Before he left, Anakin bugged Obi-Wan's speeder again. It was really a mediocre machine, he thought, dissatisfied that nobody was looking out to make sure Obi-Wan got quality vehicles. Then, he had to laugh at himself.
Right, Skywalker — because that was definitely their biggest problem to date.
Obi-Wan had been nearly back to normal by the time Anakin had had to take off, but so clearly exhausted that it almost terrified Anakin more than the seizure had. Despite the trembling he couldn't quite stop in his hands and how he struggled to focus, it had been obvious he was going to refuse to do anything resembling rest while Anakin was there. So, for several reasons, Anakin had to face the inevitable and leave the tiny, self-contained world of that house behind.
Driving back through the (mostly) deserted streets, he multitasked by trying to skim through the implant reading analysis while steering his bike with the other hand. It didn't work that well since he was no expert on the human body or its processes. He didn't crash, of course, although he may have cut it slightly close once or twice — but without a kriffing translator for all of this jargon, Anakin couldn't come to any real conclusions. He could see, though, that the analysis described the implant performing many, many more functions than what he would have expected from something that just regulated occasional flare-ups from damaged nerves
It was possible that Obi-Wan had purposefully misrepresented the extent of the implant's functions... but Anakin didn't think so. He needed to get this thing evaluated as soon as possible. Somehow. In between actually carrying out whatever this mission was going to be.
When he arrived, the Rotunda hangar was deserted except for the prep crew. Anakin dropped his speeder bike in a line of similar vehicles, all kept for the use of Rotunda security staff, and made his way to the central comm room.
The elegant halls of the government building were empty, too, for which Anakin was grateful. It had become very clear over the few days they'd been here that the GAR's presence made Centares ministers far more uncomfortable than it made Centares citizens. Since the ministers and their staffs were the source of the leak that fed privileged inside information to this Separatist spy ring, it made sense, but it was still a relief to be able to walk without being assaulted on every side with furtive looks and guilty consciences. Anakin did not relish the role of inquisitor, and this had not been a particularly fun mission. He was eager to see it finished, for more than one reason.
He ran the last few paces, jogging down the steps that took him to the holotable at the center of the comm room. Master Plo Koon was already there, turning to nod at Anakin as he approached, and so was Commander Wolffe. The relevant Centares officials - Minister Hato, one of two ministers who served as co-heads of state for the planet, and Head Consular Doerne - barely acknowledged Anakin's presence, which was fine with him.
He'd arrived before Ahsoka, which was really all he cared about.
"Morning, Master Plo."
"If you can call it that," rumbled Plo Koon's deep voice, filtered through his rebreather. "I think it's still closer to the time at which people on this planet go to sleep than the time they awaken."
At this point, Anakin's concept of time was more than a little warped. He was pretty sure he'd slept at least five hours the night before they'd landed on Centares. Was that the day before he'd found Obi-Wan? He honestly wasn't sure.
"I don't think the minister and his staff find the hour to their liking," said Anakin, and Master Plo turned slightly to survey the Centares delegation across the holotable.
Minister Hato was a tall man, intensely driven and detailed. His loyalty to his government and sense of personal responsibility had quickly made it obvious that he had nothing to do with the Separatist infiltration, but that didn't mean he was comfortable with the sudden descent of the Republic military onto his planet. The tension pouring off him was palpable in the Force, and he looked tired.
Hato's discomposure, though, was nothing to Head Consular Doerne's. She was strung so tight it was a miracle she didn't snap at the slightest touch. Practically as soon as they had landed, Anakin had pegged Doerne for the source of the leak. Her extreme defensiveness and hostility had to mean she was guilty of something, right?
Even though the culprit had turned out to be a lower-ranked consular on her staff, and Anakin had ended up chasing somebody else pell-mell through the city, Doerne hadn't been mollified at all. Standing at the minister's shoulder, she had her arms crossed stiffly over her perfectly pressed uniform. Conferring with one of her staffers, she resolutely avoided even acknowledging the Jedi with as much as a glance.
