Vader walked back in to find her sitting dejectedly in a swivel chair. “Well,” demanded the Dark Lord. “What did he tell you?”
“He…he just cut me off. I didn’t even have a chance to tell him that Boda is a dark side adept. He was just…furious that we let Boda get away. He thought…he thought you should have let me die instead.”
“It is no worse than I expected,” Vader said calmly. “The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am. Let him discover Boda’s true nature for himself. I plan to follow him to the Palace. Perhaps I will reach him before he gets there. He and I have unfinished business to conclude.”
“What does he want with the Emperor?” Mara asked.
“Like many others before him, he plans to put an end to our Master, even if it means dying himself.”
“Does he have a chance? Can’t we stop him?”
“If Ashka Boda reaches the Emperor, he will find him more than ready. I have little faith in his chances…”
“So what is he,” Mara demanded, “a madman? Is he just going to stroll past a legion of guards, hoping to get to the throne room, when Palpatine knows he is coming?”
“He may indeed be mad,” said Vader thoughtfully, “but I do not think he is a fool. He dealt with us in his garden with great cunning…and there is the matter of the explosion he caused. Such destruction in the Palace could alter the situation a great deal.”
“What was it that exploded?” Mara asked. “Could you tell?”
“It seemed to be the ground itself,” Vader said. “Perhaps an organic weapon of some kind, among his exotic plants.”
Mara quickly put the pieces together. “He worked in the Palace for eleven years, as a gardener. If he had an organic explosive all that time, he could have put it anywhere. Maybe he plans to use it against the Emperor—it could be why he was so confident.”
“Let me try to recall,” Vader said. “The Force will enhance my memory. I believe I saw one of the organisms in the greenhouse elsewhere…” He fell silent for almost a minute. “I have it,” he said finally. “When we were in the greenhouse, I saw a gray moss all over the ground. The same moss was in the Palace gardens where I saw Ashka Boda. The Ho’Din botanists asked me what it was, but I did not know.”
“All right, maybe that is the explosive,” said Mara, “but how does he set it off?”
“The most obvious change in the room,” observed Vader, “was the increased temperature.”
“Right, but how could he apply that much heat to the Palace? It’s climate controlled.”
“He will have a way,” declared Vader. “Our dark Jedi is almost as devious as the Emperor himself. Let us be on our way immediately.”
As the enormous structures of Imperial Center cooled under the darkening sky, Vantos Boda boarded an express travel tube for the Palace. Behind him was a small pocket of chaos and destruction. A flower of fire had bloomed among the cold steel towers, marking the irrevocable severance of Boda’s past. His home of the past decade was gone—all of the trees and plants, his rooms, even the ancient Holocron that had been passed down to him by his Master Dina. He himself had barely escaped the building with his life. The tube car sped on, uncaring, delivering him to all that remained of his life—a short and violent future. It would be a fitting end to his unhappy career as a savior.
Boda’s encounter with the young female assassin had left him shaken. To subdue the girl, he had been obligated to use the dark power. It sickened him to partake of the same strength that sustained Palpatine, but he had no choice. The healing peace of the light side was forever lost to him. Boda was not even certain when he it had turned away from him. All along the way he had been sure he was acting for the right reasons, serving the universal good. And he still believed it.
First had come the vision, which had given him his mission as a savior. He had foreseen the awful fate of the galaxy in the hands of the Emperor to come, and he knew that there must have been a purpose in his having had that vision. He had been chosen, chosen to change that future. An ancient passage from the Journal of the Whills had spoken to him when he had consulted that treasured text. The Journal was a huge collection of stories and prophecies, histories, and legends. It contained the words of kings, Jedi, philosophers, and scientists. Before the Empire, the Journal of the Whills never stopped growing. It was added to by the greatest minds of each generation. Now it was just one more book outlawed by the New Order. Vantos had believed the Journal contained everything that was important in the culture of the Old Republic. Somewhere in its pages, he knew, he would find the reason for his being chosen. The passage he had found told him that he was to be a savior in a time of despair—the Son of the Suns. There was very little said about this prophetic figure, but Boda knew it was himself.