“We could do with a few wild cards,” Jango said carefully, moving between Skirata and the Kaminoan. “It’s good to have some surprises up your sleeve for the enemy. What are these kids really like? And how old are they?”
“Nearly two standard years’ growth. Highly intelligent, deviant, disturbed—and uncommandable.”
“Could be ideal for intel work.” It was pure bluff: Skirata could see the little twitch of muscle in Jango’s jaw. He was shocked, too. The bounty hunter couldn’t hide that from his old associate. “I say we keep ’em.”
Two? The boys looked older. Skirata half turned to check on them, and their gazes were locked on him: it was almost an accusation. He glanced away, but took a step backward and put his hand discreetly behind him to place his palm on the head of the boy defending his brothers, just as a helpless gesture of comfort.
But a small hand closed tightly around his fingers instead.
Skirata swallowed hard. Two years old.
“I can train them,” he said. “What are their names?”
“These units are numbered. And I must emphasize that they’re unresponsive to command.” Orun Wa persisted as if talking to a particularly stupid Weequay. “Our quality control designated them Null class and wishes to start—”
“Null? As in no di’kutla use?”
Jango took a discreet but audible breath. “Leave this to me, Kal.”
“No, they’re not units.” The little hand was grasping his for dear life. He reached back with his other hand and another boy pressed up against his leg, clinging to him. It was pitiful. “And I can train them.”
“Unwise,” said Orun Wa.
The Kaminoan took a gliding step forward. They were such graceful creatures, but they were loathsome at a level that Skirata could simply not comprehend.
And then the little lad grasping his leg suddenly snatched the hold-out blaster from Skirata’s boot. Before he could react the kid had tossed it to the one who’d been clinging to his hand in apparent terror.
The boy caught it cleanly and aimed it two-handed at Orun Wa’s chest.
“Fierfek.” Jango sighed. “Put it down, kid.”
But the lad wasn’t about to stand down. He stood right in front of Skirata, utterly calm, blaster raised at the perfect angle, fingers placed just so with the left hand steadying the right, totally focused. And deadly serious.
Skirata felt his jaw drop a good centimeter. Jango froze, then chuckled.
“I reckon that proves my point,” he said, but he still had his eyes fixed on the tiny assassin.
The kid clicked the safety catch. He seemed to be checking it was off.
“It’s okay, son,” Skirata said, as gently as he could. He didn’t much care if the boy fried the Kaminoan, but he cared about the consequences for the kid. And he was instantly and totally proud of him—of all of them. “You don’t need to shoot. I’m not going to let him touch any of you. Just give me back the blaster.”
The child didn’t budge; the blaster didn’t waver. He should have been more concerned about cuddly toys than a clean shot at this stage in his young life. Skirata squatted down slowly behind him, trying not to spook him into firing.
But if the boy had his back to him… then he trusted him, didn’t he?
“Come on… just put it down, there’s a good lad. Now give me the blaster.” He kept his voice as soft and level as he could, when he was actually torn between cheering and doing the job himself. “You’re safe, I promise you.”
The boy paused, eyes and aim still both fixed on Orun Wa. “Yes sir.” Then he lowered the weapon to his side. Skirata put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and pulled him back carefully.
“Good lad.” Skirata took the blaster from his little fingers and scooped him up in his arms. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Nicely done, too.”
The Kaminoan showed no anger whatsoever, simply blinking, yellow, detached disappointment. “If that does not demonstrate their instability, then—”
“They’re coming with me.”
“This is not your decision.”
“No, it’s mine,” Jango interrupted. “And they’ve got the right stuff. Kal, get them out of here and I’ll settle this with Orun Wa.”
Skirata limped toward the door, still making sure he was between the Kaminoan and the kids. He was halfway down the corridor with his bizarre escort of tiny deviants before the boy he was carrying wriggled uncomfortably in his arms.
“I can walk, sir,” he said.
He was perfectly articulate, fluent—a little soldier way beyond his years.
“Okay, son.”