"Hm," said Master Plo. "I don't think it is necessarily the hour they dislike."
Anakin snorted. "Yeah, you might be right."
At first, Anakin had been ticked off by the Centares' attitude. Who, exactly, was out there every day risking their necks against the Seps so that everyone on Centares could live a relatively peaceful life, even during a galactic civil war? Who had already poured so much blood and ordinance into retaking this planet from autocratic Separatist control once? Not kriffing Head Counselor Doerne.
And they thought they had the right to be irritated, when they were the ones selling secrets! What a joke.
Now, it felt like years separated Anakin from those long-ago feelings, even though he knew it had been just days. All he could spare for the planetary ministers at the moment was a trickle of detached amusement. He was so done with this mission, these concerns about information flow and jurisdiction. The OEI reader with its collected data — the answer to Obi-Wan's mystery, the key to saving his master — burned a hole in his belt pouch.
Anakin nearly told Master Plo to start the briefing and forget waiting, but he remembered how he'd totally disregarded Ahsoka in his impatience yesterday. She wasn't late, not yet, and he didn't need to blow her off again. Instead, barely leashing his need to act, Anakin waited.
Only a few minutes later, Ahsoka and Rex appeared together. What a surprise.
"Snips! Glad you could finally make it." So maybe he'd engaged his limited patience on her behalf, but Anakin certainly wasn't above a little teasing.
Ignoring half the staircase in a quick leap, Ahsoka landed next to him and narrowed her eyes. It took Rex a couple more steps. "We went by your room to meet you, but I guess you beat us here," said Ahsoka, the lilt in her voice as innocent as it was pointed. "It's like you didn't even sleep, or something."
He'd told her he might not be back last night, but he really didn't want to discuss it in front of Master Plo or the Centares delegation, and she knew it. Anakin coughed. "So, ah. Master Plo, what do you have for us?"
Master Plo's impassive gaze rested on him for a second, and then he activated the holotable with one long finger. "Nothing too taxing, Skywalker. This morning, you'll be targeting two Separatist communication relay stations in the Centares system. Using the information gained from the databanks of the four planetside outposts we discovered yesterday, we were able to triangulate their locations almost exactly."
From showing a 3D image of the planet Centares, transparent and rotating slowly on its axis, the holo display zoomed out so that the entire system could be seen. Several planets lay between Centares and the system's sun, and several more traced orbits beyond it. Two small red dots stood out, blinking slowly against the blue of the rest of the holomap.
"They're out in space?" asked Ahsoka. "Are they on ships?"
"No." Plo Koon shook his head, moving the display to shrink back down in scale, focusing on the red dots. Past Centares and the next planet further from the sun, what looked like a debris field became visible as the display magnified. "They're actually on asteroids."
"Oh." Ahsoka raised her eyebrows, facial markings arching in surprise. "That's... innovative."
"That's the Naz-7 asteroid belt, between the planets Quasqi and Nizon. There used to be an azetal gas harvesting operation out there decades ago." Doerne stepped forward, indicating the area with a sweep of her hand. "Some of the asteroids completely crumbled. It's a natural minefield now, practically - extremely hazardous area to fly anything larger than a light freighter into. But some of the asteroids are still hollowed out, with the remnants of the industrial equipment that no one cared to clean up still there. It's possible these bases were set up during the Separatist occupation of the system early in the war, and never discovered," she explained. "The asteroid field is shared space. Centares has no jurisdiction to conduct independent military action out there."
"The Republic does," said Anakin. "I'll take Red Squadron out and have those Sep bases destroyed before lunch."
"I'm counting on it, Skywalker," rumbled Master Plo, "but there's a problem you may encounter. We need at least one of these two outposts intact."
"Ah."
"Just as the planetside databanks were valuable to us, these Separatist computers may be even more so. It is vital we extract all the information possible from them and, to do that, we must send a landing team."
