Black Sun mercenaries charged forward. Reacting with a panic that was only the slightest bit feigned, Nien Nunb squealed and whirled. He pelted back down the low, dim corridor.
Laughing and shouting, believing their quarry had no chance against them, the guards gave chase, led by the bellowing Second Administrator and the captain.
When Nien Nunb rounded the last corner before the control chamber, though, he ducked to one side and pressed himself against the cool rock wall near the door. His loyal fellow prisoners surged out, weapons ready. The two young Jedi Knights stood with pulsating lightsabers.
The opposing guards tumbled into each other, Piling up as they scrambled backward in a panic. They had expected no resistance at all. Thinking Kessel secure, Czethros had already reassigned his best mercenaries to other potential battles out in the New Republic. But his own base of operations was the weakest point.
The freed prisoners shouted and aimed their weapons. Blaster fire rang out, cracking walls and spouting tongues of rock dust and smoke. The surprised invaders returned fire, scorching the arm of one of Nien Nunb’s defenders—but Second Administrator Kymn quickly realized the ambush had caught them in a very bad situation. Two of his mercenaries fell, writhing in pain. Nien Nunb’s fighters kept to their sheltered positions, while Kymn’s troops remained completely exposed.
Second Administrator Kymn yelled, “Go left! Move down this way!”
Shots rang out, fired by the turning guards more in confusion and anger than in defense. None of the bolts hit their targets. Broken rock showered from the walls. Nien Nunb’s workers fired back, scorching the backplate of one of the retreating Black Sun guards. After only a minor flurry of blaster bolts, the dust settled. No one seemed injured.
The Black Sun forces had fled.
Nien Nunb’s defenders charged after the retreating guards, raising their voices. Their howls echoed in the tunnels as Kymn’s team rushed away into the deepest spice mines. Nien Nunb shouted at the top of his squeaking voice, and the defenders reluctantly pulled back, letting the mercenaries run onward in the dark tunnels.
Back in the control chamber, the Sullustan Chief Administrator busily entered codes and punched in more commands. Loud metal doors clanged shut deep in the passageways. Lowbacca chuffed with laughter.
Jaina peered down at the screens to see what he had done. “You mean they’re all sealed down in those tunnels?”
Nien Nunb’s thickly folded lips curved in a smile. Through Em Teedee’s translation, he explained that such deep sections of mines could be sealed off at the senior administrator’s discretion. Kymn and his guards would remain trapped behind heavy plasteel barricades, where they could cause no trouble. The legitimate security forces on Kessel would eventually get back to them, once they finished mopping up all the other problems here in the spice mines. The mood was elation. The defenders cheered their first victory. It had been simple and bloodless. Still, Jaina felt uneasy. There was at least one major obstacle left: Czethros himself.
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.