Panaka did as he was ordered.
"Turn around," commanded the voice.
Panaka turned slowly and regarded his captor. Bald and paunchy, but with obvious muscles beneath the fat, the man was a good head taller than Panaka. His puffy face was dominated by a knob of a nose that looked as if it had been broken, and reset many times without benefit of bacta. His baggy white clothing, stained with sand and sweat, draped loosely over his ample frame.
The man didn't lower the disruptor.
Carefully, Panaka laced his fingers behind his head. "You planning to use that?" He nodded toward the other man's weapon.
"Not unless you do something stupid. Though the way you handled yourself with those biters I already know you're not too bright."
Panaka didn't take the bait. "Whatever your intentions are down here, holding a Royal Security Force officer at gunpoint isn't going to make your situation any easier."
"Watch it, lieutenant," the man sneered. "Your partner isn't here to cover your back. I could shoot you right here for what you did to Kroke Modbom."
Panaka started at the name, then thought back to that morning's confrontation and Bialy's unseen shooter. "Kroke was a Gungan criminal," he answered smoothly. "Tell me what you are."
The look that crossed the man's face combined both disgust and pity. "Lieutenant, we're all criminals. Thank goodness we have officers like you to keep Naboo safe in the name of our king."
The cry of the sando aqua monster resounded through the meters of rock above them, much louder this time and laden with low thrumming bass notes as if most of the monster's call was below the threshold of hearing. Panaka felt the vibration through his boots.
As the noise died away, a powerful thud nearly knocked Panaka off his feet. The monster was thrashing. Sand - or perhaps pulverized rock - trickled down on his head through cracks in the tunnel ceiling.
The heavyset man glanced up anxiously. Panaka tensed, preparing to take advantage of the distraction, but his captor looked back quickly and shook his head in warning. "Uh uh." He gestured with the disruptor. "Turn around and walk forward. Slowly." More rock powder spilled down from above in dry streams, making powdery cones in the shallow water. "But don't drag your feet. I wouldn't bet on this tunnel holding forever."
Panaka wondered how he was supposed to do both those things simultaneously, but kept quiet. "What's your name?" he asked instead.
"I'm called Veermok," the man barked, and punctuated the statement by jabbing Panaka's back with the disruptor pistol. "Start walking."
Privately, Panaka smiled at the ferocious-sounding nickname. Veermoks were bloodthirsty simians whose jaws could snap bone. "The Gungan give you that name?" he asked as he moved forward into the steadily brightening light.
The other man's voice conveyed loathing. "Let me hazard a guess, lieutenant - you've spent more time riding in turbolifts than talking to Gungans. And I dare you to tell me otherwise." He paused as he picked up Panaka's S-5 from the floor. "You know nothing about Gungans, and you know even less about Kroke."
"I know he was a wanted criminal. What does that say about you?"
"I can't imagine. You tell me."
Panaka shrugged. "You know the saying. 'Veermoks run in packs.'"
"Not a wise thing to say to a man with a pistol at your back."
"That's not the way I see it." Panaka wiggled his fingers inside his leather gloves. "You had me dead to rights a minute ago. I think if you were going to kill me, you would have done it already."
The man gave a wintry laugh. "Lieutenant, you have no idea what we're doing down here, do you?"
"I know what I'm doing here," Panaka answered confidently.
They had advanced into the full light of the new tunnel. Panaka saw his earlier suspicions confirmed. Banks of artificial illuminators hung from the rock ceiling at even intervals. At least a dozen lit up the tunnel ahead before the passage bent into a distant turn. Panaka still saw no evidence of a pump, but the underlying hum of machinery was obvious. Grated metal deck plates on the floor covered the few centimeters of dirty water that puddled underfoot.
Dark alcoves in the walls ahead indicated the presence of branching shafts. As Panaka passed the first of these subsidiary passages, he noticed it was blocked with a heavy durasteel door bearing a number in futhark script.
"Slow down," the man ordered. "Walk forward carefully, one step at a time. I'll be standing right back here." Panaka heard the familiar click of his blaster's intensity setting. "And remember, now I've got two pistols trained on you."
Panaka's gut went cold. "You think the tunnel's booby trapped."
