Author's Note: This chapter contains characters and places from Karen Traviss' Republic Commando series. I lay no claim to her creative property.

The Courtesy Mathematics

Coruscant, Core Worlds

"Do these earrings go with this outfit?"

Wren wiped down his Deece's ejector, carefully removing the last bits of carbon buildup before applying the solvent. "Sure," he said, checking his work against the galley's light.

"Cookie," Ro whined, "you're not even looking."

With a sigh, he looked up and the first thing to jump into his mind was: pink.

Ro was dressed in an airy shirt that left a good portion of her midriff bare. The pants were skintight until about an inch below the knee, where the material suddenly scrunched up into tight ruffles of bright red, yellow and orange. And the outfit was - with the exception of the ruffles - an eye-smarting shade of bright pink.

Wren blinked and almost completely missed the sparkly earrings Ro held in one hand, until she jiggled them impatiently in front of his eyes.

"Well?" she asked. "Do these earrings go with these threads or should I trade in sparkly for dangly? Whatcha think?"

"I think," he said slowly, deliberately, "that you're either running off to the Intergalactic Managerie or prepping to give a fekking lap dance." He paused, then added, "If the latter, I'd go with sparkly. No man likes to be effing reminded of 'dangling' when having a girl rotate on his privates."

Ro rolled her eyes. "So helpful. Not." Then she pursed her lips. "You don't like my outfit?" She looked down at herself, wriggling her toes in the open shoes she wore. Her toenails, he realized, were each painted a different color, though no less bright than the rest of her. She peeked at him through her messy bangs, a little uncertain now. "Too much?"

"For draping yourself across a karking Hutt? No. You're spot on." He turned his attention back to his disassembled blaster. After he was done with the DC-15S blaster rifle, he wanted to strip down and go over the DC-17. He still needed to adjust the weight distribution on the hand blaster; he'd never gotten a chance to do so before being blown to all Nine Hells on Gaftikar.

"Cookie." The whine was back in her voice and she gently kicked his leg. "You know I'm talking about the meet-and-greet with Master Zey. It's my first time shaking hands with the big brass and I want to make the right impression. Related to which, is that what you're wearing? I'm no expert on military standard-do, but ain't you a smidge out of uniform? Not that I'm complaining, or some such, seeing as that your present threads leave emtix to an imagination in the gutter, but outlined abs are hardly conducive to formal wear."

Wren didn't bother to glance down at his bodyglove. Instead, he took the scrub-brush from his maintenance kit and started in on the Deece's barrel. "I'm not kriffing going."

Ro blinked, as if unable to process the words. "Rewind and repeat?"

He put down the barrel, leaning close to her. "I'm. Fekking. Not. Kriffing. Going." He enunciated each word with great care, as if he were talking to an imbecile.

Ro cocked her head to the side, neither disconcerted by his proximity, nor insulted by his tone. "But your name's on the invit." She produced a datapad out of what appeared to be empty air, almost shoving the screen up his nose. It was the orders Fleet had sent over, telling Ro to present herself to General Arligan Zey, head of the Special Operations Brigade, for a formal introduction and further orders. It was the standard courtesy call and Wren had absolutely no-fekking-interest for that Kowakian monkey-lizard dance. He'd switched outfits three times already and that wasn't counting the three transfers he'd cashed after he'd left Kamino. Besides, he had no intention of setting a single foot into General Zey's office. He might no longer be an ARC, but he'd kept tabs on his fellow Alphas over the years; mostly so he could avoid them. General Zey's number one assistant in flimsi-pushing was one Alpha ARC-26 - Maze to every wet who'd ever wanted to break his face, which just so happened to include Wren.

Wren was bred to be smart; he was bred to be courageous and by his own admittance he was an adrenaline junkie craving the next rush. But even he wasn't suicidal enough to walk into an office manned by his former podmate. Maze might not be the brightest glowfish in the ocean, but even he would be able to put one and one together and come up somewhere in the vicinity of two when he saw Wren's face. And more importantly, the very distinctive scar running from the right corner of his mouth up to his cheek. And then all that stood between Wren and a cold slab on Kamino was Maze's twitchy, bureaucratic, boot-licking finger and a comlink.

