Star Wars - Episode I Adventures 007 - Capture Arawynne

by Dave Wolverton

  The tank sat on wheels and looked like some kind of crude droid.

  The reek was horrible.

  But it gave him an idea.

  It was a very simple machine. Its markings named it a Myrkr SS-23. Myrkr was the planet it was made on. SS probably stood for Sewage Spreader. Twenty-three was the model number.

  Anakin looked at the outside controls on the tank. The nozzle was set to spread the sewage in a wide pattern. Anakin switched the setting to narrow jet.

  The ejection speed was set at medium low. Anakin boosted it to maximum.

  Now the machine wasn’t just a sewage spreader. It was a sewage cannon.

  It was a good thing, too, because just then Sebulba came bursting through the brush.

  Anakin aimed the sewage spreader and turned on its power.

  A stream of brown goo blasted out.

  The slop slammed into Sebulba’s chest so hard that he flipped over backward and landed with a thud. The foul matter rained down upon him.

  Anakin shouted, “Oooh. Smells like you had an accident.” He ran for cover. He was very lucky he was wearing a disguise. If Sebulba ever found out it was him, he’d be in big trouble.

  Khiss had rushed down the trail only to find that it led into a small swamp. There was a waterfall coming off the rocks, feeding into the swamp. Green pools, covered in algae, lay in the shadows. Protoplasmic glurpfish swam around, making small popping noises as they burped at the water’s surface.

  He stopped for a moment and looked at his surroundings. Just behind him, a pair of shots echoed in the forest. Then he heard Gondry shouting.

  I should slow down, Khiss thought. Between screaming giants and gunfire, the Ghostling children would be scared. All he had to do was hide by the trail and let the little ones come to him.

  He crouched at the water’s edge.

  Not far ahead, he saw a red Wistie flitting among the trees. He held perfectly still. Soon a small Twi’lek girl rushed down a dark trail. He recognized her instantly: Pala.

  She reached the far side of the swamp and stood gazing around. The Wistie circled the pool and shouted, “All clear.”

  The Wistie was acting as Pala’s scout. Khiss grinned wickedly. Neither Pala nor her friend had spotted him.

  Pala picked up a rock and hurled it into the water. The protoplasmic glurpfish darted away like squids.

  “Come on!” she breathed. She bent to look for a second rock.

  Khiss took aim and fired. His shot went high.

  Pala screamed and dived for cover behind a feather fern. The Wistie shrieked and flew up into the trees.

  Khiss leaped to his feet, watching the bushes at the far side of the pool for any movement. He needed to get over there, so he could flush the girl from her cover.

  There was a huge floating log in the swamp, one large enough to serve as a raft.

  He ran a step and leaped onto it.

  The log bobbed and dipped. Khiss fought to maintain his balance. For a moment he stood shifting his weight from foot to foot, until the log began to steady.

  The force of him leaping onto the log made it move slowly toward the far shore. Khiss raised his weapon and aimed at the bushes where Pala was hiding.

  “Come out, girl,” he said, “and I’ll make it easy on you.”

  His log must have hit something. It had reached the middle of the pool. Now it suddenly stopped.

  “I’m not stupid,” Pala shouted. “You’d just shoot me.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Khiss lied.

  “I don’t think you’ll catch me,” Pala answered him from her hiding place. “You’re standing on a cucul, and if it doesn’t eat you, the swamp slug will!”

  Khiss’s ears pricked up at the sign of danger. A cucul?

  He glanced down at the log beneath his feet.

  Suddenly he spotted something in the water beneath the log: a pair of flippers gently pulsing! This wasn’t a log — it was some kind of creature!

  “Augh!” he screamed as he leaped as high and far from the beast as he could. The cucul’s long head lunged out from the hollow where it was hidden and snapped at him.

  Khiss grabbed onto a dangling vine and tried to swing.

  The cucul’s jaws locked on the seat of the Dug’s pants. Khiss screamed and tried to kick the cucul off. He glanced back and saw the monster’s slimy green head. The flippers on the monster splashed as it sought to drag him down. It began thrashing its head left and right. Khiss was swinging on the vine, fumbling with his blaster, trying to set it back to kill. But he couldn’t hang onto the vine and work with the blaster at the same time. He felt himself being dragged slowly down.