"Points for the lieutenant. Maybe you officers aren't all dense."
"So if I don't advance, I get shot in the back. If I do advance, I trigger an automated intruder device and get shot in the chest. So tell me again why you think I should to help you."
"Oh, come now, lieutenant," his captor mocked. "All that Security Force training and you can't defeat a simple ambush? Move. Now. We're wasting time."
Panaka flexed his hands. He was never more conscious of the missing weight of his S-5. He stepped forward carefully, boots echoing hollowly on the deckplates. On the walls, hundreds of tiny fungus buds created giddy pointillist patterns in phosphorescent green. Hairy roots ran along the face of the stone, crisscrossing the pale fungus like networks of blood vessels. Panaka passed several more tributary tunnels off to either side, some capped with doors and others disappearing into darkness.
"Mind telling me what I'm looking for?" Panaka eyed a numbered door warily.
"What do you think this place is? What does your Royal Security Force training tell you?"
Panaka craned his neck to look behind a hanging bank of overhead lights. An observation cam stared blankly back at him through its single lens. Corroded and dripping, the cam's electronics had obviously lost the battle against the tunnel's ubiquitous moisture. "A pirate's stash," Panaka answered. "A bootlegger's warehouse."
"What if I told you this was commissioned by King Veruna? That it contains records concerning corruption at the highest levels of government? Records that would shock even you?"
Panaka snorted. "I wouldn't think much. You see whatever you want to see. You're not the only anti-royalist on Naboo."
"Anti-royalist?" the man spat. "We're not out there carrying signs. Kroke and I and the others, we're fighting for Naboo."
"Then I've never heard of you."
"I'm glad. We're not striving to be noticed. We're not even an organization. We have no leader, no hierarchy. But when your friends start disappearing, people have a funny way of working together." He paused, then continued in a lower register, his words wrapped around a lump of sadness. "The Gungans were here before us. They can tell when their world is out of balance. All my life I've tried to sense that balance. Now we have the chance to restore it." Veermok sighed as if casting off a great weight. "So no, lieutenant, we're not anti-royalist. We're anti-lies. Anti-secrets."
Panaka felt a smile at the corners of his mouth. Idealists. "That's what everyone wants," he said, keeping his voice calm and reasonable. "Including Veruna. Including me."
"You mean well, lieutenant, but you're a liar." Veermok's voice roiled with heated bitterness. "Korke and I have been looking for a repository like this one for years. Recent information led us to Port Landien, but we couldn't find it on our own. Naboo understood. The planet herself finally revealed this disease by sending the sando aqua monster. I am honored to accept her gift. If you're really sincere about wanting the truth, help me search. Help me make public whatever we find."
"Put down the pistols and we'll talk about it."
"Lieutenant, maybe I am a little naive, but I've never been called stupid. Now stop stalling."
Panaka left the dead cam behind and reached another matched pair of branching tunnels. The passage to his right was capped by a door that read "WASTE STORAGE" in faded red printing. The tributary on his left stretched off into darkness. Peering close
ly into that gloom, Panaka thought he could make out the circular outline of a wide hole in the rock floor. Worried what the pit might conceal, Panaka sprang forward onto the deckplates a meter ahead and dropped to the ground as a ceiling illumination bank exploded in a shower of sparks, spitting out an energy bolt that hissed past Panaka's ear. The wrecked lighting rig fell to the ground with a crash, revealing a recessed laser turret in the ceiling. With a hyperactive whine the turret spun around in dizzy circles, spraying destructive energy everywhere. Panaka hurried backward on his belly, outside of the turret's apparent range, back to the intersection of the two branching tunnels.
His captor moved up behind him. "What did you do?"
"Draconi fixed defensive laser," Panaka stated flatly. "Can't tell if it's pressure or motion activated, so keep still."
The turret spun around madly in its tight circle, drenching the air with missiles of hot orange energy. Laser darts peppered the walls of the tunnel, leaving rows of black smoking holes, then burned over the heads of the two figures lying prone on the deckplates.