Yeah. Not going to kriffing happen.

Something of his determination must have shown on his face - or more likely, Ro was doing her Jedi thing - because the little nuisance actually backed off.

She took a step back, crossing her arms over her pink shirt. Ro's nose scrunched up and her brow furrowed as she studied him.

Wren felt the fingers on his Deece's muzzle twitch. She was doing it again; turning that unnervingly shrewd gaze on him. And from what he'd seen on Gaftikar, that look never promised anything good.

"Is this because you're a different brand from the other clones?"

No, nothing effing good came of it.

Wren let out a sharp breath, pinching the bridge of his nose as the alarm klaxons starting to blare in his head. "Fierfek, cheeka, where the kark did you get that idea from?"

Ro lifted a pale blond eyebrow, her lips quirking into a smile. "Cookie, factoid is that I'm no parsec near as much of a koochoo as you think I am. It doesn't take a Harch to see you've got moves they don't teach all the younglings in your class." The second eyebrow joined the first. "Or should I say, don't teach the class you're currently on visit with."

He put the muzzle down very slowly, feeling his fingers tighten spasmodically as adrenaline rushed through his system. Three years. Three fekking years and no one in that time had come as close to the truth as she had right now.

Anger pulsed through him, quick and hard, but he swallowed it down. Fek, that tasted bitter and vile.

"No one should have the fraggin' right to be as fekking smart-ass as you, cheeka," he told her through clenched teeth. His first instinct was to lash out, to get rid of the possible threat to his life. His fight or flight instinct was on high alert and as a clone, it always came down to fight. He was very conscious of the dead blade strapped to his ankle, of the seconds it would take him to draw it out of its sheath and make his move.

This was a secret he'd kept watch over for three years of his life and it had the power to kill him. And now a nosy little Jedi was half-way there to figuring it all out.

Fek. Fek. Fek.

He forced himself to relax, to keep his hands at his sides even as he rose from his chair and instinctively maneuvered himself into a better position. He wanted to rid himself of this threat to his existence. But kriff it all, he'd already mentioned Asher to her and his brother's name was something he'd guarded even more carefully than the fact that he'd once been an ARC, destined to be the best of the best of the best. If he hadn't slagged her after that brief slip of the tongue in Shenio's mine, then he couldn't reasonably do it now for something she'd figured out herself.

Ro blinked a few times, her teal eyes shifting rapidly as if she were watching a high-speed wick-ball game.

"So," she said slowly, "does that mean I got it right? Do I win the golden Twi'lek?"

"What the gfersh are you going to do now?" he demanded, ignoring her inane question. The last thing she needed now was for him to confirm her suspicions.

"Do?" She looked at him as if this were an entirely new word to her. "I'm going to go back to my closet. Then I'm going to go give this courtesy call a whirl with Master Zey."

His face hardened in suspicion. "And?"

"And?" she repeated, watching him as if waiting for his next dejarik move.

Wren clenched his jaw, his annoyance ratcheting up another notch. Frag, how could someone so effing smart be so fekking stupid? "Who else are you going to fraggin' tell?"

"About you?" Ro shrugged and blew her bangs out of her eyes. "No one. In this business, it's bad sport to blow someone's cover." The nonchalance faded from her face, to be replaced by a smile that was shy and somewhat hopeful. "Will you tell me, though? About yourself?"

Wren ran a hand over his face, feeling decidedly off-balance. He'd underestimated Ro and she'd dealt him a blow he'd never seen coming. Fek, the clones he'd worked and lived beside had missed the clues, so why would he ever suspect this little nuisance of a Jedi would be able to put most of the pieces together on her own. She didn't even know what an ARC was for kripes sake.

His muscles were as tensed as a bowcaster's string. Wren felt like he'd just survived an ambush, his body still hyped on the adrenaline rush and perhaps that's why he said: "We'll see."

She beamed at him in pure delight and skipped off, the ruffles on her pants whispering and rustling as Ro headed back to her cabin to change. Again.

Wren let out a long breath, sinking back into his chair. He put his face in his hands, replaying the last few moments, weighing his options.

