Title: Labyrinth
Author: Jedi Rita
Rated: PG-13
Chapter Five
Something was shaking her, cruelly dragging her from the haven of sleep. Consciousness slowly stole over her, accompanied by nausea and a bitter taste in her mouth. The shaking only made her feel worse, and she struck out, contacting with something smooth and cartigenous hovering over her head. She opened her eyes to see Jar Jar clutching his muzzle and staring down at her, his eyestalks extended to their fullest length.
"I'm sorry, Jar Jar," Padme apologized as she struggled to sit up.
"My was thinken yousa dead," he explained in a squeak.
"No, I'm not dead," she corrected, only to groan in misery as a fresh wave of nausea surged over her. She might not be dead, but she almost wished she were. She glanced frantically around the room, which was empty of any furniture and sadly lacking any receptacle for her to be sick in. Her stomach refused to be deterred, and groaning, she crawled into a corner and threw up until her body rid itself of the last vestiges of the poison used to sedate them.
Feeling only slightly better, she leaned back against the wall, dragging her sleeve across her mouth.
Worried, Jar Jar watched her. "Yousa oke-day?"
"I'll be fine," she replied, but her answer came out as a moan. She looked across the room at Prince Bail, slumped on the floor. It wasn't going to be pretty when he woke up, either. Jar Jar, at least, seemed to have been relatively unaffected by the poison. "Are you all right? How long have you been awake?"
"My no know," Jar Jar shrugged. "Mesa wake not so longo time. But you and da Big Boss no waken." His eyestalks swiveled back to the Prince. "Maybe hesa dead, too, eh?"
"No, he'll be all right. Whatever they gassed us with just makes us feel sick." She was beginning to feel a little better. Hopefully the poison would not prove to have lasting effects.
Her alertness returning, she focused her attention on the room. Even without furniture, the room was not completely empty. The floor was littered with crumbled plaster fallen from the walls and ceiling, torn rags, crumpled plastic bottles and other detritus. The walls were gray and stained, riddled with cracks. The yellowish light was provided by a gas lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling. Padme had seldom ever seen one before. They were clearly not on a spaceship being carried off to who knows where. They were almost certainly still on Coruscant, but Padme had no idea the planet contained any place as rundown as this.
Bail began to stir, dragging himself awake. Padme waited while he, too, emptied his stomach into the corner as she had. When he stopped convulsing, she asked, "How are you feeling?"
He groaned. "I have had hangovers that were worse, but that was a long time ago. It doesn't exactly make me nostalgic for the good old days."
"You'll feel better in a minute," she counseled. As Bail waved a disbelieving hand in her direction, she glanced at Jar Jar. "You know the routine. Start checking in that corner, while I start here."
Jar Jar moved to do her bidding while Bail surveyed her with clouded eyes. "What are you doing?"
She put a finger to her lips, then began inspecting her side of the room. Within minutes she and Jar Jar discovered that the room was free of surveillance devices. It indeed seemed to be nothing more than a rundown building, although the door sported a good sized, mechanical lock. She turned back to the Prince. "No bugs," she announced.
He cocked an eyebrow. "What do you call that?" he asked, pointing at a brown insect half as big as his hand crawling up the wall.
"That's not what I meant."
Bail smiled. "I know. You're quite the professsional, aren't you?"
"I've learned to be prepared."
"Where are we?" Jar Jar asked.
Padme shrugged. "I don't know. I imagine we're somewhere on Coruscant."
"The lower levels, most likely," Bail pronounced, surveying the rundown walls. "Not good."
"Why?" Padme asked, seating herself next to him. "What are the lower levels like?"
"They were abandoned long ago as the city was built up. No one legitimate lives down here, and there are no services. No power, food, water, or transportation. Communication devices don't penetrate this far down. There's nothing here but pollution, criminals, and mutants."
Padme exchanged concerned looks with Jar Jar, but before she could comment, the lock clicked and the door swung open. A human entered and surveyed them. "Good," she pronounced. "You're all awake. Now let's see if you can walk." She raised a blaster in their direction, flicking the muzzle at them. The threesome got to their feet and exited the room, where they were flanked by several more armed guards of various species and led down a dimly lit hall into a larger room.
Padme quickly surveyed their captors. They were a motley bunch, bearing no insignia or uniforms. They looked for the most part relatively ordinary and harmless, though they sported expressions of intensity, even fanaticism. Only two of them, seated in a dark corner, showed any signs of real menace. The pair wore customized armor, combat boots, and weapons belts, and were more heavily armed than their comrades. The face of one was completely hidden underneath a helmet with a narrow, T-shaped eye slit, but her companion wore only a look of cool fierceness.
A blue-skinned Twi'lek who had been seated at a table in the center of the room stood up and approached them. "And how are our honored guests feeling?" she asked, not unpleasantly.
Before Bail could answer, Padme demanded, "Who are you, and what do you want with us?"
The Twi'lek laughed. "Straight to the point! Let me assure you, Your Highness, if you cooperate with us, no harm will come to you."
"You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical," Padme returned.
"Naturally," the Twi'lek smiled. She began to pace back and forth in front of them, strutting regally, as if she were performing before an audience. "We have no secrets here, either about our identity or our purpose in abducting you. I am Reena, and my comrades here comprise the Hammer, a faction of the True Life Movement. We feel that the time has come for more decisive action in order to protect the natural born."
"I have never heard of the Hammer," Prince Bail said.
"Of course not. This is our grand debut."
"What I meant was, I am unfamiliar with your principles," Bail amended, "your position on cloning. If you tell me about your viewpoint, we can perhaps open negotiations."
His offer was greeted with outright laughter around the room. Reena shook her head condescendingly. "We have no interest in negotiating with you, Bail Organa, Prince of Verbosity. All you do is talk, talk, talk. But on the subject of cloning there can be no debate." Her eyes narrowed in determination. "No compromise.
