Shadows of the Republic: The Underground

[Serena]

Serena did not struggle as the dianoga's suckered tentacle drew her under the water. She knew that would only cause it to clench tighter and send her into unconsciousness earlier. Her fingertips were touching her lightsaber, which was specially outfitted for use underwater, like Jedi Knight Kit Fisto. But she couldn't reach the activation plate and even if she used the Force to ignite the saber she did not know what...

No, her mind was unfocused. Serena pictured the leaf on the river, and reached out to the mind of the dianoga. Or, whatever it had that might be called a mind. She tried to show it that she was something untasty, but the creatures regularly ate garbage and it didn't seem to be convinced. Worried for her master, Serena was having trouble concentrating on her task, and she spent too much time trying to reach out to the beast's brain.

By the time she realized that she was running out of time, it was almost too late. Time to struggle. The Padawan pushed as hard as she could with the Force, and kicked out, her boot hitting something hard. The mouth. Its toothy maw snagged her boot, and she exhaled a string of panicked bubbles and opened her eyes as the starving garbage squid began to try to stuff her into its mouth.

Serena grasped the end of the pommel of her lightsaber, using the Force to flick the activation plate as her eyes began to burn with the contaminations in the wastewater. The green saber thrummed to life, and she stabbed at the creature with it, the leaf on the river forgotten.

[Sol Iman]

Sol knifed through the water as fast as he could manage with a shank of metal under one arm. He sensed the dianoga as a murky gray presence dead ahead, Serena as a white spark of life, bright with fear, unmistakable against the decay filling the water all around them.

Sol called on the Force to lend him more speed, and he thrust his spear out in front of him. The tip tore the beast's fleshy carapace, but the dianoga jerked away and escaped with only a glancing wound. Sol turned the spear in his hands to brace himself on the dianoga's body like a punting pole, but as he did, he felt a tentacle grasp his ankle, and another tentacle wrapped around his spear.

Sol tugged on the metal shank, trying to free it so he could bring its point to bear on the dianoga's gaping, toothy mouth.

[Serena]

The water was glowing around her, the bioluminescent algae frothed into action as Serena struggled with the large dianoga. A spin of her saber sliced off the tentacle that had wrapped itself around her, and she kicked wildly, her boot still stuck on something.

With effort her foot came free, and she blinked painfully against the polluted water, her body straining for air. Serena dolphin kicked for the surface, gasping loudly for air in a suddenly quiet cavern, her lightsaber and the algae the only visible light. However she could see nothing except glowing blurs, her eyes burning as she sucked in air and got a handle on her emotions.

A Jedi knows only peace...

Why was there no sound? Additional splashes caught her attention, and she suddenly realized she was nearly face to face with the dianoga's single stalked eyeball. Serena grimaced, using her lightsaber to cut it off before disengaging the blade and trying to attach it back to her jumpsuit. "Sol!" She tread water, trying to see what was around her.

[Sol Iman]

Sol wrestled futilely to free his spear from the dianoga's grasp, but then it gave a shudder of pain and released its grip. Sol searched his consciousness and found that Serena had escaped, so he kicked up for the surface once more.

But even blinded, the dianoga wasn't giving up. It seized him by the ankles once more and began sinking, dragging him down toward the depths of the lake. Two more tentacles coiled around his ribcage; he raised his arms to keep them free, but he could feel the great coils of muscle squeezing the air out of his burning lungs.

He beat down the panic rising in his throat, which was telling him to thrash madly - he knew that would only exhaust him - and he hung limp in the beast's embrace. Thinking it had killed its prey, the dianoga drew him back down toward its upturned maw.

At the last moment, Sol spread his feet, bracing them on either side of its gaping jaws, and thrust the spear downward as hard as he could, past a dozen rows of teeth and through the soft flesh within, plunging deep into the dianoga's vital organs. Gore sprayed into the water all around him.

But even in death, the beast held on, and its weight was dragging Sol down, down, down... his lungs were in agony, felt like they were about to burst...

He blew out the stale air in his lungs, sending up a flurry of bubbles and collapsing his chest. The tentacles didn't tighten, and with effort he was able to squirm free of their grip.

But try as he might, he didn't have the strength to propel himself back to the surface. His feet felt like lead weights, and hypoxia made his head feel like it was stuffed with cotton. Even if he could have kicked his way to the surface, he wasn't sure which direction the surface was anymore.

[Serena]

Serena took a calming breath, closed her eyes, and reached out with the Force. There were still two large beings underneath her, one much smaller than the other. She could feel her fellow Padawan's distress, and without another thought dragged the largest breath she could into her lungs, turning and diving back into the oily water. As she did so, the Force rippled with the death of the dianoga, but Sol's situation did not change.

Swimming smoothly, with only the Force to guide her, Serena quickly reached the drifting creature. Feeling along its fleshy and putrid skin, she made her way to Sol's body, caught underneath the dead cephalopod. The redheaded Padawan grabbed the back of his shirt, kicking strongly and dragging his dead weight behind her.

After a moment Sol began to move, but she maneuvered him to his back and she put an arm around him in a rescue swimming hold, stroking for the surface. A few burning seconds later, both of their heads broke the surface of the lake, and she was relieved to hear him coughing and gagging... but alive.

