"You come in low and left, right behind me. All right?"

She nodded at Vau. Listened as he gave the clones he'd brought with him the opposing orders. She'd never cleared rooms before he'd taught her how, but they'd discussed it like it was an everyday occurrence to them.

She had no idea that they'd drilled for it so many times they could have done this before their third birthday.

"Any surprises, Cinyc Daryc'ika?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "Nothing up here. Below? Your guess is as good as mine. There's a lot of suffering, a lot of pain. Lot of frustration and boredom and just… like benign hate. Layers of it. Some of it might be so old it's not even real anymore…"

Jaing looked at her quizzically. Glanced up at Vau. He couldn't see his brother's face for the visors in their helmets, but knew Prudii and Komr'k caught the term of endearment.

Too many translations for cin… clean, blank slate, new… what the hell? And little brown? What the hell was fresh little brown?

"What is it?" N'Dara asked, looking over her shoulder at the younger men.

All three clones shook their heads.

"What?" Vau wanted to know.

"There was a moment… a confusion… it hit all at once."

"Are you a jedi?" Komr'k spat out. He looked up at Vau.

The other man's countenance cleared and he straightened for just a moment.

"Oh. Yeah. N'Dara is part of the mystic mob. Comes complete with the laser light show and everything."

"Probably worth mentioning," Prudii snickered.

She cocked her head. "You didn't tell them?"

"Didn't even occur to me." Vau dismissed their objection. "It's not like she's a flag-waving council member. The petty officer's been out so long she doesn't even remember your Bard'ika."

Something else slipped into Jaing's consciousness. He glanced over at Vau. Nothing about the man's demeanor suggested that he was leading a former-captive back into the tunnels where she'd once been held.

"You've been here before?" he asked the woman.

She nodded. "Under different management."

"Blow 'em," Vau ordered before Jaing could follow that line of questioning any further.

She popped the door, followed him in, peeling left after him, watching his back and double-checking as they made their way to the control room below.

The young man in bright green silently dispatched the thug manning the observation deck. Slipped his bulky hooded tunic over his own armor and settled the strange round cap on his helmet before sitting down at the widely-spaced computroller panel. Dugs had long arms, long fingers. He dragged a few things closer and went to work. Pulled up additional views of the holding cells.

"Looks like six."

"We can do six."

"There they are."

"Sweet gods," Prudii murmured when the camera angled to give them a view at what they'd be dealing with vis a vis prisoner roster.

"They're barely alive," N'Dara murmured.

"They're not out of the fight yet," Vau promised. "Don't write them off."

"Which one is your contact?"

"He's not going in today," N'Dara told them. "Must have had to call out sick."

Vau chuckled and the other men exchanged a quick glance.

"Mandokarla," the older man growled.

She sighed. Looked at the younger men. "Do you speak Irmenuian?"

"That's Mando'ad."

"I figured that out," she told the clone who'd answered. "Some of the other stuff… either I can't spell it to look it up or I'm not hearing it well enough to get close enough for translation."

"I thought Irmenui spoke Basic."

"So did I," she agreed. "But apparently there's some old, ancient tongue that most history books didn't record…"

Jaing interrupted her complaint. "There's the patrol. Right on schedule."

"Outstanding," Vau hummed. Leaned in to watch the monitor. Counted out seconds. Couldn't fault their mole's information. Greedy bastard actually got it right. He palmed the access chip. Grinned when the pair of patrolling guards appeared in a different hall's camera right on schedule.

He patted Jaing. "Sing out if anything looks off. Let's go, Talyc Meshurok. Time to earn your keep." He jerked the woman's long, blue ponytail.

"Does he not know your name?" Komr'k asked as they slipped down the hallway.

"He says I have too many to keep up with," she told him, making a face. "Your boss is an asshat."

That made the boys chuckle.

"He's not our boss."

She looked up at him as they crouched, waiting for Vau to check the door's POV before sliding the access chip in.

"You voluntarily spend time with him?"

That made them laugh. Vau lifted a middle finger, used his hip to slowly depress the latch mechanism while he drew both sidearms. Gods, he loved a hot entrée. Six blasters fired simultaneously as he kicked the door open and swung through. N'Dara was already past, heading for the holding cell with her hands held up like a shield. At her strangled gasp Vau turned.

One of the men in the cage had her by the neck. His partner reached down to disarm her.

"Let 'er go or lose your fingers," Vau offered.

"Toss the keys and slide your blaster over here."

"Like hell."

"I'm not going to no Sep prison, and I'm willing to take as many of you out with me as I need to."

"I'm not a Sep," N'Dara gurgled, trying to find purchase for her toes on the disgusting floor.

Vau never wavered. "Release the Petty Officer. Now. You're fekking my op clock."

He gestured Komr'k and Prudii forward.

"You're going to find some shoes and clothes in that bag. And yai'yai. You're going to need it so we can get out of here."

He made a show of tucking his blasters into his holsters. N'Dara whimpered at him.

"Can you do the force thing where you knock people out?" Vau asked in frustration.

"What?" she gasped.