No one could know that he was Alpha-20. Alpha-20 was dead - reconditioned. It said so on every official Kaminoan record. And if word got back that he'd managed to slip through some cracks, then the long-necks would move heaven and the fraggin' stars to correct this oversight. So that left him with two options. Either he could arrange for Ro to...have an accident or he could trust her to keep her trap shut.

Trust her. Wren let the concept run through his mind a few times, before it finally hit him. That barvy little Jedi. She'd just outmaneuvered him.

Ro had deliberately put him into the position where he'd either have to get rid of her - and thereby lose his new-found semi-freedom - or actually invest a modicum of trust into his new - What was the word she kept using? - partner.

A thin smile pulled at the scarred corner of his lips, the gesture touched with irony and no small amount of admiration.

"Fekking smart-ass cheeka."

Special Operations Brigade HQ

The compound was huge and utterly bewildering and it didn't take Ro more than ten minutes to become lost.

"'Kay." She turned about on the spot, hoping for a sign or a conveniently placed personage with a point-friendly finger. So far, she was out of luck on both fronts.

"Well," she told herself, "there's one sure thing in this sitch. Far as I know, policy hasn't moved office space to the outside dimension."

Ro looked about the plaza she'd found herself in, sighing heavily before sitting down on the rim of a gold-veined marble fountain. "'Kay, Ro. Time for some new thinks. What's the next step in this sequence?"

Decisions, decisions.

Ro desperately wished that she could have at least convinced Artee to come with her. The astromech could have downloaded the blueprints for the entire military complex and acted as a tour-guide. But Artee had weighed his options carefully and decided after about two nanoseconds that his odds of survival were better with one clone aboard a relatively big ship than in the biggest military complex in the Republic, populated at any given time with several thousand clones and non-clones.

Of course, if Mr. Grumpy-Cookie-Pants had just masc'd up and come for the gander, he could have shown me the ropes like it says in his job description.

Ah, well. He hadn't wanted to come and she'd been the one to decide not to push.

The plaza was relatively business.

Ro leaned back on the fountain's edge, bracing herself with her hands and watched the flow of people. Not all of them were clones and not all wore the grey military uniforms or beige Jedi robes. There were a few rather peculiar individuals crossing the plaza, whom Ro tagged as 'dangerous-when-tickled' for no better reason than instinct. They didn't look threatening, per say, but...

I seem to have acquired interesting new coworkers. The thought pleased her to no end. But none of the people walking past her seemed in a conversational mood. Indeed, there were some who cast her questioning glances, as if wondering how a Jedi could have the time to lounge by a fountain on a sunny day, when there was a war that needed to be fought. Ro sighed. It didn't seem as if people involved in running wars had time for pleasant talks. Bummer.

"...vode are already moving in on them."

Ro's head swiveled around so quickly that strands of hair slapped against her cheek. Memory gripped her, hard and unrelenting.

Cushioned on her lap, Wren's head moved about restlessly. He was on the brink of death, half of the bones in his body broken and still he could find no peace, no rest.

Ro pressed her dirty forehead against his, sinking ever deeper into the Force in an effort to give them both a fighting chance; trying to convince broken bones and torn muscles to knit themselves back together. She felt the brush of air against her cheek as his lips moved, blood flowing from the split skin.

"Vod." The word was no more than a breath and made no sense. But even in the midst of a healing trance, there was no denying the pain and regret in that single word. "Ni ceta."

"Excuse me!" Ro was up and running before she could think about what she was doing. "Excuse me!"

Two men, one in white and red plastoid armor, the other in civilian clothing with a nerf-hide jacket, turned towards her.

Ro skidded to an abrupt stop as she saw that both men were reaching for their blasters.

"Whoa. Uhm." She looked from one to the other. It was only now occurring to her that perhaps charging towards two people in a military compound was perhaps not the brightest think she could have had. She quickly smiled at them in a way that she hoped was both friendly and adequately embarrassed for her gaffe.

"Yes..." The blue eyes of the older man quickly took her in, lingering on her Padawan braid and the twin lightsabers hanging off of her belt, "...Commander."

No attempt at civility; no effort to return the smile. The trooper - Ro thought he might be a captain, judging from the dots on his chest plate - didn't even salute. He merely settled his hands on his hips, atop what looked like a leather skirt that reached to his knees, regarding her through the T-shaped visor of his helmet.

