"Take your time," Ad'ra hissed in her helmet.
She had sixteen clone Ranger trainees hidden along the framework for the comms infrastructure. Another dozen opposite them. Twenty more in the tall building that housed the power array. Where the others were she didn't know. They'd been given the task of evaluating the Cuy'val Dar and the training operation for potential threats—told to choose the most threatening target. She'd given her approval or redirected as necessary. The other half had been told to evaluate the facility itself—challenge its weaknesses and most valuable personnel, most valuable assets. After they'd presented their findings to her she'd issued directives to either destroy or detain.
It had been an interesting and amusing diversion for them. For her as well. She'd been proud of them. None of the ones she'd redirected had needed to find new targets because of poor logic. But you really only needed one ASR Commando trying to take out Ko Sai at a time.
In the future she'd allow them to compete for targets. That would be good practice, too.
It amused the hell out of her how many of them had reported the ARCs and NULLs as hazards to the integrity of the program. That she was going to allow. She trained the sights of her own rifle on the group standing attention on the parade ground being berated by none other than her boss himself. They were going to miss muster and she'd probably take a hit for that. It baffled her that half her vode had suggested that as the best time to present an attack on the base. On one hand it made sense. Less meandering going on throughout the bastion. On the other, the rest of them were going to have three thousand pissed off and frightened clone commandos—armed clone commandos—instantly ready to defend.
One of her guys had told her his plan was to wait another year or two until he was tall enough to pose as an ARC, then infiltrate and take out one of Jango Fett's own before disguising himself in the squad, slowly executing them one-by-one. His brother had wanted to nullify the threat of the ARCs by doing the same thing—in Jango Fett's own armor.
She should have let Jango in on this little exercise and seen if the kid could pull it off.
"Udessi," she cooed as another group came around the corner. She wanted Skirata's NULLs. She'd run up against one who needed to be taught a lesson in manners and had her own sights set on taking down the man who'd adopted them and then that one.
The mission clock counted down in her head and on the HUDs of the commando trainees secreted around Tipoca City. She felt and heard the one closest to her shift. Heard him breathe in.
So did his brethren.
"You're dead, Lathlo," one of them teased, amusement in his voice.
"Now you are, too, then… di'kut," the clone argued back.
"Oya, vode," Ad'ra whispered in their ears when just another few seconds had passed.
There were some light giggles. "Oya," was returned over and over with great anticipation.
Then, in the middle of their congratulatory mirth, they unleashed unholy hell.
All of the ones sighting individual targets seemed to fire simultaneously, shots carefully placed so that they would hit between their targets' marching feet. Non-lethal rounds. This time. Next time she wanted stunners. They'd move up to stingers and shockers from there.
Flashbangs went off up the side of the tele-tower and communications array and smoke was popped to indicate successful demolitions of targets marked for sabotage.
"Ke'mot! Endex!" Fett had instantly turned, sighted up on her with his laser target.
"No fair," she complained to him.
"I always know what you're up to," he promised.
She popped her bucket off to stick out her tongue.
Admitted to herself she probably wouldn't have felt so comfortable doing so if he hadn't called the cease-fire immediately. Was almost sorry he had, as a big part of her challenge would have been getting her guys back down to the parade ground to muster for the weekly review without getting anybody actually killed.
She rose, gestured with her sniper rifle above her head, and claimed their victory.
"SOL'YC TALYC!"
Her boys cheered in their helmets. Drew them off and echoed their own chant of triumph.
"Sol'yc talyc!" First blood. They would remember this. "Sol'yc talyc! Sol'yc talyc!"
In the science lab the two tasked with taking down the head scientist bowed politely.
"The drill is over, ma'am. You may resume."
To say Ko Sai was miffed would have been an understatement.
.
"You play a dangerous game," Dred Priest hissed at Ad'ra when she joined the Cuy'val Dar after the battle dress inspection was completed.
"You failed inspection," Fett declared with no preamble as he walked in to begin his assessment. He slapped a stack of smoke frags down in front of her.
"What's this?"
"Whoever broke into the armory was sloppy. Address it."
She nodded curtly.
"You, too, Braylor. This is your AO. Fix it."
"You're lucky somebody didn't get killed," the other woman complained. "Either getting in or setting things up or that actual little show."
"See, in my mind, it worked and worked beautifully. Next time I'm going to let them compete for targets."
"No next time," Fett told her. "I won't have you disrupting an inspection muster like that again."
