EBONY AND JADE
Part Four
"The Sssith Lorrrd isss coming," said the rustling voice of the Bafforr trees. Boda startled out of his meditation, a tightness in his chest instantly replacing his calm. Vader was on his way. Boda gratefully stroked the smooth pale blue trunks next to him. The many Bafforr trees in the enormous greenhouse were his early warning system. Just below the earth which he had layered deeply on the rooftop, their intertwined roots allowed them to communicate and to assemble a group intelligence. Beneath Boda's hands, the tree trunks hummed. He felt their gift, a soothing mind-touch that swept away his anxiety. Boda rose from his soft, mossy resting place, and breathed deep its sweet smell.
"Thank you," he said to the trees.
Using rustling branches and leaves, squeaking and twisting twigs, and creaking trunks, the trees were able to create an eerie voice to reply. "We ssserve you, Masssterrr.."
Yes, Boda thought, the trees loved him for now. He had been careful not to stain himself in the one way that mattered to them - to become a killer. Sadly, he reflected that once he had destroyed the Palace with Palpatine inside it, the trees would reject him forever. Provided, that is, he still lived, which was all too unlikely.
Now. To his plan of action. Boda placed his hands on the trees and spoke to them. "Where is the Sith Lord?"
"Sssouth liffft," said the grove.
All right. That meant Boda could still escape via the north lift. He only had to delay Vader for a short time. The plants would help him to do that. Besides being able to tell him what was going on in the huge greenhouse, the trees were also able to pass on Boda's instructions to the animate vines and other defenses. "Have the vines, the fungi, and the flowers work together to stop him from advancing as long as they can," Boda commanded.
"It will be ssso," rustled the trees. This quivering passed from one tree to the next, moving away from Boda into the distance, towards Vader. Boda hated to sacrifice the plants, but he had no choice. He turned without a thought for his possessions in the apartment at the center of the greenhouse, and headed for the north lift. With Vader occupied here for a while, it was time for Boda to go and see Palpatine.
Darth Vader stepped off the roomy lift and emerged into a scene of bizarre wonder. It was as if he had arrived on a lush alien planet. Instead of the duracrete floor he expected, there was an expanse of gently curving earth. Thin blue trees with black leaves grew all over, and a carpet of gray-green moss covered most of the ground. Vader stared at low, flat, meter wide mushrooms, enormous orange flowers, and tough looking vines hanging between the trees. He took a few tentative steps out onto the springy ground, peering out into the greenhouse. There was no sign of Ashka Boda. Vader growled a curse. There were a thousand hiding places here, and a riot of life to confuse his Force senses. Angrily, he turned back, ignited his lightsaber, and slashed the turbolift controls. Then he stalked out into the garden, ready to hack his way to Boda if necessary.
What happened next took him totally by surprise. Several of the trees rustled briskly, although there was no wind. Abruptly, two of the giant mushrooms exploded. The concussion knocked Vader from his feet, and his lightsaber was jarred from his hand. Thick vines began to curl around his limbs of their own accord. Hurriedly, he reached out with the Force to reclaim his saber; it flew to him only to bounce off of the vines that had bunched around his hands. More and more vines reached out of the trees to wrap around his body. With his formidable strength, Vader tried to tear himself free, but the vines simply stretched, giving freely where he heaved. Now they began to drag him along the mossy ground, towards one of the grotesque, giant orange flowers. As he slid closer, the petals opened to reveal a gaping mouth like hole, lined with waving tendrils. Enraged and unable to concentrate, the Sith Lord was pulled up and into the carnivorous plant. With humiliating ease, it took him into its maw and wrapped its petals protectively around its still struggling prize. Vader had been completely engulfed.
Now this is an unwelcome complication, thought Boda as he stood in front of the north lift. It had already begun to rise towards his level before he arrived at it. Someone else was coming. But who? Could it be the Emperor himself? Boda had prepared for just such an eventuality...but no, it couldn't be. There would have been a very large disturbance in the Force, and there was none that he could sense. Boda quickly left the lift and hid behind a large cluster of giant mushrooms to wait.
