“Don't listen to him, Anakin!” Mace Windu shouted at Anakin Skywalker, who'd just appeared in the room, trying to ignore the pain of Sidious's lightning. He gathered the Force in his hands and lightsaber, trying to keep his nerves and the lightsaber's innards safe from electric crackle that sought to destroy him.
“Don't let him kill me!” Sidious wept as his own lightning hit his face. “I can't hold him any longer! I, I- I can't- Anakin! Help me!”
With that, Sidious stopped the onslaught of lightning. Mace did not for a moment believe he'd actually grown too weak to electrocute them, but a moment's respite from the pain was welcome.
More pathetically fake protestations from Sidious. “I am going to end this, once and for all,” Mace declared.
“He must stand trial,” Anakin declared with a mulish expression on his face. The sentiment was admirable, but he'd just walked over the corpses of the three Jedi Masters who'd tried to bring Sidious to trial. Mace had no desire to see him added to the pile.
“He has control of the Senate and the courts,” Mace pointed out, hoping Anakin would be convinced. “He's too dangerous to be left alive.”
Anakin was saying something, but Mace realized that while he might agree that this was not the Jedi way, it was also the right thing to do, even if it hurt his heart to do this alone and he'd wanted to have someone agree. Mace lunged forward, aiming for Sidious's heart.
He found himself blasted back by a wall of lightning. Force, had Sidious been holding back? He stumbled backwards, heel catching on the edge of the fall, and toppled to his knees as to not plummet to his death.
“No!” Anakin shouted.
It was over as suddenly as it began. Mace hesitantly rose and saw Sidious's head roll to his own lap, severed at the neck.
Anakin stumbled backwards, thumbing off his lightsaber. “What have I done?”
“What had to be done,” Mace stated. He reached out with the Force and confirmed his suspicions: Agen, Kit, and Saesee were all dead. Thankfully, so was Sidious.
This did nothing to quell Anakin's panic attack. Mace wasn't in any condition to dig into Anakin's psyche and discover what words might reassure him, so he walked over and drew Anakin into his arms. “Breathe,” he said.
He had wanted to keep the young Knight out of this, both because of his youth and because the Jedi needed at least one Council member not implicated in the scandal – and who better than Knight Skywalker, the Chancellor's favorite? But now all Council members were dead, offworld, or covered in the metaphorical blood of the Sith Lord who'd risen to the peak of the Republic and eroded the powers of any institution that might be capable of dethroning him.
And who'd spent a suspicious amount of time with Anakin lately. Oh, Force; Mace hoped there was no credence to the rumors that they'd been lovers.
Anakin froze. “Can you feel that?”
Mace let go of his ruminations and reached for the Force. “Yes,” he said. Something large was building, and the Force had begun screaming a warning. “Did the Chancellor threaten grave consequences if you did not do as he wished?”
“No,” Anakin said; it rang of falsehood. He pulled back from Mace. A moment later, he continued, “I've had nightmares of ... people dying. Palpatine intimated he could stop that from happening.”
That tracked with what Yoda had mentioned of Anakin's nightmares and Sidious's words about being able to save the ones Anakin loved. But could that be the cause of this? “How many people?”
“Two at most,” Anakin said, though it felt like he was stepping around something.
“Then this is unrelated.”
The obvious culprit was the fact he and Anakin had just killed the Chancellor. There would be a reckoning and a fallout that would hit the Jedi. Mace was willing to sacrifice himself for the Jedi and for the Republic. Could he keep Anakin free without lying outright? No; Anakin would be called to testify and was not skilled enough at-
The Force screamed with pain. Mace bent over in agony as he felt the deaths of Ki-Adi-Mundi and Stass Allie and an ever-increasing stream of others.
The blast doors of the Chancellor's office whooshed open. “Targets located,” a member of the Coruscant Guard said. He had four others with him. “Three down. Targets one and two still up. Closing in now.”
They felt off in the Force. Mace stood to his full height. “We will come peacefully.”
“Good soldiers follow orders,” the same soldier said. All five unloaded their blasters at him.
Mace surrendered to the Force and the repetitive task of deflecting blaster bolts. The troopers' aim was worse than usual. Mace tried to think whether this was some sort of rebellion of theirs as he broke muscle memory to deflect the blaster bolts at the ceiling rather than the shooters.
Then he was yanked from his post with a hand around his waist and found himself falling out the window, Coruscant's skyline around him. The wind whistled in the night air as Mace turned in Anakin's arms to contemplate methods of safe deceleration.
They hit a hovertaxi, dipping it down, and propelled themselves to a lower-level boulevard. People parted in confusion, muttering about Jedi poodoo, but didn't attempt to stop them.
Mace listened to the Force's cues and led them down several levels and narrower streets until they reached a level that didn't have cameras at every corner. He considered their Jedi robes, then led Anakin down another few streets until they came across a vacant one. Probably only vacated by spice dealers when they heard Jedi were coming, but vacant nonetheless.
The tide of death had slowed to a trickle. Those in immediate peril had perished; those currently dying had escaped the first, critical moments and managed to hide, at least temporarily. With Sidious dead, stopping the clones on their misguided quest was the highest priority.
“Fives,” Anakin said.
“Who?” Mace thought he recalled hearing that name. Some clone? Not in the Coruscant Guard, but-
“The ARC Trooper from the 501st who tried to assassinate the Chancellor.” Anakin leaned against a wall and sank down. “The Kaminoans said he'd gone mad and removed an inhibitor chip. They said it brought down the aggression levels from Jango's standard to something manageable. But Fives-” Anakin's voice broke. “He claimed it was some sort of mind control thing. What if he was right? We had this all in front of us and we kriffing missed it, because what? We were too busy to see what was before our faces?”
“Then we find some way to deactivate the chips,” Mace replied. If it was a chip, that meant it was implanted and mechanical. If it was in every clone, it would be mass produced. Deactivate one, and one could deactivate them all. And the Chosen One was highly adept with matters mechanical and could bring balance to the Force in this as well. “Did you get your hands on one?”
Anakin shook his head. “We'd have to rip one out of a clone.”
And that would mean either killing someone under reduced control of their actions or nonconsensual brain surgery. Mace sighed. A Jedi's life was never easy.
He'd prefer taking someone alive and seeing if simply removing the chip would be enough to remove the Sith control. He ran through his contacts and recalled a neuromod shop a few dozen levels down whose owner was a neurosurgeon he'd helped out a few times. If old Doc would agree to help them, they might get somewhere.