  He heard a squeaking noise and glanced at Pala. She was standing by some control panels, pressing buttons.

  In the background, the sound of the waterfall abruptly stopped. Now a torrent of water began to fall all around him. She’d turned on the sprinklers. The vine began to get slick.

  With all his might, he stomped the monster’s forehead.

  The cucul’s eyes suddenly crossed, and its head slumped into the water.

  Khiss was still clinging to the vine. He knew that he couldn’t let himself drop into the water — not if there really was a swamp slug in there.

  Clinging to the vine, he managed to set his blaster to kill. He started to climb, but seemed to slip back down half a meter for every meter he went up.

  He nervously watched the water below him. The cucul lay in the pond, knocked out. But the rest of the swamp was perfectly still. No sign of a swamp slug at all. He looked over at Pala and grinned wickedly.

  From up here, he could see her just fine, crouching behind some feather ferns.

  “You’re dead meat,” Khiss chortled.

  Suddenly the water boiled beneath him as something huge surged upward. Spray and foam shot into the air.

  A giant gray swamp slug rose up. Khiss saw its golden eyes, as large as boulders, and a pair of rubbery antennae two meters long. Its mouth was a jagged cavern full of teeth. It came up right under him and stood swinging its head, searching for prey!

  It was using its antennae, searching for him by motion.

  Khiss clung to the vine, trying not to move. He began to slide down.

  The swamp slug swung its great head from side to side. Khiss couldn’t hang here forever.

  Slowly, he aimed the blaster at the monster’s sensitive antennae and pulled off a shot.

  The swamp slug roared in pain and dove headfirst into the swamp.

  Khiss turned just in time to see Pala racing off through the brush.

  Grimly determined to get the girl, he shoved his blaster into its holster, then began climbing the vine.

  He made it to the top of the limb, climbed swiftly to the trunk, and dropped to the ground.

  Pala had gotten a good head start. But Khiss knew that he’d catch her anyway.

  Sebulba was in a rage. He was out of breath and stinking so bad that he knew he’d never be able to sneak up on a slave again.

  He really wanted to kill the kid who had shot him with the sewage cannon.

  Instead, he raced into a clearing and found a hostage.

  By some good fortune, he bumped into a Ho’Din gardener with bright green skin. On the gardener’s head were fleshy tubes covered in violet scales. The gardener was in a small grove, planting some sort of gourds. His long fingers, with their suction cup tips, gently tamped the plant roots into the mud.

  “All right, flower lover,” Sebulba said. “Where do I find the kids?”

  He aimed his blaster at the Ho’Din.

  “Kids?” the gentle Ho’Din asked. “You have lost one of your children? Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “Just tell me what I want to know,” Sebulba grumbled, “or I’ll blast you so full of holes, you’ll only be good for compost.”

  “I can think of no greater honor,” the Ho’Din answered, “than to feed my body to the soil when I no longer need it.”

  “Where are the stupid Ghostling children
?” Sebulba shouted.

  The Ho’Din glanced to his left, deeper into the garden. Perhaps he was trying to lure Sebulba in the wrong direction, or maybe he had accidentally given away the position of the Ghostlings.

  “All right,” Sebulba said. “You lead the way.”

  “But —” the Ho’Din began to object.

  Sebulba blasted a little gourd on the ground. The vines of the small plant began to twist like snakes.

  The Ho’Din stared at the dying plant in shock. “Do you know how far through the stars that little one has come?”

  “What do I care?” Sebulba said. “I hate plants.” He shot a nearby bush just to prove it. “Now take me to the Ghostlings!”

  “All right,” the Ho’Din said. “I’ll take you to them.” He stood up slowly, picking up a long-handled mattock that he used to dig in the dirt.

  Anakin crept through the brush as silently as he could. His skin was crawling from fear.

  He’d managed to get rid of Sebulba. Anakin would smell him coming a kilometer away. But now he had to worry about Djas Puhr.