The lift arrived, and the opening doors revealed a young girl dressed in black, carrying a large rifle. Did Vader have help? As he watched, the girl turned and fired a silent wrist laser beam into the lift controls, obliterating them. Then she moved out into the garden in a low crouch, silent on the soft moss. She quickly found cover and waited, listening. Yes, she was no doubt hunting him. She was an assassin of some kind, despite her youth. Now what was he going to do? Vader was delayed behind him, but Boda knew it was only a delay. Vader would come, and Boda would have to deal with both of them. He began to feel panic at the thought of his decade-long plan failing without even threatening the Emperor.
Then, the idea of threatening the Emperor combined in his mind with the idea of avoiding facing both hunters. Boda clutched at the sweet-smelling moss beneath his knees. Yes...he could still win free of this trap. He had only to defeat the assassin; then, if his understanding of Vader's character was correct, he would be able to leave. If not, this would be the end for him...
Mara Jade crouched, waiting for any sound from the garden. She was reluctant to enter the possibly dangerous environment, despite her agreement to meet Vader in the center. The array of alien plants changed matters, adding to the unknown risks.
Mara considered the situation. Boda was somewhere inside, which meant he was now trapped. Vader was there, too, and he stood a better chance of flushing Boda out. She decided to wait, and act as a backup as instructed. It was unlikely that Boda would be aware of Vader having a partner, so perhaps he would run in her direction, towards the lift.
A tiny noise alerted her to the presence of someone not far away. Her Force senses confirmed it. There was a human nearby, hiding among the plants. It could only be Boda. She gripped the Prax energy rifle, using its telescopic sight to check the Jedi's position. Through a gap in the mushrooms, she spotted a piece of his brown robe. Then she used the scope to look for any sign of Vader. She found nothing. Somehow, this man had eluded Vader...or perhaps he had approached her as the lesser threat. That was his mistake. She was on her own now, and Boda was hers.
Mara began circling through the trees in a wide arc around his position. She stayed low, using the trunks for cover. Then she paused, checking Boda's position again. He hadn't moved. Very good, she thought. We can finish this nice and easy. Just hold still...
She aimed and fired an electronet canister from the grenade launcher. It arced out, trailing a thin control wire. Mara thumbed a switch, and the projectile erupted into a web of sticky fibers covering a two meter spread. Boda spun and moved to the side with more speed than Mara would have thought possible for an old man, but he was still ensnared on half of his body against the mushrooms. The webbing was immediately electrified with a strong current from the guide wire. Boda thrashed about, trying to free himself. The next moment, the mushrooms he was next to exploded violently, startling Mara and hurling Boda and the net in two different directions. Mara dropped the rifle and quickly drew the dart gun from her leg holster. Running at the momentarily stunned Boda, she went to her knee with practiced ease and pumped several darts into his body. Each one contained enough neurotoxin to cause paralysis for ten minutes. Boda jerked at the impacts, tried to rise, and fell face down on the moss. He lay there, unmoving.
Wary of a trick, Mara activated her wrist lasers again, and walked slowly towards the Jedi. Keeping one laser aimed at all times, she removed the magnaharness from her belt and shook it open. The restraint employed micro magnetic fields to lock its bands in place around the captive's arms, hands, legs, and feet. Boda didn't move as she came closer and closer. Sorry, old man, thought Mara. It's nothing personal. The Emperor wants to see you, and one just doesn't turn down his invitation.
Boda lay still as the assassin approached. The neurotoxin darts had pierced his skin, but he was by no means helpless. Already, he was in touch with the Force, using the power to purge the poison from his body. He could feel the filth leaving him, moment by moment, taking the paralysis with it. The assassin's slow pace served him well; he was almost fully emptied of the toxin by the time she crouched warily over him. She bent to attach some kind of restraint harness to his neck and torso, but Boda had recovered enough mobility to roll away from her, sending the harness flying. His opponent was good - she controlled her surprise. No more than a second later, the hot beam of a wrist laser burned into the ground where he had been and began tracking towards him. However, it was too late for the girl...Boda reached out with the Force and choked her.
Mara felt the invisible fingers of the Force close around her throat. The sensation was full of the distinctive chill ferocity of the dark side. Impossible, she thought through her shock. He's a Jedi. Isn't he? In a few moments, the frighteningly strong, crushing grip combined with her lack of oxygen, and Mara Jade blacked out.