She neither agreed nor argued with him. To her way of thinking he'd given her the perfect out to repeat the exercise under different circumstances.
Kal Skirata chided her from where he was leaning against the wall. "ARCs are crazy. There was no predicting how they'd react and what he'd order them to do and then you'd have a bunch of dead seven-year-olds on your conscience."
She turned toward him. She wasn't the only one.
The other Cuy'val Dar present were just as incredulous. "Did you just say ARCs are crazy?" she heard one of the men mutter in a dark chuckle.
Ad'ra just narrowed her eyes at the shorter man.
"If I don't teach them to do the job I'll have their lives on my conscience anyway."
Her boys had been so excited they'd been nearly impossible to bring down.
"Where did you get the Verpine syntha-skins for their armor?" Kilo asked.
"That would be me," the erudite man sitting at the foot of the table said blandly. "Although I didn't realize what her plan was for them. And I'm a little insulted that none of my unit were targeted."
Ad'ra put on a faux pout. "I wouldn't have taken you out. I figure I'll need more units in my plot for world domination and I want you and Jaig'ba'buir on my side."
Fett laughed. "You want Dalphina and you want Theta but not ARCs."
"ARCs are crazy, boss," she told him. Leaned forward. "Do you have a tracker in my suit?"
"I do."
"Why?"
"Because I take you on ops with me."
"I don't get to track you."
"You're supposed to be an assassin. You shouldn't need a tracker."
She lifted her brows and sat back. Let him get on with the rest of the briefing.
It would have been impossible to ignore the baleful stares she got from several of the others. The way their troops had reacted when they took fire reflected on them. Several of them had challenged Fett, demanding to know if he'd authorized it and complaining about the spectacle she'd made.
A hundred assimilated-thirteen-year-olds chanting that they'd taken first blood was one hell of a hard pill to swallow.
The meeting moved to different things and Ad'ra leaned toward the man sitting against the wall near Skirata.
"May I do the virtual terrain indoctrinations with my vode?" she asked Skip Smar K'cen.
"No. It's for them to succeed or fail on their own," she was told.
"Just as observation," Ad'ra clarified. "They don't even need to know I'm there. I just want to see it."
"See what?" Skip asked.
"All of it. I've only ever been here and on arid worlds. I've never seen a forest or jungle. Except in pictures. I've seen gardens in pictures, too. I know my da took me to a garden on Coruscant. I just don't remember it. I read holobooks about some places that describe some of the things in jungles and forests. I just want to see them for real."
Fett's face froze and he turned from where he'd been leaned over Cort Davin speaking with him and Hege Lollo.
"Shab," Skirata hissed.
Gilamar's jaw worked and Rav leaned forward to pat the girl's shoulder.
"Oh! I mean, not for real. I know it's not real, real!"
"We'll work something out," Skip told her.
She beamed at him and looked like the child she was. She was no taller than the boys she taught and coltish with it, still growing into her long limbs and starting to spread where a woman did.
"Wicked kandosii!"
.
.
"Help me?" the girl asked a few months later.
Walon Vau lifted his brow and gestured to the sleeping animal beneath her bare feet.
"What the kriff?" She was rubbing it's wrinkled gold-furred belly with her toes while she took apart ordnance at the table in his quarters. "How did you get in here?"
"Mird let me in. Did you know he licks the tanks the new vode are growing in?"
He shook his head. She was a liability and a caution.
"You shouldn't be in there."
"Neither should Mirdy, here. It can't be sanitary."
He turned his back, reaching for a glass. "Do you want something?"
"Jango says I'm not old enough yet," she told him honestly. Watched his look of disbelief as he poured himself a libation.
He actually hadn't been offering her a nightcap. He'd love to know why she'd set up shop at the table in his compartment.
At least H.G. hadn't stopped by for a drink.
"You're the only one with crystal serviceware."
"I'm the only one with a royal bloodline," he smirked.
Her head cocked to the side and the ponytail she'd trapped her hair in swung.
"Jango. Fett." Ad'ra corrected.
"Mand'alor," he mimicked, rocking his head side-to-side. "He's just a regular man—just like everybody else here."
She reached back and touched the scar on the back of her neck.
She was sworn to his duty until he released her from the bond—by hanging or beheading. Just as she was the one, should need arise, who would be called upon by the Mando'ad to remove his in ceremonial fashion if he was rejected from the position by the courts.
Vau understood the point she was making and nodded curtly.