"I don't know," Panaka admitted, shouting over the sizzle. "I'd expect this one to track us, and it's not. It's old. And I think it's malfunctioning." Like an airspeeder caught in a fatal spiral, the laser twirled around faster with each revolution. The turret mounting wobbled violently with the off-center stress. The laser's circular spray pattern now began to zigzag up and down the walls, in sync with the back-and-forth jerking of the pivot mount. Panaka gritted his teeth. Then he noticed that the rock surrounding the ceiling turret was glowing.
Plasma. Veins of natural energy plasma gushed deep through the core of Naboo. These were tapped with drilled shafts to generate power for major cities. Trace amounts of plasma sometimes permeated surface rock, useless for any practical purpose but fun to ignite for a short-lived light show. The out-of-control turret likely ran on its own plasma source, and was venting its excess heat directly into the satu rated rock. The rock itself was unlikely to explode, but as the ceiling's temperature climbed the motor casing would melt, exposing its pure plasma battery to direct heat. And when that happened -
"We're moving!" Panaka announced to his captor. "That laser's going to blow."
The man glared back at him. A pattern of dirt smeared one side of his face where he'd pressed it against the grated deckplate. "You're not going anywhere." He still held both pistols tightly in his fists.
"Take a look!" Panaka jerked his head toward the turret, angry. Vivid white lines spiderwebbed through the superheated red rock. Panaka peered into the branching tunnel on their earlier glimpsed a dark pit. "When the laser spins that way -" he motioned opposite their position - "we roll left, and scoot down that tunnel as far as we can." Panaka held up his hand. "On my signal. One -"
Panaka never finished his count as the world came crumbling down on them. He was flipped end-over-end, swept up in a jumble of rocks that banged him from every side. Time slowed down as Panaka became acutely conscious of his surroundings, in a sort of hyperconsciousness that intruded upon his senses in life or death situations.
He was in the air, spinning, falling. Yet there was no fire from an explosion. The laser turret hadn't blown. Above him he saw rocks large and small, suspended in the air in mid-tumble like himself. Beyond the rocks he saw a ragged patch of purple dotted with pinprick stars. Silhouetted against the incongruous night sky was a massive claw with talons the size of tree trunks, reaching deep into the ground as if digging for worms.
He hadn't been blown off his feet. He'd been scooped.
Panaka flailed his arms, trying to grab hold of something, anything to break his inevitable fall. As he twisted his body in mid-air he saw the rock floor rushing up at him. Panaka landed hard on his forearms. His legs sailed up and over, flipping him on his back and sending him into a dusty slide toward the ominous pit in the floor of the tributary tunnel. Panaka reached desperately for one of the dangling, hair-like roots that draped over the lip of the pit, but it was too late. He fell down into blackness, then plunged feet-first into a film of icy water that swiftly closed over his head.
***
With a shuddering gasp, Panaka broke the surface, trying desperately to stay afloat as his sodden clothing threatened to drag him back under. Rocks and chunks of debris continued to rain down from on high, punching the water around him with loud splashes. Next to him Panaka saw a huge rectangle list over and begin to sink; with a start, Panaka saw it was the opposite tributary tunnel's door, WASTE STORAGE, which had been completely torn from its hinges.
Panaka kicked off his boots and silently cursed whomever had designed the Royal Security Force uniform to include a knee-length fabric skirt and a heavy leather vest. Treading water as he shed his gloves, Panaka stared up at the rim of the pit high above him.
Veermok dangled over the edge, his legs kicking uselessly. One hand was gripping some purchase outside the pit; the other was holding Panaka's S-5. Obviously unwilling to drop the weapon, yet unable to pull himself up one-handed, the radical dangled in the air helplessly before finally letting go of the blaster and swinging his free arm up to secure a better handhold.
The pistol fell straight down. Panaka sloshed over, hoping to catch it, but it broke the surface with a ploop and sank out of sight. Panaka drew a deep breath and dove beneath the water, paddling furiously. The icy water induced a tightness in his chest. Visibility was zero, but through luck or providence Panaka brushed against the dropping blaster with his frozen fingers. Clasping it eagerly in both hands, he kicked for the surface.
Near surface, Panaka shoved a floating obstacle out of his way. Then he gasped for air once more. Veermok no longer hung from the edge ofthe pit.
