Chapter Eleven: Battle for Naboo
Paonga Swamps, Naboo
The grey light of morning just made it through the gauzy mist surrounding the Paonga Swamps. Shadows moved within, and the throbbing drones of didgeridoos made the ground tremble.
All at once the shadows took on substance, and two thousand Gungans emerged from the fog, on foot and on kaadu. The haze coupled with the mourning calls of their didgeridoos gave them a spectral quality as they slowly took to the grass plains in formation. They marched for a kilometer, shaking the swamp mud from their feet in the midst of their loping strides. With a final growling blast from the didgeridoos, the Grand Army halted at the foot of a low rise. The shields on the backs of their massive fambas activated with an electric hum, spreading a crackling blue membrane over them. Then they stood motionless, the seasoned warriors frowning ahead unflinchingly, the younger ones swallowing hard as they heard the faint rumble of the approaching enemy.
Armored assault tanks and droid transporters reached the crest of the hill, the smaller tanks appearing like a swarm of ants flowing over the top, and the large transporters like glossy grey beetles creeping among them. Fighter jets roared overhead.
The Gungans were not acting under any pretenses. Even the bumbling General Binks understood that they had not a chance against the droid army. Their only purpose was to serve as temporary living targets, and it was likely that many of them would die today. Each Gungan glanced briefly at his neighbor, wandering which of them would leave the field and which would remain on it at nightfall, bleeding into the sandy soil. One by one, they squared their shoulders, accepting whatever fate the Gods had selected for them. training their thoughts on the young and impetuous queen still concealed somewhere behind them. The hope of all of them weighted her slim shoulders.
"Da acts of da brave be songs to da guds!" Captain Tarpals cried, shaking his cesta spear toward the droids menacingly.
The foot soldiers tightened their formation around his kaadu as they saw the compartments of the transport ships open, shelves of gleaming folded droids slowly lowered to the ground. The didgeridoos cried out into the still air.
They Queen and her party made their way along the banks of the Paonga, keeping to the safe concealment of the swamp fog. After a few miles they left the lake banks for a winding path cut into the smooth granite of the cliffs abutting Theed. Soon they were within the Verdugo Falls themselves, the foamy curtain of water flickering with prismatic light and a distorted view of the panorama beyond. Sabe saw the blackness of the tunnel that interrupted the smooth grey surface of the rock wall. "That's it," she said to Padme. "That will take us right into the square."
They were very close to the city now. A few hundred feet beyond the rock face and Theed would be in sight. Overhead they heard the scream of enemy fighters, hastening to meet the Gungans in the grasslands, and far in the distance they could hear the mournful call of the Gungan signalers along with the drone of heavy tanks.
Captain Panaka had collected a few medics, some police and more guards who had been attempting to resist the invasion in Theed. But there were only enough to fill three armed speeders, which would be accompanying them through the passages into the city. Everyone gathered around Padme, as she delivered low-voiced final instructions. Sabe took a deep breath and gathered her reserves, traveling the tunnels with her memory, following them into the square, trying to ascertain what they would find there, how they would proceed.
Suddenly the hairs along the back of her neck stood on end. She opened her eyes to find Obi-Wan standing next to her, looking at her sidelong. She felt her calm giving way to giddy awareness of his proximity.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
He looked toward the tunnel, his jaw set. She recognized the expression, that of a warrior considering the battle ahead. But then the firm lines around his mouth relaxed. "Even the best disguise tends to melt before the eyes of one strong in the Force."
Sabe stiffened, resenting both the implication and her own distraction at his nearness. "Your point?"
"I feel the presence of the dark warrior from the desert," Obi-Wan said.
Sabe felt icy fingers playing along her spine. She recalled winds of destruction, and a merciless, echoing voice.
"If we should encounter him, do not attempt to sway him with tricks," Obi-Wan continued, looking down at her. "Leave him to us. Take the Queen and run."
Sabe was speechless, touched by the idea that he had taken the time to consider her safety in the heady confusion of the battle preparations.
He was silent for a moment and then said in a low voice, "We are none of us perfect in our duty, Sabe." His blue eyes mirrored clear regret. "I too have struggled with my pride these past few days."
Sabe stared at him. He gave her the smallest of encouraging smiles and walked on ahead to join his Master.
