Powerful strides had taken Anakin almost all the way back to the hangar by the time his mind caught up with his body. An empty lift waited in front of him, ready to drop him down into the action. He stopped, stock still.

He wasn't going to the hangar so that he could grab a ship, head immediately back to Centares, and rid Obi-Wan of that disgusting piece of hardware whether his master liked it or not. He was going to the hangar to brief his men and make sure Ahsoka was prepared for the upcoming assault. Anakin was mentally aware of these facts, but that didn't mean it was easy to accept them. His whole body was still so tense that he felt he might explode — detonate into a blast of destruction at the slightest touch.

As a padawan, this would have been the point at which Anakin got into a shouting match with Obi-Wan about priorities. Countless arguments blurred in his memory, but Geonosis stood out as one of the last. We have a job to do! I can't take Dooku alone — I need you! Obi-Wan had shouted over the roar of the ship. Anakin had wanted to scream back, I don't care! How could he care about anything as abstract as strategy when someone he loved was hurt?

But Obi-Wan wasn't here now to argue with, yell at, or blame. He hadn't been for a long time. Anakin was, in fact, the highest authority on this ship. Not even Yularen outranked him, and there was certainly no one who could physically stop him from doing anything he wanted. Anakin was ruled only by himself, and the decision was his.

Pushing through the white-hot need to act, Anakin reached for the Force and searched for the reason behind the anger. He was shaking with it — but why? Obi-Wan was alive, he was fine, he would certainly survive the hours it would take Anakin to execute this mission and return to the planet. The implant wasn't going to kill him, so why could Anakin barely stand to think of it touching his master's skin for another second?

How dare they, was the beat of the outrage screaming through Anakin. How dare they — how dare she! How dare Ventress chain Obi-Wan like this. How dare she take his identity, his memories from him, like they belonged to her, like he belonged to her. Like Obi-Wan was her slave.

He thought about his mother. He hadn't saved her. Anakin had thought of her constantly, but told himself to wait, to be patient, that one day he would return to Tatooine when he was a Jedi Knight and the moment was right. He had been too late.

Waiting too long to do something necessary and right could be deadly.

But Obi-Wan was in no danger. He fully believed that. Nobody but Anakin knew that Obi-Wan was even alive, and he sensed no underlying threat in the Force. It would take them, what, a day at the most to carry out this mission? Obi-Wan could wait. He had waited more than a year already. He could wait another day, Anakin told himself, and his conscious brain was fully onboard.

He still seethed.

It was the principle. Obi-Wan should never be caged, not even for a single hour. And then, like the word caged had unlocked everything, he remembered Kadavo.

A harsh breath punched out of Anakin, and he closed his eyes. Oh, he thought. Of course.

Their mission to the Zygerrian Slave Empire had gone disastrously awry less than a month ago. Ahsoka had been kept in a cage like an animal, and their men had been put to forced labor in the mines. Meanwhile, Anakin himself had been helpless, forced to try and save their necks by wheedling and persuading the Zygerrians' conscienceless queen.

They had escaped, of course. But the rage conjured by the visual of Ahsoka in a cage did not fade. Ahsoka herself had been only a little worse for wear. Most of their time on Zygerria had been unpleasant playacting to her, and as for the cage itself — she had been in worse fixes. It was Anakin who felt unthinking blind fury on her behalf, because it was Anakin who understood what it was to truly be a slave.

Ahsoka had only ever been a Jedi. Even in elaborate costume, or suspended behind bars by slavers, she had been a Jedi in a temporarily unfortunate situation. Obi-Wan, too, had only known what it was to be a Jedi — until Ventress had chained him, using, of all things, Zygerrian slave technology.

On nights when he was too exhausted to see straight and yet still somehow couldn't sleep, Anakin would be visited by a panoply of ugly fears. One of these was the secret, cold dread that no matter what he did, no matter who he was or what he achieved, he would never be anything but a slave. This doubt, he did not want for anyone else. He loved his master, and wanted him always to be bold and arrogant and carry unconscious power like a second cloak. He loved his padawan, and wanted her always to be brash and independent and take for granted that her obedience was a choice.

Anakin forced his fists to unclench. He understood why he was angry. He was afraid that Ventress had stolen this from Obi-Wan.