Anakin winced slightly. They'd have to wear enviro-suits, and breaking into a defended facility from the outside, on a low-gravity asteroid while wearing an oxygen suit extremely vulnerable to tears and punctures from something like, say, blaster fire? It didn't sound fun.
"There is no atmosphere on these asteroids, obviously. Given the high cost and very obvious electromagnetic footprint that would be left by maintaining some kind of life support system, plus the logistical inconvenience of having to transport food and other supplies - it's likely these facilities are staffed solely by droids. So I don't expect you to face too much resistance from that quarter. The problem will be the self-destruct protocols."
"Oh, come on," said Ahsoka.
"Just like the bases we knocked over yesterday," Anakin agreed, shaking his head. "Only they just had mass deletion procedures for the files on their servers. These whole asteroids will be rigged to blow."
It only made sense, especially when there was nothing there for the Seps to lose except droids. That meant they'd have to race the clock, as well, or end up as part of the debris field themselves.
"And as soon as we commence attack on one of the asteroids, the other will know about it," he realized, with dawning frustration. They were communication relays, of course they'd be in contact with each other. "They'll start the self destruct countdown simultaneously. Which means we need to do a simultaneous assault."
"I thought we only needed to capture one base, Master. Why not let the other one blow?"
No, they couldn't do that. Why? Anakin's instincts were racing ahead of his thoughts, and he scrambled to catch back up.
It was Doerne who said, "The intra-system traffic lanes. Both of these asteroids are placed near enough to the edge of the belt that the explosive destruction of one would spray all the Quasqi lanes with debris like shrapnel."
"Is there any way to shut traffic down, get everyone clear?"
"It would take hours," said Anakin grimly. "The Seps would have plenty of time to either clear out before we arrive, or blow the asteroids anyway."
Ahsoka crossed her arms. "Well, okay then. You take one and I'll take the other?"
"Looks like that's how it's gonna be, Snips. Bet I can lock mine down before you can get yours."
"Yeah, I don't know about that, Master," Ahsoka said, tone making it perfectly clear that she intended to win that bet.
Crossing his own arms in unconscious mimicry of his padawan, Anakin turned to Master Plo. "We'll still take Red Squadron. They can provide cover and subdue any unexpected resistance, while Ahsoka and I launch simultaneous assaults on the two asteroids from CR-20s. Feel like joining us, Rex?"
"Wouldn't miss it, sir."
"We expect pretty minimal defenses, so I'm hoping we can prioritize the clock and bang out two pretty quick infils — but since we don't really know what we're facing, we'll go in prepared for the worst."
Minister Hato exchanged a look with Doerne. "I don't need to remind you what a disaster this would be if one of those asteroids blows, and we haven't even warned the shipping lanes—"
"No, you don't," Anakin cut him off. "We'll get it done, Master Plo."
Master Plo nodded once. "I have no doubt. We will monitor your progress from command, and the coordinates have already been transmitted to the fleet. Transport should be prepared to receive you in the hangar, and you are cleared to depart immediately."
"Yes, Master."
Anakin was turning, gathering Ahsoka and Rex with a look and moving to leave, when Master Plo added, "May the Force be with you, Skywalker." He had clasped his hands in front of him, as inscrutable as ever, but Anakin could sense the vague ripple of what he'd learned was Master Plo's amusement. He looked at the Hato and Doerne, both extremely uncomfortable at the mention of the Force, and grinned.
"May the Force be with you."
"He didn't say may the Force be with me," Ahsoka whispered as she followed him up the stairs and back towards the Rotunda hangar.
"He already knows the Force is with you, Snips."
Ahsoka laughed, because apparently she thought Anakin was joking. Bouncing up beside him, she said, "Sooooooo. Did you find whatever you were looking for in the city?"
"Who says I was looking for something?" Briefly, Anakin thought about Rex, following them and definitely hearing all of this, but realistically the odds that he hadn't already heard everything Ahsoka knew about Anakin's shady behavior were minimal.
"You were. You were all geared up, and had that look in your eye."
