Mara stiffened. Her naturally heated pride began to steam inside her. The Emperor himself had ordered the two of them to work together, and Vader knew it. She turned in her swivel chair and found herself staring into the blinking chest plate of Vader’s armor. Setting her jaw, she looked up into the sinister angles of his mask.
“Lord Vader,” she said, holding her voice steady, “it wouldn’t hurt you to stoop to the level of assisting a novice such as myself. We are temporarily assigned to work together. I know I don’t have your respect…yet. But I’m working on it. You have my respect, but I think you’re wrong about my being useless. I can help with this capture. But if you don’t help me, I will be useless.” Tensely, she waited, not taking her eyes from Vader’s mask. The seconds ticked by, as she became acutely aware of his slow, mechanized breathing.
“There is some fire in you, young one,” he said at last. “Very well. You will have your chance. But understand one thing. While we are on this mission, you are working for me. I will give the orders, and none other.” Not even the Emperor, was the unspoken warning. “You will do as I say unquestioningly. If you can remember that, you may survive your first assignment.”
Mara swallowed hard, unwilling to be intimidated, but feeling it nonetheless. She nodded once, without argument, hoping not to lose her unexpected headway. “It will be as you say…my Lord.”
Vader broke their eye contact first, and turned his attention to the computer terminal. Relieved, Mara also returned to it.
“Try the name Ashka Boda in the planetary census to begin,” said Vader.
Mara entered the commands. “As I expected,” she said shortly. “No such name appears anywhere.”
Vader considered this. “He was working in the Palace gardens when I saw him. If we cannot find his name, we will find his face. Bring up the work files for all Palace staff connected with the gardens. Include maintenance staff, decorators, sculptors, supervisors, suppliers, botanists, and geneticists.”
Mara entered the new search parameters. “This may take a while,” she said when the file appeared. “There are thousands of people here.”
Vader moved closer to the screen. “No. I can speed things up considerably. Instruct the computer to display the identification photos of all personnel in the file at a rate of four per second.”
Mara did as she was told. Faces began to flash rapidly on the screen. Mara couldn’t follow them all—they seemed to blend into one face that constantly changed its features. A minute passed this way, with Vader staring intently at the screen. Suddenly, he reached out with one gloved hand and froze the display on a brutish looking alien janitor. Scrolling back several faces, Vader settled on an older man with a furrowed brow, squinting eyes, and an unfriendly expression. “Is that him?” Mara asked.
“That is the Jedi,” Vader said firmly. “He is brazen to hide out in the open like this. He is either a fool, or he has reason to be confident. Perhaps he is simply overconfident. He would not be the first such Jedi I destroyed.”
“This says he’s been using the name Vantos Coll,” Mara read from the screen. “And…I don’t believe it! He’s been working at the Palace as a gardener for eleven years! What could he have been doing all that time?” She shook her head. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. All right…Here’s his place of residence. It’s the top floor of a residential complex in grid 265 North, Square 3A. It’s a converted greenhouse level. I can call up the plans in a moment…Here. It’s a group of penthouse apartments that had a food production facility built around them. It was in service for sixteen years, but then it became private property. This lists the owner as Vantos Coll. That’s it. It looks like we’ve got him.”
“Knowing where a Jedi is and having him in your grasp are two very different things,” Vader said.
“But we have all the pieces now,” insisted Mara. “Think of this as an assassination, but with a capture instead of a kill as the final goal. You’ve exposed him at the Palace now, so chances are he won’t come back here again. He’ll go to where he feels the most secure—his home, hoping that his altered identity will throw us off. He can’t be sure if we know who he is, or not, so he’ll wait this out for a few days, to see what happens. This means he’ll be at a known location, at a known time. That’s most of what you need to kill someone. We can cut off his escape routes, and take him where he’s alone. The only question in my mind is what sort of weapons to use. Usually, instant death is the desired outcome…I’ll have to find something creative for an instant capture. I’ll check with my contact in the Bounty Hunters Guild. I’ll need something swift and sure that can be used at a distance. But for just one old man, it shouldn’t be a problem.”