“I know someone in the midlevels who could do the surgery, but we need to speak to her first,” Mace said.
Anakin rose. “Lead the way.”
Mace tugged his hood over his head and walked fast. He knew it would be better to slow down, blend into the foot traffic when they met it, but any moment he might feel another life blink out and he was one of the few in a place to do anything about it.
The classy and discreet signage of the upper levels became the neon of the midlevels. Mace walked at the edges of the streams of pedestrians, feeling Anakin follow him, and scanned for the oddly muted presence of clones.
It took perhaps ten minutes to find the hole in the wall Doc was based out of. Another Jedi died while they'd been walking. Mace knocked.
A wizened old Mirialan came to the door. “Well. What would bring you here now? Come in, come in.”
Mace followed her in while Anakin kept watch outside. The tiny waiting room had seen better days, the old seats replaced with padded benches. “How is business?”
“No-one has the money anymore,” Doc sighed. “And if they do, they want to spend it on spice. But you didn't come here to make a social call while your Temple is burning.”
“Burning.” No. The Jedi Temple had stood for longer than the current Republic.
But if the Temple Guards had closed the doors and locked them well, the Temple was nigh impregnable. Trying to burn it was one of the only ways a non-Force sensitive might try to bring it down. Especially if one didn't care about capturing anyone alive.
Doc's eyes were sympathetic. “You didn't know.”
“No,” Mace exhaled. He drew a breath. The Temple should hold – for a time. “The Kaminoans have implanted some sort of chips in the clone troopers' brains. Would you be able to remove one so we may study how to remotely deactivate them all?”
“Sure. Where's your man?”
“They're mind control chips.” Mace let the fact sink in for a moment. “They're making the clones go after Jedi.”
“That would explain why they're milling around your Temple. But, Master Jedi, if I don't have prior consent from my patient ... well, you understand how much larger the favor becomes.”
“You'd get to see the Kaminoans' handiwork. Keep up with the market. See something you otherwise wouldn't.”
“There is zero chance the Kaminoans would make a mind control chip; they'd do it with biochemical conditioning.” Doc turned contemplative, though, and tapped her lips with a fingertip. “I would be interested in seeing just which Techno Union subunit it was subcontracted to, though.”
“I am glad we could come to an agreement,” Mace said. “We'll be back shortly with a patient. Do you have anything scheduled?”
“Not for the next three days,” Doc sighed. “Go. And bring that patient.”
Mace bowed and slipped out the door, leaving Doc lounging on a swivel chair. The shadowed little lanelet was just as quiet as it had been when he entered.
“Any luck?” Anakin asked.
“She'll help us.”
Relief echoed in the Force around Anakin as he again fell in with Mace. Mace was reminded of a clingy padawan – but Anakin was young yet, at an age where human padawans usually only started being knighted. Mace led him away from Doc's shop and towards the Temple.
“The men are laying siege to the Temple,” Mace quietly murmured, too low to pick up without Force-enhanced senses. “Cin Drallig must have closed the doors. They cannot be opened without the Force, so the men are trying fire.”
A flash of concern. “Even if it burns, it will take days,” Mace continued. Long enough to risk evacuating people through the secret entries in the lower levels. “More likely, nothing will happen, and the Temple has food stores and gardens aplenty.”
Anakin drew a breath and let it out. “But they will have it under watch.”
“Yes. Let's see if we can find someone on solo patrol at the edges.”
They slinked along the edges of dark streets until they were a kilometer or so away from the Temple and could pick up the the presence of the mind controlled clone troopers. They mostly hung as one mass of troops, impenetrable, at the Temple steps and in thick patrols around the Temple in the levels that held the common side entrances.
Mace felt a stab of fear from the level above them. He mentally reviewed his map to find the nearest entry and ran.
“Hey!” a passerby shouted where Mace bumped against him. Mace ignored it.
The pedestrian-only access was half empty, a few people trickling down on the designated lane. Mace and Anakin jumped onto the path that lead up and ran.
“They'll kill you, Jedi!” someone sneered.
Mace paid no heed. Their target was almost in sight.
Two turns through emptied roads and Mace saw a long stretch of abandoned street. A clone trooper was flung from an intersection to the opposite wall. He bounced off, picked himself up, and started advancing on the – padawan, perhaps – that had thrown him.
Alive, Mace reminded himself and reached out for the clone's mind with the Force. Sleep.
The clone staggered forward a step, then another, before falling down. Mace checked that he was truly asleep before looking behind the corner.
“Master Windu?” a small voice asked.
Not a padawan, but one of the initiates. A Tholothian girl. Mace wracked his brain for a name. “Katooni,” he replied after a moment. “What happened?”
“Master Sinube was teaching lightsaber forms on the Temple steps when the clones came,” she said, coming over with trembling steps. “They felt wrong and they shot him and he told us to run but Gungi died, too, and I lost the others.”
An initiate class, exercising outdoors at the exact wrong moment. Mace took a moment to acknowledge the pain and let it go. “Darth Sidious is dead, but the clones are all implanted with some sort of mind control chip to make them execute his final order. We're trying to find a way to deactivate them.”
Katooni nodded gravely. “I will help.”
“Good.” Mace turned to the slumbering clone, now in Anakin's arms.
“It's Attie,” Anakin said. “He's been with the 501st as long as I have.”
“Can you carry him?”
At Anakin's nod, Mace led them back to Doc's place through a different route. This time he tried to avoid any witnesses. It was a balancing act to keep them away from both cameras and sentients, but thankfully the levels closest to the Temple were deserted and the lower the level, the less likely the cameras were to work after dark. Mace brought them down beneath Doc's level for the bulk of the journey.
They arrived at Doc's door not a moment too soon. The sleep suggestion still held, but Mace felt twitchy enough he took the care to mind trick everyone who saw them in the final ten minutes into forgetting they passed.
Doc answered on the first knock. “What did you give him?”
“The Force,” Mace replied. “It shouldn't cause any cross-reactions with your medicines.”
Doc rolled her eyes. “Sure. Get the armor off, would you?”
Mace and Anakin wrestled Attie's unconscious form out of his armor and blacks. They levitated him to the operating table and watched Doc put on the various pieces of monitoring equipment and the IV drip. She pulled out her brain scanner from the wall. “Do you know what level it's detectable on?”
“Not a level three, we do those occasionally and nothing showed up,” Anakin said.
Doc considered for a moment. “Well, let's do a level five. It's as high as anything goes.”
She pressed some buttons and the device hummed to life. All four of them watched as the scan readings appeared on a monitor, indecipherable to all but Doc.