"We kidnapped you to make a point. You will deliver our demands for us, and for your sake, I hope the Senate will listen."
"You are surely aware that the Senate has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists," Bail mildly observed.
"Of course. They always say that, and then they always do. Do you really expect us to believe that they won't negotiate for the safe return of the popular and much-loved Senator of Alderaan? Especially when we show we mean business." She flicked a glance at several of her comrades who closed in on Bail, holding his arms behind his back, as Padme and Jar Jar were surrounded and shoved to the side. Dread filled Padme, but she knew there was nothing she could do. She glanced again at the twosome in the corner. The man looked on with interest, while the helmeted one sat forward in a pose of anticipation.
"Make it look good," Reena was saying, drawing Padme's attention back to Bail. A rather burly-looking Aqualish stepped forward, wearing armored gloves on his thick hands. He delivered a series of sharp blows to Bail's face, bloodying his nose, splitting his lip, and opening a gash above one eye. Padme winced at each blow, struggling not to cry out in protest. Beside her, Jar Jar trembled with fear.
The beating did not last long. "That's enough!" Reena ordered, and the Aqualish fell back. Bail was released, and he fell to his hands and knees, his limbs trembling as blood dripped from his face onto the floor. Aside from the two in the corner, Padme noticed that none of their captors seemed to have enjoyed the abuse. She even thought she could see the Twi'lek's lekku shiver with regret. "Get the camera ready," she instructed, her voice quiet, lacking in her earlier bravado. Several of the others set up the camera as Bail was plucked up off the floor, still gasping, and placed in a chair. Despite his injuries, he was amazingly calm and dignified.
Reena shoved a durasheet into his hand. "You will read this statement," she instructed, "insisting that this conference end at once and demanding that all cloning be outlawed immediately."
Glancing at the sheet, Bail said, "They'll never agree to such demands. Surely you must see that."
"Pray that they do, Your Highness," Reena counseled, "because for every day they don't, we'll be sending them body parts."
Jar Jar whimpered, and Padme reached out to take his hand and squeeze it, seeking to comfort herself as much as him.
The camera was set to record, and Bail complied, reading the Hammer's demands off the sheet. When he finished, they were led without word back to their prison.
For several minutes none of them spoke as they absorbed the reality of their predicament. Bail gingerly wiped the blood from his face, one eye now swollen shut. "Body parts," he mumbled with a levity that amazed Padme. "They might as well start with my teeth. I think they loosened several of them."
"No, no," Jar Jar whimpered. "Dey mutten be doen that."
"I thought you were generally perceived to be sympathetic to the True Life Movement," Padme observed.
"I am," Bail agreed.
"Then why target you?"
Bail shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. They clearly don't know what they're doing, an unknown group making extravagant demands. The Senate will not give in to them."
Padme absorbed this in silence. "They really won't?" she finally asked, leaving unspoken the dire consequences Reena had promised.
Bail met her gaze without flinching. "No."
Again there was a prolonged silence, broken finally when Bail chirped, "They say prosthetic limbs are better than the originals. Then again, with the cloning technology being proposed at this conference, I could be the first person to benefit from it. You needn't worry. Obi-Wan will find us before they disassemble too much of me."
Ignoring his last comment, Padme observed, "There's something else. Did you notice the two in the corner with all the weapons?"
"I was a little distracted," Bail admitted.
"They didn't look at all like the others," Padme observed.
Jar Jar nodded. "Dey looked like deysa ready for a war."
Padme added, "I think there is more than one faction here. And I doubt those two are interested in demands, much less negotiations."
Bail frowned. "What do you think that means?"
"I think it means we can't afford to stay around here waiting for the Jedi to find us."
Alarmed, Bail exclaimed, "You can't possibly be thinking of breaking out of here. Even if we succeeded, we are at ground level. You don't understand the dangers."
"Maybe not, but I'll wager those two are bounty hunters. I'd rather take my chances out there than wait for those bounty hunters to act."
"Bounty hunters? Now, don't jump to conclusions!"
"What else could they be?" Padme demanded. "Bounty hunters or mercenaries, regardless of the specifics, I think they are infiltrators with their own agenda. Didn't you say that there are a lot more interests at stake in the cloning issue than medical concerns? Genetic engineering, breeding slaves, factions who want cloning technology with no benevolent intentions in mind."
"Now you're really stretching it," Bail protested, but he didn't sound like he believed himself.
"Regardless of what Reena said, we will not be able to leave here alive," Padme warned. "The question is, do you want to take your chance and get out with all your limbs, or do you really want them to start hacking you to pieces first?"
Her certainty shocked him into silence, and he gulped hard.
Padme turned to Jar Jar. "Do you still have your vibroblade?"
To Bail's surprise, the Gungan nodded, unhooking his belt buckle and folding it out to make a knife. Meanwhile Padme removed several pieces of what Bail had thought were jewelry and fitted them together to form a tiny blaster. He slowly shook his head as she extracted several pins from her hair to reveal a durasteel stiletto the size of a large sewing needle and a lock-picking device. "Do you always dress for the occasion, Your Majesty?" he inquired in amazement.
Padme crouched by the door inspecting the lock. "After the Trade Federation invaded my planet, I learned to be prepared for anything."
"So you said earlier. I didn't realize how seriously you meant it." He watched her progress on the door with growing agitation. "Are you certain this is a good idea? We don't know if the door is guarded."
"No guards," Jar Jar assured him. "Mesa hear if dey were."
"Gungans have excellent hearing," Padme remarked as she jiggled the pick through a tiny opening in the door handle.
"The door could be rigged with an alarm," Bail continued faintly.
"No. No power, no wires. Nutten. Mesa check," Jar Jar said with simple assurance. His large ears perked up at the tiniest click, signaling that Padme had disengaged the lock.
She turned back to Bail and raised an eyebrow in inquiry. "It's your choice," she offered. "They may not have threatened Jar Jar and me yet, but I don't think they took us by accident. You can come with us and risk death in one piece, or stay here and wait to be dismantled."