Breathing deep and even, Anakin forced his body to obey him and dragged his thoughts along with it. He was going to continue to be angry. He was going to free Obi-Wan from the chip absolutely the first second he possibly could. Next time he saw Ventress, he knew what he was going to do. That was the future, he saw as clearly as if the Force had granted him a vision.

But this was the present, and Anakin was not a slave. It was early morning, he was wide awake, and he was a Jedi Knight with a job to do.

He was going down to the hangar to take care of his men, his padawan, and his mission.

The men had already assembled. Rex had chosen them, two groups of twenty, and most were at work prepping and loading their assigned CR-20 troop carrier, or double-checking their own gear. Pilots of Red Squadron and their flight crews were busy in clusters around the hangar as well, readying the ARC-170s and V-19 Torrents that would provide the mission's air support.

Anakin had spent several minutes flicking quickly through Master Plo's briefing packet. It was all the same information they had been told already, but in more detail. At first, the holos swam in front of his eyes, just a bunch of bright blue light. It took a long second for Anakin to muster the focus to understand what he was looking at. Once he did, though, things began to click into place. There was information about the asteroid belt, the communication they had detected between the on-planet Separatist spies and the asteroid outpost, and the gas-mining company that had gone belly-up more than two decades ago.

By the time the lift doors hissed open, Anakin wasn't quite calm, but he was in control of his own thoughts. It was a good thing, too, because Ahsoka was attuned to him the moment he stepped out into the hangar, reacting in the Force like a flag showing the direction of the wind.

She ignored him outwardly, of course.

He made his way through the clones loading the troop carriers, on a tangential path past Ahsoka and Rex. When Ahsoka couldn't pretend not to notice him anymore, Anakin jerked his chin at her to follow him. He saw her widen her eyes expressively at Rex, but she trailed him away from most of the clones to a corner of the hangar at the moment being mostly used for storage.

"We'll be ready to deploy in twenty minutes, Master," she told Anakin. "Everything good with the admiral?"

"Huh?"

"Yularen," Ahsoka said, expression chastising him for not even trying to keep his story straight.

"Oh. Yeah. Fine. We'll be in position soon. Are you prepared?"

"Yep."

"Talk to me."

She eyed him. "Sure. How about this: I'll tell you about my great plan to bust a droid asteroid, if you'll tell me about your secret project. Deal? Deal. Okay, you go first."

Anakin didn't really smile, but the corner of his mouth might have pressed up a little. "You drive a hard bargain, but how about — no. That was actually an order, not a suggestion."

"Fine." She sighed a very fake sigh. "My squads are going in with jetpacks. We'll land the CR-20 wherever we can, and then be able to cover the rest of the distance to the door that way."

Anakin nodded. He'd guessed that was what she'd been thinking. It was both less complicated and had more pizazz than his own plan, which was kind of annoying. "And once inside?"

"Once inside, first priority is to shut down the self-destruct sequence. Then clear the place of droids and any other Sep defenses."

"Easy as that, huh?"

"It's never as easy as that," said Ahsoka, parroting Anakin's tone. She had a little over a year's command experience under her belt — almost enough time, in Anakin's experience, to make it feel like you had never lived any other type of life than this one, submerged in war. Certainly enough time to learn that battle plans never survive contact with the enemy. "I can't tell you every detail. I'll have to play it by ear and trust the Force."

Anakin's mouth twisted again. He didn't want to be amused at her glibness, but couldn't quite keep a straight face. "That sounds like something I might have said once."

"Maybe," said Ahsoka, far too seriously. "I always pay close attention to your teachings, Master."

"Well in that case, here's another teaching for you, Padawan. The Force is never a nursemaid. Smart tactics and prep are what keep your men alive, and that's your responsibility."

He activated his comm, displaying part of the briefing packet.

"I looked at that. Those are useless," Ahsoka said, frowning at the holo schematics of the old asteroid mining bases that Anakin was quickly moving through. "Aren't they?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, the records are old and terrible! The base maps aren't linked to the specific asteroid they show, so it's just a bunch of random floor plans. And we don't even have all the maps! There were over a hundred asteroids mined, and only fifteen schematics in the briefing. Maybe the plans for the asteroids we need aren't even here at all. There's no way to know."

