4 Years before TBG

Approximately 26 BBY

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Fett could hear Ad'ra ranting as he turned the corner. Nearly turned around and walked the other direction.

"Oh, yeah? Because your approval rating is so high right now? How's your nose, Sergeant?!"

Kal Skirata had broken it. In a disagreement about Walon's practice of hardening his men by making them fight each other. It wasn't a great thing to toss up at him and she found herself slammed up against the permacrete wall so hard her teeth rattled.

"Let her go," Fett ordered blandly as he passed them.

Vau snarled, his face drawn up and his lip curled. Ad'ra couldn't help but gulp at the guttural sound that came from his throat. Fett's brow went up. He was tired of this place. Couldn't fekking wait to put it behind them forever. His hands were killing him… the gift that kept on giving since his discussion with Priest about the kriffing fight circles hadn't gone peaceably. He'd cancelled the en masse staff meeting that had been on the books for the morning. No need to advertise to the aiwha-bait that probably a third of his training cadre were at the end of their tethers—and at least that many had been bloodied from their various disagreements.

.

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Ad'ra escaped Vau only to walk smack into another conflict. Kal himself had one of her guys cornered.

"What's your name?"

"My real name or my nickname?"

"Name, not number," Skirata corrected.

"Roger that. I was Alor when I was first named, Sergeant."

"When you were first named?"

"Yes, Sergeant. That was the name I was given by my training cadre."

"What do your brothers call you?"

He cracked a grin. Couldn't help it. "Usually Rog, Sergeant."

"Why is that funny?"

The clone lifted a shoulder. "Sorry, Sergeant. I apologize, Sergeant." His features went stony and he stood more rigidly.

"Kal Skirata," Ad'ra Rottske, Adenn, called. "Are you scaring my Ranger cadets?"

She slid between them. Gestured at Rog with her head.

"You're dismissed, trooper. Rejoin your company."

"Roger that, ma'am."

She was smiling when she turned to Kal.

"What did he do that made you call him out?" she asked, curious.

"I was just talking to him. Why do you call him something different than his vode do?"

Her brow creased and she visibly measured his query.

"What are his vode calling him now?"

"Rog," he said.

Now she was exasperated. Her hands came up.

"What?! We all call him Rog. Or Roger, but usually just Rog. We've done it forever!"

It was Skirata's turn to look muddled.

"The lad said you named him Alor."

"Jesu," she swore. "I haven't called him that in eons." Her face softened. "I can go back to calling him that if he prefers it."

"No… perhaps I misunderstood something…"

"Were you really taking him to task about what name he prefers, Sergeant Skirata?" she asked now, clouds coming into her eyes.

"No. He mistook my questioning. He laughed when he told me his name. I thought it was maybe a derogative and wanted to make sure he wasn't being bullied or such. I don't like disparaging nicknames."

"Like Scorch?"

"That I have a hard time complaining about," Kal admitted.

Walon Vau had walked around without eyebrows and had been treated for minor burns after one of his lads had a slight mishap with some detonation materials.

It had been the first time the clones in Dalphina Company had seen their training sergeant laugh like that.

The cadet had thought he was going to die.

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Ad'ra hit her coms.

"Hey, Rog?" she asked.

The boy was quick to respond.

"Sergeant Skirata wasn't upset."

"Roger. Thank you, ma'am."

"He just wanted to make sure you were being treated fairly and respectably. That what we called you meets with your approval. It's your choice."

"Roger that, ma'am. I appreciate it. I'm good with Rog."

"If you ever want to go back to being Alor you let us know."

"Wilco. Roger that."

The girl's lips twitched as she ended the com.

"And that is why we don't call him Alor anymore."

Skirata chuckled. "I see."

"It's not so much derogatory as an inside joke."

"Roger that," the man teased. Cuffed her shoulder. "Poor lad. I'm grateful you cleared it up. I hated getting his back up."

"You were looking for a reason to find fault with my leadership." She called him on it with no expression on her face save the remaining twinkle in her eyes.

