[Short Stories] - Dark Emperor 1(20)

“I’m sorry,” said Boda. “I wish it could have been different. I know you’ve served me well, for a long time. I have one more thing to ask of you. I need the vines to lower me out the window. There’s not much time left…otherwise, I’ll die right here.”

Boda wondered if the trees he had betrayed would help him. They rustled in response, a vigorous sound made by dozens of them at once. Several of the thick vines snaked out and wrapped around his chest and shoulders. “Good-bye, masssterrr,” the trees said. “Live forrr usss.” Then the vines lifted him out the hole he had made and began to lower him gently down the side of the skyscraper.

Boda saw a drop of several hundred stories below him, but the vines did not let him fall. When he had descended five stories, the tough vines reached their limit. Boda took his lightsaber and cut his way into the nearest window. He used his legs to push away from the side of the building, then swung back neatly into the hole he had made. He was in an empty, quiet residence hallway. With another slice of the saber, he severed the vines, and began to run down the hall in search of an elevator.

Vader found Mara Jade right where Boda had promised. She had been tied with syntherope, but seemed otherwise unharmed. As he approached, she looked up, groggily. Vader had noticed the rising heat, but it had not penetrated the temperature-controlled suit he wore. Mara was sweltering. Vader was relieved to see her uninjured, but perversely upset to find no explosives nearby. Had Boda taken him for a fool? Maybe there was no bomb here.

Without warning, the ground around him erupted, blasting stones, tree trunks, and soil into the air. A great wash of flames swept over him as he fell protectively over Mara Jade. The explosions did not stop there—instead, they intensified. All over the garden, a fireball of enormous proportions was building. Debris rained down hard on his armor as Vader scooped up Mara and sprinted for the open lift door. He rushed inside with her and pounded the closure button. The doors hissed shut against a wave of heat and fire, and a sound of thunder that went on and on. As Vader held on to the groaning girl, the lift shook hard. The interior lights were snuffed out, and the lift went into a sudden free fall.

Vader braced himself against the wall as the lift plummeted, experiencing a vivid thought of what the impact more than two hundred floors below would be like. He had to get both of them out of there immediately. Drawing his lightsaber, he reached up to cut a large hole in the roof of the lift, shoving the falling severed section to the floor next to him. Then, getting a tight grip on Mara, he gathered the power of the Force and leaped straight up. His powerful jump took him through the hole, and he landed on the roof of the lift, breaking smoothly into a run as he did so. He crossed the distance to the side of the shaft and jumped up at it. Vader slammed into the shaft wall as the lift continued to fall away. He protected Mara from the impact, taking it all on his prosthetic armored right arm and leg. His bionic hand clamped onto a rung of the shaft’s maintenance ladder and refused to let go. When he finally stabilized, he looked down to see the lift disappear into the darkness until it hit bottom with a terrific crash. Distant rumblings sounded from above as well, signaling the end of Boda’s rooftop home, and probably a considerable amount of the skyscraper itself.

For a long moment, he hung on the ladder, not moving. He was covered in slime and dirt, his cape had been partly burned, and he was disturbed at the narrow escape. Mara hung in his grasp, moaning in fear. Boda had escaped cleanly, and both of them had barely survived the aftermath. As Jedi hunting missions went, Vader thought ruefully, this one certainly could have gone better.

It did not take long for Vader to climb the ladder to a maintenance access hatch, which opened onto a hallway on the seventy-third floor of the building. The area was clogged with people, but even if they had not recognized the Dark Lord from the HoloNews, they would have cleared space for the imposing figure as he strode down the hall. Mara Jade had been untied, and had come back to herself. She walked briskly in Vader’s wake. Taking an elevator (which emptied of people as if by magic), they descended to the fiftieth floor and the main building offices. Citizens continued to stream around them. The building was being evacuated due to the fire and the explosions which had collapsed the top ten floors. The offices were already empty, and Vader went straight to a HoloNet terminal in one of the cubicles.

“What are we doing now?” asked Mara. It was the first thing she had said since Vader had rescued her. She was wracked with shame, but Vader had not criticized her. Instead, he had simply led her along purposefully. In a way, she wanted to be chastised. She had failed her mission. Instead of capturing Boda, he had captured her, and she assumed that this had caused Vader to lose Boda as well.