As they entered the tunnel, Sabe realized there were one or two details she and Padme had not considered. Though she and the Jedi moved easily enough over the rugged floor of the secret passages, the others stumbled often and sometimes ran head-on into the walls. Sabe found herself shouting out guidance, but she still heard irritated cries of pain and thuds as those behind her struggled on. The speeders that followed up the rear just barely cleared the walls, and Sabe winced as she heard the screech of rock connecting with metal. It seemed like hours until they finally reached the fork made by two tunnels converging, but in reality it was only about thirty minutes.
"We must separate now," Sabe said. "The left side leads to the columns just behind the hangar. And you want the rest of us to approach the square from beneath the statue?"
"Yes," Padme said "My team should proceed to the left."
The Jedi, Eirtae, and half the guards moved on ahead. The young Queen lingered. She found Sabe with some difficulty in the dark. Sabe felt her cool, slim hand on her cheek. "Take care," she said softly.
Sabe's eyes prickled, but she nodded with a grin. "Nothing we can't handle, right Rabe?" She felt the other handmaiden's shoulder against hers in the dimness, and her determined smile.
Without warning, Padme seized Sabe in her arms, pressing her to her heart. She was gone just as suddenly, running down the passage to catch up with the others.
The tunnel Sabe, Panaka, Rabe, and the others followed opened beneath the statue of King Jafan in the square of the city. Sabe glanced up at the statue as they crept out beneath it. She thought Jafan had never looked so grand with his split lip, depicted in the battle that would end with the Great Time of Peace. Though she had only worn that scar as a decoy, she felt its weight on her heart. As they passed, she pressed her fingers to her lips and touched the base of the statue.
They surveyed the square. There were armored assault tanks about fifty feet away, and one stationary squadron of fifteen or twenty droids near them. Another group of droids marched by, leading prisoners secured one to the next by chains. Among them were two familiar hooded figures, one nearly losing her footing as she was jerked along at an insupportable pace.
"That's Sache and Yane!" Rabe gasped at Sabe's elbow. Sabe squeezed her arm as the group of prisoners and droids moved out of sight.
Across the square Sabe caught a flash of red and saw Padme with the Jedi and the rest of her team. Captain Panaka pointed his laser signal in their direction, and there was an answering flash. He waved behind him, and one of the speeders loaded with the last of the Naboovian resistance fighters slowly curved around the base of the statue, lowering a cannon. Sabe closed her eyes, reaching out with hesitant fingers of her consciousness to the inner glow of the force. It shivered.
A bolt of energy sizzled across the square. One of the tanks near Padme's group exploded into orange flame.
The responses of the droids in the square was immediate, a chorus of metallic monotones; "There they are…after them…open fire." They leveled their blasters and Sabe and the others were bombarded with streaks of blue and green light. They all ducked quickly, trying to aim around the side of the wall, fighting one another for space enough to do so. As she returned fire, Sabe saw Padme and the Jedi hurry into the open hangar door followed by a group of pilots. She bent her head over her blaster, trying to keep her aim as steady as possible as her team methodically began to clear the square.
Her hands were slick on the blaster, her trigger finger quivering just slightly. But she felt an odd sort of detachment as she cursed the cold sweat on her palms and the unsteady effects of adrenaline on her aim. Her focus was narrowed to her targets, and objects and blaster light seemed to slow to a standstill around her. I'm spinning, she thought irritably, totally spinning away. I must get it together or I will die.
Closing her eyes momentarily, she called on the inner quiet, the deep current that she had to navigate. Light danced behind her eyes and they snapped open. She leapt just in time to dodge cannon fire that annihilated the statue of King Jafen just behind her. Stone rained to the pavement.
"Hurry! We have to get inside!" Captain Panaka shouted, beckoning wildly at her and those around her. There were fewer in their party than there had been before. She leapt and stumbled over bodies, trying not to look down as she followed the Captain and the others across the now-cleared square to the hangar.
Their problems were not over once they made it inside. Reinforcement droids poured through the maintenance door, identifying Sabe as a primary target and jogging toward her on metal feet.
"The Queen, kill the Queen!" commanded an emotionless robotic voice.
Sabe found herself faced with six battle droids, their blasters all trained at her throat. Closing her eyes, she fired randomly, expecting at any moment to feel her flesh being rent apart by scorching-hot beams. Instead, she heard explosions, and when she opened her eyes, all six lay smoking and twitching. She turned.
Eirtae stood behind her, still glaring down the barrel of her blaster.
"What I wouldn't give for your eye!" Sabe exclaimed.