Anakin scoffed. "What look?"
"The I'm-going-to-save-the-galaxy-whether-it-likes-being-saved-or-not look. So? Did you save it?"
The OEI reader in his belt pouch was a weight Anakin felt with every step he took. "No," he said. "Not yet."
"Are you going back? Cause we probably don't have that much time left on this planet. If you need any help-"
"Talk to me about your plan for the asteroid, Ahsoka." He ignored her stifled groan. "You'll have one CR-20, twenty clones, the support of Red Squadron, and about eight to ten minutes from the time they start tracking our approach. How do you bust open that base?"
"Lay down cover fire, land, and blow the entrance with thermal charges," said Ahsoka, instantly. After a second, she added, "They probably won't have much in the way of long-range defenses, right? Since the whole place is some kind of repurposed mining shaft? So, Red Squadron can cover us like I said, but we probably won't have to worry about ion cannons or force fields or anything. We'll toss in some droid poppers after we blow the doors and then take the place on foot."
"What do you think, Rex?"
"Sounds good to me, General. Although I'd like to hear more about the landing."
"What do you mean?"
Ahsoka turned around to look at Rex, walking backward beside Anakin. They were in the hangar, heading toward the LAAT/i that would take them into the atmosphere were the Resolute waited to take them the rest of the way. Walking without looking, Ahsoka might have slammed her head into the wing of any given parked starfighter, or tripped over a mouse droid, but she rode Anakin's perceptions in the Force and was able to duck and continue on like it was nothing.
"Well, we won't know where on the asteroid the entrance is, Commander," said Rex. "There are probably only going to be a few places we can land a CR-20 on an asteroid. It's possible we might use up a lot of time just getting from our landing site to the door."
"They wouldn't have made the entrance too far away from a reasonable landing site. Whoever made the facility had to land their own rigs all the time, back when they were mining gas, right?"
"Whatever they were landing probably wasn't the size of our troop carrier."
"...Ah." Ahsoka frowned hard, all her focus bent on the problem.
Putting a hand out, Anakin caught her before she tripped backwards over the ramp and into the LAAT/i.
"Morning, General!" called the clone pilot. "Commander, Captain. You ready to get out there?"
"More than, Juke!" Anakin jumped into the transport bay. When Ahsoka and Rex had climbed in, he kicked the lever to retract the ramp. "Any more prep to do?"
"No, sir. I was just waiting for you."
"All right, then take us to atmo."
"Copy that, General."
Juke settled himself in the cockpit and the bay doors slid closed. Since the LAAT/i was empty except for them, Ahsoka wasted no time in taking one of the aft seats. Usually, LAAT/i transport involved a lot more standing and hanging onto one of the overhead grab rails. As they took off, silence reigned for a brief while as the engine roar overwhelmed all other sound, but when they were in the air and cruising Ahsoka started picking Rex's brain again about the asteroid assault.
"What about the gravity," she was saying, and Rex was talking about jetpacks.
Rex was a good man, and Anakin knew he could trust both of them to look out for each other. Ahsoka was fully capable of leading her command — she was often brilliant, even — but it was still a relief to have steady, experienced Rex there to guide and check her exuberance when Anakin himself couldn't. He had his own plan for taking the asteroid base, and he wouldn't let Ahsoka head out until he was sure she had a strategy that would hold up, but it sounded like she and Rex were coming up with some pretty decent ideas.
"Oh, and there's one more thing you should check, Snips," Anakin interrupted, remembering.
"Huh? What?"
"How are your 'sabers?"
Ahsoka squinted at him. "They're fine?"
"When was the last time you checked their vacuum seal?"
"Ha! That... would probably be important," said Ahsoka, grinning. She checked over both her 'sabers, making sure they were fit for combat in the vacuum of space, and didn't have time to do much else. The short trip up to the Resolute was over in minutes and, as soon as they felt the slight grind of the LAAT/i landing in the star destroyer's hangar, it was go time.