Hissed out a breath and brought the decanter of spirits to the table.
Handed her his glass on the tips of his fingers.
"If you're willing to end a life or give yours in his stead you're old enough to have a drink."
.
She wanted help creating some kind of round that would fire from the issued DCs but would leave a mark on the recipient of the blow without real damage. It took some time but they came up with something sturdy enough to survive being shot from traditional weaponry but that would erupt with colored powder or paint upon impact.
"You can't do headshots, not with any kind of impact round, not even in buckets," he warned her.
She nodded seriously. "Got it. Makes sense."
"It's terrifying to take a head shot, even in beskar'gam, and the result would be instinctive. None of us are going to be able to beat that kind of predisposition out of a man," he warned.
She cocked her head. "Have you gotten hit before?"
"I have. Of course I have."
"But your armor is in pristine condition."
"Of course it is. How many of these do you need?"
"A lot. Like, maybe two or three for each of my vode."
"They're not your brothers. You realize that, don't you?"
"They're exactly that," she argued. "They were babies when I got them and now they're nearly men. We've grown up together."
"You're nowhere near grown up."
She lifted a shoulder. "I will be soon enough."
"You understand that you're not going to war with them, don't you?"
"I know my role here."
"This is madness," he hissed, chugging the rest of the liquor in the glass. "How old are you now?"
"Almost sixteen," she told him.
The same age his lads were. Fek.
"My birthday is next week," she said softly. Continued to manipulate the fragmentation rounds they were taking apart. "It's been six years since my father died. He always bought me muja cake and we stayed up to watch my stars come into alignment. I learned to navigate that way—just stars in the dark in the desert. He taught me so that I'll always know where I came from and where I am and where I'm going. Even without tech."
He just listened to her. Blinked and shook his head softly. Kriffing madness.
He heard her swallow hard. "You can't find my stars here. It's the only place I've ever been that you can't see them. Can't see anything out there. We really are lost here, nonexistent. I'm always afraid—when Slave 1 takes off?—that we won't get through, that we'll just get sucked into that grey nothing. I'm always so grateful to see those stars on the other side."
He rubbed his brow with the back of his hand.
"Your father was unconscionable."
She set the tools down with a thunk. "How can you say that?"
"You should have been left with your mother. Not taken planet-to-planet learning to slaughter and sabotage."
"That's not our way and if you'd been born into the culture you'd understand it."
"Bullshit. Most of the men and women here went to Mando'a as a result of losing everything that gave them a soul. Even native born Mandalorians stay at the hearth the first few years. It's seven or eight by that standard before you begin training. Certainly no sooner than six."
"I am not merely Mando… mandokarla. I am the Adenn, as was my father before me and his before him. I am sworn, Walon Vau. From my first breath I was destined to await any command the Mand'alor might make of me. How was I to learn that staying where we were? My mother did not even want me. She was promised to my father, and he conceived on her, but I was his only goal in the mating."
"He told you that?" Walon asked, aghast.
The head shook. "She did," Ad'ra admitted, ducking her head to resume her task.
"Reprehensible."
"She was a fifteen-year-old child herself. Given to a man more than twice her age with the sole thought that her family had produced big, strong heirs for the Manda'yaim for generations. These commandos? They were created, replicated? I was selectively bred. Not so different, say you?"
He nodded, let out a huffing breath.
She'd given him reason to doubt his rebuke at least.
Krif.
"Mating… Marriage… Sex isn't supposed to be about the next heir," he told her quietly. "It was wrong of your father, wrong of your mother's family. Wrong of her to speak of it to you."
She tucked her cheek in on one side.
"Moot point, isn't it?"
He lifted his brows in question.
"I'm the Adenn," she said again. "There will be no home and hearth for me. I cannot serve my Mand'alor if I allow myself to beget a child. Instead I raise my vode and fulfill his needs when called upon."
He didn't know which to address first.
"Does he call upon you? As a man or as a master?"
The question in her eyes answered the disgust and dismay he'd briefly felt that Fett might be taking advantage of a child in his care.
"I am his to order. You know I accompany him off-world…"
"I meant his bed, little one," he told her bluntly. "Although you are tender for him to set you on a ledge and assign you targets."
"How old were you when you killed your first man?"
"A lot older than you are now."
That seemed to impress her. That or it shocked her into silence for a while.
"How old were you?"