These two were not impressed by her.

Well, tough puff-pie. Ro had remained undaunted in the face of far greater disapproval than what these two could dish out on their grumpiest days. Her smile widened and she stuck out her hand, placed so that either man could grab it. "Heyla. I'm Ro and I was wondering what branch of the lingua you were chattering."

The captain's head tilted slightly back before turning towards the shorter man, as if waiting for further instructions as to how to deal with this strange little person.

For his part, the other man appeared as stumped as the trooper.

He was in his sixties, no taller than Ro, with brown hair that was going grey at the temples. His appearance was slightly disreputable, a little shabby, but his Force-aura was like night and day, forced to coexist in an uneasy harmony. Ro sensed an intense passion in this man, love and fury mingling until it was difficult to separate the two. The mixture caused an uneasy response in her own body; the capacity for love this man had made her want to weep and hug him, but the potential for violence caused her fingers to itch for her lightsabers.

And he did not like the look of her. Even if Ro hadn't been able to read other people's emotions, there was no way she could have missed the manner in which his eyes narrowed as he studied her brown and beige Jedi robes. After long minutes of dithering, Ro had decided back onboard Mockingbird to err on the side of beige and dress in the traditional Jedi robes; spiced up with a colorful Togruta sash and the fact that half of her long, platinum blond hair was a glowing shade of purple. But judging by this masc's reaction, her freshly pressed robes might as well have been Hutt slime.

But Ro's curiosity had been piqued, so she stood her ground and kept her hand outstretched, smile still in place.

Slowly, deliberately making her wait, the older man took a piece of ruik root from his pocket and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

The captain shifted uneasily. "Kal'buir, we should go."

"Just one second, Ord'ika."

Ro cocked her head to the side, as intrigued by the strange words as their behavior. This...Kal-boo-eer's eyes never shifted away from her, but she might as well have been gasping for breath in vacuum for all the regard he gave her. She wasn't important. Not to him and not to the clone captain, that much was obvious.

Finally, the older man extended his own hand, but instead of shaking her hand, he clasped her wrist tightly. Ro hurriedly did the same and felt the familiar press of an arm-sheath beneath the fabric of his sleeve. In turn, he felt the outline of the slim throwing-blade she kept strapped to her forearm and his eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

Surprised you, didn't I? she thought smugly.

"Kal Skirata," the older man introduced himself. He nodded towards the clone captain. "This is Captain Ordo."

Apparently taking his cues from Skirata, the captain inclined his head in a gesture of respect that entirely lacked any such feeling. "Ma'am."

Ro tried hard not to grimace. Goodness, but she felt like someone had strapped twenty years to her back whenever she was called 'ma'am'. Did any woman actually like being called that?

"Nice to greetcha. You've got some interesting vocab, Captain. I was wondering about the brand name."

Skirata frowned and the captain did that head-tilt thing again, as if he were checking something on his HUD.

Ro fiddled with the triangular charm that hung off of her Padawan braid and tried not to sigh. "I heard you say 'VOH-day'," she said, making sure to pronounce the word just as she'd heard it. She had a pretty good ear for languages and had a knack for imitation. "I was wondering if that's in any way related to," she closed her eyes for a second, concentrating to remember the exact way Wren had pronounced the word, "'vohd'. And if so, what's it mean and what language is it?"

Skirata and Ordo exchanged a quick look that was equal parts puzzlement, alarm, suspicion and wariness. The emotional bond that existed between the two men thrummed like a rushing river with dangerous undertows. That there was so strong an emotional bond between a clone trooper and a non-clone was something Ro didn't have the experience to question or even wonder at.

"You've encountered Mandalorians?" Ordo asked, his tone interrogative.

Ro blinked in surprise "Mandalorians?" she repeated, baffled. "So those words are Mandalorian?" Though she had traveled extensively these past two years, Ro had never actually encountered one of the famed - or infamous, depending on one's interpretation - Mandalorians. Those who held with the old warrior traditions did not tend to be kindly inclined towards Jedi, no matter how unorthodox and the New Mandalorians were far too outspoken in their disdain for the kind of low-level scum Ro tended to be involved in for her to have ever crossed paths with them.