“What are we going to do if we don't see anything?” Katooni asked.
“Given the function, I can make an informed guess on its position,” Doc said, eyes on the monitor. “I would rather not go in blind, but it's not the riskiest thing I've succeeded at. You wouldn't believe the shit people get implanted.”
Attie was 501st, which was Anakin's legion. While all clones were the property of Kamino, the Jedi had implemented an unofficial system for establishing heirs and legal and medical next of kin. And in absence of anyone else, the medical next of kin was the General. “Anakin?”
“Look.”
The monitor lit up with an orange glow. “Found it!” Doc exclaimed triumphantly. She looked at the readouts. “Just where I expected it, too. Hmm, some sort of organic composite...”
“Can you remove it?”
“Of course. Now, get out of my surgery so I can start.”
Mace led Katooni and Anakin into the waiting room as Doc shaved Attie's head. “This'll take a few hours,” she called as she scrubbed down her hands.
The door locked behind them. Mace sat down on the floor and arranged himself in a position to meditate. Katooni sat on one bench, back ramrod straight and legs kicking, while Anakin was on the other, head buried in his hands, the lighting in the room drawing the bags under his eyes in sharp relief.
“It will be hours,” Mace gently said. “Try to sleep.”
“I can't,” Anakin choked out. “Every time I try, I see- I can't. I can't.”
“Let me help.”
“Sure,” Anakin sighed. “Do your worst.”
Mace rose to kneel in front of Anakin and placed his hands on the sides of the other's head. “Let me in,” he murmured.
He was let in. The exhaustion was apparent, a haze that covered all rational thought, as was a pounding voice that ran in circles, screaming what if what if what if on infinite repeat.
Sleep, Mace thought.
Anakin did not fight the suggestion. Mace guided him down onto the bench and straightened him out into something approaching a comfortable position, then draped his cloak over Anakin's sleeping form.
“What are we going to do?” Katooni asked.
“For now, we wait,” Mace said. “Come. Meditate with me.”
Katooni slid off the bench and plopped down in a meditative position with the limber bonelessness of a young teen. Mace settled in front of her with significantly more care.
“The Force is in pain,” Katooni said.
“While Darth Sidious is dead, his final revenge is still ongoing. We will stop it as soon as we can.” Mace gave her the chance to digest that. “Now, take a deep breath and let go of your thoughts. There is nothing for you to do in this moment but be. Breathe.”
Anakin's comm rang, interrupting the guided meditation. Mace sighed and pulled it to his hands with the Force.
It wasn't a saved contact and Mace didn't recognize the number. He didn't sense any danger, though, so he checked that all the encryption toggles had been left on and answered, confident that he had at least ten minutes of untraceable time.
“Anakin, what- Oh. Master Windu,” Senator Amidala said. Interesting; Mace would've thought Anakin would've saved her number, close as they were. “Where's Knight Skywalker?”
“Asleep.” Was this merely a wellness check, perhaps preceding an offer to give Anakin a place to hide? “We are safe for now.”
Amidala stared at him appraisingly. “Are you inside the Temple- No, don't answer that, I know you wouldn't tell me. You must know that the Temple is under siege. Do you know why the clones haven't let anyone near the Chancellor's office? How is the Chancellor? Is he all right?”
Mace considered lying. He let his thoughts empty and found the Force nudging him towards the truth. “The Chancellor was the Sith Lord to whose beat Dooku marched. He had a method of mind controlling the clones en masse, which is why they are now laying siege to the Temple.
Next to him, Katooni drew a sharp breath. Mace realized he hadn't told her just who Darth Sidious had been.
“Was.”
Mace inclined his head in acknowledgment. The Senator had found the heart of the matter.
Amidala's features contorted in rage. “You, what, executed the elected head of the government?! Even if he was a Sith like you allege, there are procedures-”
“Procedures, yes – all of which assume that the accused does not have complete control of the courts and the Senate,” Mace interrupted her. “The Senate has been all too willing to hand power over to him by the bucketful. The closest thing to an opposition is led by the mentee of his who originally raised him to power. And this is before the revelation that he could twist the mind of any given sentient with the Force or electrocute people at will. He was a highly powerful wielder of the Dark Side, Senator. I led three Jedi Masters, all skilled in lightsaber combat, to arrest him, and he cut them down like they were nothing.”
“So you were the one who killed him.”
Mace was silent. He hadn't, but if the Senator believed that-
“Who struck the killing blow, Master Jedi?” Amidala asked, features ashen. “Answer me.”
“Anakin.”
Amidala closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “I will see what I can do.” She hung up.
Mace stared at the space above the comm where Amidala's face had been. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. Hopefully he hadn't made a mistake.
His musings were interrupted by Katooni's fragile voice. “The Chancellor was a Sith Lord?”
“He was.”
“Then it was all for nothing,” Katooni said, voice quavering. “All those battles, the whole war – all of it was just some joke. What are we supposed to do with this?”
“We are Jedi. We right what is wrong.”
Katooni looked at him mulishly. “But how can we know what is wrong if we didn't even notice that the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic was a fripping Sith Lord?!” She ducked her head, blushing, and added sheepishly, “Uh, sorry for my language, Master Windu.”
“I would say that the occasion calls for it.” He considered her words and the most useful reply he could give her. “Can you feel the difference in the Force?” he eventually asked.
She frowned in concentration and reached out, fumbling like the Initiate she was but not as clumsy as the youngest ones. “Yes. It's ... like the silt has been purged from a river and I can see much deeper.”
Good. “Sidious's very existence clouded the Force and meant that we could not rely on it as we had in the past,” he explained. “Now that he is gone, the Force flows more freely and we can hear its will and serve it.”
“And the war?”
“Had we stood aside, the Separatists would have destroyed countless worlds. They wielded weapons of mass destruction and sold entire planets' populations into slavery. Even if our orders came from a Sith Lord and a corrupted Senate, our actions still improved people's lives.”
Katooni sighed. “I guess. It just feel so wrong.”
“And that sensation of wrongness tells you there is something here to fix. Come. Let us meditate on how.”
Mace evened his breathing and felt Katooni do so as well. He quieted his mind only to notice racing thoughts rise up from the depths. He did not linger on them, instead merely accepting their existence whenever they popped to the front of his mind and imagining them evaporating on the exhale.
The Force seeped in after uncounted moments. The general miasma of Coruscant's mid and lower levels was present as always, but Mace let it be. He was here not for guidance nor even to work through anything – that could come later – but to rest his soul in the vastness of the Force.