She lifted her shoulder and made her eyes wide. "I don't even know. I've done it as far as I can remember. It was something we did together, my father and I." Her face went soft, dreamy. "I remember him steadying the rifle for me when my arms were too short to hold the trigger and seat the butt against my shoulder and reach the forward stock all at once."
That knotted something in his gut.
He'd grown up under a sadistic bastard. Had every tender feeling beaten out of him until he'd found love—at her age—and been exiled to start anew in the big, wide world.
Which way was worse?
To rear a child with love but create a monster?
Or rob it of love with the same result?
He couldn't help but feel horror at the way she'd been raised.
.
"May I borrow Delta for a while tomorrow?"
"Why?"
"They're bigger than me and we're doing hand-to-hand."
"They have an instructor for that."
"Yes. An instructor who scares the osik out of them. Yours have faces they know and I figure they'd feel freer to go savage on them. Get their shebs kicked. It's important, I think, to learn to get up when you've been completely beaten. And fighting each other it's usually a draw."
"Have you had the osik kicked out of you?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"It's not something to write home about. Especially if it's someone you're close to, someone who should be protecting you."
"Mine don't work in squads. They're a solo act and they have to learn that. The hard way sometimes. It's just a life lesson, Sgt. Vau. Don't go soft on me now."
"Fine. I'll make my company available to you tomorrow morning." He kept speaking before she could object that she really just needed the one squad. "Five a.m."
She rolled her eyes. She was not by nature an early riser.
He caught her glancing at the chrono on the wall. Poured another drink.
"So there's two schools of thought vis a vis going to bed versus staying up when you're only going to get a fraction of the sleep you need…"
She took the cup when he offered it again. Didn't wince as much this time when the liquor hit her tongue. Shivered through the burn of it down her throat.
.
The next day he took a demonstrative stance beside her, her guys and his still in their respective formations.
Supposedly he was teaching them how to throw off an opponent who out-sized them.
In practice he was hardening her, too, according to her own mandate that you should have your ass handed to you at least once, learn to get up when you wanted to roll into a ball, and that the last thing she needed was him going soft on her.
The prolonged session brought other Cuy'val Dar to the balconies that ringed the parade and training grounds.
"Yeild?!" he yelled through the driving rain when she didn't get up. She was down on all fours, blood and snot and spit streaming from her face, her hair nearly loose from the ponytail she wore. Soaked to the bone. If it hadn't been raining she'd have still spent enough sweat to saturate her.
When she shook her head he kicked her again. Sent her rolling.
"Enough, Vau!" Mij Gilamar shouted.
"No," Ad'ra called. She made to rise and her leg gave out under her when she applied pressure to it. She slid back down with a sickening thunk on the wet ground. Twisted the other way and used a stair rung to haul herself up. Hopped back toward him, fists held ready.
He cocked his head. Danced away from her. Darted in. Tagged her. Tagged her again.
"Haar'chak, Walon. That's enough."
He watched Ad'ra shake her head. Turned his own and spat out the blood that pooled in his own mouth. He was pretty sure she'd broken his cheekbone.
Good on her.
He got hold of her hair again, whipped her around, and held her like he'd break her neck.
"Get me off of you," he ordered through gritted teeth. "Break my hold. Get free and get me down and get me-"
He grunted when a body hit him from behind, pummeling straight into his already-bruised kidney. His arm was jerked away from her faster than he could release her hair and he heard her cry out as she was thrown to the ground by the momentum. He came up swinging before he registered the sound of Jonashe Kilo sounding the cease and desist order.
"Check! Check! Check!"
"Fek!" he spat as he leapt back up, the four clones who'd jumped him staring wide-eyed and terrified. He gestured. Pointed. "Boss. Fixer. Atin. Scree."
Ad'ra was on her knees, breathing hard, too.
"Stand alone, will they?" he asked. He nodded in approval at the younger clones. Put his hand to his ribs. "It seems they missed that memo."
She half-crawled over to him as he shifted, sinking to sit down on the rain-drenched surface.
"On my mark," he ordered. "And do better than your instructor."
"Holy fek," Mij Gilamar hissed. Reached down toward Ad'ra as if he would help her to rise.
Vau cut his eyes at her briefly. "If you leave now you're weak."
"She needs medical attention," the physician declared. There was a murmur amongst the others gathered, although few of them had the guts to challenge the man.
"She can get it later. I didn't kill her."
"Damn near to it," Rav said, crouching. "Neither one of you is even in beskar!"