Eirtae looked at her. A corner of her mouth turned up. "What I wouldn't give for your reckless disregard for the safety of your own skin."
Was that some sort of roundabout compliment? But Sabe had no time to analyze it, for the pilots had now reached their ships, and they had to split their time between shooting at the droids and dodging the fighters that now rocketed past and soared out of the hangar.
"This way!" Padme cried from the other end of the hangar, and the two groups converged again, headed for the door to the underground power plant that energized the palace and most of the city of Theed. If they could make it down the catwalk through the center, they would be able to take a tunnel right into the throne room.
But it was not to be. They all skidded to a stop as the power plant door lifted slowly, revealing a figure completely enveloped in a black cloak. Suddenly Sabe's hold on the Force dropped as if it had never been. She gasped as she recognized the sick yellow eyes and the chaotic aura. An overwhelming wave of dark power crashed over her, causing a wave of nausea to ripple through her stomach. She wasn't the only one who sensed it. Everyone froze, unsure at first what to do.
It leeched energy from them, replacing it with soul-freezing fear. Images played out in Sabe's mind like the reel of a horror film; two thousand Gungan bodies rotting in the hot midday sun, Rabe and Eirtae lying bleeding and broken on the palace floor, the Jedi torn asunder, Padme herself shrinking before the insane grin of the dark creature. She felt her own loathsomeness, her own inadequacy, pathetically pliant before the force power of this being, turned as easily as a chess piece. She felt the monster's voice in her head, laughing maniacally as it chanted unceasingly.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion
Through passion I gain strength
Through strength I gain power
Through power I gain victory."
She felt herself growing faint. Nothing could break through this. Nothing could penetrate this blackness.
Then, light bled through, and a hand fell on Sabe's shoulder.
Act as a candle in dark places, and there the Force will find you.
Sabe turned to look, and there were the steady grey pools of Qui-Gon's eyes. Obi-Wan stood close behind him. It seemed as if a corona surrounded them, and their gentle energy slowed her speeding heart and released her soul from the evil that had imprisoned it a moment before. They looked and felt like gods. Her lips parted in awe as she watched them doff their cloaks with perfect calm.
"We'll handle this," Qui-Gon said, stepping through the group to face the dark lord squarely. He and Obi-Wan stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Blue and green blades hissed into the air.
"Come on," Padme ordered. "We'll take the long way."
Sabe hesitated for a half-second, staring at the master and his apprentice. But the Queen's authoritative tone brought her back to herself, and she turned to follow as Padme made for the maintenance hall on the right of the hangar.
Immediately, three droidekas rolled into their path and righted themselves onto metal clawlike feet. Sabe ducked with the others as a volley of laser fire surrounded them. Their counter-fire richocheted uselessly off the luminescent shields of the destroyer droids. They were running out of options.
All at once, the droidekas seemed to self-destruct, blossoming into yellow flame. They turned as a group just in time to see one remaining fighter rolling past, picking up speed for takeoff as it approached the open end of the hangar.
"Lucky he got caught behind," Padme remarked as she ran off down the corridor.
"No such thing as luck," Sabe muttered, staring after the disappearing fighter worriedly. She'd felt a distinct pulse of energy from within that ship.
"Don't just stand around like that!" Eirtae shouted. "Let's go!"
The maintenance hallway was completely clear, but just as they entered the castle and faced the main stairway, they found their path blocked by a squadron of droids able to slow them down sufficiently to end Padme's patience. "We don't have time for this, Captain," she yelled to Panaka.
He looked toward the large windows streaming with light. "Ascension guns!" He yelled back, and shot out the transparisteel. He and Padme scrambled out the window, followed by four other guards.
Eirtae moved to follow, but Sabe put her hand on her shoulder. "No! We'll cover them! Fight our way up the main stairway!"
Eirtae shrugged doubtfully. "Whatever you say."
I'm never going to let her forget how agreeable she is being, Sabe thought. They concentrated their fire on the droids on the stairs, slowly making their way up.
As she became more and more immersed in the tension of battle, Sabe began to hear the roar of blood in her ears, the throb of her own pulse in all her extremities.
It was nothing new to her, this rush of adrenaline, this singing battle song in her veins. Though from a certain point of view this was her first battle, in many ways she'd always been fighting. As a child she'd fought just to stay alive, scrambling and clawing her way over the property and bodies of others. Even in the temple her attention had constantly been trained over her shoulder, waiting for an attack from behind.