"Well, when you put it that way," Bail gave her a weak smile, "I am rather attached to my parts."
Without another word, Padme nodded and opened the door, stepping out into the hall, Jar Jar close behind her. Bail followed, struggling to still his trembling. His heart pounded so loudly in his ears that a blaster fight could ensue in the hall and Bail doubted he would even hear it. He hoped the Gungan's hearing was as good as Padme said it was.
She closed the door behind them and slid the tiny stiletto into the lock, breaking it in an effort to further delay their captors. Then she nodded to Jar Jar, who took the lead, gliding silently down the hall. He paused at each door, each juncture of the corridor, listening intently for any sign of their captors' presence.
As they neared one hallway they could hear voices coming up the corridor. Jar Jar quickly led them back a couple of doors to a closet they had passed before. The three of them barely fit inside, squeezing up against each other in order to shut the door all the way. Bail's head began to pound in earnest, adrenaline making his headache worse. He had been abducted once before, and like Padme and Jar Jar, he had been mentally trained to cope with hostage situations, to remain calm, to seek to establish rapport with his captors, to negotiate with them for his release. But unlike Padme and Jar Jar, he had not been trained to undertake his own rescue. He had always relied on others to keep him safe, and he had no reason to doubt that Obi-Wan would find him. That is, Obi-Wan would have found them if they had remained with their captors. But how was the Jedi to find them when they were running around in Coruscant's treacherous ground level? Any trail they might try to leave would
lead the bounty hunters, if that was indeed what they were, right to them as well. This escape attempt had to be, without a doubt, the stupidest thing Bail had ever consented to.
But he had no chance to protest, even if he wanted to. After a good length of time, Jar Jar opened the door onto a once again empty corridor and led them on. The next door he led them through opened out into a large hallway. They had evidently left the suite of rooms the Hammer occupied and now entered the main building itself. While there was no artificial light in the hall, the walls were covered with a bioluminescent algae that provided just enough light for them to see by.
Without a word, Jar Jar loped off down the hallway, Padme close behind him, and Bail bringing up the rear. It evidently never occurred to either of his comrades to try to seek a way up. Almost certainly this very building, 30 or so stories up, would be inhabited, but it was equally certain that they could probably never get there. The lowest levels of floors were sealed off in order to keep dangerous beings from ground level, whether sentient or not, from making it up into the populated areas.
They ran silently down the hall until Bail's head began to pound so severely it almost blinded him. "Stop!" he cried through clenched teeth. Leaning against a wall, he clutched desperately at his head. Padme and Jar Jar backtracked to stand next to him.
"Your nose is bleeding again," Padme observed in a mild tone, but her eyes betrayed her concern. Bail pressed his sleeve to his nose, and when he lowered his arm, the cuff was stained with blood.
"I want to put as much distance between them and us as possible before we stop," Padme continued.
Bail grunted. "I told you I'd think of a nickname for you. How's this: `Madam General.' You are certainly qualified."
Padme didn't find it amusing. Ignoring his comment, she asked, "Do you have any advice in terms of which direction we should be heading?"
"I have no idea," he answered, each word clipped with pain. "We could try going up, but we would have to go a very long way before even hoping to run across the populated levels. At the ground level, some areas are populated and others are not. Depending on where we are, we could head for one of the city's plazas. They will also be guarded, but someone might see us and let us through."
"We could steal a speeder," Padme suggested.
"You hotwire vehicles, too? Your talents never end. Still, I wouldn't count on being able to steal a speeder. I doubt we'll even find anything that works. You have no idea how dangerous the ground level is."
Padme set her jaw. "So you've already told us. But I'm not one to give up."
"Wonderful," Bail wheezed. "I'm inspired by your confidence. They do say ignorance breeds peace of mind."
"Look, you chose to come with us," she retorted.
"So I did, and I'm not saying I want to go back. But if you're the General of this party and Jar Jar is the surveillance expert, I get to be the worrier." He searched his sleeve for a clean spot to press to his still-bleeding nose.
"All right," Padme relented. She eyed him. "Are you able to continue?"
He nodded. "But I can't run anymore, my head hurts too much. I don't suppose you have painkillers stashed away in your hairdo or something?"
She gave him a tight-lipped smile and patted him on the shoulder, then nodded to Jar Jar and headed on down the hall.
Bail squeezed his eyes shut and uttered a quick prayer before following them. /Ben, please find us/. He knew that Jedi Knights could sometimes sense people telepathically, even non-Jedi, but he had no idea if Obi-Wan could sense him over so great a distance. And what about Anakin? As precocious as the boy was, was his bond with Padme strong enough to lead him to her?
He fervently hoped so, because without the Jedi, Bail doubted they would make it far, with or without bounty hunters on their trail.
*****
Eventually they found a way out of the building. It was still daylight outside, and although no direct sunlight penetrated this far down to the planet's surface, there was enough light to temporarily blind them after having been in the dark building for so long. Their eyes adjusted quickly, though, and it was evident that the Hammer had chosen to secret them in one of the unpopulated regions. As the self-appointed worrier, Bail wasn't sure whether this was good news or bad news. While they were unlikely to run into any unfriendlies, it also meant they were less likely to find any help getting out, and it would make their trail easier for the bounty hunters to follow.
The buildings were far too tall for Bail to recognize any landmark, so they had to strike out blindly. They debated whether it was better to stay in the streets and trust Jar Jar's ears to alert them to when they were being followed, or to enter another building for its comparative shelter, but Bail's head still hurt too much for him to really care. Padme was convinced that their captors would not discover them to be missing for a while, so they stuck to the streets for now.