She had done her reading, to know that. And it was true — the twenty-year-old information scavenged from the now-defunct mining operation was degraded and incomplete.

"We may not know if we have the plans for our specific asteroids, but we can still learn from what we have," said Anakin. "Say you're a Separatist—"

"I'm a Separatist," said Ahsoka.

He ignored her. "Say you're a Separatist, and you've been told to outfit an undercover communications relay. A spy station. Maybe to gather intel temporarily before they invaded Centares the first time, or maybe in a hurry while retreating after we kicked them out again. Where would you rig the emergency charge?"

"I wouldn't do anything too crazy. I'm in a hurry, right?" She thought about it for a minute. "And I can't do anything too attention-grabbing, because it has to stay a secret. I'd put only as much explosive as I needed, wherever it would do the most damage."

"Yeah. You know what azetal gas is used for? Torch fuel. Welding."

"Right." Ahsoka's eyes widened slightly. "So the charges will be in the gas pits. A chain reaction. How does that help us, though?"

"Look at your schematics. Where are the gas pits?"

Activating her own comm, Ahsoka flipped through map after map of the asteroid mines. "They're everywhere," she said, disappointed. "The only ones marked are the already-emptied ones."

She kept looking, facial markings pinched in a careful frown, and Anakin waited.

"...Wait. Gas? These things are way too small to have an atmosphere."

"The gas pockets are inside the rock, completely enclosed by the asteroid," Anakin explained. "They would have to be, right? Otherwise the gas would have already dissipated. So this operation was apparently mining right up to where the readings told them the next hollow pocket would be, and then drilling a smallish hole through the rock. They would get a vacuum seal around the hole and the gas would escape right into their storage canisters."

"So all you'd have to do is slap a charge onto the wall closest to the nearest gas-filled pocket," said Ahsoka. "Great. That probably means it'll be deep into the asteroid, since all the pockets closest to the surface will be empty and already mined. Why couldn't they just put it at the entrance, like a welcome mat? That would be polite."

Anakin shrugged. "They might have. This is only really a guess — the most likely place for them to have rigged the asteroid, since it means they'd have to use the least amount of ordnance to do it. But who knows? They might have rigged the whole thing. The asteroids we're going to hit might have already been completely stripped of gas. The detonation system might be much closer to the surface, and it might be smarter to just go for that rather than the bomb itself."

"...So we play it by ear and trust the Force."

"Exactly. We're not just jumping out of ships and winging it. We're prepared — but flexible."

Ahsoka didn't look convinced. "Sometimes we're jumping out of ships and winging it."

"Okay, yeah, sometimes we are. But more prep means less people die." They exchanged a look, thinking of the same thing, and Ahsoka nodded. "Let's go see if Rex is ready to move out."

"By the way, Master, you never told me your plan."

"Didn't I? Huh. Weird."

"You're going to use the gravity wells to make a path the men can run to the entrance, aren't you."

"No, that would be like trying to run in a constantly fluctuating gravity field. We'd be tripping and bouncing all over the place."

Ahsoka groaned. "Then what? What's the plan?"

"You'll find out— Wait." Anakin had already covered half the distance back to where Rex waited for them, but now he stopped suddenly. "We never did the apprenticeship ceremony, did we?"

"Nah, I think we were a little busy on Christophsis." Ahsoka kept walking, but then, when Anakin didn't keep up, she slowed and looked back at him. "Why?"

Anakin was the last person to care about ritual for ritual's sake. He knew that he would guide and protect Ahsoka the same whether or not he had sworn it out loud, but... still. They had been assigned to each other, a partnership begun almost as involuntarily as his and Obi-Wan's. That wasn't right. "Do you know the oath?"

"Do I know the oath?"

"...Yeah?"

Squinting at him, Ahsoka was clearly communicating with her face that this question ought not to have been asked, but Anakin was still confused as to why. "I was in the creche until I was fourteen, Master. They don't let you even take the Initiate Trials until you know all the ceremony stuff in your sleep. I was fourteen when I got out."

Her word choice made it sound like she had escaped from prison. What was the usual age to begin an apprenticeship? Anakin had always been pretty alienated from anything and everything that happened in the creche, but his best guess was ten or eleven. Younglings who grew older than that still unchosen were usually not considered to have a future in the Jedi Order. They were sent somewhere else, one of the Service Corps, normally.

