Despite her fear, she turned to them defiantly. “Did Bog hire you?”
“No,” Ferus said. “Does he know you sabotaged the computer system of this planet?”
She was at first surprised, but then shook her head. “He doesn’t know I’m involved. I doubt he’d think I was capable of it.”
“Lune is Force-sensitive.”
She bit her lip. “Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since he was four. I had my suspicions, let me say. He was different … the way he anticipated things. Obi-Wan once told me the story of Anakin Skywalker. I remembered.”
“Does the boy know?”
Astri shook her head. “He knows he’s different. That’s all. Bog didn’t know for a long time. I left him shortly before the Clone Wars, after the attack on Chancellor Palpatine. I knew Bog was involved. I knew he’d tried to discredit the Jedi in the Senate. And I knew,” Astri said, her eyes dry, her mouth tight, “that he would take my son to punish me.”
“What happened?”
“My father, Didi, died during the war, and we came here. Bog somehow got into power again and he used that power to find me. I let him see Lune against my better instincts. One day they were playing, and Lune … he suspended a laserball in midair. Bog realized what it meant. Now he wants him … for something, something for the Emperor, I don’t know what. I only know he wants to take him away.”
“Wait a minute,” Clive interjected. “You sabotaged the records of an entire planet so that your ex-husband won’t get his hands on his own son?”
Astri’s dark eyes flashed. Ferus had forgotten how lovely she was. He remembered that she’d been very close to Obi-Wan. He wished he could tell her that Obi-Wan was still alive. But that was a secret he could not share with anyone.
“Bog fathered that child but did not raise him,” she said angrily. “He had no interest in him except as a bargaining chip to keep me in line. We haven’t been able to leave the planet. Now he wants to take him from me to curry favor from the Emperor. He is to be raised on Coruscant, he told me.”
“But you’ve thrown the whole planet into chaos, endangered lives,” Ferus said. “Medical records have been lost, financial records …”
“All to protect one boy,” Clive said.
“Yes,” she said. “I would do that to protect one boy.”
Ferus leaned against the kitchen counter. What was he going to do? How could he sacrifice Lune? Astri didn’t know the Emperor was a Sith. If she knew that, she would fight even harder.
If he turned them in, Lune would be raised with evil. He could even become a Sith … or killed like the Jedi had been killed.
“I’m begging you,” Astri said. “Can you please let us go?”
Ferus suddenly felt off balance. He crossed to the window and looked out but saw nothing. Yet he knew. The Force was warning him.
Since they’d been in the building, background noise had hummed the noise of airspeeders landing in the adjacent parking garages, of turbohammers on the roof.
Clive had noticed it, too. “It’s awfully quiet.”
“Something is wrong,” Ferus said. “The dark side has arrived.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ferus left Clive with Astri and took the stairs. He Force-leaped down, going from one landing to another. He could feel the heavy, enveloping dark side of the Force like a shroud over the building. He had one overwhelming thought: A Sith was near.
He stood inside the stairwell and cracked the door to the unfinished lobby. The work vehicles were gone, as were the gravsleds and the camis. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of a prowler droid. He followed the droid’s flight until it landed…
… and found Darth Vader leading a squadron across the courtyard.
They must have just arrived. Darth Vader, his cloak billowing out behind him, was instructing teams of stormtroopers and giving orders to droids. Prowlers were sent flying in the air.
Ferus took the stairs again, soaring into Force-leaps that brought him back up to Astri’s door faster than a turbolift.
He hurried inside. Astri and Clive were still in the same place in the kitchen.
“We’ve got trouble,” he said. “It’s Darth Vader. He’s directing a door-to-door search. Stormtroopers are guarding the exits, and droids are conducting the search and entering the hangars. There looks to be at least fifteen or twenty prowlers, too.”
“There are hundreds of apartments,” Astri said.
“This is Darth Vader,” Ferus said. “It won’t take him long. The good news is that he’s starting with the inhabited buildings.”