  The Sakiyan tracker was obviously not someone who could be easily fooled. With his night vision, he could spot anyone hiding in the forest. And his keen sense of smell allowed him to creep up on you like a seeker droid.

  Suddenly Anakin spotted something up ahead, lying on the ground.

  “Dorn?” Anakin whispered, shaking his friend. He was breathing fine, but he wouldn’t wake up.

  Anakin considered dragging the Bothan to safety. The only problem was, they were in Gardulla’s fortress. There wasn’t anyplace safe.

  Suddenly, he heard Khiss scream in terror, followed by the sound of shooting and the roar of some great beast. Then the forest grew quiet again.

  Maybe running isn’t the answer, Anakin thought. Maybe it’s time to fight back.

  He stood up, just as a strange little green woman flew down from the trees. She landed on his shoulder and shouted in a small voice. “Help! Follow me!”

  She leaped into the air and flitted through the trees.

  Djas Puhr crept through the jungle, keeping his eyes and ears open. He was a hunter, born and trained. He skirted the meadow where Gondry roared in fury.

  For a moment Djas Puhr studied the vesuvague tree, but he was too cunning to fall for its traps. Likewise, when he saw the furry tongue of a tempter whipping out from a log, he knew to avoid the danger.

  Instead, he simply followed the scent of the Ghostling children back toward their lair.

  In no time at all, he was creeping through the shadowed jungle up to a tall tree. Grey spiders had broken away from its roots and were scurrying about.

  To his left, Djas Puhr heard a twig snap. He glanced that way just in time to see a Ghostling child go leaping through the brush. It was the Princess Arawynne. A Wistie flew ahead of her.

  The hunt was on. Djas Puhr gave chase. Ghostlings were fast, but with his long legs he would soon overtake the child.

  He bounded over a log, racing through a stand of chime trees whose silver flowers rang like bells. He didn’t care if the girl heard him. It would only increase her fear.

  He saw Arawynne ahead. She scurried for the shelter of a glade of feather ferns, tall ferns that shot up two or three meters into the air. She raced deep into the heart of them. Djas Puhr followed.

  It was dark beneath the ferns and smelled of mold and leaves. Small creatures leaped away, and he spotted a scurrier — a reptile native to Tatooine — ducking for shelter.

  Just then, his foot sank in a deep hole, and he tripped, sprawling headlong to the ground.

  He got up on his hands and knees. Suddenly he saw something under the brush next to him. A creature lay there, half covered with mud. Warty growths on its head poked up like mushrooms.

  Too late he realized that it was a worrt. The froglike monster made a belching noise and hopped out of the underbrush. It grabbed his right elbow in its mouth and bit deep into his arm.

  Normally, a worrt fed on small rodents and reptiles — creatures like the scurriers. But their vision was notoriously bad, and they ended up biting anything that got too close.

  Djas Puhr tried to shake the thing off his arm. Then he grabbed his blaster and fired at it.

  The rubbery worrt flipped end over end, then lay on the ground, snoring, as if it would take a long nap.

  Djas Puhr got up and shook his head to clear it. His ankle was twisted and his elbow was bleeding.

  He blinked in confusion. He hadn’t seen a hole before he tripped, only grass and leaves.

  Which meant that someone had played a trick on him. Someone had dug the hole, hoping that he’d trip and break his leg.

  Not only that, but they’d dug the hole right next to the worrt’s lair, knowing that he’d get bitten. They probably hoped that the worrt would kill him.

  These kids were smart. They’d planted traps for him.

  Djas Puhr would have to be smarter.

  All right, he thought. I’m not going to play their game.

  The hunter sat in the brush and thought for a moment. The children couldn’t really hope to hide in the pleasure garden forever.

  That meant that they’d have to escape. But they couldn’t go out the front door, since that led straight into the fortress. Besides, he had it guarded.

  So where would they go?

  There were waterfalls here, which meant there was plumbing underground. And he could feel the slightest breeze and smell the warm air off Tatooine’s desert.

  That meant that there were air vents. These kids had been crawling all through the fortress’s air shafts!

