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October 19 - December 1, 2025
Someone knows. I feel it. And I know someone singleminded is looking for information about the new clone army. It’s not a secret I could have hidden, not an operation that big, but I didn’t need to. Beings believe what you tell them. They never check, they never ask, they never think. Tell them the state is menaced by quadrillions of battle droids, and they will not count. Tell them you can save them, and they will never ask—from what, from whom? Just say tyranny, oppression, vague bogeymen that require no analysis. Never specify. Then they look the other way when reality is right in front of
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So what’s wrong with being a mercenary? Is your war worth fighting? If it is, then why does it matter who fights it for you? Aren’t we imbued with the righteousness of your cause when we take up arms for you? Would you rather your own men and women died to make the point? And if your war is so noble, so necessary—why aren’t you fighting it yourself? Think of all that before you spit on us, aruetii. —Jaster Mereel, Mand’alor, Al’Ori’Ramikade, speaking to the regent of Mek va Uil, ten years before dying at the hands of a comrade he trusted
“Sergeant Vau!” he barked. No Walon, then. “What in the name of the Force happened to Skirata? I’ve just passed him.” Vau was the only being Scorch had ever seen who could come to a halt grudgingly. “He’s fine.” “He is not fine. He’s badly injured. He can’t even stand up straight.” Vau inhaled slowly. “We were having a philosophical discussion, as Mandalorians often do, and I asserted that the only demonstrable reality was individual consciousness, but he insisted on the existence of a priori moral values that transcended free will. So I hit him.” Zey didn’t even blink. “You think you’re so
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Zey clasped his hands in front of him in that Jedi way, looking slightly sideways at Vau. “Trying to sense any dark side in me, General?” Vau asked. “You don’t feel remotely dark. Quite serene, actually.” “I’ve been told that before, and that should set off your warning bells, jetii. Your senses need recalibrating. None of you can feel darkness right under your noses.”
It was a very simple pledge, a contract, a business deal in its way: We are one when together, we are one when parted, we share all, we will raise warriors. There wasn’t anything more that needed saying. “Is that it?” Fi asked. “Yeah, you’re stuck with me now.” “Okay. That’s good.” “Yeah, you’ll do, too.”
Space was a big, lonely place to die.
“I don’t know what else to say, Dar.” “Nothing you need to say. We can’t change what happened, so it makes sense to forget it and start again.”
They spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening playing with Kad and pretending that there wasn’t a war outside waiting for them, that they were just any ordinary young family. They even recorded a family holoimage for the years to come. It was an exotic, heady fantasy for people who were anything but ordinary, and wouldn’t be allowed to be ordinary without a fight. Etain pondered the irony of desperately wanting not to be special.
Aliit ori’shya tal’din. Family was definitely more than bloodline—and more than midi-chlorians.
The Mandalorian language has more terms of insult than any of the more widely spoken galactic tongues. But whereas most species choose insults that are based on parentage or appearance, the majority of Mandalorian pejoratives are concerned with cowardice, stupidity, laziness, dull conversation, or a lack of hygiene. It reveals the preoccupations of a nomadic warrior culture where bloodline matters less than personal qualities, faces are largely masked, and a clean, efficient camp is crucial to survival. —Mandalorians: Identity and Language, published by the Galactic Institute of Anthropology
“Well, I understand Mandalorians a great deal better after today.” She opened the projector and activated it. “If you can’t carry it, it’s a burden, and if it can be easily replaced, it’s not worth regret.” “You married a Mandalorian. What do you think that makes you?” At least it made her laugh, and that lit up her face. “I’ve got to wear armor, haven’t I?” “Nothing but top-grade beskar, too. Only the very best for my girls.”
Ordo concentrated on the anxious chill in his gut and used it to keep him sharp, just as Skirata had shown him. It was almost the first lesson he’d ever taught Ordo and his brothers: to use their fear. It was their alarm system, he said. They had to heed it, and realize the adrenaline was getting them ready to run faster, fight harder, and notice only the things they needed to stay alive.
Her eyes narrowed a little. “And you’re not Separatists…” “We’re not on anyone’s side but our own,” Ordo said. “Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between the Republic and the Seps anyway.”
You worry too much, Clonemaster. I only require your clones to be fit for purpose, and that means they have no need to meet the same exacting standards as the army bred on Kamino. The Grand Army has to be the very best in the galaxy for one single special operation ahead of them. This is the culmination of my strategy—two armies with two quite separate tasks. —Chancellor Palpatine, to the Spaarti lead clonemaster supervising the production of a new army on Centax 2
“It’s so easy to become accustomed to the abnormal and unacceptable simply by being exposed to it for too long,” he said. “We get used to doing terrible things. That’s why I need the Skiratas of this world. He lives his compassion, even if he has no idea what it is philosophically. But so many of us cherish it as a theory, without application.”
