“This stops right now,” Skirata barked. “You hear me? Stand down!”
He’d never seen Niner react like that. Soldiers got into scraps all the time; it was an inevitable part of being encouraged to fight. Sometimes they took a swing at each other, but it was rarely serious, no more than a bit of bravado. But not his boys-and certainly not Niner.
There was a switch in all men somewhere, no matter how deeply buried, that could be thrown.
“You have never lost brothers.” Niner took one grudging step back from Boss. “Never. You have no idea.”
“Ever wondered why?” said Boss.
“Enough.” Skirata put an arm between them. “Next one to open his mouth gets a thump from me, okay?”
This was the brief moment where the fight would erupt or vanish, and Skirata was secretly uncertain if he had what it took to separate two bigger, younger, fitter men. But Niner muttered, “Yes, Sarge,” and sat down in a chair on the far side of the room, face white with anger. Boss paused, then followed him to hold out a placatory hand.
“Apologies, ner vod.”
Niner just looked up at him, unblinking. Then he took Boss’s hand and shook it, but his mind was clearly elsewhere, and Skirata knew exactly where. Some things didn’t go away with time. Niner had lost another Sev, plus DD and 0-Four, at Geonosis; and during training he’d lost Two-Eight, Republic Commandos never forgot the brothers they grew up with in that tight pod from the time they were decanted.
But Delta still had their pod intact. The world was different for them. They thought they were invincible; death only happened to others.
“I think we need to take a step back,” Skirata said, bleeding for Niner. He’d thought the squad was as close as a true pod, but they still nursed their loss. “Delta, you break off and get a meal downstairs and report back at nineteen-hundred. Omega, you break when they get back. Maybe we’ll all feel better on a full stomach.”
There was no point turning this into a contest between the squads. But mixing them hadn’t helped that much. Skirata watched Delta troop out toward the turbolift. It was going to take more than food to distract them, although it usually did the trick.
“Are we all okay?”
Atin looked up from a datapad he was cannibalizing. Dismantling things seemed to keep him happy. “We’re okay, Sarge. Sorry. I just don’t feel happy calling you Kal Except in public, of course.”
“That’s okay, son.”
Skirata made a point of sitting down where he could see Darman and make a discreet assessment. There was something about the way he was turned slightly toward Etain in his seat, and she made a lot more eye contact with him than she had earlier. Skirata wondered why he hadn’t spotted it earlier, and also when it had happened.
If he was right…
It was bad for discipline to let an officer and an enlisted man have a relationship. But Etain wasn’t an officer, and Darman had never chosen to enlist. The risk lay more in how Darman would handle it, and how left behind his brothers might feel now that they were out in a world where everyone who wasn’t wearing armor was free to love.
Skirata stood up and limped across to Etain. “Come and explain some Jedi stuff to me,” he said quietly. “I’d ask Dard’ika, but he’s still in disgrace at the moment.” He winked at Jusik to indicate he was joking: the kid took his ribbing far too seriously sometimes. “Outside.”
It wasn’t subtle, but Darman obviously didn’t think anyone else had noticed what was going on between them. He probably thought Skirata wanted to discuss the unsavory side of interrogation with her.
Skirata sat down next to Etain on the rickety bench against the landing platform wall. It was late afternoon and the air smelled of hot speeder drives and the powdery sweet scent of a solitary mayla vine that had taken root in a crack in the permacrete. Etain folded her hands in the lap of her pale blue tunic. Without the dull brown robes she didn’t look like a Jedi at all.
“You and Darman,” Skirata said carefully.
She closed her eyes for a second. “He told you, then. I suppose he tells you everything.”
“Not a word. But I’m not stupid.” It was amazing how easily people told you things when you didn’t even ask a question. Perhaps she actually wanted people to know. But it seemed Darman didn’t, and he had a right to keep what little privacy he had. “I heard the squad’s comments after Qiilura.”
“Are you telling me to stop?”
“No, I’m asking where this is heading.”
“Are you going to tell him to stop?”
“Not if you make him happy.” Skirata trod carefully, but he knew where he drew the line and whose interests he would put first, war or not. “See, I know that much about Jedi. You can’t love.”