, and a nasty-looking metal device crested with a row of short, savage spikes and that appeared to have holes for four fingers. She stared. He placed it on the table. “The hormone that makes them hard fighters is the same one that makes them a bit of a handful, too.” The contents of Skirata's jacket continued to pile up on the table. A coil of thin wire, a fifteen-centimeter knife with a tapering three-sided blade, a stubby custom blaster, and a length of heavy, sharp-edged chain joined the cache. “Not that the poor ad'ike are ever off duty, of course. But when you say the word, they're on the case like that.” He snapped his fingers to make the point of immediacy. Yes, she'd seen that.
Skirata took off his jacket, revealing surprisingly broad shoulders and an underarm holster holding what looked like a modified Verpine shatter gun. He hung the garment over the back of a chair. Etain estimated he was still exceptionally fit in the wiry way of small men and continued to revise her view of him as a man who could only train others to fight.
And she had never seen so many instruments devoted to injury and destruction in one man's possession—not even a Republic commando. She indicated the weapons with a cocked head and waited for a hint of why he was carrying them.
Skirata paused, one hand raking his short gray hair.
“What?” he said, looking bemused.
“The … kit.” He was a walking armory. “The weapons.”
“Oh, don't worry.” He clearly didn't understand. “I don't carry many tools when I'm in civilian areas. Don't want to be too conspicuous. Ordo looks after the rest of it. We'll be properly cannoned up when we deploy. Guess what? Got six Verpine sniper rifles. Custom-made and EMP-hardened. Exquisite. Not really rifles, 'cos they don't have rifled barrels, but …” He grinned suddenly, apparently distracted by a thought, and she had a brief and vivid vision of another man entirely. “You haven't met Ordo yet, have you? He's a fine lad. Pride of my heart, really he is. Him and his brothers.”
Etain was totally disarmed by his candor, which seemed both incongruous and yet in keeping with a man who had gone to such extraordinary lengths to equip his young charges to survive.
She knew he was a killer. She knew his people had a long history of killing Jedi, even fighting for the Sith. She knew exactly what he was, but she couldn't help liking him and knowing that he would be very, very important to her for the rest of her life.
Her certainty was in the Force. And she knew what was coming in the days and months ahead would take her beyond her limits, and would bring her no sense of peace or understanding as a Jedi. But the Force would show her what it intended her destiny to be.
7
I think it's significant that the casualty rate among commando squads trained by Mandalorians is lower than those trained by other races. Somehow, Mandalorians imbue their charges with a sense of purpose, self-confidence, and almost obsessive sense of clan– of fancily—that gives them a genuine survival advantage. Let us be thankful they're on our side this time.
–General Master Arligan Zey, Director of Special Forces, officer commanding SO BDE, addressing the Jedi Council
SO Brigade HQ Coruscant, briefing room 8, 1500 hours, 370 days after Geonosis
“I thought we'd have a chat,” said Skirata. He turned a chair around and swung his legs astride it, folding his arms on the chair back and resting his chin on them. “Just us Mando boys. No aruetiise present.”
Delta Squad had settled in seats on one side of the briefing room and Omega on the other, with the table between them. Skirata could have sliced through the atmosphere between Atin and Sev with a vibroblade: how could they think he hadn't noticed? He knew how to read every nuance of cloned men like a book, even if they weren't the ones he knew intimately. In fact, he could read most species now. So they either thought he was stupid, or they were so at ease in his company that they felt no need to disguise their feelings.