“You built it. You keep it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The doors opened and then hissed shut behind him. Etain was left in a wasteland. Zey let out a long breath.
“I regret that,” he said. “I really do. Very well, General. Dismissed.”
Etain walked to the doors and turned around just as they were closing. She caught a glimpse of Zey with his elbows on the desk, head propped on his hands, and knew that it wasn’t Jusik’s resignation that had deflated him, but that he had asked and answered the question that almost every other Jedi had chosen to ignore.
It was a stain, indeed. And they could all see it.
Besany Wennen’s apartment, Coruscant, 548 days after Geonosis
“Aren’t you a bit old to look after babies, Sarge?” Niner asked, crunching his way through a plate of crisp moss chips.
Skirata gave him that special Mando hand gesture of friendly disagreement, the one he taught his boys never to use in front of polite company. “I raised you lot, didn’t I?”
“But we were a bit older, and you had a team of care droids, and you were ten years younger.”
Besany topped up the bowl of chips while Darman peered at the baby. With his wispy dark hair, Venku didn’t look much like Skirata, but then nobody had seen his kids and they would all have been in their thirties or forties now. He wondered what had happened to make them hand over a tiny child like that to a man fighting a war.
But that was Mandalorians for you. They were compulsive adopters, and if someone was in trouble, they all pitched in. Skirata certainly looked besotted. He wrapped the child in a blanket with the deft hands of a man who knew how to handle babies, and cradled the bundle against his chest with a big grin. Etain and Besany were making a show of keeping the food coming, and Etain looked upset. Well, Jusik had walked out of the Jedi Order. It was a shock for everyone.
Skirata swallowed hard as if he was going to start crying. He was so hard that he didn’t care who saw his emotions, and Darman admired that. “His name’s Venku.”
“That’s nice,” Atin said. “What would you call a son, Corr?”
“Not Sev, for a start …” They guffawed. “I’d go for Jori.”
“That’s not a Mando name.”
“I’m still catching up on Mandalorian stuff, guys. Just a white job who’s been promoted, okay?”
Darman chewed over the question. “Kad,” he said. He was aware of Etain and Skirata looking at him. Maybe he wasn’t showing enough interest. “Kad’s a nice name.”
He moved in a little closer; Etain looked uncomfortable and stared at her boots. Maybe she didn’t find babies as fascinating as Skirata did, but then it was his grandchild. It was to be expected.
“Can I hold him?” Darman asked.
He wanted to show some enthusiasm, because Skirata was… fierfek, this was his own father in as many senses of the word that mattered, the man who raised him. It was rude not to admire his grandson. Darman held out his arms, and Skirata hesitated with an expression on his face that Darman couldn’t fathom at all. It looked like sorrow.
“Here you go, son.” Skirata laid the baby in Darman’s arms, moving them into position. There was a technique to baby holding, apparently. “They don’t react much at this age. They basically eat, sleep, and … need their diapers changed.”
Darman, surprised at how heavy the bundle was, inhaled cautiously. Little Venku just smelled vaguely of powder and skin. But the baby did react: he opened his eyes and tried to turn his head, unfocused and totally uncoordinated. His eyes were pale blue-green and glassy.
“He’s got your eyes, Sarge,” Darman said, lost for anything else to say. What he actually felt like blurting out was so inane that he didn’t dare: that babies were so tiny, so helpless, that he couldn’t imagine ever having been’so small. He had a vague memory of babies in glass vats in Tipoca City, but that was different. This was a real live kid in his arms, and he had no idea what to do next.
“Their eyes change color,” Skirata said. Yes, there was a definite huskiness about Kal’buir’s voice, which usually meant he was emotionally charged about something. “They’re all blue at first, pretty well. Might be totally different in a few weeks.”
“Right,” said Darman. “Do you want him back now?”
“You can hold him as long as you want, son.”
“I don’t think he’s comfortable with me.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think he’s fine…” Darman felt inexplicably uneasy. The baby seemed to be doing his best to squirm toward him, and for a moment he felt as if Etain was reaching to him in the Force, but that was impossible. She was right there, right next to him, looking toward the doors as if she wanted to get out of the room as fast as she could.