"Ad'ra, it's not that… it's that you're very young to have been put in the position you've been given."

"And yet here we all still are." She turned and walked away.

"Nobody wants to see anyone else fail-" he began.

The look she shot over her shoulder had her brow lifted.

"I think you're wrong there," she told him with no particular inflection in her voice.

He watched her twist back around, pull her bucket on, and jog off.

Youth.

He shook his head.

.

She'd named Roger herself. The first one she'd nicknamed, too.

His brothers had been the first bestowed with names.

She'd beheld them, fascinated by the differences in them and Boba, and felt the enormity of having her father's responsibility for them.

They'd come to her numbered, with no names.

Where name and rank would typically be found on Class B Utilities was a canvas strip embroidered with ASRC-1001. ASRC-1002. ASRC-1003. ASRC-1004. ASRC-1005.

"This won't do," she told them. "I can't say your numbers fast enough clearly enough to make a difference in a real-time experience. Come here."

"Roger that, ma'am. Fall in!" the little pipsqueak in front had called.

It charmed her.

"You're my leader, aren't you?"

"No, ma'am. We aren't-"

She shushed him. Patted him.

"I didn't mean it in complaint, Alor."

"We don't know that word."

"It's in Mando'a. Do you know what that is?"

One hundred and four little heads shook. Big brown eyes looked up at her.

"I'll teach you. I'll teach all of you."

She'd turned, regarded the little boy at her elbow.

"You have old eyes, little one," she told the small figure. Such a pretty face. Eager but cautious. The one next to him, too. More trepidation in the soulful eyes. As if he already saw their deaths.

Omega she named his brother. Taung she called him, after the forefathers of her people.

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Now, at sixteen, most of the names she'd bestowed as a child herself had mutated a bit. Shortened, become familiarized. They'd mourned losses and she recounted the names of her clan that had fallen. Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum. Father…Buir—Liam Rottske. Beloved Vode—Guri, Olan. I'm so sorry, vode. So, so sorry. Be in the Manda. Be at peace. Please be at peace.

She sighed as she studied the task before her. Administrative osik. Reconfiguring for the time when her vode would no longer be cadets but be assigned to actual GAR units. Some of the training battalions and companies would need to be restructured and reorganized simply because of the undertaking of housing and supporting them. Specialties and concurrent taskings.

The shinies more than commandos, although them, too.

She glanced over the requisition, making sure she understood. Trying to make the math work out.

100.

It perplexed her and she got out paper, tried to make it add up properly.

100.

Olan.

So sorry, my vod.

I'm so, so sorry.

100.

100 ARCs. 100 ASRCs. Twenty five companies of RCs—100 each.

Ten companies of pilots—100 each. Ten companies of…

100.

100.

How? Why?

No.

.

They'd each been given 104 commandos at the beginning of the assignment. Well, except for Kal. And that was something of an aberration.

How did you take 3, 320 and make 3000 out of it?

Why hadn't they been given companies of 100 if that's what the GAC wanted? Were they planning to just crack one squad off of each company to make a new company at the end? Or use them as HQ staff or something…

She pulled the TOA to her. Scanned.

Shook her head.

Tallied again.

There were some losses.

I'm so sorry vode. Buir. I let you down. Forgive me. Peace. Please be at peace.

Her eyes flickered up at the men who came into Fett's office, accompanied by two of the cloners. She hated them.

They'd make a nice kute someday.

"Why did you give me one hundred and four cadets to train into Ranger Commandos?" she asked bluntly.

Fett cocked his head in question.

"We can discuss it later," he suggested.

He moved to stack the things he'd assigned her.

Her knife flashed out, pinned the flimsi sheets and charts and requisition forms to the table.

"I'm not having an existential crisis," she told him coldly. "There's a discrepancy in the numbers. I'm looking for an answer from you, Mand'Alor. I seek honor. Explain this to me, please, so that I remain in manda."

He grimaced. Leaned toward her.

Pulled the knife out and leered.

"I will explain to you what I deem it necessary for you to know." He caught her chin and used the side of the blade to tap the side of her neck before slamming the kal down right in front of her.

