But they still stood in silence.
“Tell you what,” Skirata said, bewildered. He pointed to the couch. “You sit down over there and I'll get you something to eat. Okay?”
They paused and then scrambled onto the couch, huddling together again. He found them so utterly disarming that he had to make a rapid exit to the kitchen area to gather his thoughts while he slapped uj cake onto a plate and sliced it roughly into six pieces. If this was how it was going to be for—for years … .
You're stuck, chum.
You took the credits.
And this is your whole world for the foreseeable future… and maybe forever.
It never stopped raining. And he was holed up with a species he loathed on sight, and who thought it was okay to dispose of units who happened to be living, talking, walking children. He raked his fingers through his hair and despaired, eyes closed, until he was suddenly aware of someone staring up at him.
“Sir?” the boy said. It was the courageous little marksman. He might have been identical to his brothers, but his mannerisms were distinctive. He had a habit of balling one fist at his side while the other hand was relaxed. “May we use the 'freshers?”
Skirata squatted down, face level with the kid's. “'Course you can.” It was quite pathetic: they were nothing like his own lively, boisterous sons had once been. “And I'm not sir. I'm not an officer. I'm a sergeant. You can call me Sergeant if you like, or you can call me Kal. Everyone else does.”
“Yes … Kal.”
“It's over there. Can you manage on your own?”
“Yes, Kal.”
“I know you don't have a name, but I really think you should have one.”
“I'm Null Eleven. En-one-one.”
“How'd you like to be called Ordo? He was a Mandalorian warrior.”
“Are we Mandalorian warriors?”
“You bet.” The kid was a natural fighter. “In every sense of the word.”
“I like that name.” Little Ordo considered the white-tiled floor for a moment, as if assessing it for risk. “What's Mandalorian?”
For some reason that hurt most of all. If these kids didn't know their culture and what made someone a Mando, then they had no purpose, no pride, and nothing to hold them and their clan together when home wasn't a piece of land. If you were a nomad, your nation traveled in your heart. And without the Mando heart, you had nothing—not even your soul—in whatever new conquest followed death. Skirata knew at that moment what he had to do. He had to stop these boys from being dar'manda, eternal Dead Men, men without a Mando soul.
“I can see I need to teach you a lot.” Yes, this was his duty. “I'm Mandalorian, too. We're soldiers, nomads. You know what those words mean?”
“Yes.”
“Clever lad. Okay, you go and sort yourselves out in the 'freshers, and I want you all sitting back on the couch in ten minutes. Then we'll sort out names for everyone. Got it?”
“Yes, Kal.”
So Kal Skirata—mercenary, assassin, and failed father—spent a stormy evening on Kamino sharing uj cake with six dangerously clever small boys who could already handle firearms and talk like adults, teaching them that they came from a warrior tradition, and that they had a language and a culture, and much to be proud of.
And he explained that there was no Mandalorian word for “hero.” It was only not being one that had its own word: Hut'uun.
There were an awful lot of hut'uune in the galaxy, and Skirata certainly counted the Kaminoans among them.
The kids—now trying to get used to being Ordo, A'den, Kom'rk, Prudii, Mereel, and Jaing—sat devouring both their newfound heritage and the sticky sweet cake, eyes fixed on Skirata as he recited lists of Mandalorian words and they repeated them back to him.
He worked through the most common words, struggling. He had no idea how to teach a language to kids who could already speak fluent Basic. So he simply listed everything he could recall that seemed useful, and the little Null ARCs listened, grim-faced, flinching in unison at every blaze of lightning. After an hour Skirata felt that he was simply confusing some very frightened, very lonely children. They just stared at him.
“Okay, time to recap,” he said, exhausted by a bad day and the realization that there was an unknowable number of days like this stretching ahead. He pinched the bridge of his nose_ in an effort to focus. “Can you count from one to ten for me?”
Prudii—N-5—parted his lips to take a quick breath and suddenly all six spoke at once.
“Solus, t'ad, ehn, cuir, rayshe'a, resol, e'tad, sh'ehn, she'cu, ta'raysh.”
Skirata's gut flipped briefly and he sat stunned. These kids absorbed information like a sponge. I only counted out the numbers for them once. Just once! Their recall was perfect and absolute. He decided to be careful what he said to them in the future.
“Now that's clever,” he said. “You're very special lads, aren't you?”
“Orun Wa said we couldn't be measured,” Mereel said, totally without pride, and perched on the edge of the couch, swinging his legs almost like a normal four-year-old. They might have all looked identical, but their individual characters seemed distinct and … obvious. Skirata wasn't sure how he managed it, but he could now look at them and see that they were different, distinguished by small variations in facial expressions, gestures, frowns, and even tone of voice. Appearance wasn't everything.
“You mean you scored too high for him to count?”
Mereel nodded gravely. Thunder slapped the platform city: Skirata felt it without hearing it. Mereel drew up his legs again and huddled tight up against his brothers in an instant.
No, Skirata didn't need a hut'uunla Kaminoan to tell him that these were extraordinary children. They could already handle a blaster, learn everything he threw at them, and understand the Kaminoans' intentions all too welclass="underline" no wonder the aiwha-bait was scared of them.
And they would be truly phenomenal soldiers—if only they could follow a few orders. He'd work on that.
“Want some more uj?” he said.
They all nodded enthusiastically in unison. It was a relief. At least that gave him a few minutes' respite from their unrelenting, silent attention. They ate, still miniature adults. There was no chattering or high spirits.
And they flinched at every bolt of lightning.
“Are you scared?” asked Skirata.
“Yes, Kal,” said Ordo. “Is that wrong?”
“No, son. Not at all.” It was as good a time to teach them as any. No lesson would ever be wasted on them. “Being afraid is okay. It's your body's way of getting you ready to defend yourself, and all you have to do is use it and not let it use you. Do you understand that?”
“No,” Ordo said.
“Okay, think about being scared. What's it like?”
Ordo defocused slightly as if he were looking at something on a HUD he didn't have. “Cold.”
“Cold?”
A'den and Kom'rk chimed in. “And spiky.”
“Okay … okay.” Skirata tried to imagine what they meant. Ah. They were describing the feeling of adrenaline flooding their bodies. “That's fine. You just have to remember that it's your alarm system, and you need to take notice of it.” They were the same age as city kids on Coruscant who struggled to scrawl crude letters on flimsi. And here he was, teaching them battle psychology. His mouth felt oddly dry. “So you tell yourself, okay, I can handle this. My body's now ready to run faster and fight harder, and I'll be seeing and hearing only the most important things I need to know to stay alive.”
Ordo went from his wide-eyed dark stare to slight defocus again for a moment and nodded. Skirata glanced at the others. They had that same disturbing concentration. They had also stacked their plates neatly on the low side table. He hadn't even noticed them doing it.