He'd been in his BDUs. Had stripped off the tunic at some point. She'd dressed out in cammies like her guys.
"Harder to break a body that way." He lifted his hand to his face. Noted it was shaking a little now. Too much. Too much adrenaline and catecholamine and CRH pumping through him. "Did she fuck up my nose?"
"I didn't break your nose," Ad'ra grunted at him.
Watched him pause in his perusal of personal damages to shout out an order for one of the combating pairs.
Gil had produced something from his bag of tricks and was injecting her in the neck.
"Is that stim or narcotic?"
"Why do you care?"
"Because if it's a stim she's going to end up hypothermic. We've been up all night and she'll already have a hell of a letdown from the battle rush."
"Kriffing gods, Walon, the two of you have been bashing each other all night?"
Ad'ra shook her head. "It started off instructional. I've never been attacked before."
He grunted at her.
"It hurts."
"Told you," he replied without emotion.
She whimpered when she shifted, taking a seat on her ass.
"Yeah."
He handed her a handkerchief from his back pocket. It was freezing cold and soaking wet, but it was clean.
When Gil handed her a yai'yai pouch she couldn't punch the straw in it. Rav Braylor's cold eyes were on Vau as she took it and opened it herself, held it for Ad'ra until she'd sucked some before the girl reached to take it. He held his hand out for it in turn.
Rav just shook her head when he turned, lifted himself to his knees with a painful wince and exhalation, and retrieved his heavy tunic. That was all she could do when he draped it around the body just starting to shiver next to him.
"I'm not weak," Ad'ra challenged, starting to push it away.
"No," Vau told her. Blew air out his cheeks and immediately wished he hadn't. Yeah. That felt broken. Maybe a chipped tooth, too. "No. You're not weak. This one's on me. My weakness."
He slumped back down. Wished Gil would offer him something numbing or stimulating. Shouted out a few more directives before he got up to pair off the rest of their guys.
"You'll fight until you can't get up, do you understand me?" he asked one of the guys who hadn't been able to take Ad'ra's pain and had jumped him. Gutsy. So gutsy.
He liked guts.
"Then you find a way to turn that weakness around. If you can't get up you're as far down as you can get. Nowhere else to go. Make it work! Find a weakness in your opponent's victory—even if you have to let them think they've won—then you find a way to lash out and get them down on your level! You're never out of it! You're not weak men, you are Republic Commandos! The GAR's Rangers! Your genome was twisted to make you more! Make you different! Don't watch your brother—he has lessons you've never learned, paths to take you won't follow! Watch me! Listen to ME!"
He jerked one around, put his fist to the surprised face, then launched at his own commando trainee on the swing.
Bashed their heads together.
Yeah. He liked guts.
Admired the kid when he reached out with his feet and tried to trip him up.
Of course, it would cost him a trip to a bacta tank because Vau just broke both his ankles, then flipped his own trainee around and, berating him for letting him get the jump on the younger clone, broke his ankles, too.
He'd bit off more than he could chew and was so fucking relieved when every single one of their wrist comms lit up red and they popped to attention at the short bark of command.
"You're remanded to barracks!" Hashery Ghett called. "DALPHINA and 4th ASRC! Fifteen minutes to triage, be ready in beskar or in the infirmary in twenty!"
Two loud claps heralded the order to "MOVE!"
"Fierfek, Walon," the man called. Circled the other instructor. Held out his hand to him.
"Don't shake it hard," Vau warned with a half-laugh.
"Kill anybody today?"
"Not yet. Sun's not up yet, though, so there's still plenty of time left."
"You after my job?"
"Not for every credit in the Republic," Vau swore.
H.G. chuckled. "They roughed you up pretty good."
The other man pointed. "Not them. Little bit over there."
"Hellll yeah. Kandosii."
Mij Gilamar was not amused. "He damn near killed her."
"Taught her a lesson, an important one," Vau argued.
Ad'ra nodded. "I'll fix it," she told him.
"Fix what?" Rav Braylor snapped.
"Her hair's a liability," Walon told the other woman. "She suffered most, I was able to subdue her multiple times, because of a fekking vanity. She wants long pretty hair, that's fine. There's jobs as secretaries and whores to be found all over the galaxy. She wants to wage war? It needs to be up and out of her way and where I can't get a grip on her that way."
"I didn't think of it like that," Ad'ra told Rav sorrowfully.
"Just in combat," Walon told her. "You come at me again and I expect more of a struggle getting you under me."
