Slowly turning his head, Jar Jar found an old control console on the other side of the guard post. On the wall above the console, a wordless pictogram illustrated a simple view of the Quarry’s waterfall, pool, beach, and surrounding walls. The pictogram suggested there was a secret cavern behind a stone door, and that the cavern could be reached by raising the water level within the pool.
Jar Jar was ecstatic. If he could raise the pool’s water level and open the stone door, the bongo would rise with the water, enter the secret cavern, and escape the Quarry. All he had to do was figure out how to raise the water level!
Ten levers extended from the console’s enamel surface, on which small Gungan letterforms were barely visible. Jar Jar hoped the letterforms would identify the function for each lever, which might control the secret door and the water level. As Jar Jar stepped away from the window to get a closer look at the console, he accidentally slammed his head against the star-shaped bell.
If his head’s impact against the bell wasn’t enough to disorient Jar Jar, the loud gong practically knocked him off his feet. As his hands reflexively covered his ears, his left knee struck the control console and shattered its enamel surface. When he recovered from the bell, he looked down to see broken enamel littered across the floor.
Even if Jar Jar had the time, he doubted he’d be able to piece together the broken enamel to reassemble the letterforms and learn the function of each lever. He could only hope that at least one lever would help him escape the Quarry. He decided to take a chance and pull a lever.
The first lever made the window’s bars drop down into the sill. Jar Jar pulled the next lever, and heard a loud clang from outside. He ran to the open window and peered down to see what he’d accomplished. To his amazement, the pool’s water level was visibly rising. He realized the lever must have sealed off the pool’s drain vents.
Before Jar Jar could turn from the window and try another lever, a large spydr leaped from the outer wall and through the window. The spydr’s body was twice as large as Jar Jar’s head. Jar Jar shrieked and batted at the spydr, which hissed at him as it tried to claw its way into the guard post. Eyeing the levers, Jar Jar jumped across the room and smacked the lever that controlled the window’s bars.
The bars instantly snapped back up through the sill, and the spydr’s legs poked through the gaps between the bars. Remembering his electropole, Jar Jar unslung the weapon and gave a high-powered jab to one of the spydr’s long hairy legs. The spydr shrieked and scrambled away from the window.
Jar Jar switched off the electropole and reached for the next lever. It was stuck, so he gave it a strong tug. From outside the window, a rumbling sound reached Jar Jar’s ears. Keeping his distance from the barred window, Jar Jar stood on his toes to peer down to the beach, and quickly saw the cause of the rumbling. A large layer of stone was sliding away from the wall over the pool. The lever had opened the gateway to the secret tunnel.
Then Jar Jar noticed the bongo was already drifting away from the beach. He realized that unless he immediately returned to the sub, it might float out through the secret tunnel without him!
Jar Jar ran back to the lift tube shaft, grabbed hold of the lift rail, and slid down to the main level. Exiting the lift, he ran through the corridor that led to the circular chamber. But when he reached the end of the corridor, he discovered that something very unexpected had happened within the chamber.
The circular floor was gone. And so were the two defeated veermoks. Only the vines were still there, dangling down from the high ceiling.
Jar Jar peered over the end of the corridor’s floor. He looked down to see that the chamber’s floor had dropped to the detention block’s level, transforming the chamber into a deep pit. The two defeated veermoks — still bound by the thick vines — remained on the lowered floor along with the giant skeleton. Jar Jar suspected the circular floor was built upon a hydraulic lift mechanism, and that one of the levers in the guard post might have activated the floor’s descent. The ancient Gungans had obviously taken great measures to discourage any escape from the Quarry.
At the bottom of the pit, a high-arched gateway gave access to the lower level. Given the dimensions of the gateway, Jar Jar imagined it was the passage once used by the fallen beast to enter the circular chamber.
Suddenly, dozens of veermoks charged through the gateway. As they hooted and yowled, it occurred to Jar Jar the beast might not have been victim to a single creature; the gigantic monster could have been felled by an attack from a number of savage veermoks.
The sight of the two unconscious veermoks made the others roar in anger. The beasts look up and saw Jar Jar peering over the edge of the corridor floor.
Five large veermoks began to scale the stone wall.