He resumed his clearing of the table while she seethed.

The Kaminoans looked at her as if she were a specimen.

Vaguely interesting. Vaguely distasteful.

"What are your names?" she demanded.

"This is Sinta Ha. I am Ko Win," the musical voice responded. It was male. He was the first male of their kind she'd heard speaking. She didn't like the sound of it.

Neither of the Cuy'val Dar with Fett added anything.

The Kaminoans continued to stare at her.

She added them to her list.

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Stared back for the entirety of the brief meeting. Listened without taking notes.

She hadn't the eidetic memory her vode did but she was damn close.

"Is there cause to address the purchase order for the current client?" Ko Win asked when Fett opened the floor for anything else.

The rest of them knew that was his form of dismissal, his dispersal.

The Kaminoans did not.

"There is not," Jango assured him. "As we just discussed, everything proceeds according to spec."

"Your youngling was confused? Or upset?"

Walon Vau snickered across the table. Hashery Ghett kicked him, his own smile hidden behind his cup of caf.

Ad'ra rolled her eyes.

It made Fett want to choke her. He hated the habit.

"I assure you, my adenn is well in hand."

"It is most curious," Sinta Ha murmured, joining the discussion for the first time.

Another male voice. Worse than the first.

It sounded like a flute was drowning.

She pursed her lips. Made a decision.

Swallowing Wad'e Tay'haai's bes'bev and being held in a bacta tank might make for an interesting form of execution.

She wondered how long it would take a being to die in a bacta tank, with it keeping wounds sterile while any movement of the neck made a new cut from the sharp quill end. No. Not a bacta tank. Her vode might need those and it would be a waste.

That oddly luminescent fluid they grew baby clones in? That was what she'd stuff them in after she'd forced them to choke down a bes'bev quill-first.

Ad'ra smiled at the Kaminoan.

It was not a reassuring smile.

In fact, the other humans in the room were instantly on edge, wondering what was coming next.

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Shocked the osik out of them for her to remain silent.

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That ended the minute the Kaminoans left the room.

Fett gestured them out, turned around and cuffed Ad'ra on the side of the head.

"What the hell was that?"

"Tion!?" she shot back. Teenager. Pure teenager. Jesu. He wanted to deal with the Adenn right now, not the orphaned child of his best friend. "The ahwai-bait was staring at me! You know I don't like that! They didn't defer to you, not one time, and-"

"Oh, because you were so deferential when I told you to hold your tongue behind your teeth?"

"I didn't threaten them. They have no idea…"

He ignored H.G.'s chuckle. Vau joined it. Jaig, too. Lot of help from that quarter.

"You didn't have to utter a threat, little one. You're terrifying when you stare at someone like that, then smile that way."

The grin she shot him was cheeky and inappropriate for the situation.

Jaig leaned forward, snagged the sheets she'd been working on.

Nice, big, gaping hole in that one.

Semi-permanent notations had been scribbled on the printed blocks of numbers and regimental assignments. Other tallies were scribbled on a flimsi.

"Your handwriting is atrocious," Vau commented. Tipped his head to study the sheets Jaig passed to him. Showed them to H.G.

"Why is one-hundred-four dishonorable?" Jaig asked. "It doesn't mean anything in Mando'a."

"Because the requisition isn't for companies of one-oh-four. It's for one hundred."

"The typical century," Kei're Hosch Tiethe' noted with satisfaction. "Most armies are organized thusly. Not just Mando. There's no dishonor in it."

"We've each got extra commandos," she said, worriedly. Child now. "I can't find a configuration for where they'll end up. For where they're to be assigned. When their units are activated, how will you decide which ones stay with their current companies and which ones… do what? Go where?"

Like they were hive-minded all four Mandalorians looked up at Fett.

"Fek." The man paced. Sat. Reached for Ad'ra's hand.

She pulled it away. Glanced over at the other men.