Before long, however, it became apparent they would need to find food, and more importantly, water. The lower level teemed with life, albeit not of an appetizing kind, and since Jar Jar was accustomed to hunting for food on Naboo, they would probably not go hungry. Water, however, was another matter. Certainly liquid accumulated at ground level. Waste water and days old rain, not to mention precipitations of a more questionable nature, ran down the buildings and through the streets in odiferous streams, but it was hardly potable. Another sarcastic inquiry from Bail revealed that neither Padme nor Jar Jar carried decontamination tablets concealed on their person. Finding enough fuel among the detritus on the streets in order to boil water was only slightly less likely than finding a suitable container to boil water in.
As night fell, the dilemma remained unsolved. They sought shelter in another building, and Jar Jar, his eyes better equipped for seeing in the dark, set out to hunt some food. Bail stretched out on the hard ground, grateful to be lying down. His head hurt so badly he had to fight just to keep from retching. Padme settled on the ground not far from him, her knees drawn up under her chin. "How are you doing?" she asked softly.
"I'll live," Bail croaked. "The rest will do me good." He paused, then ventured, "I'm sorry for my attitude earlier. There's no excuse for it."
"It's all right."
"No. The last thing we all need is for us to be fighting amongst ourselves. And it's not that I don't trust you. You certainly are far more prepared for this kind of adventure than I am. I suppose it's a matter of personality. I would rather deal with known dangers than unknown ones."
"Be that as it may, you know best out of the three of us what we can expect down here. What do you think is the best way for us to proceed?"
Bail rolled over onto his side, pressing his burning temple against the cool stone floor. At last he said, "I don't know. If the Force is with us, we'll pass by a landmark I'll recognize. That will give us a direction to aim for. Maybe we will find a speeder. Maybe we'll come across a populated area where someone will figure the reward for our recovery to be more lucrative than the bounty."
"How much of the ground level is populated?"
"No one knows."
Padme sighed heavily. "As our designated worrier, you're doing an excellent job."
*****
Jar Jar soon returned with an ample supply of small rodents, amphibians and flying mammals, all equally unappetizing. They were unable to find enough fuel for the fire, and what they found appeared to be toxic enough to poison the meat with its fumes, so they were forced to eat their food raw. Jar Jar was accustomed enough to it and fell to his meal with satisfied delight. Padme tried to follow his example, reminding herself that raw meat was considered a delicacy on many planets. She suspected that some of the varieties of fungus that grew everywhere in the damp, dark canyons were edible, but no one was sufficiently hungry yet to risk it.
They agreed that Bail should not take a watch, in the hope that a full night's sleep would render him fit enough in the morning. Padme took first watch, and soon after the others had fallen asleep, she went back into the streets to study them and formulate a plan.
She leaned her head all the way back and looked straight up into the murk above her. The buildings all around her were completely dark, and the lights above were so far away she could not see them. A layer of pollution coated the air about 10 or 20 stories above the ground, visible by day as a brown smog, and at night faintly glowing with the ample light she knew lay above. Less than a kilometer overhead lay civilization and safety. If she could walk up the side of the building, she could reach it in a short stroll. But the vertical distance might as well be lightyears, and on foot, who knew how far they would have to walk to get to freedom?
Coruscant. What an ugly planet. Up above she had been dazzled by the lights and colors, the myriad of beings, the variety of activities going on. The planet seemed glamorous and exciting, a cityscape of infinite possibilities. Yet the vibrant city above lay like a thin skin over a decaying skeleton, visible at ground level. Here the price the planet had paid to support the city became evident in endless valleys of decay and death.
The Naboo prized the natural environment. Their cities and architecture were designed to complement nature, not suppress it. Even the smallest room in the poorest house on Naboo could not be found without several plants or miniature water gardens in small pots, complete with fish and frogs. Naboo might seem backward to residents of the core worlds, and yet having seen Coruscant's underbelly, Padme appreciated her homeworld's aesthetics all the more. How could she even contemplate becoming a Senator and living so much of her future on this vile, unlovely world?
And yet her decision could not be made on the basis of personal preference and taste. In the few days she had been on Coruscant, the need here had become evident. The decay at ground level was infecting the upper levels as well, and it would spread to other worlds, even in the Outer Rim. Naboo could not remain isolated forever. If she chose to stay on her homeworld, there was no guarantee that the cancer spreading from Coruscant would not over-take her own people. Sooner or later, on one planet or another, she would have to take a stand.
Abruptly, Padme became aware of a faint, high-pitched whine. It took a moment for her to recognize it as an engine. She almost shouted out loud for joy at having found someone before she realized that someone was more likely to be an enemy than a friend. She ducked back into the building and crouched behind the door, waiting for the visitor to appear.
Several minutes passed before a searchlight shone on the street outside the door. She pulled back farther into the darkness and watched anxiously as the light beam swept back and forth across the street and up onto the sides of the buildings. Eventually, a speeder appeared, moving very slowly, about 30 kph. Too fast for a careful search, but not so fast that they wouldn't notice any obvious sign Padme and the others might have inadvertently left. She hid herself completely behind the door, trying to shield herself if they had scanners. Of course, if they had powerful scanners, they would be able to penetrate the buildings. Organic matter could effectively jam scanners, as could high electronic emissions. The Prince had said communicators didn't work down here, but did he mean only that they couldn't penetrate to the upper levels, or that they didn't work at all? Would scanners even work down at ground level? Either way there was nothing Padme could do about it. She held
her breath as she heard the speeder pass by her door. To her relief the engine's tone did not change, indicating that they were not slowing their pace or stopping. She counted silently to twenty, then risked poking her head out. The speeder was not far up the street, the passengers silhouetted against their search lights. One was bareheaded, and the other wore a helmet. The bounty hunters.
For a moment, Padme considered stepping out into the street and trying to kill them with her blaster, but she just as quickly dismissed the plan. Her tiny blaster was not very accurate, nor powerful over long distances. Anyway, for now they remained undiscovered. Why risk showing herself to the hunters? Let them remain hidden as long as they could. Silently Padme sank back into the shadows of the building's depths.