Ordo marveled at the fact that a vast war machine—a whole fleet, weapons, and equipment for millions of troops—had been manufactured and stored without anyone leaking information or wondering what Rothana or its parent company KDY was doing. He’d thought that it was just because three million was a small army in galactic terms. And then he realized that it was actually because most beings weren’t very good at putting pieces of a puzzle together and seeing the bigger picture. Palpatine could hide anything that way. He hid his secret in plain sight, mixed into the sheer mundane business of the
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Ordo listened for the subtleties of the accent, and knew this man hadn’t been trained on Kamino. There were overtones of Coruscanti accent that few would spot, but Ordo did. And he’d watched the 501st, and the other troopers in the red livery, the shock troopers, noting their level of precise discipline.
In a closed world, you had no reason or way to disbelieve what you were told.
Opportunity, Kal’buir said: opportunities were also threats. It just depended on how you handled them.
“This is where we choose sides, Ordo,” Vau said, a disembodied voice in his helmet. “We fight for the Republic, or we fight for the survival of our own. We can’t do both, except by accident.” “Aliit, then,” said Ordo, thinking about the RC squads who would do their duty to the end, and feeling wretched at his choice. “Our clan.”
I say we get Ruu, Fett’s sister, and Uthan out in that first, with Sull, Spar, and Mereel. Then we follow in Aay’han.” “Well, when a few thousand warships have finished pounding ten shades of osik out of each other, and the planetary shields are lifted.” “Walon, it was always going to be a case of winging it.” “Yes, I know.”
“Opportunities and threats, Mij. One and the same.”
You have to know the limits of your physical and mental endurance, so you can recognize them and pass beyond them. This is why I will push you beyond any suffering you can imagine. You will not give up and die like lesser men; you will not crack up like lesser men; you will not lose heart in the direst circumstances like lesser men. You will carry on beyond your imagined limits. And you will be the last men standing, when the weaklings have opted to do the easy thing and die. —Sergeant Walon Vau, Cuy’val Dar, addressing junior clone trainees (average biological age: ten years old) on Kamino,
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“Did he tell them to leave Sev behind?” Etain snapped. “Did he even know they had a man missing? Would he have given the same order if he had?” She knew she was on blasphemous ground now, because Master Yoda was the most venerated of living Jedi, the guiding hand of the Council for centuries. He couldn’t be criticized. He was the Jedi Order. “We sent ARC troopers to rescue Jedi from Hypori. We didn’t say, ‘Oh, war sure is tough, we’re bound to lose a few.’ We decided it was worth risking clones’ lives to get them out. Why isn’t Sev worth that? Why is a Jedi worth more to the war effort than he
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“Now do you see? Do you?” Vau hissed the sibilant like escaping steam. Mird cowered on the floor, whining softly. “I’m sick to death of your sentimental twaddle about Jango betraying us by letting Kamino use his genes. He did it to stop the Jedi. He did it to create an army strong enough to bring them down. You drone on about the injustice of unelected elites, my little working-class hero—well, now they’re gone. Yes, it cost our boys’ lives, but the Jedi are gone, gone, gone. And they won’t be killing Mandalorians again, not for a long time. Maybe never.”
“Oh, I know what happened at Galidraan,” Jusik said. “I know Jedi wiped out Jango’s entire army.” He paused. “And I know Jango killed Jedi with his bare hands, too, because I once talked to a Jedi who was there.” Vau nodded approvingly. “See, if you want to take out Jedi,” he said, “only the likes of Jango could really do it. Only his clones, trained by him, and by men and women like him. That’s why he knew it had to be done. He couldn’t take them all down alone, but he knew an entire army of Jangos could.”
“We’re tired old men, with tired old grudges.” Jusik looked at his chrono and then checked his comlink. “Had to be said.” He shook his head slowly. “I’ll make sense of this later…maybe. But…okay, I understand Fett’s vengeance. But if the whole Grand Army was planned just to take out the Jedi Order, then Fett alone couldn’t have done this or even hijacked it. Why is nobody asking this question? Who planned the army in the first place? Who bankrolled it? And what’s Fett got to do with the second wave, the Centax clones, the massive new fleet? What’s the link between the Chancellor and the Jedi
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“They killed us…They killed us all…Why?” Ordo stood up and pocketed the datachips, then tucked his helmet under one arm. Power was a strange, shifting thing. Ko Sai had been the arbiter of life and death for him as a small child, and then the Jedi had become his masters—or so they thought—and now both were dead. It was best to be your own master, and lord it over nobody, because, sooner or later, the beings you trod down always came to get you. “Orders,” Ordo said. “You never read the GAR’s contingency orders? They’re on the mainframe. I suppose nobody thinks contingency orders will ever be
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“I’ve never disobeyed an order,” said the ARC captain. Zey didn’t seem to have the strength to turn and look at his former aide, just shutting his eyes as if he was waiting for the coup de grâce. “What am I supposed to do? Pick and choose? That’s the irony. The Jedi thought we were excellent troops because we’re so disciplined and we obey orders, but when we obey all orders—and they’re lawful orders, remember—then we’ve betrayed them. Can’t have it both ways, General.” Zey summoned up some effort and stumbled toward his desk to slump over it.