Were they not doing that anymore?

"Oh," said Anakin. "Why?"

Ahsoka looked at him the way he had always looked at Obi-Wan whenever his master said something only a person raised in privilege and luxury would say. "Well, it wasn't because I'm an idiot who couldn't memorize the apprenticeship oath."

She honestly sounded defensive. Ahsoka was such an indispensable part of Anakin's life that it was weird to think about how he hadn't actually known her that long, and how much he didn't know about her life before they'd met. She was driven and ambitious and energetic — of course it would have been frustrating for her to spend so many years in the creche, old enough to be out there in the galaxy making a difference, doing the work of a Jedi, and not knowing if she would ever really get the chance.

"Ahsoka," Anakin said seriously, "I have never once believed that you are an idiot."

"There just aren't enough masters to go around," said Ahsoka, acknowledging him only with a stiff-shouldered shrug.

"Because of the war—?"

"Well yeah, now it's worse. There are barely any. But there have been less and less Jedi for a while now, even before the war. It's normal for initiates to be older and older. Plenty just never get masters at all."

It reminded Anakin of the push to knight padawans earlier that had begun during his teenage years. At the time all he could see was the fact that Ferus Olin was a candidate for knighting and he wasn't, but it was probably a consequence of the same fact: there just weren't enough Jedi. All the more reason why Ahsoka should have an apprenticeship that was real in every way, not just some ad hoc substitute.

"What is this about, anyway?"

"Huh? Nothing," Anakin said. "Just, remind me about this conversation later."

"Later as in after we take care of these asteroids, or later as in—"

"Later as in whenever we have a spare kriffing minute, Snips."

Ahsoka laughed. "So — never? Got it."

"Come on, don't be such a pessimist."

"Pessimist?" scoffed Ahsoka. "No way. I'll have you know I'm absolutely confident that I'm going to lock down my asteroid before you."

Grinning, Anakin headed for Rex. "Well, in that case, be a little more of a pessimist."

In the Force, Rex twisted with impatience, keenly aware of the chrono ticking away and that the men had been ready for minutes now while his Jedi conferred. "We good, sir?" he asked when they were close enough.

"You and me are good to go. As for the intergalactic man of mystery here, who can truly say?"

Anakin rolled his eyes. "We're ready, Rex. Do we need to brief?"

"I briefed the men on the simultaneous assault. Pilots know their jobs. The ground assault squad leaders just need specifics."

"Good. We can do that on the transports. Let's load up."

"Yes, sir."

Ahsoka followed Anakin so closely she was almost stepping on his heels as he headed for the transports. "You're just trying to avoid telling me your plan, aren't you, Master?"

"I'm using the gravity wells, Ahsoka."

"Yeah, I figured that much."

They stopped by the boarding ramp of the closest CR-20, and Rex said, "We loaded two aboard for you, General. Will that be enough?"

Anakin nodded. "Should be fine for what I've got in mind. Did you get the other thing too?"

"Yes, sir," said Rex, straight-faced. "The other thing is loaded and ready."

Ahsoka made a disgusted noise and crossed her arms. "Are you serious? This is so immature."

Anakin didn't bother to stifle the amusement he was leaking into the Force, but also didn't respond. To Rex he said, "Great. Enviro-suits?"

"The men are already suited up. Your suits are onboard."

"The squads?"

"Two of ten each. Fives and myself under Commander Tano. Sergeant Appo is your second."

Anakin could read between the lines that Rex had stacked Ahsoka's squads very nicely. They would be almost all veterans, while Anakin would have the new transfers and shinies they'd recently been given to replace the casualties suffered on Umbara. Only one more thing to double check. "Dogma?"

"With you, sir."

"Good." If there were going to be any problems, he wanted them to be in his troop carrier, not Ahsoka's. Shaking out his wrist comm, he said, "General Skywalker to the bridge. What's our status?"

In a moment, Yularen's voice came back to him. "General Skywalker, we are in position. Deploy when ready."

"Copy that, Admiral. Deploy."

Yularen's acknowledgement was drowned out as the bay door siren shrieked and warning lights flashed. As the massive door that separated the hangar from the blackness of space began to retract, Anakin raised his eyebrows at Ahsoka. "Anything before we go?"