He bent, reached for her arm to haul her up. Groaned through the pain in his forearm and shoulder when she accepted the assistance. He cradled it tighter to him when she was steady on her feet.
"You all right?" she asked him.
He gripped the side of his face with his uninjured hand and snorted out a laugh. Fek. That hurt, too. He hoped Mij would be willing to set the bone and give him something for it.
"I've been better, but then I've been a whole hell of a lot worse, too." He slapped her back. "Next time I'll let you put me down once or twice so your guys think you can."
She stuck out her tongue. He liked spunk, too.
.
Her papa bear hunted him down as he left the mess.
"You beat the hell out of Ad'ra?"
"I did."
"In front of a parade field of clones standing at attention all night?"
"You're hearing parts of different stories there. Ad'ra and I were working on something last night. The clones didn't get brought in until this morning before breakfast."
"You look like shit."
"Yeah, well…"
"What was it over?"
"What?"
"What set you off? What started the fight?"
"She hasn't ever had the osik kicked out of her and it was time somebody did it."
Fett shook his head. "No offense, but you look like you took a tumble from the upper atmosphere and hit every satellite circling this daryaim morut before you landed. Why are you walking like that?"
"Shab, Fett. Somebody taught her to kick first, knee second. It's probably a good thing I never wanted children."
Fett laughed long and loud, quickly outpacing the other man as he continued on down the hallway.
Walon, after having one of the medics from his company pack his nose and sinus cavity since Mij Gilamar expressed no interest in treating him, had spent some time in his rack with a couple of heating pads and a fekking ice pack on his gett'se. He had barely been able to stand the pressure of the flight suit under his beskar'gam holding everything in tight.
Wondered how Ad'ra was holding up after their little contest. Wondered if she was out of it for a day or two.
.
Found out that night when he got hit with the first powder-blue dust round.
In short order he'd been hit in the chest, back, and took four to the helmet.
Which he thought was overboard.
Half his sergeants got hit with the first volley. All the Nulls and all the Cuy'val Dar on his side of the parade field.
Yellow rounds exploded in quick succession as he ordered Dalphina to set their rifles to stun. ARCs, more of the Cuy'val Dar, and all the windows behind him. He wondered about that, what assimilated target they'd been assigned.
Then the lights went out. No sooner did he and the others order night vision than they shot back on, even brighter than before, and accompanied with flash bangs. Bitch.
He laughed when he stood, trying to discern where the next volley of shots was coming from.
He was good at it, and directed fire to the rooftops, sighting up his own rifle to knock out a few of her guys.
"Don't take down anybody who'd fall," he ordered on external speaker.
"Fuck that," Hege Lollo shouted back. "This is intolerable."
His gauntlet didn't take all the impact from whatever the hell hit him. He cursed and shook it before picking up the missile. A fekking hunk of shabla steri-steel. He clicked through comms to open a link to her.
He heard the yelp and turned immediately. Sighted up on Ad'ra. He heard a series of crashes and correctly assumed that was her helmet getting beat to hell as it bounced down the side of the building.
She wasn't struggling. She must have given the order to surrender over ASRC coms because the ones who hadn't taken stun rounds held their DCs over their heads and stood up.
One of the Nulls had her half-suspended over the edge of the building, a knife to her throat and his palm over her brow. Vau nodded in approval. Her hair was braided back so tightly he couldn't use it as a handhold. Lesson learned.
The other commandos echoed the salute when Skirata's Null held the knife out, making a fist.
"Ib'tuur jatne tuur ash'ad kyr'amur!"
[Today is a good day for someone else to die]
Vau laughed. Removed his bucket—the fucking rounds he'd told her not to shoot at their heads obscured part of his vision—and cupped his hands around his mouth.
"Ke barjurir gar'ade, jagyc'ade kot'la a dalyc'ade kotla'shya!"
[Train your sons to be strong but your daughters to be stronger]
He hoped Ad'ra would accept the advice being given.
She gripped the wrist holding her hostage.
Tapped the other three times on the forearm.
"Ni dinu ner gaan naakyc, jorcu ni nu copaani kyr'amur ner vod."
[Honor my truce, brother, as I would shed my blood before yours.]
Fett stepped out of the shelter of the building and regarded the chaos on his training field. He'd known her plan this time. Purposefully stayed out of it. She would make enemies this way. But her troops were getting more realistic training out of it and she'd made her point to the elder Cuy'val Dar.
