A Gungan danced at the starting line, frantically waving a fan of translucent opee fins. The crowd roared within the great bubble of the Otoh Gunga Garden; muting the engines of thirty-two bongo subs as they blasted out of their pens and gurgled onto the water track.
The Otoh Gunga Challenge was open to anyone with a single-engine sub that could achieve a speed of at least 100 longos, fast enough to outrun a klaa fish on its best day. Weapons were not allowed, and military subs were prohibited unless they had been decommissioned. Beyond that, the rules were as wide open as an opee's eyes.
The bongos sped out of the launch pool and into the half-kilometer-long water-filled race tube that wrapped around lower interior of the Otoh Gunga Garden. The race tube led to a portal that emptied into Lake Paonga, where the race would continue. Commanding the early lead was the Opee Fleer, a decommissioned military sub with a crew of three. Compared to the sleeker designs, it was a cumbersome vessel that needed to slow down to make the sharper turns, but its breadth made it difficult for other subs to pass it in the narrow race tube. Pursuing the Opee Fleer were three blinded monobubbles piloted by Tup Tup Grizbain, Friggy Squig, and Zak "Squidfella" Quiglee. After them came the purple custom-grown monobubble bongo helmed by Brooboo Seep, the oldest pilot in the race and favored by many on the Rep Council.
The first five subs tore through the portal and into the dark waters of Lake Paonga. Spectators in Otoh Gunga Garden quickly redirected their eyes to the large orb-shaped monitors suspended from the arena bubble's ceiling, but others kept their gaze on two subs that were still heading for the portal, operated by Spleed Nukkels and Neb Neb Goodrow.
Humming to herself as she weaved past a broad-bellied bongo, Spleed Nukkels felt downright cozy in her blue blinded monobubble, with its distinctive elongated forward diving plane. Her wake flipped the broad-bellied bongo into a roll, spinning it toward the green, custom monobubble bongo hounding her tail. In the green bongo, Neb Neb Goodrow was chewing on a stick of gimer bark. Neb Neb's bongo had a bulked-up engine with rotating, clipped electromotive fins that allowed for tight turns. Certainly it was not the design of these two bongos that captivated spectators; rather, it was the reckless manner in which the two Gungans steered them.
As Spleed and Neb Neb accelerated through the race tube, other bongos got out of their way. By the time they reached the portal for Lake Paonga, they were traveling side by side and had left a dangerously churning wake behind them. While the trailing bongos slowed to navigate through the swirling bubble trail, Spleed and Neb Neb bolted after the leading subs.
Early in their racing careers, Spleed and Neb Neb had been accused of collusion by their competitors. Working together to ram or drive other bongos off course was not allowed in any official competition. These accusations ended after race officials reviewed recordings of the two in action, and determined that Spleed and Neb Neb were indeed competing against each another. The problem was that they weren't competing with anyone else. As Spleed had been widely quoted, "Mesa racen Neb Neb Goodrow. Everybody else just inda way."
Not surprisingly, several bongo racers had submitted requests to have Neb Neb and Spleed banned from the sport. The common gripe was that they were too reckless, that they had given the sport a bad name. Squidfella Quiglee stressed that unless officials revised the rules of the game, it was only a matter of time before Neb Neb and Spleed's breakneck antics got somebody pasted. Responding to Squidfella's accusations, Spleed commented that any racer who worried about getting pasted should stay at home. Neb Neb laughed, adding, "Squidfella's got mesa un Spleed all wrongo. Mabee wesa lookee reckless, boot it taken a lotta skill to blast past da otter racers un let dem live."
Squidfella Quiglee had gone so far as to file official charges, cosigned by his fellow whiners, Tup Tup Grizbain and Friggy Squig. Unfortunately for the disgruntled trio, the charges were tossed out by the Gungan race commissioner and never reached the Rep Council.
The Opee Fleer maintained its lead and was the first bongo to reach the buoy making a confident, wide turn before heading for the next transport tube, a floating construct tethered to the lake floor. The tube had a larger diameter than the one in Otoh Gunga Garden, and its five-kilometer length spiraled downward along the continental slope to the water-filled underwaterways below Lake Paonga. Dozens of orb-shaped remote-seein devices floated beside the transparent tube, ready to broadcast images of the race to the spectators in Otoh Gunga Garden.
With a great burst of speed, the Opee Fleer shot into the transparent tube, followed by Squidfella, Tup Tup, and Friggy. Seconds later, Brooboo Seep's bongo entered the tube. Brooboo had his eyestalks trained on the tail of Friggy's craft when Neb Neb's green bongo shot underneath him, its wake propelling Brooboo toward the tube's ceiling. Brooboo pushed down hard on his controls, sending his craft into an angled dive. Spleed's blinded monobubble soared over his canopy and forced him to execute a tight roll to avoid collision. As Brooboo straightened out and watched Spleed's blue bongo zoom ahead of him, he realized he was holding his breath. He sucked in some air, briefly wondered whether he should retire from bongo racing, then stomped on the accelerator. Spleed shot past Neb Neb and came up fast behind Friggy She did not have to look at her navigation sensor field indicator to know that Neb Neb was right behind her and would try to overtake her before reaching the end of the tube. Even if she had looked at her sensor, it would have been of little use, since it was still broken from the last race. In front of Spleed, Friggy was maintaining a long twisty, steering his sub through a controlled roll in an effort to prevent Spleed from passing him.
"Tube hog," Spleed muttered, then sped forward, aiming for Friggy's fins.
Seated in his spectator box in the Otoh Gunga Garden bubble, Boss Nass grinned as the bongos -- visible on the Garden's large monitors -- careened through the race tube in Lake Paonga. However, the ruler of Otoh Gunga was not looking at the monitors but at the gathered crowd. Naturally, many of them were, like himself, Gungan bongo racing fans, but there was also a new element to the audience.
Tourists.
And not just the human population of Naboo, although they were well represented in Otoh Gunga Garden that night. Boss Nass had to admit that he would have had difficulty distinguishing one humanoid species from the next were it not for their clothes. In his eyes, the Naboo dressed better.
Since the Battle of Naboo, word had spread of the courageous and resourceful people that had crushed the Neimoidian Trade Federation. Although Boss Nass was immensely pleased and proud of his alliance with the humans of Naboo, he was even more delighted by the countless representatives of Republic planets who had contacted him personally, requesting visits to Otoh Gunga and audience with the Boss who commanded the Grand Gungan Army. With great discretion, Boss Nass had asked around about whether Theed had received as many requests from outlaunders. If the information he had gained were true, Otoh Gunga was definitely the more popular destination.