Author: Jedi Rita
Rated: PG-13
Chapter Five
Something was shaking her, cruelly dragging her from the haven of sleep. Consciousness slowly stole over her, accompanied by nausea and a bitter taste in her mouth. The shaking only made her feel worse, and she struck out, contacting with something smooth and cartigenous hovering over her head. She opened her eyes to see Jar Jar clutching his muzzle and staring down at her, his eyestalks extended to their fullest length.
"I'm sorry, Jar Jar," Padme apologized as she struggled to sit up.
"My was thinken yousa dead," he explained in a squeak.
"No, I'm not dead," she corrected, only to groan in misery as a fresh wave of nausea surged over her. She might not be dead, but she almost wished she were. She glanced frantically around the room, which was empty of any furniture and sadly lacking any receptacle for her to be sick in. Her stomach refused to be deterred, and groaning, she crawled into a corner and threw up until her body rid itself of the last vestiges of the poison used to sedate them.
Feeling only slightly better, she leaned back against the wall, dragging her sleeve across her mouth.
Worried, Jar Jar watched her. "Yousa oke-day?"
"I'll be fine," she replied, but her answer came out as a moan. She looked across the room at Prince Bail, slumped on the floor. It wasn't going to be pretty when he woke up, either. Jar Jar, at least, seemed to have been relatively unaffected by the poison. "Are you all right? How long have you been awake?"
"My no know," Jar Jar shrugged. "Mesa wake not so longo time. But you and da Big Boss no waken." His eyestalks swiveled back to the Prince. "Maybe hesa dead, too, eh?"
"No, he'll be all right. Whatever they gassed us with just makes us feel sick." She was beginning to feel a little better. Hopefully the poison would not prove to have lasting effects.
Her alertness returning, she focused her attention on the room. Even without furniture, the room was not completely empty. The floor was littered with crumbled plaster fallen from the walls and ceiling, torn rags, crumpled plastic bottles and other detritus. The walls were gray and stained, riddled with cracks. The yellowish light was provided by a gas lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling. Padme had seldom ever seen one before. They were clearly not on a spaceship being carried off to who knows where. They were almost certainly still on Coruscant, but Padme had no idea the planet contained any place as rundown as this.
Bail began to stir, dragging himself awake. Padme waited while he, too, emptied his stomach into the corner as she had. When he stopped convulsing, she asked, "How are you feeling?"
He groaned. "I have had hangovers that were worse, but that was a long time ago. It doesn't exactly make me nostalgic for the good old days."
"You'll feel better in a minute," she counseled. As Bail waved a disbelieving hand in her direction, she glanced at Jar Jar. "You know the routine. Start checking in that corner, while I start here."
Jar Jar moved to do her bidding while Bail surveyed her with clouded eyes. "What are you doing?"
She put a finger to her lips, then began inspecting her side of the room. Within minutes she and Jar Jar discovered that the room was free of surveillance devices. It indeed seemed to be nothing more than a rundown building, although the door sported a good sized, mechanical lock. She turned back to the Prince. "No bugs," she announced.
He cocked an eyebrow. "What do you call that?" he asked, pointing at a brown insect half as big as his hand crawling up the wall.
"That's not what I meant."
Bail smiled. "I know. You're quite the professsional, aren't you?"
"I've learned to be prepared."
"Where are we?" Jar Jar asked.
Padme shrugged. "I don't know. I imagine we're somewhere on Coruscant."
"The lower levels, most likely," Bail pronounced, surveying the rundown walls. "Not good."
"Why?" Padme asked, seating herself next to him. "What are the lower levels like?"
"They were abandoned long ago as the city was built up. No one legitimate lives down here, and there are no services. No power, food, water, or transportation. Communication devices don't penetrate this far down. There's nothing here but pollution, criminals, and mutants."
Padme exchanged concerned looks with Jar Jar, but before she could comment, the lock clicked and the door swung open. A human entered and surveyed them. "Good," she pronounced. "You're all awake. Now let's see if you can walk." She raised a blaster in their direction, flicking the muzzle at them. The threesome got to their feet and exited the room, where they were flanked by several more armed guards of various species and led down a dimly lit hall into a larger room.
Padme quickly surveyed their captors. They were a motley bunch, bearing no insignia or uniforms. They looked for the most part relatively ordinary and harmless, though they sported expressions of intensity, even fanaticism. Only two of them, seated in a dark corner, showed any signs of real menace. The pair wore customized armor, combat boots, and weapons belts, and were more heavily armed than their comrades. The face of one was completely hidden underneath a helmet with a narrow, T-shaped eye slit, but her companion wore only a look of cool fierceness.
A blue-skinned Twi'lek who had been seated at a table in the center of the room stood up and approached them. "And how are our honored guests feeling?" she asked, not unpleasantly.
Before Bail could answer, Padme demanded, "Who are you, and what do you want with us?"
The Twi'lek laughed. "Straight to the point! Let me assure you, Your Highness, if you cooperate with us, no harm will come to you."
"You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical," Padme returned.
"Naturally," the Twi'lek smiled. She began to pace back and forth in front of them, strutting regally, as if she were performing before an audience. "We have no secrets here, either about our identity or our purpose in abducting you. I am Reena, and my comrades here comprise the Hammer, a faction of the True Life Movement. We feel that the time has come for more decisive action in order to protect the natural born."
"I have never heard of the Hammer," Prince Bail said.
"Of course not. This is our grand debut."
"What I meant was, I am unfamiliar with your principles," Bail amended, "your position on cloning. If you tell me about your viewpoint, we can perhaps open negotiations."
His offer was greeted with outright laughter around the room. Reena shook her head condescendingly. "We have no interest in negotiating with you, Bail Organa, Prince of Verbosity. All you do is talk, talk, talk. But on the subject of cloning there can be no debate." Her eyes narrowed in determination. "No compromise.