They stepped off the transport in lockstep, the changed surroundings barely noticed, as familiar as a second skin. "I'll get the men assembled and brief them on the general details of the mission, General," said Rex. "We should be prepared for your specific orders by oh-four-hundred."
"Good, I'll see you then. And get Ordinance to make sure we have enough miniature gravity wells in working order to go around."
"Yes, sir."
"Gravity wells?" Ahsoka asked, eyes sharp with interest. "Is that part of your—"
"You just work on your own strategy, Snips," said Anakin. "I wanna hear it before the briefing, okay?"
Flicking her lekku, Ahsoka sniffed. "Sure, Master. And where are you going?"
"I have to check in with Yularen." Stopping in front of a lift, Anakin said, "I'll catch up with you back here."
Ahsoka's reply was muffled as the lift door closed, but Anakin was pretty sure it included some kind of affirmative, give or take the sass. Which was completely uncalled-for, because Anakin had been completely honest about his plans. Mostly. He did go directly to the bridge and speak to Admiral Yularen.
There wasn't all that much to say — it was a simple mission as far as most of the crew of the Resolute was concerned. The admiral, used to commanding an entire fleet through chaotic space battles, barely batted an eye at moving a single star destroyer into position not even a full astronomical unit away. Since Anakin had been planetside for several days, there were some administrative matters Yularen felt he should be apprised of, but overall they were good to go. The Resolute had received the coordinates of the two asteroid bases from ground command with no problem and was in uninterrupted communication with Master Plo and the rest of the Rotunda. Satisfied, Anakin gave Yularen the go-ahead to move out.
Then, he went straight to the medbay.
The Resolute's medbay wasn't as enormous or as well-equipped as a medical frigate or medical station, but it was big enough to be able to deploy three fully operational Rimsoos and, at the moment, it was mostly empty. Critically injured clones had been transferred to Kaliida Shoals, and it had been long enough since their last major campaign that most of those less injured had recovered enough to no longer need twenty-four-hour medbay care. That did mean the staff had more leisure to notice Anakin's unusual presence, but the troopers were too well-trained to do anything but salute and then go back about their business.
Except for Kix. He straightened up from where he was filling his medpack with extra bacta bandages and saluted. "General! Everything all right? This is the last place I'd expect to see you, at least while you're conscious."
"I think you've got me mixed up with my Master," said Anakin, before Kix's slight frown reminded him that nobody in the 501st had ever even met Obi-Wan. "No, everything's fine, Kix. I'm just looking for the Commander. Have you seen him?"
"I think he's in his office, for once."
It actually took Anakin a minute to remember where, exactly, that office was. Maybe Kix was right about him avoiding the medbay. He eventually found it, though, and without having to stoop to asking one of the medics.
The office was a tiny room, situated with doors to both the surgery chambers and medbay command center, and more of a private command station than an administrative space. Commander Neo, chief medical officer of the 501st Legion, stood with his arms crossed facing a rapidly scrolling holo readout. "General," he said, pausing the projection as soon as he noticed Anakin's presence. "What can I do for you?"
"I won't take too much of your time, Commander, if you're in the middle of something—"
"I am at your disposal, General. I hear we're heading back into combat?"
Anakin squinted at Neo. He moved far enough into the office to allow the door to close behind him. The clone commander waited, hands behind his back, with every appearance of mechanical compliance. Neo might look as clean-cut and sterile as the medbay he ran, but Anakin could sense weariness sunk deeply into even the walls of the place.
"Yes, but it's just an incision mission. We won't even be leaving the system, and I'll do my best to make sure you won't have any new residents when we get back."
"I appreciate that, General."
The commander said nothing else. Clearly, he was still waiting to find out what had prompted Anakin's visit. Stalling, not even totally sure why he was doing it, Anakin said, "That looks like the latest field intelligence report." He nodded at the holo readout.
"Yes. It's — well." Neo sighed. "There have been instances of Separatist forces in the Outer Rim using armor-piercing slugthrowers instead of blasters."
Anakin winced.