He rose out of his meditation to find Anakin awake and fiddling with something, Katooni observing intently. Mace's cloak had been neatly folded on the bench.
“Ah, good timing,” Anakin said. “Doc just had a droid pass over the chip. She's closing up Attie now.”
“Do you see anything that could be used to turn it off remotely?” Mace supposed the question revealed the depths of his ignorance, but even this short meditation had given him hope of a fast solution.
“Not at a quick glance.” A pause. “Hmm. That looks like a maker's mark. Your friend might have some clue where to start. What's her name, by the way?”
“I know her only as Doc.”
Anakin continued fiddling with the chip. Katooni observed him, transfixed. Mace sank back into a light meditation.
A while later, Doc emerged. “He's stable. Nothing obviously wrong, but there's always a risk with brain surgery. Anything on the chip?”
“It's Techno Union.” Anakin read out the subsidiary and serial number.
“Good news, Jedi; that's one of the crappy ones. They'll probably start failing in a few weeks.” She cocked her head and considered. “Then again, they might also not respond to the proper shutdown signal. But that subsidiary is known for mass produced shoddy construction and it's a wonder they've lasted this long.”
“Do they all use the same deactivation signal?” Katooni asked hopefully.
“That would be a bit too easy, don't you think?” Doc said. “Now, I can figure out a shutdown signal, but I'm just a chop shop doc, not a real tech-”
“Anakin is an excellent engineer and familiar with the GAR's technology,” Mace smoothly interjected.
Anakin jerked and then ducked his head, blushing, as Doc cast an appraising eye on him. “Do you have any experience with biointerfacing?” she asked.
After a moment's thought, Anakin removed the glove covering his mechanical arm and flexed the fingers. “Built it myself,” he said with a faint glimmer of pride.
Doc whistled. “All right, Jedi, you get to see the back room. Come.”
Anakin stumbled after Doc through the operating room. Mace reached out to feel Attie still unconscious and turned to Katooni, the one person in current need of his guidance.
“Will it work?” she quietly asked.
“Knight Skywalker and Doc both know what they are doing. Trust in them,” Mace gently replied. He sensed he had a worrywart on his hands – though any youngling would be distraught after undergoing what she had undergone. While she'd have to work through her fears and anxieties, that would take time they did not necessarily have. Mace decided to redirect her so that she would at least not obsess over what had happened. Asking after potential masters would not be the best of ideas – he still felt the occasional twinge of yet another of his kin returning to the Force – but her studies should not be a field of landmines. Mace considered the constraints of their space and the interests of the average teen. “How far along in your Shii-Cho katas are you?”
“Master Sinube taught us the first four, then switched to the first Soresu ones and deflecting blaster bolts.”
“Eminently wise, given the circumstances. Would you like to learn the basics of Makashi?”
Katooni's eyes went wide. “Yes!” she said and jumped up. “Uh, do we have enough room? I'd hate to cut up Doc's office.”
“Makashi is the most contained of lightsaber forms,” Mace explained, settling into his lecturing voice with decades of experience. “It was formed for lightsaber to lightsaber combat and as a consequence does not have the tools for deflecting blasterfire that Soresu and the more recent techniques, Ataru, Djem So, Shien, and Niman, have.”
Katooni nodded and watched intently as Mace slowly demonstrated the first kata of Makashi. Then he had her do it and corrected her as she went. It was nice to teach; the war had kept him much too busy lately.
A while later, Anakin wandered over, now looking more like himself and less like he was five seconds away from a mental breakdown. He nodded at Katooni's by now unhalting rendition of the basic kata, then gave them an update. “We managed to figure out a deactivation signal that'll come through the skull. We can't just send it over comm, of course, but we can insert a virus into the armor's hardware that will make the helmets vibrate and produce the necessary frequency right where it's needed. It's infrasound, so the clones can't hear it and it won't make them take off their helmets.”
“Yet it does not sound like it'll be that simple,” Mace said.
“Well, no. Programming updates can only be delivered by two transmitters: one to cover Coruscant and another hyperspace relay in orbit that sends the updates to the various fleet vessels on one of the secure channels, and the ships then send them on to the troops they're responsible for. It won't reach anyone who's gone dark, but they might not have gotten the original signal in the first place and they'll put comms back online eventually.”
Anakin took a deep breath. “Both systems' input is fully airgapped, so we'll have to insert the data spikes manually. Additionally, there's a hashed crosscheck between the two transmitters so the spikes have to be inserted within five minutes of each other or the update won't go out and it'll trigger some alarms we, uh, really don't want to trigger. The spikes are compiling; it'll take a few minutes longer.”
Mace nodded. Two teams; two Jedi Knights. He'd take one and Anakin the other. He'd passed the hyperspace relay a few times on the way past, but hadn't thought much of it, always either heading out to war or coming back to the battleground of the Senate. The other... “Is the Coruscant transmitter in the Senate Dome?”
“Right under the Chancellor's office. Why?”
“The office is, according to Senator Amidala, swarming with clones. They're not letting anyone in. I am not sure if the transmitter is also under such patrolling, but it will not be easy to sneak in.”
“I'm not that much taller than a clone trooper. I could take Attie's armor and walk in,” Anakin suggested.
Which would leave the hyperspace relay for Mace. He could pilot, but his true talents lay elsewhere. This would mean-
Mace felt Attie stirring, sleep suggestion wearing off. “Katooni, look up the security measures and supply runs for the hyperspace relay.” He tossed her his identichit. “I don't think this has been cancelled yet.”
She nodded seriously and plugged the identichit into a datapad. Mace let himself trust the Initiate's work ethic and entered the operating room.
Attie was still, eyes closed, but Doc's instruments had picked up the pulse and breathing rate that were rising toward wakefulness.
A few twitches. Anakin leaned over him just in time for him to open his eyes.
“General?” Attie croaked. He blinked his eyes, twice, then a soul-crushing panic erupted in him and he tried to push himself up while pushing Anakin away from him. “General! Run! It's not- I'm not safe, there was this thing that-”
“The mind control chip has been removed,” Mace said. “Peace, soldier.”
“General Windu?” Attie exclaimed. He settled down on the bed and was silent for a while. “There was this Tholothian girl. Where...”
“She's all right,” Anakin said and gently rested his forehead against Attie's, cradling Attie's cheeks in his palms. “We'll free your brothers. I promise.”
“General,” Attie exhaled. He raised hesitant hands to Anakin's neck and held on.