It had never actually occurred to her that Wren might have been speaking Mandalorian, though in retrospect that should have been obvious. The clones' genetic template, Jango Fett, had, after all, been the most infamous Mandalorian of their time. It made sense that Wren would know the language. Didn't it?

Ro was about to open her mouth to ask more questions, when a new voice intruded on their group.

"Commander Arhen."

She, Skirata and Ordo turned to see another clone trooper cross the plaza, heading right for them. His steps were quick without being hurried and unlike Ordo, he had his helmet clipped to his belt, which meant Ro did not miss the brief look of annoyance that crossed his face when he identified Ro's companions.

Ordo's reaction was just as telling. Although his body language did not change in the least, his Force-signature tightened around him, before relaxing once more, as if giving a resigned sigh. Something like affectionate disdain threaded itself through the chaotic mix of energies and feelings that surrounded Captain Ordo. It was a strange blend of emotions, but Ro couldn't sense any deeper than that. Quite frankly, concentrating on Ordo's Force-aura too long made her feel dizzy. If Wren was an akk dog prowling through the dangerous jungle of Haruun Kal, then Captain Ordo was an entire swarm of kyren, darkening the sky and swallowing anything in his path whole in his efforts to take it apart and analyze it completely. He was calm detachment and endless violence; a kaleidoscope of color, yet with an obsidian orb at its base that could not - would not - be changed. And it was all mixed and tangled in ways that Ro didn't consider normal, but couldn't classify as either healthy or unhealthy. Just...unnerving.

"Captain Ordo. Sergeant Skirata." The newcomer had reached them and gave each of the other men a polite nod before saluting Ro. "Commander Arhen, I'm glad I found you."

"You are?" Ro smiled up at the tall clone. "That's nice, Mr. Tall-Dark-Handsome-And-Totally-Unknown-To-Me."

Skirata snorted a laugh and even Ordo seemed mildly amused by her nonsense.

The newcomer was not. His politeness was just that: a polite formality. He was glad that he'd found her, in that her absence had been an irritation to him. In the Force, he was an iceberg on two legs, his emotions playing beneath the surface like shards of light fracturing in the ice, buried so deep it was hard even for Ro to suss them out. Other than a general feeling of dissatisfaction and grumpiness - mostly aimed at her and some aimed at Captain Ordo - she sensed practically nothing from him.

"I'm Captain Maze," the clone introduced himself. "General Zey sent me to find you, Commander. Your courtesy call began thirty minutes ago."

"Oh. Great gooey crumblebuns, is it already that late?"

"It is," Maze said, then turned his attention to Skirata and Ordo. "Captain, Sergeant, I was under the impression that you had a mission to accomplish."

The change in Ordo's Force-aura was as unmistakable as it was startlingly swift. There was no way for Ro to describe it other than that the Force around Captain Ordo grew spikes, like a defensive armor.

Ro quickly locked her hands firmly behind her back, willing herself not to reach for her lightsabers at this sudden increase in hostility. She'd never met anyone who was so good at bristling as this Captain Ordo.

Skirata put a placating hand on the captain's arm and nodded towards Maze. "We were just on our way when we were," his eyes flickered towards Ro, "delayed. Shall we proceed, Captain?" The tone was surprisingly deferential and just a tad needling, as if Skirata felt the need to remind everyone present that Ordo outranked him.

It seemed to make the captain a little uncomfortable in Ro's estimation, but the sharp spikes of hostility vanished from his Force-aura, for which she was grateful. Negative emotions like that always left a bad taste in her mouth.

"Yes, we should get going." The T-shaped visor swiveled from Maze, to her and back to Skirata and without any further ado, the two men left.

"Well," Ro said to no one in particular, "that was awkward." She looked up at Maze, but the trooper's face was inscrutable as he gazed after Skirata and Ordo. There was history between those three, that much was clear. Question was, did she want to get in the middle of it?

Absotively not.

"So," she wondered aloud, "is it happy coincidence that my guide through that maze of corridors and doors," she pointed a finger at the huge building complex that had given her so much trouble, "is named after the self-same maze or a sign for my own sad lack of direction?"