Jar Jar knew he’d have to cross the distance to the door, and fast. He took a step back to get a secure footing, then jumped out over the pit, snaring a vine with his strong hands in an attempt to swing to the doorway. Unfortunately, he’d grabbed a weak vine, and it snapped from the ceiling.
Jar Jar fell only a short distance, landing on the skeleton’s skull. From the wall, three of the climbing veermoks dove at him, and he yelled as he jumped straight up to the hole over the doorway. The veermoks crashed into the skull with such impact that the remains of the skeleton collapsed beneath them. While the veermoks roared at the bottom of the pit, Jar Jar slipped through the hole and out of the fortress.
Jar Jar ran down to the beach. The water level had already risen so high that the bongo was starting to drift toward the secret tunnel. Jar Jar could see the two unconscious Gungans in the cockpit, and the albino dianoga in the net secured to the vessel’s hull.
Jar Jar noticed a series of rocks that poked up through the water, creating a set of stepping-stones that traveled from the shore to the drifting bongo. Hoping to hop from stone to stone and into the bongo’s cockpit, Jar Jar leaped onto the nearest stone. As soon as he landed, the stone dropped into the water, and Jar Jar watched in horror as the other stones shifted. They weren’t stones at all, but the spinal ridges of a subterranean behemoth!
The creature twisted and rose out of the water, turning its wide head to reveal a mouth lined with diamond-sharp teeth. Jar Jar screamed and dove from the monster, splashing down next to the bongo. Moving faster than he’d ever moved in his life, Jar Jar climbed up the side of the bongo, jumped into the cockpit, and tripped into the throttles, accidentally pushing them forward. The bongo tore into the secret tunnel just as the behemoth brought its head down near the tunnel’s entrance.
When Jar Jar realized the behemoth was too large to enter the tunnel, he sighed in relief. He couldn’t believe he’d survived the Quarry. Seconds later, the bongo reached the end of the cavern and entered the clear water of Lake Umberbool.
The bongo glided past a cluster of rocks, and the festival arena came into view. The arena’s central bubble was a gigantic orb, designed to accommodate many thousands of Gungan spectators. The central bubble was surrounded by four large habitat bubbles, each linked to three sub pens. One of the sub pens appeared to be under construction, but Jar Jar noticed the linking transport tube was broken. Jar Jar wondered if the pen had been torn away from the transport tube during the seaquake. Otherwise, the Festival Arena appeared to have held up rather well in the storm.
Suddenly, two shadowy figures angled toward the sub. From the way they moved, Jar Jar could tell they were not vessels but large creatures. As they drew closer, they extended long lures from their heads and flexed broad pectoral fins. Jar Jar recognized them as Vink and Nink, the pair of dwarf opee sea killers from the research facility.
Although Vink and Nink were fearsome in appearance, both were somewhat trained to follow instructions from their researchers. Jar Jar wondered if a verbal command would prompt them to swim back to the research facility. He imagined their freedom could have encouraged them to forget or disobey commands.
Jar Jar found the switch for the bongo’s voice amplifier right next
to a switch that released a trawling net. He figured if Vink and Nink didn’t respond to his verbal command, he could try to catch them in the net. He activated the amplifier and said, “Vink un Nink! G’wan home tada zoo!”
Outside the sub, the dwarf opee sea killers slowed down and swam closer to the bongo.
“Yousa hearen mesa?” Jar Jar asked. “Mesa say yousa swim yousaselves back to Otoh Gunga! Huff Zinga surr wowdabe heppy to see yousa.”
Either Vink and Nink didn’t acknowledge Jar Jar as a voice of authority or they didn’t understand a word he said. They began to swim away from the bongo. Jar Jar steered the bongo after the fleeing pair. When he was above them, Jar Jar deployed the trawling net.
The net caught both Vink and Nink, and they didn’t like it one bit. After a brief struggle, they tore free, then swam fast for the bongo.
If they had things their way, Vink and Nink would be munching through the bongo in seconds.
Jar Jar pushed the throttles and accelerated away from the dwarf sea killers. Without any escape plan in his head, Jar Jar headed for the festival arena. As soon as he saw the sub pens, a desperate idea came to him.
He checked to make sure both Commander Wollod and Boss Nass were strapped into their seats. If Jar Jar’s plan worked, Vink and Nink would be trapped within the sub pen. Jar Jar didn’t even want to think about what would happen if he failed.