Though relatively unusual, slugthrowers were more common on remote, less-developed worlds. He remembered seeing several examples of the damage and disfigurement they could cause on Tatooine, and he'd even been wounded by a slug once as a padawan. It was much more painful, more likely to fester and get infected, and more difficult to treat than a blaster wound. "Just what we need."
"Yes," said Neo, drawing out the word scornfully. "Given our luck, it's likely we'll face these things sooner rather than later. I'm trying to figure out how I can equip our Rimsoos to deal with this, next time we deploy them. They're already given half the supplies they really need, and slug wounds are so much more complicated to deal with than blaster burns."
"Let me know if I can do anything, get anything for you." There were so many horrible ways to die on the battlefield. Anakin had lost men crushed under tanks, blown to bits by cannons, ravaged by wild animals, suffocated slowly as their life support failed. "Whatever I can do to keep this from turning into another Jabiim."
Neo raised an eyebrow at him. "Thank you. If you could somehow get Kamino to deliver on the Phase II armor they've been promising us for months..."
"Yeah." The commander was joking, the equivalent of a casual jab at government inefficiency, but Anakin cocked his head slightly. Shaak Ti was on Kamino. He could at least include a line in his next report to the Council, make some inquiries. "I don't know. I'll see what I can do."
Now Neo eyed Anakin openly, disbelief and curiosity prickling in the Force. After a minute, he seemed to decide something and crossed his arms. "I suspect that's not why you came to see me, though, General."
"No. I have, well. I have kind of a personal question." Bad choice of words. That made it sound like Anakin had some kind of a disease. "A medical question. Not related to the mission, or the war at all," he explained. "It's highly confidential. I need a second opinion, but like I said, it's unrelated to the mission, so I understand if you don't feel it's within the scope of your duties."
Shoulders straightening, Neo nodded at Anakin. "On the contrary. What's the question, sir?"
Anakin let out a long breath, exhaling both his nerves and gratitude. "I came across a neural implant recently, that seems to have some odd effects. Its supposedly for, uh, relieving symptoms of past trauma, like tremors and seizures, but I'm concerned it might be doing some other things, too."
"Can I assume this implant isn't yours, or any of the troops'?"
"Yes."
"And you think it might be doing something more harmful than nerve correction?"
"Yeah," said Anakin.
It was really, really unpleasant to think about, honestly. Because if Obi-Wan's implant wasn't what he thought, then Ventress had put it there. And if Ventress had put it there, he was carrying part of her torture around with him, and she was still tormenting him, even after he'd escaped. And if that was the case, then he needed that implant gone as soon as physically possible.
"I was able to take an organic electronic impulse read of the thing, and even I can see that its type and direction of stimulation isn't consistent with what a typical nerve correction implant would be doing. A civilian doctor was able to tell me it wasn't like anything she'd ever seen before, but that's not very informative, and I'm no expert. I was hoping you might be able to crosscheck the reading, and find out what type of implant this thing actually is."
Neo's eyebrows arched and stayed there, but he accepted the OEI scanner from Anakin and didn't ask any of the thousands of questions that must have occurred to him by now. When he pulled up the device's analysis of Obi-Wan's implant, all he did was make a thoughtful noise under his breath. Slowly, he frowned, and as he scrolled further through the information his expression only darkened.
"Yes," he said belatedly, "I'll check the database for anything similar."
Anakin waited as Neo connected the OEI scanner to the central console, replacing the slugthrower report readout with the scanner's analysis of Obi-Wan's implant. Flipping through several menu options, Neo downloaded the electronic footprint of the implant and set the system searching to compare it with those of all known implant types.
"This might take a while. But I don't think—" He stopped, crossing his arms and tightening his jaw. "Well, I'll wait to see the results of the search before I make any conclusions. Any chance you could tell me who, exactly, this piece of shady hardware belongs to?"
"No," Anakin said. "But I'm afraid that at one point, it might have belonged to Ventress."
Neo hissed softly. "Then this might not take that long after all."