But to fight for survival….Every living thing does that. It isn't courage. To fight merely for survival is nothing.
Sabe shook her head, trying to concentrate. It was slow going, but at last they reached a level where Sabe could access the tunnels again. She felt a strong tug in the Force. "The Queen has been captured," she said to Rabe and Eirtae. "There is no time to lose."
As they scrambled through the dark tunnels, Sabe yelled directions to the others, trying to warn them of the twists and turns in the path. They stumbled and groaned along anyway. At last they reached a dead end, and Sabe found the panel that lifted the wall away. Blinking against the blinding spill of light, the group ran out, peering around a column. They were just outside the throne room door now, and from their vantage point they could see into it, where Padme, Captain Panaka, and the guards had been imprisoned by ten or fifteen droids. Nute Gunray stood before them, his ugly reptilian face made even more so by his expression of self-satisfaction.
"Now what?" Eirtae whispered in dismay.
Knowing that there are bigger things to fight for than just survival. Knowing freedom, beauty, and justice. Those are Padme's gifts to me.
Sabe smiled grimly. "Now, we make ourselves as obvious as possible," she replied.
Jumping to her feet, she strode down the middle of the hallway. "Sabe, what the-" Eirtae hissed, and caught at her wrist, but she shook off the girl's grip. After a moment she heard the others following and she broke into a run.
"Viceroy!" She shouted. Everyone in the throne room turned to stare at her. "Your occupation has ended here!" She fired, and to her delight, hit two droids squarely on either side of Nute Gunray.
Darting to the right with the guards and Rabe and Eirtae just behind her, she laughed to herself as she heard Gunray's shout. "After her! This one is a decoy!" A stream of battle droids flowed out of the throne room doors.
Secure the doors, Padme, secure the doors, she prayed silently, and then beamed with satisfaction as she heard the giant doors of the throne room slam shut.
Eirtae caught up to her as they neared the Great Hall, blaster fire whistling around them and taking chunks out of the columns on either side. "Uh, Sabe? Was there a plan in place here?"
"Of course!" Sabe replied with a laugh. "Just shoot until there aren't any more of them!"
Eirtae groaned as they entered the Great Hall and the droids flooded in behind them. "Cut them off!" she shouted, and the guards closed and locked the doors.
It seemed that the handmaidens and the guards' movements were all choreographed in a deadly dance as they dispatched the droids in the Great Hall with ruthless efficiency. But apparently one side had not been secured, for around a column rolled three more of the insect-like droidekas. Sabe felt her companions hesitate. Their blasters would be useless against the machines' auto shields, and there were no fighter jets around to help them now.
Having the freedom to choose what I will love and what I will fight for, that was Qui-Gon's gift to me.
Sabe faced them and closed her eyes, giving herself over to her feelings. She became a wave again in the limitless ocean, her companions' presences sharpening to brilliant points of light. The Force swirled around them all, forming a turbulent crisis point somewhere above. Her eyes flew open. "The chandeliers!" she cried, and everyone trained their weapons on the huge candelabras just over the droidekas. After a few direct hits, the lights swayed and fell upon the machines, overloading their shield generators with their tremendous weight. The flickering blue of their shields disappeared altogether as the chandeliers crashed to the floor, and the droidekas wiggled feebly under the debris, attempting to get clear of it.
"Oh, guys,' Eirtae said with an malicious twinkle in her blue eyes. "You all just picked the wrong handmaidens to mess with."
Sabe, Eirtae, and Rabe advanced on the damaged machines, their blasters merciless as they turned the destroyers into smoking piles of dust.
A/N: In case you are confused, didgeridoos are Austrailian instruments, and they have a fairly interesting history. They are little more than hollow tree trunks that have had the insides eaten by termites. The tube is cleaned and polished and one end is sealed with wax and used as a mouth piece. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to get a sound out of these things. But some anthropologists believe they may be one of the oldest instruments on Earth, possibly 40,000 years old!
Anyway, if you watch the battle scene in TPM, you will see the Gungans playing a similar instrument that pretty much sounds the same. So I decided they were the same, mostly because I think didgeridoos are really cool.
Another thing : I forgot to note it in a previous chapter, but the little sithie chant Maul keeps repeating is actually the Sith Code, as written in some book or other in the expanded universe. It is meant to directly mock the Jedi Code, and it ain't mine. I'm just borrowing it to make him creepy :-)
Not much else to say 'cept read n' review :-D