Crisis at Crystal Reef

14

Given the undersea monster’s enormous body mass, the powerful spice worked more quickly than Zekk could possibly have imagined. He gripped the controls and tried to maneuver the minisub away with all possible speed, but they gained only a minimal distance—nowhere near enough.

After swallowing the prodigious amount of andris, the beast flailed briefly, then began darting from left to right, its tentacles thrashing, grabbing, jittering, as if from seizures and convulsions.

Jacen rubbed his temples, concentrating, then gave a sigh of exasperation. “There’s no way I can get through to it now. It’s got a storm going through its brain!”

Cilghal released the useless grasper controls of the sub’s remaining mechanical claw and threw herself into helping Zekk. He pushed the minisub’s engines beyond their maximum recommended levels, heading higher into the inverted canyons of iceberg roots, toward the blocky mass of the polar cap and away from the thrashing beast.

“Maybe he won’t notice us,” Zekk muttered.

“Yeah, and maybe Han Solo’s on his way to rescue us at this very moment,” Anja said with clear scorn. Her face was flushed, her forehead sweating—but she seemed to be fighting internal battles beyond simple fear for their survival. “Face it, Zekk—we’re in trouble.”

The leviathan’s flailings became even more frenzied. It spun about, tentacles waving like handfuls of bullwhips. Finally, it focused its energy on a single target: the minisub. The creature turned its long head on its sinuous neck, its glowing yellow eyes flaring with a brighter light as the monster dove in to attack.

Cilghal uttered a wordless sound as she jammed the throttles from the copilot’s station. Zekk let her maneuver, since she was more familiar with oceangoing vessels. The sub’s propellers and bubbles swirled behind its main body as they shot off through the frigid water.

The sea monster followed, reaching forward, stretching, trying to grasp. The tip of one tentacle brushed against the main propeller on the rear of the sub, which sheared it off. The creature drew back,. but seconds later the maddened monster resumed the chase, frothing the water behind it. Its sharp silver-fanged jaws clacked together, as if prepared to cut through the metal hull.

With a rapid sideways motion, a tentacle slammed into the directional fin that guarded one engine. The inner compartment of the minisub rang like a heavy bell from the blow. The engines squealed and groaned, spilling smoke, but they continued to work—just barely.

Zekk and Cilghal took the sub higher, closer to the ice-locked surface. Zekk’s ears popped with the pressure difference.

Outside, drifting slabs of ice smashed against the hull with loud thunks and bangs that reverberated through the chamber. Cilghal swerved the minisub’s rudder, and Zekk tilted the craft to avoid a knotted underwater cliff that dangled beneath a heavy iceberg.

By grasping the rough ice with its tentacles, the sea creature hauled itself forward. Closer and closer.

“Up there!” Zekk said, pointing to a fissure in the ice. “It’s too small for the creature to follow us inside.” Cilghal saw and nodded.

Anja frowned, covering her fear with her usual show of skepticism. She seemed to be exceedingly tense and appeared to be shivering. “I doubt even the sub could get in there.”

The creature lashed out with its sharp-ended tentacles and slapped the ice. Large blue-white chunks broke off and drifted around them, like boulders rising and falling in slow motion. The minisub ducked below a jagged ceiling of frozen ice and accelerated as the gap widened, spewing bubbles. The sea creature charged after them, thrashing, groping with its tentacles. One of the long whiplike appendages finally fastened on to the rear of the sub, somehow gaining purchase with its suckers on the smooth hull.

Inside, Jacen was tossed into Anja. Her breathing rasped in his ears. Tenel Ka was the only one who managed to keep her place. Zekk was thrown halfway from the pilot’s seat to slam against the sub wall. Cilghal gripped the controls and held herself erect.

“It’s got us,” Zekk cried, trying to regain his balance. His ears ringing, he pushed himself back into his seat. Cilghal throttled the engines down, let the minisub drift backward for a second, and then revved up the engines in a sudden burst to push them forward again. Slowly, the slippery hull pulled free from the suction cups, leaving the monster’s bruised and throbbing tentacle behind.

Bubbles sprayed in front of the windowports, and Cilghal could barely see to help Zekk navigate. Huge, jagged chunks of ice blocked their way. One smashed into the front of the sub, making a scar on the thick windowport and shearing off the minisub’s remaining grappling arm.

Cilghal placed a flippered hand on Zekk’s arm. He felt strength flow into his mind. Guided by the Force, Zekk twisted the rudder from left to right, and the sub looped around an obstacle, more because of the Force than from any spectacular piloting skill. The torn end of the ruined grappling arm sparked and sprayed, then went dead as Zekk disabled its power systems.

“You’re sure there aren’t any weapons on this thing?” Jacen called from the rear of the sub. “Anything at all?”

“It’s a working craft, mainly for tourists or that Yarin’s personal use,” Cilghal answered. “I’m sure it was never meant to drive off an attack.”

“There is the towing beam.” Tenel Ka pointed out a small tractor-beam that could fasten onto an underwater object and drag it to the surface. “Perhaps that could assist us.”

“Hey!” Jacen said. “Good idea.”

“Great,” Anja said with a snort. “Am I the only sane person down here? Or does someone else agree that the last thing we want is to pull that monster closer to us!” Perspiration stood out on her upper lip.

“Not that—we can grab a big chunk of ice and pull it behind us. Block the way,” Zekk said, seeing Tenel Ka’s idea.

Cilghal didn’t argue, immediately running her webbed hands across the controls. A pulsing beam stabbed out from the rear of the sub and grasped a knob of ice, yanking the berg into the path behind them. The ice moved slowly through the thick, cold water—but it did move. The frozen wall drifted enough to cover their escape.

The creature rammed into it, wrapping tentacles around jagged blue-white edges.

The moving iceberg pounded into others, slamming ice against rock-hard ice. Zekk moved the minisub up into the fissure between the broken chunks of the polar cap, rising higher. Cilghal continued to use what was left of the ice chunk as a shield. Shattered pieces of other floating mountains snapped off and drifted back into the channel through which they had just passed.

The sea monster suddenly found itself surrounded by a hail of floating boulders. Its tentacles reached out to knock the ice chunks aside as the beast struggled forward in pursuit of its prey. But the icebergs ground together, sealing off access.

The discouraged monster battered its tentacles against the ice. At last, expelling a mouthful of bubbles and gnashing its long silvery teeth, the creature swam away, still writhing with energy. Jacen sensed the monster propelling itself into the dark depths of the polar ocean in search of easier prey. The overdose of spice would give it energy to hunt for a long, long time….

Zekk had difficulty maneuvering toward the surface. Ice walls closed around them, sealing off their retreat while blocking any forward motion. The sub couldn’t even rise up to where the occupants could reach the cold air on the surface.

Jacen and Tenel Ka stared in the direction of the departed monster as more ice chunks lodged into place further sealing them off.

“The beast believes it has given us a mortal wound,” Tenel Ka said. “It has gone to hunt elsewhere.”

“Practically speaking,” Zekk said, “we do have a mortal wound. Is it as bad as I think it is, Cilghal?”

The Calamarian ambassador examined the controls, worked them a bit, but the minisub made no headway. The engines rumbled and smoked. “Our vehicle is damaged,” she said. “Our air is limited, and we find ourselves trapped in a maze of blue ice.”

Zekk grunted in acknowledgment. He hadn’t wanted to be right about the damage to the sub.

“At least we got away from that monster,” Jacen said, always the optimist.

“Great,” Anja answered in a shaky voice. She looked very much on edge, very distressed. “But have you noticed that we’re stranded beneath the polar ice cap?”