What he meant by that, Anakin didn't know. He barely had time to think about asking and decide not to, before the console beeped shrilly. A rotating diagram of an implant system lit up in red against the figure of a human body in blue was thrown up on holo, and Anakin moved immediately to read what it said. He read the first paragraph and thoroughly confused himself before he realized that Neo hadn't moved at all.
"This says 'compliance augmentation'...?"
Slow with reluctance, Neo said, "Yes, General. That other doctor had probably never seen something like this before because this implant isn't medical."
"But you know what it is?"
"Yes. My, ah, training included preparation for a lot of things no Mid Rim civilian doctor would expect to encounter. This implant seems to fit the specs for a line of modification chips meant to... alter the subject's attitude by restricting their access to certain lines of thought. Illegal within the Republic, of course, but most slave traders don't particularly care what the Republic thinks of their methods."
Anakin stepped back as if he'd been slapped. He focused on Neo's expression of grim distaste and worked to pull his thoughts out of the tailspin they were plunging into. "I don't remember—" No. "I've heard of tracking chips that would detonate a slave if they strayed too far from an approved radius, but — lines of thought? That doesn't sound familiar."
"It's a more sophisticated technology," said Neo. "I believe it's popular with the luxury slave trade, especially among the Zygerrians. Owners find their slaves more tractable if they are blocked from thinking about a time in the past when they were free. Sometimes the implants provide mental conditioning, to train the slave to avoid thinking about certain subjects too long or too deeply."
"Like escape, or a loved one." Or the Jedi Order. Anakin felt gutted, like someone had reached in and scooped out his insides with a vibroblade.
"Exactly. And some models deliver physical punishment if the slave attempts to fight or defy the implant's programming."
Like a shock to the kriffing brain stem, for instance. Whoops, wrong conversation topic — here, have a seizure.
Anakin thought about the careful blankness in Obi-Wan's eyes whenever he had come close to mentioning the Jedi, about why he always had the strangest feeling that he shouldn't talk about the Force in Obi-Wan's presence. The only time he'd ignored those instincts, Obi-Wan had collapsed. Apparently, that had been the implant putting him through a painful neural storm as punishment.
Anakin's hands were fisted so tightly his muscles ached. Even though Neo wasn't Force-sensitive, he kept the black hurricane of fury swirling inside him locked down. Scrambling for perspective, he thought about Obi-Wan's smiles. Obi-Wan was alive, physically unhurt, probably asleep right now on the planet below. Obi-Wan was alive. He could still fix this.
"Thank you," he told Neo, trying not to push the words through gritted teeth.
Neo nodded, watching him with sympathy just disguised enough to be professional.
When Anakin felt he could do it without destroying Neo's office, he opened himself a little to the Force and tried to breathe. "I'm assuming there's a way to remove these things, safely."
"The slaver who programmed the implant in the first place will have a specific electronic key to deactivate it, and then it can be removed like any other implant. Without that key, the procedure is still mechanically as simple as any implant removal, but most chips are programmed to self-protect by influencing the slave themselves to resist removal."
I need that thing.
"Sith hells." Focus, Anakin told himself. This wasn't about his anger — this was about helping Obi-Wan. Focus, Skywalker. "Is— Is there anything else I should know?"
"Not off the top of my head, no, but all the information is there." Neo nodded at the holo still displaying the diagram of the implant. "Take it. The entry should tell you anything you need."
With halting movements, Anakin downloaded the file on the implant to the OEI scanner and then tucked it back into his belt. "Thank you, Commander." He should have said something about hearing duty calling, or assure Neo he'd remember about the Phase II armor, but Anakin didn't have the concentration to spare.
"Of course, General." Neo was still looking at him, wariness and concern mingled. "Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you."
Anakin nodded. "Yes — thank you — I will—" He had to move, to get out. Barely noticing Neo's salute, Anakin left the office behind him and swept through the medbay like a theta storm, heedless of anything but his own barely-leashed wrath.