He clapped his hands slowly.
"Drop," he ordered.
Ad'ra nodded smartly.
"Remind me who you are?" she asked, tapping wrists with the Null Commando.
"I'm Null ARC N-5. At your service, Marshal."
"Your name," she demanded. "What name did your Buir give you?"
"Prudii, ma'am."
"You have my respect, Prudii," she told him. Bumped his elbow with her own. And free-fell from the top of the building.
Several of them thought she was a little too cute for her own good, waiting to release the liquid-cable line so that it sunk in and slowed her fall just before she hit a velocity that would jerk her at full tension. Fett reached out to catch her by the shoulders.
Jerked his head at her when he set her on her feet and she turned around. Handed her back her buy'ce and gave her one short nod.
At the unspoken order she hit her knee, her helmet tucked to the side so that she could present the back of her neck to him.
He reached out and hit the side of his fist against the protective ring of good, Mandalorian steel that circled her collar.
It was all the censorship she needed and he stepped away, leaving his sergeants and generals to disperse his troops.
"I can't believe you let your guys shoot me in the face," Walon told her when he stalked up to her.
She grinned at him. "I can only tell you that I clearly relayed to my mission directors that you'd given direct orders when you helped me make the rounds that we were not to aim for headshot kills."
He brandished his helmet. "I should make them stand at attention while you scrub it."
She licked her thumb and rubbed it over the colored splatter. Not a budge. Not even when she scraped it with her nail.
"Perfect," he hissed.
"Somebody will be able to think of something."
"Your boss is going to kill you."
"The thought occurs. There for a second…"
He, too, had had just that millisecond of disquiet when he thought Fett was going to invoke his right to end the life of an Adenn whose actions were unwarrantable.
"You need to grow up, Ad'ra," Vau growled. "In a hurry."
"That thought has occurred to me, too."
"You should be too exhausted to pull this nonsense. You're running on no sleep."
"Did you find time today to take a nap in a syntha-swing?"
She wanted a hammock. Had read about them in a novella and looked them up. Everywhere they were pictured looked exactly opposite of everything she'd ever seen in real life.
She turned and jogged away. Youth. Possibly stupidity.
It was the only thing he could come up with to explain her sunny disposition and seemingly indefatigable energy.
She jogged all the way to Skirata's door.
"Can you recall N-5 for me?"
"Why?" the man asked suspiciously, not opening his door.
"Because I'd like to talk to him. I'm not armed."
She held her hands wide.
"Any snipers hiding in wait?" he asked, making a show of mocking her by looking left and right and above.
"If there were you wouldn't spot them," she sneered.
She must have been practicing it in the mirror. Or spending too much time around the older guys. It wasn't a look that suited her to his way of thinking.
"You're going to get someone killed."
"We're all raising vode so they get killed in someone else's war. Is your son home?"
She was pragmatic about it. He was not.
He couldn't reconcile the girl he saw celebrating victories and bolstering her troopers with this seeming acceptance of their inevitable fate.
"Are you afraid to die?" she asked him when he stepped back.
He flinched, looked over his shoulder at her.
She just looked around. Her attention caught on his hand-knit afghan and she gasped in delight. Picked it up to run it over her cheek. It was disconcerting to try to reconcile that side of her, too, the one who love the soft and shiny and exclaimed over it—still bearing the marks of a man's bruises on her pretty face.
This was osik.
"Prudii!"
The clone shuffled out.
"May I speak with you?" Ad'ra asked. "Privately."
"Meet me in my office," the Null offered. "Thirty minutes."
She agreed, clasping his arm in the way Walon had offered his after their sparring match.
Met the young man on the rooftop.
"Are you coming to bargain for the use of my body next?" he asked.
"In a manner of speaking. You know that I am the adenn, the merc's merc?"
"I am aware."
"I have no heir and am unlikely to produce one. I'd like to offer the position to you next."
His eyes flickered over her with interest.
"What does that mean?"
"It means you'll serve the next Mand'alor when I am dead. Fett if he is still bearing the title. Whoever comes after him."
"How will I know, if I'm in the army?"
"Don't rush me to my grave, Mando! Unless the Mand'alor comes to you specifically, you give it a year. To do otherwise is rude. Inappropriately so, given our relationship. So you give it a year—Mando have been prematurely reported dead and the Mand'alor and Adenn most frequently of those—and then seek out the sign of the skull."