Vink and Nink were gaining on him fast. Jar Jar steered for one of the Festival Arena’s sub pens and aimed for its eastern portal zone. Nink nearly bit one of the bongo’s rotating electro fins as the sub knifed into the pen. Jar Jar kept up the speed, zooming out of the pool and soaring through the bubble’s pressurized interior. As the bongo splashed down in the pen’s western pool, Jar Jar looked outside the sub pen and saw that the dwarf opee sea killers were about to follow his lead.
Jar Jar edged the bongo closer to the sub pen’s western portal zone. The moment Vink and Nink entered the sub pen through the eastern portal, he gunned the bongo’s engine and launched through the western portal at an odd angle, striking one of the utanode braces as he made the exit. The struck brace triggered an alarm, and the bubble’s emergency system kicked in, sealing off all the portal zones.
Vink and Nink were trapped inside the water-filled sub pen.
Jar Jar steered the bongo to face the sub pen so he could get a good look at the two baby sea killers. Inside the pen, Vink and Nink dove from one pool to the next. For all they knew, they were already back in the research facility.
Jar Jar noticed a light moving back and forth in one of the neighboring sub pen bubbles. As he steered closer to the pen, he saw that the light was a glow rod. The rod was held by a Gungan engineer who gestured at Jar Jar to dock the bongo.
The bongo entered the sub pen’s pressurized interior and rose to the surface. As water flowed off the cockpit’s hydrostatic field, the engineer saw Jar Jar’s two unconscious companions within the bongo, then noticed the albino dianoga secured to the sub’s exterior. Jar Jar climbed through the cockpit bubble and stepped onto the docking platform.
“Isa dat Boss Nass yousa got in dare?” asked the wide-eyed engineer.
“Indeedee,” Jar Jar replied. “Him un Commander Wollod isa wounded. Hep me get dem outta da bongo.”
“Yousa lucky ta get hair!” the engineer remarked as he helped remove the unconscious Gungans from the sub. “Wesa got terrible trouble.”
“Mesa know all about da seaquake,” Jar Jar replied. “Dat why wesa come hair. My afraid all-n yousa engineers get pasted.”
“Wesa okeydey, but some of da bubbles isa taken on water,” answered the engineer. “Mesa was inspictin dis sub pen’s bubble when mesa see yousa catchen Vink un Nink.”
“Yousa know dem?” Jar Jar asked, surprised.
“Doesn’t everybody? Dem’s famous. Some nonoggin burst-ed da zoo bubbles and let Vink un Nink loose. Mesa see yousa caught da albino dianoga, too.”
“Dat’s right,” Jar Jar said as he released the stunned albino dianoga into a garbage bin. Hoping to change the subject from the research facility disaster, he asked, “Did da Rep heyblibber get hair yet?”
“Dat’s da moto terrible trouble,” the engineer replied. “Da heyblibber had just dock-ed inna sub pen when da storm struck! None of uss-n engineers saw what happened, but it lookie like da entire sub pen bubble tore from da moorings.”
“Mesa seen da sub pen’s bust-ed transport tube,” Jar Jar commented. “Nobody got outta da heyblibber?”
The engineer shook his head. “Un since da seaquake knocked out comm-talkie, dare-sa nobody ta call for hep.” The engineer pointed a finger in a direction west of the festival arena. “Wesa tin-ken da sub pen bubble got swept inta da core.”
Jar Jar looked at the unconscious bodies of Commander Wollod and Boss Nass. Although the Gungan engineer didn’t know it, Jar Jar was a criminal at large. Despite the fact that he had safely delivered Wollod and Boss Nass to Lake Umberbool and rescued some creatures, he could imagine that Boss Nass might still send him back to the Quarry. It wasn’t so much that Jar Jar wanted to rescue the Rep heyblibber as he felt he didn’t have anything left to lose. This was his only chance of saving himself from imprisonment.
Before the engineer could protest, Jar Jar hopped back into the battered bongo, started the engine, and steered out of the sub pen.
Leaving the festival arena behind, Jar Jar approached a narrow crevice and steered down into it. The crevice was wide enough to have accomodated the missing sub pen, but Jar Jar wasn’t thinking about the sub pen or the Rep heyblibber anymore. He was thinking that he had just entered the core, and he was wondering if he was crazy. The core’s tunnels and underwater canyons were inhabited by numerous large creatures. Few Gungans had ever entered the core and survived.