"We kidnapped you to make a point. You will deliver our demands for us, and for your sake, I hope the Senate will listen."
"You are surely aware that the Senate has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists," Bail mildly observed.
"Of course. They always say that, and then they always do. Do you really expect us to believe that they won't negotiate for the safe return of the popular and much-loved Senator of Alderaan? Especially when we show we mean business." She flicked a glance at several of her comrades who closed in on Bail, holding his arms behind his back, as Padme and Jar Jar were surrounded and shoved to the side. Dread filled Padme, but she knew there was nothing she could do. She glanced again at the twosome in the corner. The man looked on with interest, while the helmeted one sat forward in a pose of anticipation.
"Make it look good," Reena was saying, drawing Padme's attention back to Bail. A rather burly-looking Aqualish stepped forward, wearing armored gloves on his thick hands. He delivered a series of sharp blows to Bail's face, bloodying his nose, splitting his lip, and opening a gash above one eye. Padme winced at each blow, struggling not to cry out in protest. Beside her, Jar Jar trembled with fear.
The beating did not last long. "That's enough!" Reena ordered, and the Aqualish fell back. Bail was released, and he fell to his hands and knees, his limbs trembling as blood dripped from his face onto the floor. Aside from the two in the corner, Padme noticed that none of their captors seemed to have enjoyed the abuse. She even thought she could see the Twi'lek's lekku shiver with regret. "Get the camera ready," she instructed, her voice quiet, lacking in her earlier bravado. Several of the others set up the camera as Bail was plucked up off the floor, still gasping, and placed in a chair. Despite his injuries, he was amazingly calm and dignified.
Reena shoved a durasheet into his hand. "You will read this statement," she instructed, "insisting that this conference end at once and demanding that all cloning be outlawed immediately."
Glancing at the sheet, Bail said, "They'll never agree to such demands. Surely you must see that."
"Pray that they do, Your Highness," Reena counseled, "because for every day they don't, we'll be sending them body parts."
Jar Jar whimpered, and Padme reached out to take his hand and squeeze it, seeking to comfort herself as much as him.
The camera was set to record, and Bail complied, reading the Hammer's demands off the sheet. When he finished, they were led without word back to their prison.
For several minutes none of them spoke as they absorbed the reality of their predicament. Bail gingerly wiped the blood from his face, one eye now swollen shut. "Body parts," he mumbled with a levity that amazed Padme. "They might as well start with my teeth. I think they loosened several of them."
"No, no," Jar Jar whimpered. "Dey mutten be doen that."
"I thought you were generally perceived to be sympathetic to the True Life Movement," Padme observed.
"I am," Bail agreed.
"Then why target you?"
Bail shook his head. "I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. They clearly don't know what they're doing, an unknown group making extravagant demands. The Senate will not give in to them."
Padme absorbed this in silence. "They really won't?" she finally asked, leaving unspoken the dire consequences Reena had promised.
Bail met her gaze without flinching. "No."
Again there was a prolonged silence, broken finally when Bail chirped, "They say prosthetic limbs are better than the originals. Then again, with the cloning technology being proposed at this conference, I could be the first person to benefit from it. You needn't worry. Obi-Wan will find us before they disassemble too much of me."
Ignoring his last comment, Padme observed, "There's something else. Did you notice the two in the corner with all the weapons?"
"I was a little distracted," Bail admitted.
"They didn't look at all like the others," Padme observed.
Jar Jar nodded. "Dey looked like deysa ready for a war."
Padme added, "I think there is more than one faction here. And I doubt those two are interested in demands, much less negotiations."
Bail frowned. "What do you think that means?"
"I think it means we can't afford to stay around here waiting for the Jedi to find us."
Alarmed, Bail exclaimed, "You can't possibly be thinking of breaking out of here. Even if we succeeded, we are at ground level. You don't understand the dangers."
"Maybe not, but I'll wager those two are bounty hunters. I'd rather take my chances out there than wait for those bounty hunters to act."
"Bounty hunters? Now, don't jump to conclusions!"
"What else could they be?" Padme demanded. "Bounty hunters or mercenaries, regardless of the specifics, I think they are infiltrators with their own agenda. Didn't you say that there are a lot more interests at stake in the cloning issue than medical concerns? Genetic engineering, breeding slaves, factions who want cloning technology with no benevolent intentions in mind."
"Now you're really stretching it," Bail protested, but he didn't sound like he believed himself.
"Regardless of what Reena said, we will not be able to leave here alive," Padme warned. "The question is, do you want to take your chance and get out with all your limbs, or do you really want them to start hacking you to pieces first?"
Her certainty shocked him into silence, and he gulped hard.
Padme turned to Jar Jar. "Do you still have your vibroblade?"
To Bail's surprise, the Gungan nodded, unhooking his belt buckle and folding it out to make a knife. Meanwhile Padme removed several pieces of what Bail had thought were jewelry and fitted them together to form a tiny blaster. He slowly shook his head as she extracted several pins from her hair to reveal a durasteel stiletto the size of a large sewing needle and a lock-picking device. "Do you always dress for the occasion, Your Majesty?" he inquired in amazement.
Padme crouched by the door inspecting the lock. "After the Trade Federation invaded my planet, I learned to be prepared for anything."
"So you said earlier. I didn't realize how seriously you meant it." He watched her progress on the door with growing agitation. "Are you certain this is a good idea? We don't know if the door is guarded."
"No guards," Jar Jar assured him. "Mesa hear if dey were."
"Gungans have excellent hearing," Padme remarked as she jiggled the pick through a tiny opening in the door handle.
"The door could be rigged with an alarm," Bail continued faintly.
"No. No power, no wires. Nutten. Mesa check," Jar Jar said with simple assurance. His large ears perked up at the tiniest click, signaling that Padme had disengaged the lock.
She turned back to Bail and raised an eyebrow in inquiry. "It's your choice," she offered. "They may not have threatened Jar Jar and me yet, but I don't think they took us by accident. You can come with us and risk death in one piece, or stay here and wait to be dismantled."