He nodded. Reached for her hand again.
She started to jet down. Fett's new gift pleased her greatly. She wished she'd had it already when they launched their insurgency this evening. She'd thought she'd be late for this meeting when he'd sent for her, Boba hopping up and down excitedly when she entered their quarters.
"It should be held secret for now, I think," she told Prudii. "My father took me from my mother when I weaned so that I would not be targeted, so that none would use me to distract him from his duties and thus weaken Fett."
"I can keep my mouth shut. Especially since I haven't the foggiest clue what to do about any of it."
She smirked. "If you can get behind me that fast after I put you down I don't doubt you'll figure it out."
"We'll see."
"Hey," she called. Tossed him something. "Sharpen your blade."
"Thanks!"
"Kih parjai." [Small victory /Don't mention it]
.
Skirata waited, pacing, when he ran back into the private quarters where they'd begun their relationship. Prudii called to his brothers to see his new treasure.
"Look! It's a sharpener!"
"Kandosii!" "Look at that skull!" "Is that a mythosaur, Buir?"
Skirata looked, nodded. "That's one hell of a trinket. Why?"
Prudii shrugged. "She said my knife needs to be sharpened. I believe she was implying she didn't want anyone dull taking her out." His grin was pleased.
Kal didn't buy it. It was too worthy a gift. Still, he wouldn't push. If the boy wanted to meet a girl and they were exchanging tokens—well, it was a slice of normalcy it their lives.
"It was likely her da's," he told the lads gathered round. "The symbol and age of it makes me think it's not the first time this passed hands. Cold, hard beskar. I'll bet she's thinking of you tonight."
Prudii grinned. Turned to meet the impressed eyes of his brothers.
"Let's sharpen our kads!" Kom'rk suggested.
"Me first," Prudii demanded.
They nodded, but rushed out in a group.
No jealousy amongst them, Kal noted gratefully. Just pleasure for their brother, gladness at his boon. Excitement to test out the new tool. Of course, they were innocent enough that they might not know what a midnight meeting in some secret location meant.
Not that the girl would have much of a clue, either, Skirata mused. Nay, she'd grown up as sheltered as any of the lads here.
.
There was no innocence left in Ad'ra the next week.
She was standing there, cheering boys to the top of an endless climbing practice one minute, and the next she watched as one lost his grip. Grappled. Bounced. Made a grab for a slick rung. Grasped at another, his fingers catching like he might be able to arrest his fall, before it, too slipped past his grip. He made one more valiant effort but hit his elbow, wrenched his shoulder. And plummeted past his vode.
He landed with a noise she'd never imagined before she could decide whether to rush forward to catch him or move father out of the way.
Everything in him broke.
"Medic! Medic!" voices called out as they responded. Voices that approached.
She whipped off her outer tunic.
"No! Stay back!" she warned them. "Get back! Get me a board and a sheet and a bag… but don't come closer!"
The immediate cries for help had brought others running. One of them had hit the button for an emergency med-evac. She couldn't spare them the experience but she could remove them from its aftermath.
Her hand shot up.
"Who told you to come down! Up! Up, now! Double time! And since you want to repeat exercises, rappel down the opposite side and scale the Comm tower! You'll bring me back every yellow wire in the array or die trying!"
She couldn't spare them the sight of the blood and gore that was oozing out of the body she'd hidden with her blouse. But she could remove them from the grisly sight below it that was no longer man or boy or any type of being they'd recognize.
Things became a blur then. She shouted people away from him. Repeated her request for the things she'd need to transport his body. What was left of him.
She was taken to the ready room. Debriefed. Offered condolences and congratulations on her handling of the event. Some of them grieved for her, as they'd have grieved if it had been one of their own.
Rav sat, sniffling into a cup of shig, and bemoaning the loss. Speaking of the individual traits that made a personality despite every cell being replicated exactly like the rest of them.
It wasn't what Ad'ra wanted to hear, on top of everything.
She accepted the cup that the aruetii handed her along with his solace. Heard him mutter the words, such a shame, so young.
Wasn't sure if he meant her or the dead clone.
Didn't care. Hated him.
Added him to her list.
Walon Vau came in. Walked past her to the pot of caf. Filled his canteen and turned to walk out without saying a single word. She felt the way he slowed just before he paused long enough to run his hand down the length of her unbound hair before going on past to go about his business.
It nearly broke her, that.
Hardened her, too, though, and she got up, left the room and went back to her duties.