“Palpatine’s probably the one who had you created,” Zey said. He was lucky he was still breathing. Ordo wasn’t sure why Maze hadn’t just slotted him. “Why couldn’t you see what he was?” “Why couldn’t you sniff him out with your Force powers?” Ordo asked. “And why the shab did you never ask where we came from?”
“Why doesn’t she just call in?” Niner sounded exasperated. “Doesn’t she know we’re going to come out and look for her?” “She’s like Kal’buir. She thinks that if she says not to do it, then we won’t.”
“You shabuir,” Niner hissed. “Don’t you shabla well stay with me. Go with Kad. You can’t leave him.” “And I can’t leave you,” Darman said, his heart not just broken but utterly destroyed forever. How could he feel so much pain twice? The LAAT/i medic thudded onto the permacrete beside them and started putting a brace on Niner’s neck, immobilizing his spine. The man had no idea what was going on; he couldn’t possibly have known they were talking about desertion. “Kad’s fine. You’ll be fine. One day—we’ll all be fine. I can’t leave you. You never left me. You came for me on Qiilura. You didn’t
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Vau wandered out to join the inspection. “He’ll go like Jango.” Mird tiptoed around them, leaving remarkably misleading footprints. “The first bereavement knocks the guts out of him, and then the next one turns him into something frightening, and all the anger gets swallowed and recycled into long-term retribution. But don’t worry. It kept Jango going on a slave ship all those years, and it’ll keep Kal alive, too. It’s a Mando thing—long memory, short fuse, big revenge.”
Fi was still coming to terms with the Mandalorian psyche, the contrast between not caring what someone did before they joined, and yet clinging to ancient pasts and feuds. It was in him, too. He was only just starting to find it.
“It’s okay,” Skirata said, sounding tired. Kad offered him a sloppy spoonful of vegetables and he took it. “Don’t be afraid to say it—dead, death, the dead. It isn’t going to go away, and if we don’t face it, we’ll just make it bigger than it really is. Can’t live without death, can’t die without life.”
Skirata looked as if he was going to weep. The mood around the table stood balanced—as it would for weeks, months, and maybe even years to come—on a knife-edge between crying and laughing. “Kal, you’ll go over it in your head a thousand times,” Ny said. She seemed to be able to read Skirata as if she’d known him all her life. “Over and over. I’ve done it. But remember that Etain only died once, and then it was over.” On first take, it sounded harsh, if brutally true; but Jusik recognized the wisdom and comfort in that observation, and actually felt some beginnings of peace. Nobody died as
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Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori’wadaasla. Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you’ll be. —Mandalorian saying
Ordo thought that was a good idea, and wondered how it could be done discreetly. He realized yet again that he lacked some awareness that most human beings had—social blind spots—and knew he didn’t react quite the same way as others, so, as long as they were beings whose feelings he cared about, he took care to note what might offend them.
“Palpatine’s dissolved the Republic—it’s the Empire now, and he’s declared himself Emperor.” “How modest.”
We all decide what those we love should know and not know, and think we’re being kind. Isn’t this where it all started?
“Is this revenge?” Uthan asked. Skirata respected someone who didn’t go to pieces when they found they’d been totally scammed. “So, do you really want to kill clones, or were you just trying to solve a puzzle, Doctor?” “Why do you ask?” “Because I can’t imagine why any intelligent being would genuinely want to kill strangers for no reason. So either you’re a sad, sick shabuir, or you’re a typical scientist who just wants to make something work without thinking too hard about the consequences.”
Darman had been trained to survive against all odds behind enemy lines, and that was what he was doing now. Strength of will: that determined who lived, and who didn’t. “Dar?” He knew when he was plunging into the abyss. Kal Skirata had taught him to spot the signs of despair and weakness, so he would know when he needed to get a grip. It wasn’t lack of water, or food, or even being shot that really killed you in these circumstances; it was letting despair eat you alive. It was giving up. “Dar, can you hear me?” If you take control of pain, fear, and loss, then you take control of your
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