It's A Jungle Out There

The scout ship burst out of hyperspace in a flurry of colors, and the small ship shook alarmingly, parts rattling, as the Jedi inside tried to stabilize the ship. The ship had fared rather badly during the protracted hyperspace jumps, nearly breaking down along the way. Jaina had been cursing Polygon as they struggled with the ship through hyperspace. They were now within two planetary diameters of Nal Hutta, which was much greener than they remembered it to be.

"It's much greener than it used to be," remarked Jacen, looking at the others.

"Yeah, the Vong probably terra-formed it really well," replied Kirana Ti, who was busy sharpening her concealable dagger.

"Nah, they didn't terra-form Nal Hutta. This must have been the result of the planet being abandoned by the Hutts," said Dorsk 82, drawing stares from the others. He shrugged, "What? I can't read war documents?"

A shrill, piercing alarm sounded. The Jedi rushed to see what was going on, with Dorsk 82 and Kirana Ti manning the guns. They saw a cluster of large comets, over twenty of them, shooting around in elliptical orbits, shooting bright tails of superheated gas. The comets then turned to shoot towards them, one particularly fast one grazing their shields and coloring their sensor screens in blinding white light.

Jaina shouted at the rest of the Jedi, "Comets can't turn like that! They shouldn't even be turning around randomly in the first place!"

"Then thesssssseeee are no ordinary cometsssss, yes?" asked one of the Chaa triplets.

"I don't think so! Look!" shouted Jacen, as one of the comets sprouted a tail of vapor, and sprouted two 'horns'. The comet's horns then grew claws that resembled a crabbex's, which opened and closed in their direction.

Jaina jerked the ship into a barrel roll, narrowly avoiding the comet's flailing claws. The comet then tumbled to a halt, rotated to face them, and shot forward again. Kirana Ti cursed in Dathomirian, and let loose a volley of bright red quad-laser shots. The shots hit the comet, which glowed green in color, and then increased in speed. Curses flew around the cabin.

"Eat this, thingie!" shouted Dorsk 82, as he shot a triple-package of plasma space mines towards the comets, which had now formed an arrowhead formation, with the clawed comet as the point of the arrowhead.

The space mines shot off, spinning at amazingly fast speeds. As they approached the swarm of charging comets, they exploded in a ball of supercharged plasma, a flower of death that belched out pieces of the comets. The remaining comets, blown out of formation by the shockwaves of the blast, spun out of position, their plasma tails flashing in a futile attempt to get back on course. The Jedi steered their ship out of the comet's orbital area, moving down towards Nal Hutta.

"That was close," breathed Jaina, slumping in her seat, while the Chaa triplets hissed in relief, butting heads.

"Descending into the atmosphere… Wow!" said Jacen, who was now manning the sensors.

"What?" said one of the Chaa triplets.

"The oxygen concentration of the air has increased, and the water content too! The air is also much more humid than it was once!" exclaimed Jacen, in astonishment, "It must have taken some EXTREME terra-forming work to accomplish this."

"It sounds like an Ithorian greenhouse," remarked Kirana Ti, who had come down from the dorsal quad-laser turret.

"What'sssss a greenhousssse?" asked the triplets.

"It's a structure where people grow plants in a controlled environment. The temperature, soil type, and even atmosphere of a greenhouse are usually different from the planet it's on. That's how we grow exotic plants on Coruscant and other worlds," replied Jacen.

"Humansss," said one of the triplets, shaking his/ her head, "We'll never underssssstand them."

"Hey! We're… SITHSPIT!" cursed Jaina, as the ship rolled suddenly, throwing the Jedi inside around like rag dolls. On the sensor screens they saw a dark cloud of fast-moving shapes. Loud screeches were heard as the ship bucked and rolled, as though being hit by multiple projectiles simultaneously.

"What the kriff is happening?" asked Dorsk 82.

"I have no idea!" shouted Jaina, "We seem to be flying through a swarm of projectiles!"

Out of the blue, a long, metallic-looking spike pierced through the hull of the ship, which happened to be the ship's thinnest part. The spike retracted, and was followed by several more stabbing through at the same time. They could now hear the animal-like, loud screeching of whatever was attacking the ship. They also heard the metallic screeching sound of the ship's hull being scratched at by things. They frantically tried to clear the bridge, which now had many spikes sticking upwards through the floor. Looking through the unbroken transparisteel bridge view port, saw gigantic flying creatures flying around the ship, flapping their enormous wings. The creatures had long, beak-like protuberances and claws that glinted in the bright sunlight, as though the appendages were made of metal. Some of the creatures screeched from their wide-open mouths, baring rows of metallic-looking teeth.