Serena kept her hold on him, holding him afloat in the dimly glowing water and the eerie silence of the underground lake. Her eyes felt like they were on fire. She couldn't see where to swim.

[Sol Iman]

Sol's breath came in painful, ragged gasps, but he was regaining his feeling in his extremities and could at least tread well enough to keep his head above water. He had the urge to wipe the grime off his face, but he knew his hands weren't any cleaner.

"Well," he said between breaths, "that's my first garbage squid." And then he laughed - a combination of adrenal rush and oxygen deprivation. Bits of entrail bobbed up to the surface. The lake's scavengers would eat well.

[Serena]

Serena did not join in Sol's laughter. She turned herself around, listening and reaching out with the Force. There seemed to be an edge to the lake ten or so meters away, and she tapped the other Padawan on the shoulder. "Can you see how far we are from the tower? We should get back to our masters."

He bobbed around next to her, and she felt that she was having trouble keeping a handle on her fear. What if there was another dianoga underneath her, or something worse? Blinded as she was, Serena had no choice but to give into fear... or to depend on the Force.

She chose the Force. The Padawan felt her surroundings melt away - the chokingly warm odor of the lake, the prickling chill of the dank air on her face, and the dark glow of the fluorescent algae - and the leaf on the river focused in her mind. She heard her voice, sounding strangely distant as she continued to talk to Sol.

"I cannot see..."

[Sol Iman]

Serena's voice brought Sol back to the moment, and he could hear Master Tau's voice in his head chiding him - Focus, boy. Focus.

He turned back toward the tower, surprised how far away they'd drifted in the struggle with the dianoga. The droids had stopped firing, but a half-dozen searchlights swept the surface of the lake, their beams bright in the acid fog.

"We'll need to find another way in," he said. "They're watching the lake..."

Something about her tone of voice gave him pause. He turned back around and tried to catch her eyes, though in the low light he couldn't be sure where she was looking.

"We need to get out of the water first. Come on."

He put a hand on her back to gently guide her toward the nearest shore.

[Serena]

She nodded in agreement, and let him turn her towards the closest shoreline. Serena swam strongly, and the two Padawans were soon dragging their bedraggled bodies up onto slimy concrete and out of the lake.

She reached up, squeezing liquid out of her hair and tying it back into a ponytail, her padawan braid dangling down past her shoulder. Blinking furiously, Serena tried to clean her hands by wiping them on each other to get the majority of the grime off. Her eyes were still burning, but they were producing tears and washing some of the contamination out.

It was hard to resist rubbing them. She blinked more, her involuntary tears streaking the oily dirt down her cheeks. The world was blurry, and she could just make out Sol's figure next to her. "Its so quiet..."

[Sol Iman]

Sol shook as much of the water off of him as he could, and then he drew out his lightsaber to let it air. No water poured from the casing, so he knew it hadn't leaked. "Look away," he said, and he ignited the ice-blue blade and plunged it into the concrete until it glowed orange-hot. The heat would help them warm up and dry out.

Then he reached for his comm and pinged Master Tau's frequency. He frowned. "Master Tau's not answering. Could mean anything - maybe they're still fighting, maybe they're under radio silence. We'll need to find them on our own."

He rubbed his hands over the glowing concrete, then looked at Serena. "You okay?"

[Serena]

She looked up from warming her hands over the heated concrete, and nodded. "I'm okay." Serena looked down blearily at her right foot, the one the dianoga had nearly managed to get in its mouth. Her boot was torn and there could have been a smear of blood... but she didn't feel any pain.

She blinked rapidly as she looked around, her eyes getting clearer but still hurting. "We cannot go into the tower - at least not the way Master Dremmel and Master Tau did. The droids are watching that entrance." Obviously. She felt a little silly to point out something so obvious to Sol, who was clearly more experienced in this sort of situation than she was.

Of course, there had been that hostage negotiation on Kuat that Master Dremmel and she had been a part of. She'd had to crawl through the station's maintenance tubes to get into the room and -

She wasn't concentrating again. Serena frowned, her eyes still weeping. She turned back to Sol with her inflamed eyes, "Do you have a plan?" She smiled, adding, "One that doesn't involve pinch bugs, I hope. Or swimming."

[Sol Iman]

For the first time, Sol caught a glimpse of Serena's eyes in the low light - they were filmy and bloodshot, and her eyelids were swollen. His face sobered immediately.

"Well... I'm working on one. Those blasts came from a neighboring building..." He pointed to a crouching warehouse next to the tower. "Probably a spider-droid on the roof. They shouldn't have many tower sentries on that side. If we can secure that warehouse, we might be able to take them unawares... Uh, listen..."

He chewed his lower lip, obviously distracted.

"I'm not sure what we're up against, but I'm a little concerned about taking you into a firefight with your eyes like that... You know, impaired vision, and, Force forbid, if infection sets in, you could lose them. Maybe if you go back topside, find a clinic with some bacta..."

[Serena]

She shook her head even before his voice trailed off. "No, I am not leaving. The Separatist foothold here is stronger than we thought, and you'll need my help."