Maze turned to look down at her, his brow furrowed. He didn't seem to have understood her and simply ignored the playful question.

"If you'll follow me, Commander," he said, indicating the building behind them. "General Zey is waiting for you."

Ro raised both of her eyebrows. "I'd hope so. Otherwise, we'd be having a mono stellar game of Hunter through the corridors."

Again, that blank look as he led the way across the plaza and up the stairs into the building. Ro let out a sigh, blowing her bangs out of her eyes as she did so. This Maze masc was Captain Control all the mono way.

Perhaps sensing that his demeanor had been less than civil, Captain Maze cleared his throat and hazarded a comment of his own. "I see you didn't bring your new partner with you, Commander Arhen."

Ro glanced away from the endless walls of grey and holos of starships that were the only adornments in this stretch of corridor. "Yeah, no." She shrugged, fiddling with her Padawan braid. "Coo-Wren didn't feel like coming along."

"Didn't feel like it?" Captain Maze repeated, his dark brows lowering in disapproval. "Commander, the courtesy call was directed at both of you. You should have overridden the lieutenant."

"Why?" Ro wanted to know. "I'm not the boss of him."

Judging by the look he gave her, Ro had just said something galactically stoopa. He didn't even bother answering her, just focused his attention forward.

Ro sighed and resigned herself to following after the taciturn captain like a good little selky. This whole courtesy call thing wasn't working out like she'd hoped and technically, she hadn't even started the actual interview.

But silence had never really been her strong-suit. The short interlude with Skirata and Ordo had started an entire tumble of questions inside of her head and it didn't take long for those questions to find their way from her mind to her mouth.

"Do you also speak Mandalorian?"

The question obviously caught Maze by surprise. He shot her a look, but quickly composed himself. "I was taught the language on Kamino, Commander."

"So all clones know it?" she asked.

Maze seemed to hesitate over that one. "The commandos certainly do. Most of their training sergeants were Mandalorians. As an Alpha ARC, I was trained by Jango Fett personally." A shiver of pride raced across his icy Force-signature, but it was also accompanied by a glint of fear that Ro could not account for. "The language has since trickled down the ranks." He grimaced. "The swears, in particular, have becoming popular amongst the rank and file."

"Huh." She thought this over for a moment, taking in the doors and offices they passed. The section of building they'd entered was busy, but not crowded. "What does vod mean? Or vode?" This time, the pronunciation of the two words felt more natural.

"Vod," Maze said carefully, as if measuring each word to see how poorer he'd be for letting it go, "means brother, sister or comrade. Vode is the plural form." He thought for a moment, then added reluctantly, "Usually, it means 'brother' among clones."

So Wren had been hallucinating about his brother after being injured on Gaftikar. She thought about the other snatches of words she could remember from that time. There'd been two that had kind of sounded like names. Asher and Thrush. Was one of them the brother Wren had been talking about?

Ro bit her lip, then finally asked, "And 'ni ceta'? What does that mean?"

Maze came to a stop, actually turning around to look at her fully. His brows were lowered, but he was more surprised than irritated, as if he hadn't ever expected to hear those two words. "It means, 'I'm sorry'. It's a means of begging for forgiveness amongst Mandalorians."

The two stared at one another for a few seconds longer, Maze obviously waiting for some sort of explanation while Ro's mind raced.

Did that mean that Wren had been begging someone for forgiveness in the depths of his hallucination. It was hard to imagine the proud trooper begging for anything, let alone forgiveness. Ro had actually gotten the impression that remorse and apologies were something utterly foreign to Wren. But she was sure that's what she'd heard him say. But who would he be asking for forgiveness? His brother; this Asher or Thrush?

You've got some secrets, rolled up into all that grumpiness, haven't you, Cookie?

Maze had apparently given up on ever receiving an explanation for her sudden interest in the Mandalorian language. "If that will be all, Commander," he said stiffly and gestured at a door ahead of them. "The general is waiting for you."

Ro peeked around Maze's form, studied the door to Zey's office for a second, then turned back to the clone captain. "One more quick ask and then I'll behave and meet-and-greet with the bosban."