"Jacen, distract them!" said Kirana Ti, who was firing off quad-laser blasts at the creatures, which mostly dodged the shots with surprising agility.

"I… can't!" cried Jacen, turning to look at her, panic in his eyes, "They're like empty holes in the Force! You know, like….like…. like an ysalamiri!"

The others stared at him, mouths agape.

"You mean these… things are Force-immune?" asked Dorsk 82.

"Yes, and they're swarming the belly of our ship!" yelled Jaina, as the ship was rocked around with greater intensity.

The floor was, by now, full of neat, ovoid puncture holes. As they bundled into an escape pod, the last thing they saw before the pod's hatch irised shut was the sight of several metallic-looking, bird-like claws that came through the bridge floor, which grazed the ceiling and ripped the ship's conduits and wiring to shreds.

xxx

The pod shot away from the ship with a roar of propellant engines. They crowded the pod's view port, watching the ship start to smoke at the bow. The creatures flew off, leaving the ship to fly forward, but at a sharp angle to the ground. The ship rolled several times, hitting trees as it crashed, showing its mangled ventral hull segment. It finally crashed into a colossal tree, exploding in a flower of flames. The pod finally succumbed to Nal Hutta's gravity, spinning in a graceless tumble to land with a crash on the ground. The Jedi exited the pod, which had now opened up. They were on a cliff, and the view before them was breathtaking.

The metal-limbed creatures were flying into a cluster of caves on the sides of the canyons adjacent to the cliff they were on. Below the cliff, they saw an ominous-looking, swampy area, shrouded in mist, with occasional flocks of small birds that rose into the air noisily. In the titanic trees surrounding the cliff, various animals were visible, ranging from brightly-colored ones to dark-toned, sinister-looking ones. They were awed with the sight, for Nal Hutta had been a wasteland since the Hutts had started living on it. Suddenly, a soft droning noise filled the air.

Turning around, they saw a flying swarm of things that formed a dark, cloudlike mass. As the cloud came closer, they saw that the approaching things were actually large spiders-somehow looking very much like the Kashyyyk Trap Spinner, but bigger and with transparent, insectoid wings, much like those of the Drongarian Flare-Wings. The spiders flew closer to them, and they ignited their drawn lightsabers, which only seemed to make the spiders hasten their aerial approach.

Kirana Ti, ever the jungle expert, let out a cry, "Look at that! They're climbing up the cliff walls as well! We're in a pincer attack formation!"

The others whirled to look, and saw that Kirana Ti was right; dozens of the spiders were swarming up the steep cliff walls, and were crawling up behind them in a rapidly-moving mass of wings, legs, and shiny eyes. The spiders came closer, and the Jedi tensed, prepping themselves for their next move. The spiders swarmed forward, venom dripping sinisterly from their clicking mandibles. Each spider had eight large eyes, which glinted menacingly with reflections of the morning sun. As they drew within eight meters of the Jedi, both the flying and the crawling swarms stopped their approach. The flying spiders landed, and the foremost spiders started jumping towards the Jedi in a series of bounding leaps, their wings unfolding so that they could glide, easily clearing two meters of distance, in a fast jump that brought them five meters in the air.

Jacen tried a Force push, but merely ruffled the short, spiky, maroon fur on the spiders' bodies, and made their wings flap slightly, as if blown by a weak wind. The spiders unfolded their wings, better balancing themselves in their jumps towards the Jedi, who had formed a rosette of blades, their backs to each other, blades outwards. The first spiders, on approaching the Jedi, found themselves in multiple pieces, smoking where the lightsabers had sliced through them.

They fought silently, grimly. They were fighting a losing battle against the spiders, which were now spraying out copious amounts of webbing which was fast-solidifying, and had already hit them, nearly paralyzing their limbs in awkward positions. Spiders had started to crawl onto their bodies, and they were spared the horror of feeling the spiders sinking their fangs into them by the sudden retreat of the spiders, which fled the area. An armored flying craft hovered nearby, and eight men in black bodysuits had them at weapon-point. The tallest man spoke.

"Come with us. You are under arrest."