Serena blinked, "Anyway, Master Dremmel has the field kit with him, with bacta capsules. It will be faster to meet up with him than it would be for me to make my way to the surface. So stop worrying about my eyes and lets make a plan to get into that warehouse."

[Sol Iman]

Sol opened his mouth to argue, but he saw from the look in Serena's reddened eyes that he might as well argue with a gundark. "Diplomat" didn't mean "pushover."

"Okay..." He craned his neck to take in as much of the periphery of the lake as he could. "First we have to get there and evaluate the situation. There's plenty of cover on this side of the shore, so we shouldn't have any trouble keeping to the shadows. I'll take point. Just keep your head low and your senses open. Let's go."

[Serena]

She nodded, getting to her feet. Her jumpsuit was still sodden, but there was nothing to do about it. Serena took her lightsaber off its d-ring and held it in her hand, inactive but ready.

Sol looked over his shoulder at her, and she nodded again, curbing her impatience. The leaf on the river. He started out, moving quietly and swiftly, half crouched as he kept to the shadows as much as possible. She followed in his footsteps as much as she could, extending her senses out as widely as she could while still keeping them optimally sharp.

As they hunkered down behind some mouldering crates for a moment to survey the space between them and the warehouse, she felt a tingle in the back of her mind. Sol was looking at the approach and probably gauging how they should cross the open area, but she found herself looking to the side. Behind the warehouse.

Serena frowned. There was nothing behind the warehouse except more warehouses. No life forms... wait.

She poked Sol in the shoulder. "In the other buildings. People. Lots of them."

[Sol Iman]

Nodding, Sol reached out with his feelings, and he could sense them all around, little sparks of sentience populating the concrete and durasteel jungle surrounding them. He couldn't tell their species or their intentions.

"Vagrants," he concluded. "I don't sense any threat from them."

Of course, that would be the case if they were Neimoidians with a legion of battle droids who simply hadn't noticed the Jedi Padawans skulking through their midst. And though he could sense danger, he couldn't sense droids, no matter how many there were.

He stared across the barren, trash-filled square, what in ancient times might have been a park, between them and the base of the warehouse. "I don't like charging out over open territory," he whispered. "That's what got us into trouble in the first place. They could have bioscanners watching the perimeter--"

A shuffling noise somewhere behind them grabbed his attention, and he whirled about with a hand on his lightsaber. A pair of womprats, nearly two meters long, trundled out from an alley, their snouts swaying back and forth over the ground in search of food.

[Serena]

Serena sensed the oversized rodents, turning her head slightly towards them as they came closer. Blinking, she could feel the tears dripping down her face as her body tried to cleanse the contaminants out of her eyes.

"Bioscanners..." she whispered. "But they're not shooting at the womprats." She shifted her weight slightly as she crouched, putting a hand down for extra support. She was not worrying, but it was concerning how quiet the area was. What had happened to their masters?

[Sol Iman]

Sol was thinking the same thing - agitated that Master Tau hadn't checked in yet. As long as it'd taken him and Serena to circumnavigate the lake, he'd have thought two full Knights could've destroyed the entire garrison by now.

But he forced himself back into the moment. "Those womprats," he whispered back, "they mass about the same as us, body temperature should be within a few degrees... If we can get them to go in ahead of us, that might just be enough to fool the scanners into seeing four 'rats."

[Serena]

"Okay." Serena looked up at the looming tower. "I can get them to go in that direction." The urge to wipe her eyes was strong. Closing them, she thought of the leaf on the river, and reached out to the rodents.

Their minds were small... simple. The omnivorous scavengers were not native to Coruscant, but just about everything ended up on the Core planet sooner or later. Serena was sure there were stranger things to be found in the Under City than a pair of womp rats. All she had to do was convince the creatures that the tower contained an easy meal.

Serena felt a little guilty using the creatures, but they were basically pests. And if it worked, then they would not be in any danger. She lightly touched the part of their brains that registered scents, and the 'rats paused in their trek, waddled closer to the padawans, and then turned towards the tower.

She opened her eyes, looking at the blurry figure beside her. "It is done." The padawan got into a three point stance, ready to move when Sol did.

[Sol Iman]

Sol watched the rodents shuffle toward the warehouse, and he flipped his neutral-colored hood over his head. "Stay low to the ground," he said, "and try to move as they do."

He cast a glance at his fellow Padawan, and he couldn't help thinking she was handling herself much better than he would in a diplomatic situation. On an impulse, he reached over and gently squeezed her shoulder. "May the Force be with us," he said.

Crouching low, they advanced over the barren mall, mimicking the womprats' meandering path. Sol kept his saber in hand, ready at a moment's notice to defend them from a hail of blaster fire, but he sensed no impending danger. At last they were under the shelter of the roof - too close to the building's edge to be targeted by any sentries above. They hurried to the wall and flattened themselves against it.

"Entrance," Sol whispered, and he looked up and down the warehouse wall for a window or unlocked door they could exploit. But while he did so, one of the womprats dug away a pile of garbage at the foot of the building, revealing a large drainage duct with the grate rusted away. The two scavengers snuffled inside.