Chapter 5

My ignominious departure from Otoh Gunga weathered my sentimentality as I peered out the domed window roof of Boss Nass's Zoomer. A Zoomer is a traditional Gungan submersible, roughly manta ray-shaped, with three elongated propellers sticking out its back. It fits roughly five to six people, so our trio could spread out a bit.

Why the big boss's personal Zoomer was lent out, I still couldn't fathom, even as we descended deeper and deeper into Naboo's bottomless ocean. The planet has an aqueous core. Don't ask me how this works scientifically; I'm a soldier, not a hydrologist.

The orange bubble cities were soon consumed in the inky blue of the sea, but a kinship was starting to bud between the pair of Jedi and myself. They had gotten me out of a sticky situation, their interpretation of events notwithstanding. Maybe kinship was too strong a word.

To my surprise, Obi-Wan opted to steer. I was fully qualified, even if it had been more than a few years, but these Jedi were proving proactive.

“Any time you want me to take over, let me know," I told them. “Oh, dang! A gooberfish! I haven't seen one of those in…"

Obi-Wan interrupted me, even though I really would've liked to go on about the gooberfish here. They're like affectionate fish Gungans sometimes keep as pets. “Why were you banished, Jar Jar?" Obi-Wan asked, a very un-gooberfish-like thing to ask a person.

As eager as I could be to dwell on regret, I heaved a terrific sigh and humored him. “That, my guy, is a long story. To make it short, I was in the army during the final days of the War for Gungan Independence. Suffice it to say, I got pretty fed up toward the end of so many loud explosions, and now I can't quite get them out of my head."

What I wanted to say was, “Mind your own business." But that seemed rude to him, so instead I was rude to myself. It's a tic of Gungan hospitality: Don't insult your guests. It stung, belittling my own issues, but I didn't expect they really cared anyhow.

“You were banished because you were in a war?"

“I was banished because the war didn't end for me. Oh, we treated our war vets nice-like, giving them cushy jobs when they came home, if they were still up to work. But most people's accidents are just little accidents. Mine took me on excursions into the noisy past. I ended up crashing the boss's Heyblibber—that's a kind of high-end submersible—and before you could say, 'Jar Jar, you're banished,' I was banished. Gods, I'm saying 'banished' a lot today.

“What about you? Either of you have any sob stories we can cry about and say we didn't?"

“We were dispatched from Coruscant," said Obi-Wan, who was proving much more talkative than Qui-Gon. “By the High Jedi Council. We were in orbit over Naboo to conduct trade negotiations with the Neimoidian embargo. Only their diplomacy skills were on par with their graciousness as hosts."

“How's that?"

“They tried to gas us. We escaped down to the planet, and right now, we need to make contact with Theed Palace, capitol of Naboo."

“The Human capitol," I said.

If he said something else, I wasn't paying attention, because the radar screen was showing something big and fast approaching us. See, gooberfish are small and cute, but they have these gigantic cousins with sharp, gnashing teeth. It's a common gag to tell a Gungan kid his gooberfish will blossom into this more monstrous variety when it grows up. They're ordinarily not such a problem for two reasons: Gungans never swim this deep on their own, and most submersibles carry electrical discharge weaponry which demonstrate these Opee sea killers are craven at heart.

Well, I was sure I had jabbed the discharge on my console, but instead there was a loud crunch as the Zoomer was seized between its jaws.

“What is that?" Qui-Gon turned around in his seat. Obi-Wan struggled with the controls, while I uselessly jabbed on the weapons again, thinking it had jammed. Not that the Zoomer belonging to the big boss should jam. I looked out into the water as I wracked my suspicious brain for ideas, only to see a Sando aqua monster shutting its terrifying jaws around our assailant. To compare sizes, a particularly hungry Sando could eat two Opee in a sitting, if the Opee were just sitting around to get munched on.

As the Opee became the Sando's lunch, our ship was released, and Obi-Wan gunned it out of the dining area.

“Old Gungan saying," I said. “'There's always a bigger fish.'" I admit, my heart had leapt to my throat for a minute there, but now that it was back securely seated in my chest where it belonged, I had time to think. Sandos lurk in Naboo's deepest oceans. Gungans consider there being no reason to come down this far outside of scientific motives.

“Where are we going?" I asked aloud.

“Like I said, Theed Palace," said Obi-Wan.

“Okay, but, like, in how many pieces did you want to get there?"

“It's of utmost importance we get there without delay, even if we have to dodge a few monsters along the way."

“Oh, brother."

“Don't worry," said Qui-Gon. “The Force will guide us."

“Hm. Pretty big deal, this 'Force'."

There's another Gungan saying, usually told to very young Gungan children who are scared of their first swim: “Out of the rainstorm, into the ocean." It was this phrase that sprang to mind as a slew of alerts rang out through the Zoomer. The internal screens dimmed. The interior lights and headlamps flickered and shut off, leaving the three of us in interminable darkness, with only the guttural creaking of the water pressure on our ship.

“Ah," I said. “The Force screws us over yet again."

“Mind your manners," said Qui-Gon.

“Two things have been bothering me," I said. “One, why would the big boss give us his personal Zoomer? And two, why didn't those electrical prods scare off that Opee when it grabbed us? This thing should be serviced to pristine condition. I know; I drove the boss's Heyblibber once."

“What is your point, Jar Jar?" asked Obi-Wan.

“I don't think this was a 'going away to Theed' present from Boss Nass. I think it was a 'going away to the hereafter' present."

“Just relax. We're not in trouble yet," said Qui-Gon.

I laughed mirthlessly. “What 'yet'? We've got giant sea monsters out there. This readout says that last bite sprung a few leaks in here. The engines and lights have stopped. When exactly are you beginning to think we're in trouble?"

Obi-Wan was fumbling at the control panel, and I admit I was getting a bit testy at this point, so I said, “Oh, let me!" and I ripped open the panel housing the wiring unit. As I'd expected, all but one power coupling had been disconnected, no doubt a deliberate bit of sabotage to show Boss Nass really cared for humans and myself intruding upon his city.

As soon as I plugged them in, I grabbed the steering column from Obi-Wan and tried restarting the submersible. The motor hummed to life and the lights kicked back on, with out headlights beaming into the toothsome maw of a Colo claw fish.

I said a very rude word and jerked the steering hard to starboard, reeling us out of the way of the deadly jaws that snapped at the water. I blasted it with both barrels of the electrical prod for good measure. Now that everything was connected up properly, I drove the motor into high gear, and we sped off at breakneck speed through the oceans and in the direction of the city of Theed.