  He tested the air and knew right where it was coming from. At that moment he heard an engine die nearby. The fans for the air vent had gone off.

  Djas Puhr flipped on his comlink. “Sebulba, Khiss, can you hear me?” He crawled to his right, leaving the trail that Arawynne had tried to lead him on, making his way toward the vent.

  He was almost there...

  The Ho’Din gardener had slowly led Sebulba back to the front door of the garden.

  “What’s going on here?” Sebulba asked.

  “I saw Ghostlings here,” the gardener said. “Just last night.”

  “Not here,” Sebulba said. “Deeper in the garden. I want to know where they live.”

  “Live? I don’t know where to find such creatures,” the Ho’Din said. Sebulba was furious. The gardener was stalling, he felt sure. The gardener pointed. “Look here on the ground. You can see their tracks.”

  A call came over Sebulba’s comlink. “I hear you,” Sebulba told Djas Puhr.

  “The kids are heading out the air shaft,” Djas Puhr warned. “Go cut off their escape.”

  Sebulba smiled evilly. The Ho’Din gardener had led him back to the front door. In doing so, he had been a big help. From here it would be easy to race outside to the vents.

  “Thank you,” Sebulba said.

  The Ho’Din’s eyes widened in fear. To Sebulba’s delight, the gardener raised his mattock and rushed him.

  Sebulba shot the mattock, blasting it in two.

  The Ho’Din took a chance and turned away through the underbrush.

  “Better not let Gardulla know you run out on the job,” Sebulba cried out.

  He raced out the door to Gardulla’s hangars, where he leaped into the nearest Corellian freighter.

  Pala raced away from Khiss, but the Dug ran fast. He was catching up quickly.

  The trail was full of booby traps, but he’d be watching for them now.

  Overhead, a Wistie flew around, shouting to Pala, “Hurry! Come on!”

  But Pala couldn’t run any faster.

  She bounded around a corner, leaped over a log, and zigzagged.

  Almost too late, she remembered this spot. The deneba bush!

  She raced from the deneba bush just as a limb made a grab. She looked back to see leaves fluttering to the ground, and clawed fingers like long branches reaching for her.

  She dove o
ut of the monster’s reach, raced ahead up the trail, and sprawled headlong as she tripped over a hidden wire. She’d fallen into one of her own traps!

  The Wistie flew down, shouting, “Hide!”

  Pala lay flat in the deep grass.

  She heard twigs snapping in the wood — the Dug.

  She glanced up through the tall grass and saw Khiss rushing from the woods. He knelt to study her footprints and saw where she had headed for the deneba bush.

  He ran straight at the monster.

  Pala jumped up out of the grass and screamed, “Please, I surrender. Don’t shoot me!”

  She raised her hands overhead.

  Khiss ground to a halt and spun.

  The bush struck. There was a sound like wind moaning through trees, and all of the bush’s leaves dropped instantly.

  Khiss looked up, terror showing in his eyes, just as the twiggy limbs of the creature raked out, drawing him to it’s trunk.

  At the same instant, Pala heard a snapping sound, and a dark wedge of a mouth appeared in the tree trunk. The limbs of the tree swept Khiss into that mouth, and he was gone.

  The Dug never even had time to scream. As Pala turned to run away, the deneba bush bent over and picked up all of the fallen leaves. In seconds, it looked like just another tree in the forest.

  Djas Puhr crept through the jungle, watching overhead for Wisties. He knew that they were trying to spy on him, so that they could warn the children of his movements.

  He kept deep in the shadows of the feather fern and moved ever so carefully.

  It was the Wisties who gave the Ghostlings away. He simply watched where they flew in the trees. It was just like hunting for gwayo bird eggs back home. Watch the birds, and they’ll lead you to their nest. Only in this case, the Wisties led him toward the children.

  He soon closed in on their position, spotting the big circular hole of the vent hidden back in the brush.

  He picked up his comlink and whispered, “I’ve found the vent.”

  “Good,” Sebulba answered. “I’m coming up on my side of it now. Stay where you are, and I’ll flush them out.”