Skirata lowered him to the floor and the kids fell in behind him, oddly quiet and disciplined. They didn’t strike him as dangerous or deviant, unless you counted stealing a weapon, pulling a feint, and almost shooting a Kaminoan as deviant. Skirata didn’t.
The kids were just trying to survive, like any soldier had a duty to do.
And they looked four or five years old, but Orun Wa had definitely said they were two. Skirata suddenly wanted to ask them how long they’d spent in those awful suffocating transparisteel vats, cold hard tanks that were nothing like the dark comfort of a womb. It must have been like drowning. Could they see each other as they floated? Had they understood what was happening to them?
Skirata reached the doors of his stark quarters and ushered them in, trying not to dwell on those thoughts.
The boys lined up against the wall automatically, hands clasped behind their backs, and waited without being told to.
I brought up two sons. How hard can it be to mind six kids for a few days?
Skirata waited for them to react but they simply stared back at him as if expecting orders. He had none. Rain lashed the window that ran the whole width of the wall. Lightning flared. They all flinched.
But they still stood in silence.
“Tell you what,” Skirata said, bewildered. He pointed to the couch. “You sit down over there and I’ll get you something to eat. Okay?”
They paused and then scrambled onto the couch, huddling together again. He found them so utterly disarming that he had to make a rapid exit to the kitchen area to gather his thoughts while he slapped uj cake onto a plate and sliced it roughly into six pieces. If this was how it was going to be for—for years…
You’re stuck, chum.
You took the credits.
And this is your whole world for the foreseeable future… and maybe forever.
It never stopped raining. And he was holed up with a species he loathed on sight, and who thought it was okay to dispose of units who happened to be living, talking, walking children. He raked his fingers through his hair and despaired, eyes closed, until he was suddenly aware of someone staring up at him.
“Sir?” the boy said. It was the courageous little marksman. He might have been identical to his brothers, but his mannerisms were distinctive. He had a habit of balling one fist at his side while the other hand was relaxed. “May we use the ’freshers?”
Skirata squatted down, face level with the kid’s. “’Course you can.” It was quite pathetic: they were nothing like his own lively, boisterous sons had once been. “And I’m not sir. I’m not an officer. I’m a sergeant. You can call me Sergeant if you like, or you can call me Kal. Everyone else does.”
“Yes… Kal.”
“It’s over there. Can you manage on your own?”
“Yes, Kal.”
“I know you don’t have a name, but I really think you should have one.”
“I’m Null Eleven. En-one-one.”
“How’d you like to be called Ordo? He was a Mandalorian warrior.”
“Are we Mandalorian warriors?”
“You bet.” The kid was a natural fighter. “In every sense of the word.”
“I like that name.” Little Ordo considered the white-tiled floor for a moment, as if assessing it for risk. “What’s Mandalorian?”
For some reason that hurt most of all. If these kids didn’t
know their culture and what made someone a Mando, then they had no purpose, no pride, and nothing to hold them and their clan together when home wasn’t a piece of land. If you were a nomad, your nation traveled in your heart. And without the Mando heart, you had nothing—not even your soul—in whatever new conquest followed death. Skirata knew at that moment what he had to do. He had to stop these boys from being dar’manda, eternal Dead Men, men without a Mando soul.
“I can see I need to teach you a lot.” Yes, this was his duty. “I’m Mandalorian, too. We’re soldiers, nomads. You know what those words mean?”
“Yes.”
“Clever lad. Okay, you go and sort yourselves out in the ’freshers, and I want you all sitting back on the couch in ten minutes. Then we’ll sort out names for everyone. Got it?”
“Yes, Kal.”
So Kal Skirata—mercenary, assassin, and failed father—spent a stormy evening on Kamino sharing uj cake with six dangerously clever small boys who could already handle firearms and talk like adults, teaching them that they came from a warrior tradition, and that they had a language and a culture, and much to be proud of.
And he explained that there was no Mandalorian word for “hero.” It was only not being one that had its own word: Hut’uun.