"Adenn," Kei're said quietly. "War is not the only way in which a warrior loses his life…"

She knew that. She'd lost two now. They'd heard the stories of her screams when the first clone took a bad tumble and ended up lifeless at her feet. Nobody knew exactly what had happened to this last one. It had just been a line item on a report that most of them barely flickered over.

Apparently she hadn't lost her cool over him. Or, not that they'd heard.

Vau wondered if that was what they were witnessing now.

Fett's voice was calm and commanding.

"It was always assumed that there might be casualties during the indoctrination phases, Ad'ra. The number was bumped so that, in the end, each company could still muster the century of warriors for the TOA."

"What about the spares?"

"They'll not be reconditioned, cyar'ika," Vau whispered across the table.

Jaig moaned. "Is that what worries you?"

She twisted, just barely looked at him. Blinked back up at Fett.

"You won't recondition them, you promise? And they won't… remove the lowest performing vode from the-"

"Shab," H.G. swallowed.

"No, Ad'ra," Fett told her. "You know that there have been some failures. That is to be expected. But I would not destroy a fully-functional man with no idiosyncrasies just because the number at the end of his designation is higher than 100."

"Will you let them?" she gestured.

He shook his head. "Worst case scenario, when it's all said and done, if there are some companies that are low on numbers we'll reassign commandos from units with one-plus to fill in those ranks. Is that acceptable to you?"

She gulped in air. Nodded. Nodded again more steadily.

He tapped her on the back of the neck as he passed her. Exited the room.

The woman-child reached to reorder her sheaths, stacking them and trying to maintain her composure.

The others stood. Started to leave.

Jaig reached for her hands and she snatched them back.

"I'm fine. I'm fine, ba'buir. I just… please."

"All right, then," the man whispered softly. "You know where to find me."

She nodded brokenly and he squeezed her shoulder as he moved past her. Leaned down to say something in H.G.'s ear before he, too, made for the egress. The girl ordered her paperwork and sucked in a breath. Pulled the TOA back out and bent to resume making notations. Seemed to just get stuck and stood there sucking in deep breaths one after another.

The black-armored man couldn't take it anymore.

"Come here, Adenn," he told her. Held his arms wide for her.

She threw herself against him and sobbed while he petted his hand down her long hair.

"You are too sweet to be a mercenary," H.G. told her, rubbing her arm, then the side of her head.

"I have to be," she told him, lifting her face. Tears marred the youth and innocence. "I am adenn and I must be without mercy. I must be strong. I just…"

She waved at the flimsi.

"Some of my favorites are the last two left. Both by their proficiency numbers and by their nomenclature. How was I to pick which ones went and which ones were ended?"

"That is the hardest part of being a commander," H.G. told her.

Walon nodded. "The men you most admire, most respect, those are the ones you entrust with the most difficult missions. And those are the ones who join the manda too soon."

"Why couldn't the GAR approach us, hire us? It cannot possibly have been so costly as creating all this."

Her hands went up. Gestured around them.

"It's just a job, kid," H.G. told her.

"It's not a nice job."

"It isn't. Not some days."

"It sucks," Walon agreed. "It just sucks. It sucks and there's nothing for it but to just keep on."

"I'd rather do it myself than know I sent them to their deaths," she confessed.

H.G. patted her on the shoulder.

"That is why, when the time comes, men will rally to you as surely as to the Mand'alor."

She frowned, a betraying twitch around her eyes, over her brow. She half-turned, watching him leave the room with a shake of his head.

"I don't understand," she murmured. Sniffed once.

Walon handed her a handkerchief. Watched her wipe her eyes. Watched her pull herself together.

"What did he mean?" she asked meekly.

He considered all the ways in which he might answer.

In the end he thought it simplest to just bend his knee.

"Haat, Ijaa, Haa'it, our Adenn," his voice came to her as he ducked his head in the obeisance. "Jatnese be te jatnese."

[Truth, Honor, Vision. The best of our best.]

He rose from the homage. Ducked a kiss to the part in her hair and ran his hand down the long tail of it. Strode past her to resume his usual duties of imparting the art of savagery to his charges.