Mace and Doc made eye contact and silently retreated from the scene, Doc to the back room and Mace to the waiting room. He closed the door behind him to give some privacy to whatever was going on within.
“Master Windu, I think I have something,” Katooni said.
Mace sat down next to her. “A way in?”
Katooni nodded. “They send a supply ship in every six hours so that the Separatists won't notice when we're making any actual changes. We could sneak in on the ship – they use something with a reasonably large cargo hold.”
It would be risky, but doable. Mace called up the plans for the ship on the datapad and confirmed Katooni's observation. The cargo hold was segmented, with plenty of nooks for them to hide in. The trouble would be sneaking aboard on Coruscant and off on the relay.
They? Mace probed at the Force to see whether this was its guidance or merely him being too accepting of an Initiate's desire to be helpful.
To his great surprise, the Force suggested bringing Katooni along. Mace considered the matter for half a moment more, but as there was no safe place for her to stay, she would have to come with. “Did you find the docking procedures?”
“They have some sort of procedure for selecting the ship, but I don't really understand it,” Katooni admitted. “I didn't get to the hyperspace relay bit. Sorry.”
“Quite alright, pa- Katooni. You didn't have much time.”
Katooni didn't remark on the slip of his tongue. She nodded and looked at him expectantly, like he had the keys to the universe and this was but a school assignment with the answers already known to all but her.
Mace read the ship selection and preparation documents and saw how Katooni might've bounced off them – they were in dense military jargon. It was remarkably straightforward, though, and Mace quickly figured out an infiltration plan. He called up a map of the facility and tried to recall where the cameras were. The clones present he might still be able to mind trick. Those watching camera feeds would be the biggest hazard.
A few more moments of staring at the map and he had formulated a plan for getting on. It depended on his General-level access still being there, but as he'd used it to access these files, the clones had forgotten to revoke it.
Or they had been stripped of the independent thinking necessary to come up with the issue. Perhaps Sidious had thought he'd be alive to cut the orders.
The tougher part would be getting off undetected at the hyperspace relay. There would only be a few clones at the relay; Mace could cut them down with his lightsaber should he and Katooni be spotted, but the clones were even more victims than he. He would be able to mind trick some but not all. Sleep suggestions would be more secure, though he wasn't confident in his ability to get all the half dozen clones under before one sounded the alarm.
But he was a Jedi. He would do what he must, even if he desperately wished for another way.
“Have you looked at the schedule?” he asked.
“The next ship leaves in three hours.”
It was just long enough they had a chance of making it. “The spikes should be ready soon. I suggest you meditate.”
“I'm coming with, right?” Katooni asked, with all the terror of a young teen who didn't know which answer she wished to hear.
“You're certainly not going with Anakin,” Mace replied.
Katooni swallowed and nodded. Fear curdled the Force around her.
Mace did not sigh. “It is all right to be afraid,” he told her. “Acknowledge the feeling and sit with it for a while. Know that it exists and that you are afraid, but do not let the fear rule you or dictate your actions. You are a Jedi. You know how to be brave.”
This time, Katooni's nod was more decisive. “I will, Master.”
Mace smiled. “Good.” He rose and knocked on the operating room's door. It opened before him.
Attie was sitting up unassisted, looking mildly frazzled but not like anything was wrong with him. Doc was going over his reflexes. Anakin sat a bit to the side, levitating two data spikes in front of him.
“The hyperspace relay receives a shuttle every six hours. The next one leaves in three.”
Anakin nodded. “Three hours. We should be in position at the Coruscant transmitter then.”
“You're taking Attie?”
“Yeah.” Anakin shrugged. “We'll have to steal some armor, but he can do the talking.”
That would improve Anakin's cover – the clone troops should patrol in pairs even now, unless the mind control chip had eliminated even that – and as Anakin didn't sound much like a clone trooper, keep him undiscovered. Attie, however, had just recovered from brain surgery. Mace pointed out as much.
“It's not the dumbest shit someone's pulled after waking up on my table,” Doc replied. “He'll be wearing a helmet and accompanied by a Jedi! That's much wiser than half my patients.”
“What sorts of patients do you have, Doctor?” Attie asked. “Isn't a recovery period necessary after implant surgery?”
“The kind who want to immediately test their mods in real situations,” Doc sighed. “Like getting into a firefight with Cad Bane.” She took a final look at the scanner readout. “You don't seem to have any adverse side effects and the scanner shows all clear. Good luck with your mission.”
Mace bowed. “Thank you for your aid. We will remember it.”
Doc waved a hand. “I'll wire you the bill once your Temple isn't on fire anymore.”
“Thank you.” Mace collected Anakin, Attie, and Katooni on the way out and bowed before leading them away from Doc's hole in the wall.
“How's your comm?” Anakin asked.
It turned out to be fried. Anakin handed his own and told Mace to comm Attie when he and Katooni were in position.
“May the Force be with you,” Anakin said, more solemn than was his wont but utterly focused. He bowed deeper than was customary.
“May the Force be with you as well,” Mace replied and bowed with an equal level of respect.
For a moment, Anakin looked like he wanted to say something more, but then he thought better of it and disappeared into the shadows, Attie on his heels. They'd have to find a second set of clone armor, but they had hours to do so.
Mace drew his hood up and led Katooni a few levels down. They were in the ambiguous border zone of lower and middle levels, now, and all manner of miscreants eyed the two Jedi suspiciously. No-one tried to stop them, so there must not be a bounty.
They walked the kilometers to the docks under cover of the night, going up and occasionally down the levels as they went. Mace counted the levels and brought them to a large lift tube that didn't seem to have a clone presence.
Mace and Katooni went unaccosted to the edge of the docks. Did the clones not have access to the network of cameras that threaded though Coruscant like an infinite-eyed spider's web? Or had the chips made them stupid, so focused on executing Sidious's final order that they missed the forest for the trees?
Or perhaps this was a final act of resistance. Compliance, but incompetent.
The eerie sensation of blankness that characterized the clones now massed at the next street over. Mace opened a service door and pulled Katooni inside.
A few rooms down, there was a closet full of spare techs' uniforms. Mace ditched his own robes in favor of an orange jumpsuit and managed to find a jacket that was only slightly too large for Katooni. Together they walked down the corridors, deserted of the usual techs both clone and natborn, to the door nearest to the shuttle that would be in use. Mace picked up a toolbox for verisimilitude, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
Two pairs of clones patrolled the perimeter of the apron. It was otherwise empty, with none of the usual hustle and bustle: the natborn techs on night shift seemed to have taken the opportunity to skive off work and all but the required minimum clone personnel was elsewhere – probably laying siege to the Jedi Temple.
