CHAPTER 42: THE CHIP DISCOVERY
POV: Kael Vorn
The medical bay's sterile lighting cast everything in harsh shadows, making the three clone troopers in the bacta tanks look more like specimens than patients. Rex paced the narrow space between monitoring stations, his armor pristine despite their recent engagement on Christophsis.
"They'll be fine," Rex said for the third time, though his voice carried the weight of a man trying to convince himself. "Blast to the head, some shrapnel wounds, nothing the tanks can't handle."
Kael nodded, watching the medical droids adjust treatment parameters with mechanical precision. CT-9821, CT-7567, and CT-2117—men with designation numbers instead of names, though Rex had mentioned their chosen callsigns. Patches, Mixer, and Torch. Brothers, Rex called them, and Kael could feel the captain's genuine affection through the Force.
Something's wrong.
The sensation had been building since the clones arrived. Not medical wrongness—the bacta treatment was proceeding normally. Force wrongness. A persistent tickle at the edge of his enhanced senses, like trying to remember a forgotten dream.
"Rex." Kael moved closer to the nearest tank, letting his Force Sight penetrate deeper than normal vision. "Have any of your men ever complained about headaches? Memory lapses? Behavioral changes?"
"No more than any soldier in a war." Rex's tone sharpened with attention. "Why?"
Kael pressed his palm against the tank's transparisteel, focusing his perception on CT-9821's unconscious form. Through the Force, he could sense the man's life energy, his healing wounds, his—
What the hell is that?
A foreign object, organic in nature but clearly artificial, nestled at the base of the clone's skull. Small enough that standard medical scans might miss it, sophisticated enough to interface with neural tissue.
"Rex, I need you to authorize a deep brain scan on your men."
"What? Why?"
Instead of answering, Kael activated the medical bay's advanced imaging array, focusing on the region where his Force sense had detected the anomaly. The holographic display materialized above them, showing a cross-section of CT-9821's brain structure.
There it was. A small, oblong device embedded in the tissue, connected to neural pathways with the precision of advanced biotechnology.
Rex stared at the image, his face cycling through confusion, horror, and growing rage. "What... what is that thing?"
"I don't know. But all three of your men have them." Kael ran additional scans, confirming his worst fears. "Same location, same configuration. This isn't natural."
"Kaminoans." Rex's voice turned deadly quiet. "They put something in our heads. During the growth process. Something we were never told about."
Kael's mind raced through the implications. Bio-chips in clone soldiers, sophisticated enough to interface with brain function. The applications were terrifying—behavioral modification, memory suppression, remote control of actions.
This is Order 66. This is how Palpatine turns them.
His curse kicked in before he could speak the truth, forcing out meaningless syllables about "dancing protocol grandmothers" instead of the warning he desperately wanted to give. Rex looked at him with concern, clearly thinking the stress had affected his judgment.
"We need to extract one of these devices," Kael said instead. "Analyze it. Find out what it's designed to do."
"Extract it? From their brains? That's neurosurgery. One mistake and—"
"And we lose a brother to find out what someone's been hiding from the entire clone army." Rex's jaw set with determination. "Do it. Use CT-9821. He volunteered for dangerous missions before—he'd volunteer for this."
The extraction took four hours. Kael's Force-guided precision allowed him to navigate neural tissue with microscopic care while rex monitored life signs and provided second opinions on anatomical structures. When they finally had the device isolated in a containment field, both men were exhausted and blood-spattered.
The bio-chip was smaller than Kael had expected, roughly the size of a grain of rice but infinitely more complex. Organic circuits wove through synthetic neural interfaces in patterns that suggested advanced programming capabilities.
"Can you analyze its function?"
Kael interfaced his enhanced Codex with the medical bay's computers, running every diagnostic protocol he could access. The results made his blood freeze.
"It's a behavioral modification implant. Hardwired to respond to specific audio triggers with predetermined action protocols."
"What kind of actions?"
The primary programming was clear, written in binary code that his Earth background helped him interpret. A single command phrase linked to a single overriding behavioral mandate.
"Eliminate all Jedi on command."
Rex stepped backward as if physically struck. "What?"
"There's a trigger phrase. When activated, it overrides conscious thought and forces the execution of any Force-sensitive individuals the clone considers Jedi." Kael's hands shook as he read the additional protocols. "Complete mission at all costs. Accept no surrender. Show no mercy."
"Every clone has one of these?"
"That would be my assumption. This level of sophistication requires mass production infrastructure. The Kaminoans wouldn't develop this for a few test subjects."
Rex slammed his fist against the wall, the sound echoing through the medical bay. "We're weapons. Pointed at the people we serve. Slaves with built-in kill switches."
The anguish in his voice cut through Kael's analytical detachment. These weren't just soldiers—they were victims of the most comprehensive violation of free will in galactic history.
"Rex, listen to me carefully. This can be removed. The surgery is delicate but possible. And once we perfect the technique, we can free others."
"How many others? There are three million clone troopers in active service."
"I don't know. As many as we can reach before..." Kael stopped himself before mentioning Order 66 directly. "Before whoever installed these decides to use them."
Rex stared at the containment field, watching the bio-chip's organic circuits pulse with faint bioluminescence. "I volunteer for the first extraction. If the procedure kills me, at least you'll know it doesn't work."
"It won't kill you. I won't let it."
The surgery began at dawn. Ahsoka assisted, her steady hands complementing Kael's Force-guided precision. The bio-chip in Rex's skull had been in place for over a decade, requiring careful separation from neural tissue that had grown around it.
When Rex finally woke, his first words were a string of profanity that would have impressed a spice runner.
"How do you feel?"
Rex sat up slowly, touching the small bandage at the base of his skull. "Like someone's been rummaging around in my brain. But..." He paused, considering. "Free. For the first time since Kamino, I feel like my thoughts are entirely my own."
"Good. Because now we have work to do."
Over the following days, they refined the extraction procedure and began planning a covert operation of unprecedented scope. Three million clones needed to be freed from biological slavery, and they had to do it without alerting whoever had ordered the chips installed in the first place.
Rex established contact networks with clone commanders he trusted implicitly. Fives and Echo became the first recruits, undergoing extraction and immediately volunteering to spread the procedure to their own units. Each freed clone became a node in an expanding network of liberation.
But the mathematics were sobering. Even working at maximum efficiency, they could free perhaps three or four hundred clones per month. Against three million, it was a drop in an infinite ocean.
"We have to prioritize," Rex said during a planning session. "Clone units serving with Jedi who might be sympathetic. Battalions stationed at strategic locations. Commands with access to weapons and ships."
"It's brutal triage," Kael agreed. "But it's all we can do."
Ahsoka looked up from her datapad of target units. "What about the Jedi? Don't they deserve to know that their clone allies have kill switches in their heads?"
The question hung in the air like a blade. Kael knew the answer, but saying it felt like admitting defeat.
"We can't tell them. They'd investigate officially, which would alert whoever's behind this. The chips would be activated early, or the clones would be eliminated and replaced."
"So we protect the Jedi by lying to them."
"We protect them by removing the threat before they know it exists."
Rex nodded grimly. "Every clone we free is a Jedi who won't be murdered by his own men. That's what matters."
As the planning session continued into the night, Kael felt the weight of the secret they carried. Somewhere in the galaxy, someone with the power to command the clone army was preparing to use them as weapons against the Jedi Order.
The race had begun. They had months, perhaps a year, before the trap was sprung. It would have to be enough.
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