“If mesa get outta dis alive,” Jar Jar said to himself, “mesa never ganna get inta trouble again.”
Up ahead, Jar Jar saw a faint glow against the darkness of a sloping mountainous wall. As the bongo drew closer, he saw that the glow came from a sub pen bubble. The bubble appeared to be stuck within a dark formation that jutted out from the wall. The formation partially enveloped the bubble, sealing off the portal zones.
Inside the sub pen bubble, the Rep heyblibber bobbed at an odd angle. Jar Jar could see a Gungan figure moving in the heyblibber’s cockpit, but he couldn’t see whether it was Rep Teers or Major Fassa. Jar Jar didn’t know Major Fassa, but he remembered seeing Rep Teers earlier that morning, back in Otoh Gunga.
As the bongo’s navigational lights traveled above the pinned sub pen, Jar Jar suddenly realized the mountainous wall wasn’t a wall at all.
It was a sando aqua monster.
The monster was huge, and its webbed claws had a firm grip on the sub pen bubble. As Jar Jar contemplated escape, the monster twisted its immense head and focused on the bongo.
Terrified, Jar Jar reached out and punched the switch to eject the bongo’s cockpit as an emergency escape pod. It wasn’t a very smart move. The entire cockpit blasted free from the doomed bongo and rose up through the water.
Gazing through the cockpit’s canopy, Jar Jar saw the startled monster let go of the sub pen bubble. As soon the bubble was released, the Rep heyblibber blasted through one of the bubble’s portal zones. Then the cockpit rolled in the water, and Jar Jar saw that the escape pod was headed straight for the sando aqua monster’s head.
Jar Jar shrieked as the monster opened its jaws and inhaled. He felt the escape pod being drawn toward the beast’s mouth. Scrambling out of his seat, he pushed himself through the hydrostatic canopy and into the water. Jar Jar was using all of his strength to swim away from certain death when the sando aqua monster clamped its jaws down on the air-filled escape pod.
The pod exploded in the monster’s mouth, sending air bubbles in all directions. The monster groaned and Jar Jar swam faster, trying to catch up with the fleeing heyblibber. But it was no use.
The enraged sando aqua monster turned its attention to Ja
r Jar’s swimming form. Just then, Jar Jar saw a creature swim past the back of the sando aqua monster’s head. It was the Great Hohokum, the gentle herbivore who had recently escaped from the research facility.
Jar Jar had no idea why the Great Hohokum would have traveled into the core. Jar Jar’s only thought was that hohokums had powerful fins that made them incredible swimmers. At one time or another, almost every teenage Gungan had tried hitching a ride with a passing hohokum.
The Great Hohokum was following the same path as the Rep heyblibber. Jar Jar waved at the gentle creature and it sighted him. As the sando aqua monster prepared to strike, the Great Hohokum darted for Jar Jar.
The Great Hohokum drew near and Jar Jar caught hold of one of the creature’s long tusks. The sando aqua monster’s claws passed within millimeters of the Great Hohokum’s tail, but it missed just the same.
Jar Jar held on for dear life. Moments later, the Great Hohokum raced through the crevice. As soon as they had entered Lake Umberbool, the Great Hohokum slowed down, apparently confident that the sando aqua monster would not be able to follow them.
Gazing at the festival arena, Jar Jar saw the Rep heyblibber had already reached another sub pen. He hoped that Rep Teers or Major Fassa would tell Boss Nass about how Jar Jar had helped make the sando aqua monster release them.
Jar Jar’s attention was diverted by an army transport submersible that descended from above. Inside the army transport’s main observation bubble, Captain Tarpals stood at the helm, staring out at Jar Jar. Jar Jar realized Captain Tarpals must have intercepted his distress beacon, then proceeded to Lake Umberbool.
Captain Tarpals didn’t look happy.
Floating in the deep water near the Festival Arena, Jar Jar looked at the Great Hohokum’s wise old face. If Jar Jar didn’t know better, he would have sworn the creature was smiling.
At this point, readers who chose to follow the adventure in the Star Wars Adventure Game Book can return to Rescue in the Core.
Star Wars - Episode I Adventures 009 - Rescue in the Core Page 4