Mace steered himself and Katooni to the shuttle through a route that did not bring them anywhere near either pair of clones. No-one questioned his authorization or the work order that had brought them there at midnight.
At the shuttle's side, Mace knelt and opened the toolbox. He had no idea what was safe to open on the shuttle's side, so he simply knelt and knocked at the metal shell in a few places, then crawled under the shuttle, repeating his “inspection” on several sections of hull plating.
“I think we'll have to go inside to check,” Katooni said.
Mace had a moment of panic at her speaking before her words registered. “I agree, Tech,” he replied, aiming for the same sort of casual tone he'd overheard techs use.
He squirmed from beneath the shuttle with a stunning lack of smoothness or finesse. He hoped no-one had witnessed that.
The shuttle ramp was on the other side of the shuttle. Mace walked over like he had every business being there, released the ramp, led himself and Katooni in, and then in striking violation of protocol retracted the ramp.
“Where should we hide, Master?” Katooni asked the moment the ramp closed.
“Wait,” Mace admonished. “Closing the ramp while there are maintenance techs inside is a violation of protocol they might interrogate us on. Let's wait a while.”
“Oh. Okay.” Katooni poked at a wall panel. “But couldn't we be in the hold, so that whoever's doing the inspection might think they just missed us finishing up?”
Mace considered for a moment. “Very well. We'll pretend to maintain the cargo hold.”
He opened the hold door and flicked on the lights in a section not immediately visible from the door. The Force would give them some warning on anyone coming, so Mace only looked around for something one might plausibly poke at with tools and sat down next to it with an open toolbox.
Katooni fidgeted next to him. He sent Attie and Anakin a message stating he was in the shuttle.
“How long before the launch?” she asked.
Mace checked the time. “A hour and a half. I suggest we meditate.”
Katooni sighed and sat down with her back to a wall. Mace knelt next to her and opened himself up to the Force.
The last vestiges of Palpatine's dark cloud were dissipating. For the first time in years, Mace could reach beyond Coruscant to the worlds of the Core. Kaller was still beyond his reach, but-
His worries about Depa and Caleb returned him to his body. He took a deep breath and visualized himself as a rock in the eternal stream of life. Emotions fell off him like rain. The sun dried his surface and bathed him in its gentle warmth. Circumstances did not budge him from his stable position.
The Force swirled around him and its opaque veil turned translucent. Mace felt the clones' muted presences dot the docks and swirl around the Temple. He felt the Jedi within, anxious, and touched Cin Drallig's mind for just long enough to offer a drop of reassurance. He felt Anakin, bright as Coruscant's sun, outside the Senate Dome and received a clear sensation of being amused at Mace having enough time to meditate. Nothing seemed amiss with that half of the operation.
Finally he let his consciousness coagulate towards the docks. The clones patrolled, completely devoid of any individual spark, flattened into a homogeneous gray mass. The chip had turned them into the flesh droids people had always accused them of being.
Next to him, Katooni was worried and afraid. Mace let the serenity he had found pool around him and flow to her.
She caught the edge of it and draped it around herself. She was quite advanced for an Initiate; the Council would have to find a master for her soon.
The Force rang with the truth. Mace let it sit and breathed.
A pair of clones approached the shuttle just before launch time. Mace withdrew from his meditation and gently shook Katooni back to the realm of crude matter. She groaned and shook out her legs.
“They will inspect the shuttle before launch,” Mace quietly warned her. “Let's hide.”
With that, he flicked off the lights and backed into a corner. He helped Katooni prop herself against a ceiling beam and waited.
The ramp opened. Mace hopped to another beam, using the Force to keep himself up, and levitated the toolbox so it almost touched the ceiling.
Footsteps. A clone trooper in full armor opened the door to the cargo hold, turned on the light, and looked around cursorily. He didn't look up and didn't spot the two Jedi or the levitating toolbox.
Mace counted very slowly to ten after the clone had closed the door behind him before setting the toolbox quietly to the floor. He touched down silently and helped Katooni down before sending Anakin a quick message that the shuttle was launching.
Going in, Anakin replied. A pause. May the Force be with you.
And with you, Mace sent before putting the comm away. The next message would be the coordination of the spike insertion. Anakin and Attie would not need to do any covert infiltration and would hopefully have more leeway in their timing.
The shuttle hummed to life and shortly afterwards shuddered up into the air. The landing gear slid in with a clang.
Coruscant's hustle and bustle gradually faded away in the Force. Mace took a deep breath and tried to read its currents as best he could.
“Do we have a plan on getting out of the shuttle?” Katooni whispered.
“I suspect we'll have to wing it.”
“Will they leave someone to guard the shuttle?”
“The pilot will stay aboard.” Mace tried to recall the protocol. “We don't need to worry about our departure, so we have the full time the shuttle is docked to board the relay.”
Katooni nodded seriously. “So we wait a bit and then sneak onto the relay?”
“Exactly.” Mace told her everything he knew about the relay's internal structure and the place to insert the spike.
A gentle grinding sound heralded their arrival at the relay. Mace took a moment to send Anakin a status update and reached out with the Force.
The pilot, as he'd said earlier, stayed in his seat. The two passengers rose and went to the ramp. They were greeted by another pair of clones and all four of them walked further into the relay structure.
Katooni squirmed. Mace counted to ten and padded over to the cargo bay door.
The door slid open with a hiss Mace did his best to mute with the Force. The pilot didn't notice and the ramp was still open. They slipped into the hyperspace relay.
Silence greeted them. Mace knew there would be security cameras, but they'd be monitored by automated subroutines and facial recognition would place him and Katooni both as Jedi and thus authorized personnel. Now that they were here, it did not matter if the clones eventually discovered them – they were in sight of their goal and Mace was confident in his ability to hold them off until the spike was inserted.
Nonetheless, Mace kept an eye on where the clones were through the Force. He would rather they not be spotted until the clones had been freed.
The clone activity was concentrated in the center of the station, where the relay core was. Mace thought protocol would've had the shuttle leave already, but perhaps the shuttle crew wished to brief the station crew on the order to execute the Jedi. Perhaps there were arguments on who stayed behind and who went Jedi hunting. All clones present were under the influence of the chips – not that Mace had thought or even consciously hoped for anything else.
They took a corridor that felt empty and led closer to their destination. Mace had his eyes half closed as he desperately gave himself over to the Force in an effort to get them to their destination without coming across any clones.