Maze cocked a single eyebrow at her, his hands folded neatly behind his back. "Yes, Commander?"

"Do you have chest hair?" she asked, twirling a strand of purple hair around one finger. "'Cause the clones I've met bare-chested so far are distinctly lacking in that department."

The ice cracked. Maze gaped at her, clearly at a loss for words.

Ro continued to study the trooper, still twirling the purple half of her hair.

The door to the office opened and Jedi Master Arligan Zey poked his head out of his office.

"Ah, I thought I heard voices."

He glanced at the dumbstruck captain and frowned. "Is everything alright, Captain?"

Startled out of his astonishment, Maze straightened, trying to compose his face into professional neutrality once more.

Ro ducked her head, tucking a smile away. It was such bombad stellar fun to frazzle organics. A tad wicked of her, perhaps, but still mono loads fun.

"Ah, yes, General. Everything is fine." Maze glanced at Ro, before deliberately focusing on the older Jedi, saluting smartly. "General Arligan Zey, Commander Arhen, as ordered."

"Thank you, Captain." Zey stepped aside to let Ro into the office. "Why don't you grab yourself some caf. This won't take long."

Maze nodded, obviously relieved to get away from Ro. He shot the shorter Jedi another look, which Ro returned with a wide smile. The gesture seemed to unsettle the captain only more and he beat a hasty retreat.

"If you'd follow me, Commander," Zey invited her into a large office, dominated by a lapiz-topped table. "There are a few things I would like to settle before discussing assignments."

"'Kay," Ro said absentmindedly. She wasn't really listening; her attention was riveted on Maze who was walking down the corridor with those same quick, but unhurried strides he'd used when crossing the plaza.

There was...something about the way Maze moved and now that she thought about it, it was a trait he shared with Captain Ordo.

Both clones walked slightly leaning forward on their toes, ready to jump at the slightest sign of danger. Their hands never seemed to stray far from their holstered blasters. And Maze's eyes constantly tracked his surroundings and Ro was sure that beneath the helmet, Ordo had been doing the same.

Vigilance. Attention. Focus.

Ordo and Maze couldn't have felt more different in the Force than if they'd been fire and ice incarnate, but those three traits were something they definitely shared. And Wren did as well.

Maze said he was an ARC. And judging by the similarities in armor, Ordo was as well. And the language. Maze had said that the Mandalorian had trickled down through the ranks, while the ARCS and the commandos had actually learned it. And it was mostly the swears that the normal troopers were supposed to know. But she'd never heard Wren use a swear word she hadn't been able to understand. No, his usage of Mandalorian had been restricted to a moment of mental confusion, where the brain fell back on what it knew best. Like a language learned in childhood.

Despite what Wren might think of her, Ro actually was able to add two and two together.

The skills that regular troopers like Gaff didn't share. Using uncommon words of a language he'd supposedly never been taught. The walk of a predator she'd so far seen only on him and these two ARCs.

Cookie is one of them. An ARC. Whatever that meant.

But if that was so, then why hadn't he wanted to come with her today? This seemed to be ARC central.

"Commander Arhen?" Zey was gazing at her, his eyebrows raised, greying hair swept back. He was still waiting in the doorway for her.

"Oh, ehm, yeah." She glanced again at Maze, but the ARC captain was already out of sight. "Of course. I'm sorry, Mas-General Zey. Didn't mean to stand around like a Woostroid statue."

"That's alright." Zey gave her a smile that was sincere, though slightly worn at the edges. The man radiated a fatigue that was slowly settling into his very bones. "I know from experience that this can all be a little overwhelming at first."

Ro gave the empty corridor one last sweep, as if checking for left-over ARCs to pop out of the ventilation shafts. "Yes," she said quietly as she followed Zey into his office. "Quite overwhelming. And educational."

It was obvious Wren didn't want people to know he was an ARC. Ro didn't know why, but she was poselutely determined to find out.

A smile tugged at her lips. She loved a good mystery.

Translation: emtix = (Bocce) vacuum, koochoo = (Huttese) idiot, stoopa = (Huttese) stupid, vod/vode = (Mando'a) single + pl. brother, sister, comrade, Ni ceta = (Mando'a) I'm sorry