Crisis at Crystal Reef

18

Over the past hour, the temperature had dropped dramatically inside the trapped minisub. Ice walls clasped the Elfa like a clenched fist.

The only light that trickled in was a filtered crystalline blue-green from the polar ice pack. Zekk feared that before long the air in the sub would grow thick as well. Deprived of oxygen, filled with carbon dioxide, the atmosphere would offer less and less for its five imprisoned passengers to breathe.

He crawled up to his waist into the Elfa’s engine compartment, wriggling his head and arms through the small access hatch. Normally, Calamarian repair crews would either have hoisted the sub into its dock on Crystal Reef or labored underwater to complete repairs. Here, though, Zekk had to make do with what access he could gain from within the cramped cabin.

He had to use a too-small hydrospanner, one of the few tools available in the meager emergency repair kit. He could see how the gears had ground together, how the electrical connections had been broken and the precise flow conduits knocked out of alignment during the tentacled sea creature’s attack. He nudged and tweaked and banged with the hydrospanner, straightening out what he could.

Jacen hovered behind him. “I wish Jaina were here. She’s always good at fixing things.”

Zekk banged with the hydrospanner again, discouraged, and skinned his knuckles instead. “I’m not such a bad mechanic myself,” he said. “And these aren’t exactly ideal conditions, you know.”

“Not ideal,” Anja agreed. “Besides, if Jaina were here, we’d have one more set of lungs using up what’s left of our oxygen.”

Tenel Ka frowned at the young woman’s remark.

“I guess you’re right,” Zekk said. “I feel better knowing she’s safe on Kessel.”

Jacen gave Tenel Ka a lopsided grin. “Yeah, my sister’s probably just relaxing, bored to tears while we’re stuck with all the troubles.”

Zekk reattached the connections to the small engines as best he could, using his sore fingers when the tool itself wouldn’t work. “Try it now, Cilghal,” he called over his shoulder. Then he backed out of the access compartment, his clothes and hands and face grimed with engine lubricants and dust.

The Calamarian ambassador worked at the controls. With a thrumming, puttering growl, the mini-sub’s engines fired up. Propellers turned, then ground to a halt against the solid ice that pressed in around them.

“Seems to be working smoothly enough,” Jacen said.

“Yes, but we are not able to move anywhere,” Tenel Ka pointed out. She listened to the sound of ice scraping against the hull.

“If those icebergs shift, our situation will become even more perilous,” Cilghal said. “We’ll be crushed.”

“Great,” Jacen answered. “Up until now I was having a tough time imagining how things could possibly get any worse.”

Her face grim, Tenel Ka stood. “We are trapped … but it is only ice.” She looked around at the four other passengers crowded into the small sub. “I count five lightsabers among us. Certainly that should suffice to cut us free.” She raised her eyebrows. “If we are willing to go outside.”

Per regulations from the Crystal Reef Amusement and Tourism Council, the minisub was required to carry enough slicksuits for each passenger in an emergency. Their current situation, Jacen thought, was about as much of an emergency as anyone could have imagined.

“You know this is probably suicidal, don’t you?” Anja said as she slipped into the flimsy garment that clung to her skin like a symbiotic organism. She pulled the skull-fitting hood over her voluminous hair, so that most of her head was covered. The glistening Calamarian fabric molded itself to bodily contours and provided temperature control. Jacen wondered, though, if even the most efficient heaters would keep them warm enough this deep under the polar ice.

Cilghal stepped forward and took hold of a flap at the neck of Jacen’s suit. “This membrane will allow you to breathe,” she said, stretching it tight over his mouth and nose. Now only his eyes were exposed. “It will filter oxygen molecules from the water. You can breathe as usual. Just do it slowly and carefully.”

“Are you sure our lightsabers will function underwater?” Zekk asked, looking at his newly made—and untested—weapon.

Cilghal nodded, her round Calamarian eyes swiveling as she held up her own lightsaber. The hilt was lumpy, but with a smooth, pearly finish. “It will, if you constructed it properly.”

Tenel Ka frowned down at her lightsaber, made from a carved rancor’s tooth, and flashed a glance over at Jacen. Zekk knew she must be recalling the day her own defective lightsaber had failed, resulting in the loss of her arm. But she had built a new weapon, taking extra precautions.

Zekk thought of the extraordinary care with which he had built his new lightsaber. Master Skywalker himself had approved. He took a deep breath, nodding confidently. “Then my weapon won’t fail.”

Jacen, Zekk, Tenel Ka, Anja, and Cilghal finished suiting up, then took turns going through the force-field doorway into the deep, cold ocean. Jacen inhaled deeply. The membrane that covered his face produced a warm flow of breathable air.