His comm rang, harsh and shrill with emergency tones in the hush. Katooni jumped.
Mace answered. “What-”
A clone trooper's holographic form flickered into existence. “We had to insert our spike, sorry sir,” Attie said. He dodged something and rolled into cover before shooting back at someone.
The connection closed. Mace cursed internally. “Katooni,” he asked, “do you remember where the spike port it?”
“Yes, Master Windu,” she said, questions in her wide eyes. Force, she was so young.
“Take the spike and insert it.” He handed her the spike and palmed his lightsaber. He had a great deal of regrets, and plans rushed in the back of his mind, but none of that mattered now. He quieted his thoughts.
“But...”
“Go, padawan,” Mace said and marched back to the previous corridor.
He waited until he felt Katooni scurrying toward the relay core in a panic. He took a deep breath and approached the room the clones were huddled in from a different direction. His ploy would only work if they discovered him first.
A camera. He lit his lightsaber and looked directly into the lens. “Troopers of the Republic,” he began. “I am Mace Windu, Jedi Master and a High General of the Grand Army of the Republic. You have drawn your weapons against your superiors, which is a crime according to military law. I have come to arrest you. Lay down your weapons and put your hands behind your heads.”
For a moment, nothing, then a calm utterly unlike that of a regular hunter who had spotted their quarry. The clones were moving towards him. They still had the Force equivalent of a flat affect – not even a Jedi to hunt perturbed them.
The hatch at the end of the corridor opened up. Two beats later, Mace had a flashbang tossed at him. He grabbed it with the Force and returned it whence it came.
The flashbang went off with a muffled thud. Another hatch opened behind him, and Mace had to spin around to intercept blaster bolts from the two clones who'd rolled out.
Razor and Stak. Force. Wasn't the 91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps supposed to be with Stass on Saleucami?
“It is not too late for you to surrender,” Mace declared as he frantically deflected blaster bolts to the floor and ceiling. “Lay down your weapons.”
“Execute the Jedi traitor!” Razor ordered.
Mace thought the first group might've recovered from the flashbang, so he opened a hatch slightly to the side with the Force and backed into it. The shuttle pilot had yet to be alerted, and Katooni felt only as afraid as she'd been when Mace had sent her off. His distraction had succeeded in drawing the clones' attention; none were approaching her.
More soldiers from the 91st rolled in: Razor and Stak, whom he'd saved on Ryloth; Vents, who'd barely avoided death in the hands of the Zillo Beast; Stickfigure and Kerlis, both of whom Mace had dug out of the wreckage on Dantooine; Sedge, grievously injured on Ridlay; Battery, who'd only barely dodged Maul's blade on Ord Mantell; Weller, whom Mace had pulled out of a bomb's range on Anaxes. All arranged themselves to rain blasterfire on Mace.
And Mace could only deflect to the ceiling. The clones' armor might absorb a glancing blow or a ricochet, but these were Mace's comrades – their lives were much too precious to risk through carelessness.
Triumph blazed through the Force strong enough to make Mace falter and send a blaster bolt flying millimeters from Stak's helmet. The spike was in and Katooni safe; Anakin's end was done and the relay and Coruscant transmitter would send the neutralization signal after the crosscheck was done.
“You're being mind controlled,” Mace said as he deflected more blaster bolts. “I do not blame you for your actions.”
“Good soldiers follow orders,” Battery countered robotically.
More blaster bolts. For a moment, Mace considered the chance that the neutralization signal would not work, or that it would not get sent to the clones crewing the hyperspace relay.
Then Sedge's firing fizzled out. “Hey, guys... What are we doing?”
“Good soldiers ... follow ... orders?” Stak replied, losing confidence in his words as his presence in the Force turned unique once more.
One by one, the rest of the men stopped firing as reason and self-determination seeped back into them. They looked at each other and him in evident confusion.
“General Windu,” Razor began, obviously distressed. “What the kriff happened?”
Mace turned off his lightsaber. “It turns out all of you were implanted with mind control chips on Kamino. When the Sith Lord died, a signal went out to turn on these chips. We've now sent a deactivation signal to all troopers over the galaxy.”
“What about those brothers under comms blackout?” Vents asked.
“It's a software update that makes the helmets themselves produce the deactivation signal; it should get patched the moment they turn comms back on.”
Vents nodded, relieved. “Good. I ... kriff. I can't believe we were ... General?” His voice had turned plaintive.
“You were under a Sith's mind control. I do not blame you for your actions.”
“Oh. Is it permanently off?”
Mace pulled out his comm. “I'll ask the expert.” Attie didn't answer on the first few rings. “If you feel it coming back, put on your helmets.”
Finally, Attie answered. “General Windu! Is something wrong, sir?”
“Is the shutdown signal permanent?”
“The general didn't say.” Attie glanced to the side. “General?”
“I do not need to be put in a bacta tank, Kix, for Force's sake!” Anakin yelled loud enough for the armor comm to pick up.
After a pause, Attie relayed Mace's question to Anakin and nodded. “It should be permanent,” Attie said to the comm. Another pause as he listened to someone the comm did not pick up. “My brothers want the chips out, though.”
“Perfectly understandable. Thank you, soldier. We'll come down to the surface and see about unsealing the Temple. Windu out.” Mace cut the connection as Attie saluted.
Razor looked at his fellow clones. “Vents, Weller, Battery, and Stickfigure, you stay here to keep the place online. Your brothers' freedom rests on your shoulders. The rest, with the General.”
A sense of relief settled over Mace as the unit settled into its usual operations. Then Kerlis started moving out and almost bumped into him.
“Before we depart, there's someone I must pick up,” Mace said. He closed out and reached for Katooni's bright presence. Come, he said and tugged at her for good measure. Finding him would be good exercise for her Force abilities.
A few minutes later, Katooni hesitantly walked into the corridor. “I left the spike in the port,” she said.
“That's all right.”
The clone troopers' heads snapped as one to Katooni. Weller gasped.
“We're getting a Commander?” Kerlis asked hopefully. Mace could feel the excitement and anticipation in him and all his brothers.
Mace might've said that the war was over and they would not need a Commander, or that Katooni was not his padawan, but again, something niggled at him. He turned it over in his mind and felt the Force nudge him to the obvious conclusion. He knelt before Katooni. “Katooni. Would you like to be my padawan?”
“Yes!” she squealed, eyes wide with delight and bouncing on her feet.
Then she launched herself at him. It felt mostly like adrenaline comedown, but Mace opened his arms and hugged her back. At least one of the troopers cooed.