He extended his arms. "Knock the young man out so we can bug the kriff out of here. Kid. You've got maybe ten seconds before this rescue gets ugly. Unhand my lovely assistant and get dressed."

The guy with N'Dara's blaster looked over his shoulder.

"Fek it."

Vau took two long strides and reached out, jerking the hand away from N'Dara's neck. He used the momentum of the movement to pull the soldier forward, bashing his face into the bars.

"Get dressed. Now. Or stay. But we're banging out of here in twenty and no faster than your friends are going to be moving we need to get started if you're coming with us."

He bent, tipped the woman's head up. She'd crumpled when he'd gotten her loose and was just sitting in the slime and filth gasping for breath.

"You look fine. He thought you were a fekking separatist, Navy. Somebody forgot to tell them the war's over."

"I gathered," she gasped. Took his arm when he offered it and let him jerk her upright.

"Are you really a petty officer?" one of the men on the floor asked weakly.

"When she's not doing saber jockey showpieces like keeping your shebs from getting shot off while we take out your guards," Vau snapped.

"Are you Commander Wyatt Hollister?" N'Dara asked more softly.

"I am, yes."

"Well, I'm not saluting you, Commander. But your mother's probably worried about you, so what say you let me help you up and we'll get you airborne again?"

"We're going to need information about where you were kept and who you might have been detained alongside," Vau warned.

"And you're not Separatists?"

"No. One of my boys got left behind when they overrode the post on Kashyyk. I just want him back."

"Oh. Fek. I'm so sorry."

"Yeah. You stepped in it," Vau told the guy who'd grabbed N'Dara. "We good if I open this door now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Kid. Do not call me sir. There is not now nor has there ever been shiny shit on my shoulder."

.

.o0o.

.

The Skirata contingent managed to hold their curiosity until Vau joined them in the command compartment of the crap ship he'd picked up. He'd needed one… that's how he justified the expense. With information starting to come in he wanted the freedom to act on what came his way without a lot of osik. It was legally registered. Well, under an assumed identity. But, still, taxes paid and everything.

"Sergeant Vau…"

"I'm not in the army anymore," he reminded them. He was almost chipper. It was disconcerting.

"What's going on with the jedi?"

"She's a good egg. Got a lot of potential. I keep trying to get her to come over to the dark side… get 'er in some beskar and teach 'er-"

"Yeah," Jaing interrupted. "No."

"What's going on with the brown references?" Prudii wanted to know. "I don't get it."

Vau turned. Blinked at them. Set his lips the side.

He glanced aft, then let out a deep breath.

"She's not weak. She's… not like a regular jedi. She left the order a long time ago and put in her time onboard the Perseverance and Indomitable then got sucked back in as independent contractor when the war broke out."

Komr'k tilted his head. "Warships are grey, the navy wears grey, and her hair's that wicked blue. So… 'Daryc'ika'?"

"She was captured and detained. The same Trannie division that overran the gun emplacements on Kashyyk."

"She took them out?"

"Eventually."

"And… daryc? What's that got to do with calling her little brown gem?"

"Because she's covered in scars from them."

"So that's why don't you want her to know what it means." Prudii turned on him, his face incredulous. "You're a piece of work."

"Even you can't be that cruel," Komr'k hissed. "You'd ridicule her for her scars?"

"No," Vau told them with a voice as cold and hard as stone. "I proclaim them more valuable than any treasure from any world in this galaxy. Give thanks to every deity I was too stupid to pray to in my youth for them and claim her triumph for her in the only language that makes sense to me. That woman survived the unimaginable and those marks it left on her body? They're the most precious thing about her as far as I'm concerned."

The younger men watched his jaw clench. Watched his chest work like a bellows. Watched his eyes go cold and hard.

"She thinks they're ugly. The first time I saw them? She apologized to me for forgetting they were there. Like they're shameful. So, no, she doesn't need to know that I call her my brown-kissed diamond or blood and courage. She's not there yet. She thinks they're a liability. Someday she's going to see them as the strongest thing about her."

"Mird likes her," Jaing noted.

Vau nodded. Glanced over at him. "He does. I can't tell you how tempted I've been a time or two to leave him to guard her."

"Why didn't she come back with us?"

"Why would she?"

Prudii shrugged. "Um. So she wouldn't be alone out there hoping somebody finds something."

"She's a fast learner and she's got some solid contacts."

"She's the one in the security vids. The one who-"

Vau turned again, fixed Jaing with a quelling stare. "Did you erase it?"

"Of course."

It had been a demand Vau made after watching it over and over and over. Memorizing faces, features. Zooming in on the dangling access chips the guards had worn. Extracting every detail of those hours and days she was at their mercy. The scars on her wrists and hands where she'd physically forced the bones through the repulsor-cuff they'd locked around her?

They were nothing like the badge of honor he'd like to swear her glory on.

"That woman should be Mand'Alor," he said. "Forget Shysa and Boba and every man you've ever met. If you want to know what mandokarla means… you go right on back there and spend five minutes with that woman."

"I think Sergeant Vau likes her, too," Jaing noted.

The older man lifted the sides of his lips. "There's a reason I didn't enlist Mereel on this little jaunt through the Mytaranor sector."