Panaka reached out for the floating object he'd just jostled, hoping to use it as a life preserver while he examined the S-5. The floater was two meters long, roughly cylindrical. He threw his arms over it and it dipped under the water in response. Panaka turned his head toward the object's closest end.
A vacant-eyed rictus grinned back at him.
It had once been a Gungan, before the body had swelled and rotted. The eyestalks were gone, leaving only black sockets peering out from a skull. Rubbery flesh stretched tight over the snout, peeling away from two rows of blackened, grimacing teeth. Two fanlike ears floated on the surface of the water, though with the skin eaten away the cartilaginous webbing looked like long-fingered hands pointing in opposite directions.
Splashing away from the body in disgust, Panaka bumped into something behind him. He twisted around and saw a second body, this one human. Its stomach bulged with gas and its mouth gaped open in a soundless scream. The bile rose in Panaka's throat as he realized he'd swallowed the same water the seeping corpses were bobbing in. As he spat out his saliva, he saw at least a half-dozen other floating forms.
Panaka groped on his belt for the durasteel grappling hook. Finding it, he fitted it to the barrel of his S-5. Kicking hard to keep from dipping underwater, he raised the pistol with both hands and aimed straight up, past the rim of the pit, up to the rock ceiling of the tunnel itself. Squeezing the trigger, he fired the liquid-cable shooter.
A thin line of spraymist unspooled from the blaster, trailing the grappling hook like a strand of choloropede silk. It hardened into unbreakable wire the instant it touched the air. The grappling hook hit the roof of the tunnel with a thunk, its sharp tines biting deeply into the stone. Panaka thumbed the retract control.
Motors within the device whined as they pulled the line back into the S-5's tiny reservoir. Panaka held tightly to the pistol stock with both hands. As the S-5 climbed the cable he was lifted clear, water running off his clothing in great runnels.
Panaka halted the ascension once he had cleared the hole in the floor, with a couple of meters left on the line. He needed to gain enough lateral momentum to reach the edge of the pit. He began swinging back and forth, causing the grappling hook to rock in the stone overhead. As Panaka finished a long backward arc he raised both feet, prepared to jump
to safety at the end of the return arc. As he passed the midpoint of the swing the grappling hook popped loose.
Panaka fell, but inertia still carried him to the lip of the pit. He hit the edge hard, knocking the breath from his lungs, but succeeded in wrapping one arm around a hairy root before he slid backward. Panaka pulled himself up to secure ground. Panting with fatigue, he retracted the remainder of the liquid cable and the dangling grappling hook.
Panaka stood and ran back toward the main tunnel, back to where the sando aqua monster had dug though from the outside world. His uniform felt like a suit of cold, slapping armor as it leaked water onto his bare feet. As Panaka got closer to the site of the breach, the gray darkness of the underground passages began to give way to the pure indigo of Naboo's night sky.
The monster suddenly howled and slapped its snakelike bulk against the surface above. The tunnel vibrated like a struck drumhead. Panaka stumbled, off-balance, and drove his left heel into the point of a low stalagmite. Loose stone showered from the ceiling. From out in the main tunnel Panaka heard a cry of surprise. Favoring his right leg in a grotesque limp, Panaka lurched out into the opening, blaster pistol at the ready.
The main tunnel was utter devastation, as if it had been shattered by a pressure bomb. Panaka still couldn't believe he'd been standing at ground zero. Several tons of stone, most of it crumbled into shaak-sized boulders, littered the floor of what had once been a tunnel, though now that a chunk of the roof was missing Panaka supposed it was more like a trench. Straight up, through the hole above, he could see the constellation Beautite winking from behind a shivering, heaving mass that was likely some part of the monster's shoulder.
The monster's claw had scooped away a mountain of broken stone, leaving two rocky heaps on opposite sides to mark its passing. One pile completely blocked the route Panaka and his captor had traversed at the start of their exploration. The other pile clogged the tunnel ahead where the amok laser turret had once stood guard. From the other side of this jumbled roadblock came muffled grunts and curses.
Star Wars - The Monster - Star Wars Gamer #2 Page 3