Mace let her go after a moment and rose. “Let's go down to Coruscant. There is work to be done.”
They said their goodbyes to the men who'd stay on the station – Mace thought he saw Weller sneak a picture of Katooni, and no doubt the others would try as well – and boarded the shuttle. Mace explained the situation to the pilot, who'd had the most confusing wake up of his life, and sat next to where Katooni was being fussed over by four overprotective clone troopers.
It was to be expected, really – Depa's men had fawned over Caleb's youth and done their best to keep him safe. Katooni was just as young, if not younger, and the clones would want to reassure themselves they could still like their Jedi after the traumatic experience with the chips.
Depa and Caleb. Mace didn't think he could reach Kaller through the Force. Anakin's comm burned on his wrist.
Before he could think about punching in Depa's number, though, the comm rang. Rex, it said.
Mace answered. “Capt- Ahsoka,” he amended once he saw it wasn't the 501st's Captain answering but Ahsoka Tano. “It is good to see you well.”
“How's Anakin?” she asked, full of suspicion.
“Alive and getting patched up. My comm was fried, so he loaned his.” Mace considered whether to mention Sidious, but Ahsoka was not currently a Jedi. He would not tell her over comm. “You had a detachment of the 501st with you.”
“The mind control chips in their heads were activated. I got Rex's out, but the rest are dead.”
Mace closed his eyes and spared a moment's thought for the dead detachment. “And Maul?”
“Escaped.”
There was something more there, but that could wait for the debriefing. “I see. Do you have passage to Coruscant?”
“No,” she said. “That's actually why I called.”
“Give me the coordinates and I'll arrange for transport.”
She rattled off a set of coordinates. Stak took them down; Mace nodded his thanks.
“Master Windu,” she then continued, tone serious. “What led to the Jedi ordering a clone army with some – mind control chips that could be taken over by the Sith? What were you thinking when you placed the order? Was the practical slavery not enough, you had to go for mind control too?!”
“The army was actually ordered by Dooku. We did not release the information for obvious reasons.”
Ahsoka recoiled. “You just – didn't you do anything?”
Mace shrugged, aware that the clones' ears were on him. “What was there to do? We had years of experience telling us the clones were loyal to us and the Republic. We did investigate, but the Sith made their play before we had anything.” Ahsoka didn't look convinced. “We'll hold an inquest. If you wish to contribute, you know where the Temple is.”
“I do.” It sounded vaguely like a threat.
“Anakin will be glad to see you.”
That made her cave. “I'll speak to him. Goodbye, Master Windu.”
“May the Force be with you.”
Ahsoka cut the connection. Mace set the comm down and took a deep breath. Palpatine had been behind the plot to discredit her and had aimed for the death penalty. That would come up in the inquest on them not spotting Darth Sidious, but that was a job for later.
“What do we do now, Master?” Katooni asked.
Ah yes, he had a padawan now. Mace smiled at her and ran over what still needed to be done. “We'll rendezvous with Anakin and his men and see about reopening the Temple. Then we should look at the political fallout of Sidious's death.”
The clones glanced at each other. “Sir, it's almost morning,” Stak pointed out. “I think the Senators are all asleep.”
Mace pulled out Anakin's comm and looked at the time. “Indeed.” He closed his eyes and identified fatigue creeping in now that the mission was complete and the adrenaline was receding. He could use a variety of Force techniques to combat it, but his new padawan couldn't, and there was a limit to how far one could take them. “I suppose we can take a moment to rest.”
“Good,” Katooni said and slumped. Mace smiled and pulled her closer so she could lean against him. Depa had been older when he'd taken her on, but more than once had she fallen asleep on him when they were returning from somewhere.
Speaking of Depa, Mace should reach out. He couldn't sense her or Caleb on Kaller, far as it was, so he'd have to comm.
There was a chance they wouldn't answer. Mace wanted to believe he'd have felt their deaths, but if they'd been killed in the first wave of death, he might not have noticed the snuffed-out spark of life that was Depa Billaba.
He punched in Depa's number and wondered who, if anyone, would answer. It was also possible Depa's comm had been destroyed.
Then a pale blue image of Depa materialized above the comm and a weight fell off Mace's shoulders. “This better be good, Skywalk- Mace?” Depa asked. She frowned. “Who's the girl?”
“My new padawan, Katooni.”
Depa smiled, then winced. It was hard to tell with the holo's low quality, but Mace thought he saw darker patches on her robes. “Congratulations. I'm afraid I can't talk for long. The clones-”
“The mind control chips have been turned off,” Mace interrupted her.
“Mind control chips?” Caleb's outraged voice came from outside the range of the comm's visual pickup.
“Placed in them by the Kaminoans on behalf of the Sith, yes,” Mace said. He smiled as Caleb crawled on top of Depa, mirroring the way Katooni was draped over him. “Caleb, this is my new padawan, Katooni. Katooni, this is Depa's padawan, Caleb Dume.”
“Well met, Caleb,” Katooni said.
“Well met, Katooni,” Caleb replied. “How are the clones now that the chips are off?”
Mace toggled the wide-range visual pickup. Depa jolted at the four troopers who appeared on her comm and hissed in pain.
“General Billaba, I think you should see a medic,” Stak said.
“We're ... fine, I guess,” Razor said. “Is your battalion under a comms blackout? That would disable the deactivation order.”
“They certainly weren't under comms blackout when the order to shoot us came,” Depa said archly. Mace could see the strain on her face.
“If they feel like they should, they should be safe to approach,” Mace told her. “If they feel muted in the Force and identical to each other, they're still under the chip's influence and you'll have to find healthcare elsewhere.”
“I'll keep that in mind.”
“Depa,” Mace said sternly. “Go get yourself patched up.”
She snorted. “Getting back in the padawan-raising groove, Master?”
Mace let himself smile. “So it seems. You should still-”
“I'm going,” Depa sighed. “I think I'll comm Stiles and see if he still wants to murder me. May the Force be with you.”
“May the Force be with you,” Mace replied and ended the call.
He slung an arm around Katooni's shoulders and let her arrange herself in a more comfortable position and drowse. She'd be disturbed by their arrival, of course, and have to trudge to the Temple and her room within, but Mace would give her this moment of rest. There would be work to do, first in opening the Temple doors and then in managing the fallout of Palpatine's death and the chips, and their already war-thinned numbers had been further depleted, but as Mace gently stroked his padawan's shoulder, he was sure they'd be able to rebuild.