Rex answered, "No, sir."

"Snips?"

"Nope," she said, lifting her chin.

"Then let's go."

Rex saluted, and Anakin watched for a minute as he and Ahsoka headed toward their own troop carrier. Had Obi-Wan ever felt the peculiar mixture of pride and anxiety that always stirred in his chest when sending Ahsoka out on her own? Most of the time, it had seemed like Obi-Wan hardly gave him a second thought, unless it was to remind him to hurry up or stop being so reckless. Something to ask, after he got Obi-Wan back.

"Sir?" A clone trooper in an enviro-suit stepped out of the carrier, helmet tucked under his arm.

"Sergeant Appo," said Anakin, leaping up beside him onto the boarding ramp. "How do we look?"

"Ready, sir. The boys are eager for a scrap."

"Good. So am I. Let's get this thing off the ground, and then we'll talk infil strategy."

Anakin headed to the cockpit of the CR-20. The pilots had their target coordinates already, as expected. Time to check comms.

"Red Squadron, check."

The pilots' comm channel was silent, no chatter since they hadn't launched yet, but a voice came back immediately. "This is Red Leader. We are go, General."

Anakin's own pilot twisted in his seat to give him a thumbs up, and the copilot leaned over to call in, "Transport One, check."

"Transport Two, check." That was Ahsoka's carrier, right on cue.

Popping the mini comm earpiece off his wrist, Anakin left it tuned to the pilots' frequency and stuck it in his ear. "All units, launch."

"Launching!"

His pilots began preflight sequence, and Red Squadron's takeoff chatter filled his earpiece. That done, it was time to get himself ready. Putting on his enviro-suit was always a pain, even though he stripped off all his outer tunics first. The clones just had versions of their usual armor that incorporated life support systems and a mini, emergency air propulsion system.

They were in the air by the time Anakin joined the men in the belly of the transport. Troop carriers like this were built to hold forty clones and a squad of speeder bikes. They were fielding half that manpower for this mission, so there was plenty of room. Anakin spotted the shadowed lumps against the back wall, where Rex had his equipment loaded, and went to stand next to Appo.

The comm built into the wrist of his enviro-suit was on default settings. Anakin keyed in the frequency they used for command communications. "Who's our second squad leader, Appo?"'

"Attie, sir." Signaling across the bay, Appo summoned the man in question and then put on his helmet.

"Sir," said Attie, jogging over.

"How goes it, Attie?"

"Just fine, sir. We were getting bored cooling our heels for so long. Good to get some action, even if it is just a quick day trip."

Anakin grinned. Half the men formed up behind him had their helmets on, all trying to look tough and nonchalant, but many of them were shinies. He could sense them, each a distinctive glow in the Force, and they weren't thinking of their first real action as a day trip. He knocked the gauntlet of his enviro-suit against Attie's armored shoulder illustratively, and then spoke into his wrist comm.

"Command check."

Attie hurried to put his helmet on.

"Check," said Ahsoka's voice.

"Check, sir," said Rex.

"Check," said Attie, helmeted now.

"Check," said Fives.

Appo just rapped his knuckles on the side of his helmet and gave Anakin a thumbs up.

"Command channel clear." Anakin crossed his arms. "Okay, Rex briefed you about the mission?"

"Yes, sir," Appo said. "We know it's a race against the clock. We've got ordnance disposal specialists, and Zero over there is our tech. He's brand new, but he's smart. The captain said you had a specific plan for the approach?"

"Yeah. We'll probably have to land at a distance from the base's entrance, so we've got to cover some zero-g ground fast. What we've got is an AT-RT, and a gravity well. I'm going to mount the well on the walker, and your squads will be able to make their way to the entrance easily in the walker's gravity bubble."

"We'll have to form up pretty tightly behind the AT-RT to fit everyone in the area of highest gravity," said Attie dubiously.

"Yep."

"So, that will make us sitting ducks if the outpost has any artillery. Or even a blaster cannon."

"Or one droid with a single blaster," said Appo.

"It won't be a problem. Just leave that part to me."

The clones looked at each other; Anakin didn't exactly know what the exchange meant, but he suspected that he should be offended. "The plan, sir?"

"The plan," he confirmed. "Okay... do any of our guys know anything about welding?"