Still, he hesitated at the portal. Anja, standing next to him, gave him an inquiring look. Finally, Jacen stepped through the shimmering hatch and out into a world of liquid ice.

Pulsing lightsaber blades blazed through the water like colorful torches, attracting tiny darting fish that somehow lived and flourished in the inhospitable arctic environment. Stalactites of clear blue ice lurked around them like massive fangs. Broken icebergs trapped the insignificant minisub. The lightsabers shimmered in the murky water, cutting an underwater channel through the frozen mountains.

With her one arm—the other sleeve snubbed tightly and knotted so it would be waterproof—Tenel Ka wielded her turquoise blade. She slashed, severing a slab of ice. Steam and bubbles erupted as the chunk slowly drifted away, freeing one of the fins of the minisub.

Jacen hacked and chopped at the prison of ice. His lungs heaved, drawing tendrils of air through the membrane. All around him the water felt like a smothering blanket of carbonite. The slicksuit fought off most of the deadly chill, but the cold eventually seeped through. Jacen found his arms and legs growing sluggish. His mind felt lethargic and stupid, as if he were thinking in slow motion.

Cilghal, better adapted for underwater work even in the arctic seas, swam ahead, using her throbbing lightsaber to hack her way forward. Bubbles churned upward until they were trapped by the ice ceiling. Cilghal cleared a narrow channel, then moved along the fresh passageway, rolling with her lightsaber.

Zekk swam directly behind her, widening the channel with his energy blade.

Jacen, Tenel Ka, and Anja worked closer to the Elfa. When the last of the frozen jaws were sheared away, the small craft settled slightly and drifted loose. Jacen felt the cold growing more and more intense all around his body. His arms and legs seemed heavy. Too heavy.

Tenel Ka watched him with a look of concern. They were both good swimmers. Together they had spent many days swimming in the river on Yavin 4. But this was cold, infinitely colder….

Jacen forced his hand to give a thumbs-up sign, and Tenel Ka nodded. Together they swam back toward the minisub’s force-field hatch. Jacen waved for Anja, who floated in place close to the Elfa holding her acid-yellow lightsaber. She signaled that she would be behind them in a moment. Jacen and Tenel Ka rapidly stroked toward the hatch, toward warmth.

Up ahead, Cilghal and Zekk had nearly finished with their labors as well.

Anja had worked as hard as she could manage. She had no strength in the Force, and her only special abilities with a lightsaber had come from having her body pumped up with andris spice. She was free of that addiction now, however. She would never use the spice again … but that also meant she would never feel the same rush again, the energy she had once considered a part of her strength.

The lightsaber in her hand was a fraud, nothing more than an antique she had purchased from a peddler who specialized in Jedi artifacts. Anja knew how hard Zekk had worked to build his own sleek and simple weapon—and its hilt looked nothing like the heavy, ornate design of her energy blade.

However, Zekk’s lightsaber was real. He had earned his, and he knew how to use it. The Force guided him. Anja’s didn’t belong to her, no matter what she had paid for it. It was a Jedi weapon, and she was not—nor would she ever be—a Jedi. Perhaps the lightsaber was itself a symbol of her addiction—her willingness to rely on something that was not a part of her.

Caught up in her restless thoughts, she swam around the fin of the minisub and saw something trapped between two struts in the support casing that held the rudder in place: a single remaining vial of andris spice, glittering and preserved in the frigid water. It must have caught there when they broke open the containers hidden under the ice caps, or when the sea monster had attacked them and consumed the rest of the stash.

As if drawn by a magnet, Anja swam forward and plucked out the vial. It was pure andris.

Anja hesitated. She could take it … treat herself to one last dose.

She felt the yearning return inside her, a longing for that familiar surge of energy that made her feel so intensely alive. She knew it was more mental than physical. If she succumbed now, if she kept this dose for herself … it would be like voluntarily placing her hands into a set of stun-cuffs. She might as well lock herself up and become a prisoner of her own addiction once more.

But Anja didn’t want that. She didn’t want it ever again.

She let the vial drift out of her hand. The small object floated there in front of her, taunting her, daring her to change her mind.

Anja locked her acid-yellow lightsaber on and, with an effort, swept down, slicing through the offensive vial. It disintegrated in a puff of seared materials.

Then, as she stared down at the Jedi relic in her grasp, Anja knew she could never use it again. Deep inside, she felt a calm finality at this knowledge.

Anja’s cold fingers released their grip on the hilt and let the lightsaber drift away. Then, with a feeling of satisfaction, Anja swam back to the warmth and companionship that waited for her aboard the minisub.