"Well, when you put it that way," Bail gave her a weak smile, "I am rather attached to my parts."
Without another word, Padme nodded and opened the door, stepping out into the hall, Jar Jar close behind her. Bail followed, struggling to still his trembling. His heart pounded so loudly in his ears that a blaster fight could ensue in the hall and Bail doubted he would even hear it. He hoped the Gungan's hearing was as good as Padme said it was.
She closed the door behind them and slid the tiny stiletto into the lock, breaking it in an effort to further delay their captors. Then she nodded to Jar Jar, who took the lead, gliding silently down the hall. He paused at each door, each juncture of the corridor, listening intently for any sign of their captors' presence.
As they neared one hallway they could hear voices coming up the corridor. Jar Jar quickly led them back a couple of doors to a closet they had passed before. The three of them barely fit inside, squeezing up against each other in order to shut the door all the way. Bail's head began to pound in earnest, adrenaline making his headache worse. He had been abducted once before, and like Padme and Jar Jar, he had been mentally trained to cope with hostage situations, to remain calm, to seek to establish rapport with his captors, to negotiate with them for his release. But unlike Padme and Jar Jar, he had not been trained to undertake his own rescue. He had always relied on others to keep him safe, and he had no reason to doubt that Obi-Wan would find him. That is, Obi-Wan would have found them if they had remained with their captors. But how was the Jedi to find them when they were running around in Coruscant's treacherous ground level? Any trail they might try to leave would
lead the bounty hunters, if that was indeed what they were, right to them as well. This escape attempt had to be, without a doubt, the stupidest thing Bail had ever consented to.
But he had no chance to protest, even if he wanted to. After a good length of time, Jar Jar opened the door onto a once again empty corridor and led them on. The next door he led them through opened out into a large hallway. They had evidently left the suite of rooms the Hammer occupied and now entered the main building itself. While there was no artificial light in the hall, the walls were covered with a bioluminescent algae that provided just enough light for them to see by.
Without a word, Jar Jar loped off down the hallway, Padme close behind him, and Bail bringing up the rear. It evidently never occurred to either of his comrades to try to seek a way up. Almost certainly this very building, 30 or so stories up, would be inhabited, but it was equally certain that they could probably never get there. The lowest levels of floors were sealed off in order to keep dangerous beings from ground level, whether sentient or not, from making it up into the populated areas.
They ran silently down the hall until Bail's head began to pound so severely it almost blinded him. "Stop!" he cried through clenched teeth. Leaning against a wall, he clutched desperately at his head. Padme and Jar Jar backtracked to stand next to him.
"Your nose is bleeding again," Padme observed in a mild tone, but her eyes betrayed her concern. Bail pressed his sleeve to his nose, and when he lowered his arm, the cuff was stained with blood.
"I want to put as much distance between them and us as possible before we stop," Padme continued.
Bail grunted. "I told you I'd think of a nickname for you. How's this: `Madam General.' You are certainly qualified."
Padme didn't find it amusing. Ignoring his comment, she asked, "Do you have any advice in terms of which direction we should be heading?"
"I have no idea," he answered, each word clipped with pain. "We could try going up, but we would have to go a very long way before even hoping to run across the populated levels. At the ground level, some areas are populated and others are not. Depending on where we are, we could head for one of the city's plazas. They will also be guarded, but someone might see us and let us through."
"We could steal a speeder," Padme suggested.
"You hotwire vehicles, too? Your talents never end. Still, I wouldn't count on being able to steal a speeder. I doubt we'll even find anything that works. You have no idea how dangerous the ground level is."
Padme set her jaw. "So you've already told us. But I'm not one to give up."
"Wonderful," Bail wheezed. "I'm inspired by your confidence. They do say ignorance breeds peace of mind."
"Look, you chose to come with us," she retorted.
"So I did, and I'm not saying I want to go back. But if you're the General of this party and Jar Jar is the surveillance expert, I get to be the worrier." He searched his sleeve for a clean spot to press to his still-bleeding nose.
"All right," Padme relented. She eyed him. "Are you able to continue?"
He nodded. "But I can't run anymore, my head hurts too much. I don't suppose you have painkillers stashed away in your hairdo or something?"
She gave him a tight-lipped smile and patted him on the shoulder, then nodded to Jar Jar and headed on down the hall.
Bail squeezed his eyes shut and uttered a quick prayer before following them. /Ben, please find us/. He knew that Jedi Knights could sometimes sense people telepathically, even non-Jedi, but he had no idea if Obi-Wan could sense him over so great a distance. And what about Anakin? As precocious as the boy was, was his bond with Padme strong enough to lead him to her?
He fervently hoped so, because without the Jedi, Bail doubted they would make it far, with or without bounty hunters on their trail.
*****
Eventually they found a way out of the building. It was still daylight outside, and although no direct sunlight penetrated this far down to the planet's surface, there was enough light to temporarily blind them after having been in the dark building for so long. Their eyes adjusted quickly, though, and it was evident that the Hammer had chosen to secret them in one of the unpopulated regions. As the self-appointed worrier, Bail wasn't sure whether this was good news or bad news. While they were unlikely to run into any unfriendlies, it also meant they were less likely to find any help getting out, and it would make their trail easier for the bounty hunters to follow.
The buildings were far too tall for Bail to recognize any landmark, so they had to strike out blindly. They debated whether it was better to stay in the streets and trust Jar Jar's ears to alert them to when they were being followed, or to enter another building for its comparative shelter, but Bail's head still hurt too much for him to really care. Padme was convinced that their captors would not discover them to be missing for a while, so they stuck to the streets for now.