There were an awful lot of hut’uune in the galaxy, and Skirata certainly counted the Kaminoans among them.
The kids—now trying to get used to being Ordo, A’den, Kom’rk, Prudii, Mereel, and Jaing—sat devouring both their newfound heritage and the sticky sweet cake, eyes fixed on Skirata as he recited lists of Mandalorian words and they repeated them back to him.
He worked through the most common words, struggling. He had no idea how to teach a language to kids who could already speak fluent Basic. So he simply listed everything he could recall that seemed useful, and the little Null ARCs listened, grim-faced, flinching in unison at every blaze of lightning. After an hour Skirata felt that he was simply confusing some very frightened, very lonely children. They just stared at him.
“Okay, time to recap,” he said, exhausted by a bad day and the realization that there was an unknowable number of days like this stretching ahead. He pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to focus. “Can you count from one to ten for me?”
Prudii—N-5—parted his lips to take a quick breath and suddenly all six spoke at once.
“Solus, t’ad, ehn, cuir, rayshe’a, resol, e’tad, sh’ehn, she’cu, ta’raysh.”
Skirata’s gut flipped briefly and he sat stunned. These kids absorbed information like a sponge. I only counted out the numbers for them once. Just once! Their recall was perfect and absolute. He decided to be careful what he said to them in the future.
“Now that’s clever,” he said. “You’re very special lads, aren’t you?”
“Orun Wa said we couldn’t be measured,” Mereel said, totally without pride, and perched on the edge of the couch, swinging his legs almost like a normal four-year-old. They might have all looked identical, but their individual characters seemed distinct and… obvious. Skirata wasn’t sure how he managed it, but he could now look at them and see that they were different, distinguished by small variations in facial expressions, gestures, frowns, and even tone of voice. Appearance wasn’t everything.
“You mean you scored too high for him to count?”
Mereel nodded gravely. Thunder slapped the platform city: Skirata felt it without hearing it. Mereel drew up his legs again and huddled tight up against his brothers in an instant.
No, Skirata didn’t need a hut’uunla Kaminoan to tell him that these were extraordinary children. They could already handle a blaster, learn everything he threw at them, and understand the Kaminoans’ intentions all too well: no wonder the aiwha-bait was scared of them.
And they would be truly phenomenal soldiers—if only they could follow a few orders. He’d work on that.
“Want some more uj?” he said.
They all nodded enthusiastically in unison. It was a relief. At least that gave him a few minutes’ respite from their unrelenting, silent attention. They ate, still miniature adults. There was no chattering or high spirits.
And they flinched at every bolt of lightning.
“Are you scared?” asked Skirata.
“Yes, Kal,” said Ordo. “Is that wrong?”
“No, son. Not at all.” It was as good a time to teach them as any. No lesson would ever be wasted on them. “Being afraid is okay. It’s your body’s way of getting you ready to defend yourself, and all you have to do is use it and not let it use you. Do you understand that?”
“No,” Ordo said.
“Okay, think about being scared. What’s it like?”
Ordo defocused slightly as if he were looking at something on a HUD he didn’t have. “Cold.”
“Cold?”
A’den and Kom’rk chimed in. “And spiky.”
“Okay… okay.” Skirata tried to imagine what they meant. Ah. They were describing the feeling of adrenaline flooding their bodies. “That’s fine. You just have to remember that it’s your alarm system, and you need to take notice of it.” They were the same age as city kids on Coruscant who struggled to scrawl crude letters on flimsi. And here he was, teaching them battle psychology. His mouth felt oddly dry. “So you tell yourself, okay, I can handle this. My body’s now ready to run faster and fight harder, and I’ll be seeing and hearing only the most important things I need to know to stay alive.”
Ordo went from his wide-eyed dark stare to slight defocus again for a moment and nodded. Skirata glanced at the others. They had that same disturbing concentration. They had also stacked their plates neatly on the low side table. He hadn’t even noticed them doing it.
“Try thinking about your fear next time there’s lightning,” Kal said. “Use it.”