Darth Vader was surrounded by a wet, suffocating blackness. He was held tight by a fleshy yet fibrous womb - the interior of the carnivorous plant. He did not suffocate; as soon as his life support system found itself unable to take in oxygen, it closed its intake valves and turned on his closed system reserves. Vader continued to breath normally as he pushed his rage to the back of his mind. He needed to think clearly in order to escape.
One advantage to his location was that the imprisoning vines had loosened all over him. He could open his hands and begin to move again. He guessed that the vines were being eaten away by the foul liquid that he lay in. Doubtless it was some sort of digestive acid. He was safe in his armor for the moment, but how long would it take for the acid to eat through those portions of his clothing that were not durasteel plated? He did not want to lose the few remaining parts of his body that were human and not machine.
Vader strained with his cyborg limbs, and with a satisfying wet ripping sound, the vines shredded, freeing his arms and legs. In response, the plant cavity fiercely contracted, crushing him back to immobility again. The Dark Lord's anger took control once again. It roared in his mind, and with it flowed the power of the dark side. The Force was with him. No oversized flower was going to withstand the potency of that weapon. Vader imagined what he would do if the plant was a normal flower at his feet; if it offended him, he would rip it from the ground. Size was unimportant to the Force. He gathered his will around the entire monstrosity, and began to raise it up with himself inside.
The great organism shuddered as it rose. The plant was helpless to stop what was happening. The earth in which it was planted was only a few feet deep, so its root system was shallow. Those roots tore up in a shower of soil and moss as the carnivorous creature hung helpless in the air. The violence of its uprooting had mortally wounded it; the flower convulsed and went limp, its underside in tatters.
Finally, it settled back to the ground. Although it was dead, the plant bulged outwards where it lay, until the black, slime coated form of Darth Vader burst forth from the bloated pod behind the collapsed flower. Vader stepped from the corpse and shoved futilely at his soaked, acid burned uniform. With a thought, he summoned his saber from the ground, up into his hand. Its searing red blade stabbed forth, and, still furious, he hacked the remains of the dead flower apart. The light blade hummed and moaned as he moved on to the vines, severing as many as he could find. Many of them withdrew, snake like, to safety among the deeper foliage. With broad, slashing strokes, Vader hewed the nearest blue trees down as well, hearing as he did so an eerie sound of inhuman pain. Finally, he stood in a cleared area, safe from further attacks.
He returned his attention to Ashka Boda and Mara Jade. What had happened to his partner? Vader hoped she was not fighting Boda alone, or worse, being consumed by one of the garden's monstrosities. He felt a sudden concern for her, and he wondered at it. He tried to tell himself that his Master would be displeased at Vader losing his new agent, but a deeper part of him quietly insisted that Vader himself would regret her death. Despite his initial doubts, Vader had seen something of a warrior in Mara Jade. It gave them an unlooked for sense of connection. But there was more to it than that...Vader had realized that they were in the same dangerous position in life. They were both servants of the Emperor, the most difficult Master in the galaxy. The thought gave him a rough sort of empathy for her. Besides, the only one who would really be served by friction between Vader and Mara would be the Emperor. Palpatine wanted all of his servants to be at odds with each other, worrying what each other was up to, so they had no time to plot against him. Perhaps it could benefit Vader, after all, to have an ally where the Emperor was concerned. He would consider it, once Ashka Boda was dealt with. Vader hurried off into the garden after his prey.
Boda wasted no time tightly tying up the assassin with her own syntherope. Leaving her securely bound on a bed of Phelarion moss, he hurried to the environmental control box next to the lift. He swung down the cover and rapidly punched a code into the numeric keypad: 52-5197-7, the override for the heating system in the greenhouse. Then he entered a new temperature command - one very much higher than the normal one. A temperature hot enough to set off the explosive organism growing all over the vast room...Boda's treasured moss.
The gray-green plant was an obscure organism from the outer rim planet Phelarion. Among the various rare and dangerous plants Boda had discovered and cultivated, the moss was the most innocent looking and the most destructive. The reason lay in its biochemistry. In its cells was an enzyme that could catalyze the breakdown of a complex high-energy molecule in the cytoplasm. The enzyme was only catalytic at highly elevated temperatures, but then the reaction was intensely exothermic.