Before long, however, it became apparent they would need to find food, and more importantly, water. The lower level teemed with life, albeit not of an appetizing kind, and since Jar Jar was accustomed to hunting for food on Naboo, they would probably not go hungry. Water, however, was another matter. Certainly liquid accumulated at ground level. Waste water and days old rain, not to mention precipitations of a more questionable nature, ran down the buildings and through the streets in odiferous streams, but it was hardly potable. Another sarcastic inquiry from Bail revealed that neither Padme nor Jar Jar carried decontamination tablets concealed on their person. Finding enough fuel among the detritus on the streets in order to boil water was only slightly less likely than finding a suitable container to boil water in.
As night fell, the dilemma remained unsolved. They sought shelter in another building, and Jar Jar, his eyes better equipped for seeing in the dark, set out to hunt some food. Bail stretched out on the hard ground, grateful to be lying down. His head hurt so badly he had to fight just to keep from retching. Padme settled on the ground not far from him, her knees drawn up under her chin. "How are you doing?" she asked softly.
"I'll live," Bail croaked. "The rest will do me good." He paused, then ventured, "I'm sorry for my attitude earlier. There's no excuse for it."
"It's all right."
"No. The last thing we all need is for us to be fighting amongst ourselves. And it's not that I don't trust you. You certainly are far more prepared for this kind of adventure than I am. I suppose it's a matter of personality. I would rather deal with known dangers than unknown ones."
"Be that as it may, you know best out of the three of us what we can expect down here. What do you think is the best way for us to proceed?"
Bail rolled over onto his side, pressing his burning temple against the cool stone floor. At last he said, "I don't know. If the Force is with us, we'll pass by a landmark I'll recognize. That will give us a direction to aim for. Maybe we will find a speeder. Maybe we'll come across a populated area where someone will figure the reward for our recovery to be more lucrative than the bounty."
"How much of the ground level is populated?"
"No one knows."
Padme sighed heavily. "As our designated worrier, you're doing an excellent job."
*****
Jar Jar soon returned with an ample supply of small rodents, amphibians and flying mammals, all equally unappetizing. They were unable to find enough fuel for the fire, and what they found appeared to be toxic enough to poison the meat with its fumes, so they were forced to eat their food raw. Jar Jar was accustomed enough to it and fell to his meal with satisfied delight. Padme tried to follow his example, reminding herself that raw meat was considered a delicacy on many planets. She suspected that some of the varieties of fungus that grew everywhere in the damp, dark canyons were edible, but no one was sufficiently hungry yet to risk it.
They agreed that Bail should not take a watch, in the hope that a full night's sleep would render him fit enough in the morning. Padme took first watch, and soon after the others had fallen asleep, she went back into the streets to study them and formulate a plan.
She leaned her head all the way back and looked straight up into the murk above her. The buildings all around her were completely dark, and the lights above were so far away she could not see them. A layer of pollution coated the air about 10 or 20 stories above the ground, visible by day as a brown smog, and at night faintly glowing with the ample light she knew lay above. Less than a kilometer overhead lay civilization and safety. If she could walk up the side of the building, she could reach it in a short stroll. But the vertical distance might as well be lightyears, and on foot, who knew how far they would have to walk to get to freedom?
Coruscant. What an ugly planet. Up above she had been dazzled by the lights and colors, the myriad of beings, the variety of activities going on. The planet seemed glamorous and exciting, a cityscape of infinite possibilities. Yet the vibrant city above lay like a thin skin over a decaying skeleton, visible at ground level. Here the price the planet had paid to support the city became evident in endless valleys of decay and death.
The Naboo prized the natural environment. Their cities and architecture were designed to complement nature, not suppress it. Even the smallest room in the poorest house on Naboo could not be found without several plants or miniature water gardens in small pots, complete with fish and frogs. Naboo might seem backward to residents of the core worlds, and yet having seen Coruscant's underbelly, Padme appreciated her homeworld's aesthetics all the more. How could she even contemplate becoming a Senator and living so much of her future on this vile, unlovely world?
And yet her decision could not be made on the basis of personal preference and taste. In the few days she had been on Coruscant, the need here had become evident. The decay at ground level was infecting the upper levels as well, and it would spread to other worlds, even in the Outer Rim. Naboo could not remain isolated forever. If she chose to stay on her homeworld, there was no guarantee that the cancer spreading from Coruscant would not over-take her own people. Sooner or later, on one planet or another, she would have to take a stand.
Abruptly, Padme became aware of a faint, high-pitched whine. It took a moment for her to recognize it as an engine. She almost shouted out loud for joy at having found someone before she realized that someone was more likely to be an enemy than a friend. She ducked back into the building and crouched behind the door, waiting for the visitor to appear.
Several minutes passed before a searchlight shone on the street outside the door. She pulled back farther into the darkness and watched anxiously as the light beam swept back and forth across the street and up onto the sides of the buildings. Eventually, a speeder appeared, moving very slowly, about 30 kph. Too fast for a careful search, but not so fast that they wouldn't notice any obvious sign Padme and the others might have inadvertently left. She hid herself completely behind the door, trying to shield herself if they had scanners. Of course, if they had powerful scanners, they would be able to penetrate the buildings. Organic matter could effectively jam scanners, as could high electronic emissions. The Prince had said communicators didn't work down here, but did he mean only that they couldn't penetrate to the upper levels, or that they didn't work at all? Would scanners even work down at ground level? Either way there was nothing Padme could do about it. She held
her breath as she heard the speeder pass by her door. To her relief the engine's tone did not change, indicating that they were not slowing their pace or stopping. She counted silently to twenty, then risked poking her head out. The speeder was not far up the street, the passengers silhouetted against their search lights. One was bareheaded, and the other wore a helmet. The bounty hunters.
For a moment, Padme considered stepping out into the street and trying to kill them with her blaster, but she just as quickly dismissed the plan. Her tiny blaster was not very accurate, nor powerful over long distances. Anyway, for now they remained undiscovered. Why risk showing herself to the hunters? Let them remain hidden as long as they could. Silently Padme sank back into the shadows of the building's depths.