He went back to the kitchen area and rummaged through the cupboards for some other snack to keep them going, because they seemed ravenous. As he stepped back into the main room with a white tray of sliced food-board that looked even less appetizing than the tray itself, someone buzzed at the door.
The Nulls immediately went into a defensive pattern. Ordo and Jaing flanked the door, backs hard against the wall, and the other four took cover behind the sparse furniture. Skirata wondered for a second what flash-learning program had taught them that—or at least he hoped it was flash-taught. He waved them away from the door. They hesitated for a moment until he took out his Verpine shatter gun; then they appeared satisfied that he had the situation under some sort of control.
“You scare me,” Skirata said softly. “Now stand back. If anyone’s after you, they’ve got to come through me first, and I’m not about to let that happen.”
Even so, their reaction prompted him to stand to one side as he hit the panel to open the doors. Jango Fett was standing in the corridor outside, a small sleepy child in his arms. The boy’s curly head rested on his shoulder. He looked younger than the Nulls, but it was the same face, the same hair, the same little hand clutching the fabric of Jango’s tunic.
“Another one?” Skirata said.
Jango glanced at the Verp. “You’re getting edgy, aren’t you?”
“Kaminoans don’t improve my mood. Want me to take him?”
He shoved the shatter gun in his belt and held out his arms to take the boy. Jango frowned slightly.
“This is my son, Boba,” he said. He pulled his head back to gaze fondly at the dozing child’s face. This wasn’t the Jango that Skirata knew of old; he was pure paternal indulgence now. “Just trying to settle him down. Are you sorted now? I’ve told Orun Wa to stay away from you.”
“We’re fine,” Skirata said. He wondered how he was going to ask the question, and decided blurting it out was probably as good a way as any. “Boba looks just like them.”
“He would. He’s been cloned from me, too.”
“Oh. Oh.”
“He was my price. Worth more to me than the credits.” Boba stirred, and Jango carefully adjusted his ho
ld on the kid. “I’ll be back in a month. Orun Wa says he’ll have some commando candidates ready for us to take a look at as well as the rest of the Alpha batch. But he says he’s made them a bit more… reliable.”
Skirata had more questions than seemed prudent under the circumstances. It was natural for a Mando’ad to want an heir above all else, and adoption was common, so cloning was… not that much different. But he had to ask one thing.
“Why do these kids look older?”
Jango compressed his lips into a thin line of disapproval. “They accelerate the aging process.”
“Oh, fierfek…”
“You’ll have a company of a hundred and four commandos eventually, and they should be less trouble than the Nulls.”
“Fine.” Did he get help? Were there Kaminoan minders to tackle the routine jobs, like feeding them? And how would the non-Mandalorian training sergeants deal with them? His stomach churned. He put on a brave face. “I can handle that.”
“Yeah, and I’ll be doing my bit, too. I have to train a hundred.” Jango glanced at the Nulls, now watching warily from the couch, and began walking away. “I just hope they aren’t like I was at that age.”
Skirata pushed the controls, and the door sighed shut. “Okay, lads, bedtime,” he said. He dragged the cushions off the couch and laid them out on the floor, covering them with an assortment of blankets. The boys gave him a hand, with a grim sense of adult purpose that he knew would haunt him for the rest of his days. “We’ll get you sorted out with decent quarters tomorrow, okay? Real beds.”
He had the feeling they would have slept outside on the rain-lashed landing pad if he’d asked them to. They didn’t seem at all unmanageable. He sat down in the chair and put his feet up on a stool. The Kaminoans had done their best to provide human-suitable furniture, something that struck him as a rare concession given their general xenophobic arrogance. He left the lights on, dimmed, to soothe the Nulls’ fears.
They settled down, pulling the blankets over their heads completely. Skirata watched until they appeared to be asleep, laid his Verpine on the shelf beside the chair, and then closed his eyes to let the dreams overwhelm him. He woke with an explosive jerk of muscles a couple of times, a sure sign that he was past the point of tiredness and into exhaustion, and then he fell into an unending black well.