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Etain trailed after him, trying not to smell herself, but it was hard, nauseatingly hard. Even a scent-hunting gdan wouldn’t recognize her as a human. It was getting dark now, and the farmer kept glancing over his shoulder at her.

“Oh-ah.” He shook his head, engaged in some internal conversation. “I’m Birhan, and this is my land. And I thought you lot were supposed to be able to use some sort of mind control tricks.”

“How do you know I haven’t?” Etain lied.

“Oh-ah,” he said, and nothing more.

She wasn’t going to volunteer the obvious if he hadn’t spotted it for himself. A disappointment to her Master, she was clearly not the best of the bunch. She struggled with the Force and she grappled with self-discipline, and she was here because she and Master Fulier happened to be nearby when a job needed doing. Fulier never could resist a challenge and long odds, and it looked as if he’d paid the price. They hadn’t found his body yet, but there had been no word from him, either.

Yes, Etain was a Padawan, technically speaking.

She just happened to be one who was a breath away from building permadomes in refugee camps. She reasoned that part of a Jedi’s skill was the simple use of psychology. And if Birhan wanted to think the Force was strong in her, and that there was a lot more behind the external shell of a gawky, plain girl covered in stinking dung, then that was fine by her.

It would keep her alive a little longer while she worked out what to do next.

Fleet Support, Ord Mantell, barrack block 5 Epsilon

It was a waste, a rotten waste.

RC-1309 busied himself maintaining his boots. He cleaned out the clamps, blowing the red dust clear with a squirt of air from the pressure gun. He rinsed the liners and shook them dry. There was no point being idle while he was waiting to be chilled down.

“Sergeant?”

He looked up. The commando who had walked in placed his survival pack, armor, and black bodysuit on the bunk opposite and stared back. His readout panel identified him as RC-8015.

“I’m Fi,” he said, and held out his hand for shaking. “So you lost your squad, too.”

“Niner,” RC-1309 said without taking the proffered hand. “So, ner vod—my brother—you’re the sole survivor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hold back while your brothers pressed on? Or were you just lucky?”

Fi stood there with his hands on his hips, identical to Niner in every way except that he was … different. He spoke a little differently. He smelled subtly different. He moved his hands … not like Niner’s squad did, not at all.

“I did my job,” Fi said carefully. “And I’d rather be with them than here … ner vod.”

Niner considered him for a while, and went back to cleaning his boots. Fi put his kit in the locker beside the bunks, then swung himself up into the top rack in one smooth motion. He folded his arms under his head very precisely and lay staring up at the bulkhead as if he were meditating.

If he had been Sev, Niner would have known exactly what he was doing, even without looking. But Sev was gone.

Clone troopers lost brothers in training. So did commandos. But troopers were socialized with whole sections, platoons, companies, even regiments, and that meant that even after the inevitable deaths and removals during live exercises, there were still plenty of people around you whom you knew well. Commandos worked solely with each other.

Niner had lost everyone he had grown up with, and so had Fi.

He’d lost a brother before—Two-Eight—on exercise. The three survivors had welcomed the replacement, although they had always felt he was slightly different—a little distant—as if he had never quite believed he’d been accepted.

But they performed to expected levels of excellence together—and as long as they did, their Kaminoan technicians and motley band of alien instructors didn’t seem to care how they felt about it.

But the commandos cared. They just kept it to themselves.

“It was a waste,” Niner said.

“What was?” Fi said.

“Deploying us in an operation like Geonosis.