The whole phenomenon was a part of the plant's reproductive cycle. It multiplied through the distribution of heat resistant spores. An animal would eat some of the moss, and the plant cells would heat up in its stomach. In the resulting explosion, the animal would blow up, scattering spores and other organic material to fertilize the ground nearby. Taken out of the context of its normal reproductive cycle, the moss still exploded when heated too much in the open air. In fact, the blast was even more violent, involving deadly flames as well, and it could set off a chain reaction with any other Phelarion moss nearby.
Boda had discovered the organism through his hiring a pair of interplanetary scouts - they brought him a sample of the moss and the spores from one expedition, and he paid them well for these curiosities. Boda had realized at once that the Phelarion moss represented a weapon that he could hide out in the open...a weapon that could destroy the Emperor and his undeserved palace. For years, he had been cultivating the moss, distributing the spores by hand and making more and more of it. His job as a menial gardener took him all over the gardens of the huge Palace, and he had placed the moss everywhere. The Emperor like having exotic plants around, so it had been easy for Boda to introduce the moss to his supervisors as a new decorative touch. Its sweet smell, softness, and pleasant color made it a natural success for not only the gardens, but also the beautification of the Palace in general. Wherever there was a corner that could use a green touch, the maintenance free moss would appear. After years of this process, the entire Palace was ready to go up in flames. All it needed was a little heat...
The possibility had always existed that Palpatine would somehow discover Boda and come to his greenhouse to destroy him. It was a small possibility, admittedly, but Boda had wanted to be prepared just in case. So, he had blanketed his greenhouse with Phelarion moss and installed a heating system override. Now, his home itself was a bomb, just like the Palace. If the Emperor had ever come there, he would have met the very same death that awaited him at the Palace.
Boda could already feel the air getting hotter. In just ten minutes or so, the entire rooftop would go up in a flaming concussion. He had that long to get away. Darth Vader, however, would soon be upon him. He could feel the Dark Lord coming. Vader would never let him go, unless Boda could convince him that something else was more important...such as the life of this girl. Boda's entire hope now rested on his assessment of the Sith Lord. If, as Boda hoped, Vader was a warrior with honor, he would not pause to duel Boda while the girl, his partner, was in danger of dying. When Vader went to rescue her, Boda would flee, in order to preserve his last chance to destroy the Emperor. If Vader chose to fight him...there was only one outcome then. All three of them would die in the fire. Leaving the girl tied, Boda ran towards the approaching Sith Lord, racing to intercept the man who held all their lives in his black gloved hands.
Vader saw the running form of his quarry approaching him, and he stopped his own advance, his lightsaber ready. The Jedi came around a cluster of the same kind of smooth blue trees Vader had cut down before, and stopped, panting, facing Vader across a clearing.
Vader waved his light blade through the air, and made a summoning gesture to his opponent. "Come to me, Ashka Boda. There is no more running to be done. I do not understand how you still live after our last meeting, but that is not important to me. Once, you asked me to kill you, and to do it quickly. Today, I will give you your wish once again. Defend yourself, or do not. The end will be the same." Vader began advancing on Boda, all his senses focused on the attack.
"Wait!" cried Boda. "You don't understand at all! I'm not Ashka, and I don't want to fight you! Stop - listen to me!"
Vader did not stop, and Boda desperately pulled out his lightsaber, extending the silvery blade. "Don't you want to know what happened to your partner - the girl?" Boda shouted as he backed up. "If you want to save her, there's very little time!"
Vader stopped. "What do you mean?" he demanded in a low voice.
"She's behind me, back at the north lift," Boda explained hurriedly. "There's going to be an explosion. She'll die unless you get her out of there in time. It's either me or her. Why don't you let me go, Vader? My business isn't with you, it's with your Master." Boda held his lightsaber low and non threateningly. "What's it going to be? What's your decision? Whatever it is, you have to decide quickly."
Vader hesitated. Boda was right there in front of him. He could attack, and perhaps kill the Jedi right away. It would be all over, and he would never have to worry whether the man had any secrets or not. But if Mara Jade's life really was in danger...Vader knew that her preventable death would be to his own dishonor. On this mission, she was his responsibility. If she had faced Boda alone and lost, it was the result of his miscalculations. The moment stretched out, as Boda and Vader faced each other in the rising heat.
