Mandalorian concept. Aay’han was that peaceful, perfect moment surrounded by family and friends and remembering dead loved ones, missing them to the point of pain, a state of mind that bittersweet could hardly begin to cover. It was about the intensity of love. Skirata doubted if aruetiise, non-Mandalorians, would believe that such a depth of feeling existed in a people they saw as a bunch of mercenary thugs. He swallowed to clear his throat and grant the name the respect it deserved. He found he was thinking of his adoptive father, Munin, and a teenage clone commando called Dov whose death in training was Skirata’s fault, a pain that made his aay’han especially poignant. “This ship shall be known as Aay’han, and remembered forever.”
“Gai be’bic me’sen Aay’han, meg ade partayli darasuum,” Ordo repeated. “Oya manda.”
I’m sorry, Dov. There’d better be a manda for you, some kind of immortality, or there won’t be enough revenge in the galaxy for me.
Skirata turned his attention to the living again. This wasn’t a bad ship at all, and she only had to complete one mission-the most critical one, to find Ko Sai and seize her technology to halt the clones’ accelerated aging. He went aft through the double doors into the crew lounge to check out the cosmetic detail. A smell of cleaning fluid, stale food, and mold hit him. The refreshers and medbay were on the starboard side, stores and galley to port, and the galley lockers were completely empty. He made a note of supplies they’d need to lay in at the first stopover, scribbling reminders on his forearm plate with a stylus. It really didn’t matter what the accommodation was like as long as Aay’han flew-or dived-in one piece, but he checked the cabins anyway: same gray-and-yellow trim as the rest of the interior, and not much cosmetic water damage. Not bad, not bad at all.
He prodded the mattresses on the bunks, calculating. Eighty thousand creds-but we’ve got four million from scamming the terrorists, and nobody will ever miss it. Six-teen berths, then, and if they needed it there was plenty of cargo space that could be used for crew, maybe enough for thirty people. So if we need to bang out in a hurry, that’s ample room for my boys, Corr, Omega Squad, and any of the ladies, with places to spare. And then there were all the other Republic commando squads he’d trained, still more than eighty men out there in the field, his boys and his responsibility every bit as much as Omega, and he was neglecting them. They needed a refuge when this war was over, too, maybe even before then. Did I do enough?
I can make the difference now, lads. Shab Tsad Droten-curse the Republic.
Skirata was still refitting Aay’han in his mind’s eye when Ordo loomed in the hatchway.
“I think we need to change course,” he said. “Go ahead, then, son.”
“I mean we need to divert to do an extraction.” Skirata sighed. Okay, they were on Republic time, and he was on Republic pay even if the clones weren’t. It had better be our lads. I hate every second I spend on civilians. He trusted Ordo’s assessment of necessity, and turned to go back to the cockpit. Ordo simply held out a crackling comlink.
“It’s Delta,” Ordo said. “They had to bang out of Mygeeto in a hurry, and Vau got left behind.”
Skirata grabbed the comlink, all the bad blood between him and Vau forgotten. He motioned Ordo back to the cockpit, mouthing do it at him.
“RC one-one-three-eight here, Sergeant.” It was Boss. “Apologies for the interruption.”
Skirata slid into the copilot’s seat, trying not to imagine how badly things had gone if Vau had been stranded behind enemy lines. He was an escape artist. “Where are you?”
“We rejoined the fleet on station. We wanted to retrieve him, but General Jusik says…”
“…we’re on our way. Sitrep?”
“About twenty kilometers from Jygat. We were leaving the Dressian Kiolsh bank when we met some resistance and he fell down a crevasse.”
“Bank?” They’d been there to locate communications nodes for the Marines. “Run out of creds, did he? Needed some small change?”
“It’s a long story, Sergeant, and that’s why General Jusik thought you’d be … a wiser choice.”
“Than who?”
“Than telling General Zey.”
“I won’t waste time asking what the shab you were doing in a bank.” Jusik: he was a smart lad, Bard’ika. Whatever it was, the Jedi had decided that the extraction needed to be kept quiet. “Is Vau alive?”
“Unconfirmed. We lost his signal. He had kit with him that General Jusik felt you would want to recover.”