“Blaster bolts!” Jacen cried, wiping blood from the oozing wounds on his hand. “That was close.”
But it was just the beginning. With dread, he looked at the water all around them. The seaweed roiled angrily in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Large fronds thrashed into the air, grabbing the deck rails, as if intending to heave the wavespeeder down. The monster had tasted Jacen’s blood, and now it had decided that Jedi Knights were exactly what it wanted for lunch.
Another writhing tentacle rose above the boat’s side, searching for a target to skewer with its thorns. Tenel Ka leaped in front of the deadly frond, wielding her throwing dagger. She stabbed into the thick stem of seaweed, and a syrupy green ooze gushed out.
The seaweed recoiled, then lashed back, slapping Tenel Ka across the side of the head. A trickle of blood traced a scarlet line down her cheek. Rather than cry out in pain, Tenel Ka chose to respond with her knife, slashing through the coiled weed—and another fat tentacle thumped to the deck.
Jacen shook his injured arm to restore the feeling then grasped the lightsaber clipped at his side. He had not used it in some time, but there was no room for hesitation now—not if he ever intended to be a Jedi Knight … not if any of them wanted to get out of this mess alive. He flicked on the emerald-green blade. “I’m not letting some weed get the best of me!” he said.
The humming weapon sliced off one of the large tentacles twined around the rail. “Take that,” Jacen said. Gray fumes burned his eyes as the chunk of severed seaweed fell away.
Out in the water the tentacles thrashed. Now they seemed to be in pain. The scarlet eye-flowers blinked and gyrated furiously. The smell of seared vegetables and saltwater filled the air.
“I’m getting us out of here,” Jaina called from the controls, restarting the engines. But grasping tentacles held them in place, and the wavespeeder could not break loose.
Roaring, Lowbacca ignited his own blazing lightsaber and held it with both hands, a glowing bludgeon of molten-bronze light.
Larger stems rose now from the deeper water, each with a pair of serrated shells on the end, like vicious pincers ready to tear apart prey. The tentacles writhed and clacked their sharp edges together, looking for something to bite into.
Jaina pushed hard on the controls. The wavespeeder’s engines whined as it strained against the grasping tentacles.
Lowie raced to the rail. Bellowing a warning, he swept down with his lightsaber blade again and again, slicing through the seaweed that still held their craft.
“Oh, do be careful, Master Lowbacca—here comes another one!”
Grunting a reply, Lowie slashed at the tentacle, and the little translating droid said, “Excellently done, Master Lowbacca! And it’s quite a comfort to hear you would rather I didn’t wind up as an appetizer for a mass of salivating seaweed.”
Tenel Ka turned to fend off an attack from one of the sharp-shelled tentacles. She slashed with her knife, but one of the clamshell pincers clenched the point of her dagger with a loud click. The razor-edged shells clacked again, pushing to reach closer to her face.
Then Jacen was there, chopping the tentacle away with his brilliant green energy blade. He flashed Tenel Ka a roguish grin. “Just wanted to keep the score even!”
“My thanks, Jacen,” she said.
Lowie hacked with his blade, severing the last of the seaweed tentacles holding the boat. The wave-speeder broke loose and lurched away while thorny fronds writhed and lashed out, struggling to recapture their prize.
As quickly as she could, Jaina pushed the wave-speeder to its highest velocity, roaring over the twisted weed. The malevolent eye-flowers stared at them. Other thrashing tentacles rose up, but the seaweed seemed unable to respond fast enough.
Jacen gripped his emerald-bladed lightsaber, ready. This thing was more than a plant. It was … something sentient, something that could respond. He used the Force, hoping to calm it, make it leave them alone. “I can’t find its brain,” he said. “It seems to be all reflexes. All I can sense is that it’s hungry, hungry.”
“Yeah, well it’s going to stay hungry a while longer,” Jaina said.
“Yes, indeed! I agree wholeheartedly,” Em Teedee answered.
Moments later they were out into open water again. Jaina and Lowie plotted their new course, made the appropriate calculations, and manually set the wavespeeder’s direction to take them back to the Reef Fortress.
Glancing over at Tenel Ka to make sure she wasn’t hurt, Jacen was surprised to see her wearing a calm and satisfied expression as she slid her throwing dagger back into its sheath at her waist. She seemed more alive and confident now than he had seen her at any time since their fateful lightsaber duel on Yavin 4.
“We are fine warriors,” Tenel Ka said. “There is nothing like a physical challenge to make the day more relaxing.”
Lowbacca gave a low grunt. Em Teedee bleeped, but refrained from articulating a comment. Jaina looked at Tenel Ka in surprise, but Jacen laughed. “Yeah, we are quite a team, aren’t we? Real young Jedi Knights.”
Tenel Ka helped Jacen bind up the minor wounds on his arm, and he applied some salve from the wavespeeder’s emergency medkit to the stinging cut on her cheek. “I do not believe Ambassador Yfra had this in mind when she sent us out for a day of recreation,” she said, “but I found it enjoyable nevertheless.”
Lowbacca growled and pointed toward the navigation console. “Oh, dear! Master Lowbacca suggests that it might, perhaps, be premature to feel safe and comfortable quite yet,” Em Teedee translated. “You see, he hypothesizes that this wavespeeder was purposely sabotaged.”
“What do you mean?” Jacen asked. “Those numbers don’t mean anything to me.”
“I think he means this.” Jaina nodded down at the console, indicating the preprogrammed course coordinates. “The autopilot was set to take us into the middle of that killer seaweed—with no return course!”
17
The gurgling, shushing sound of gentle waves lapping against stone docks and anchored boats filled the cave grotto. With each breath, Tenel Ka drew comfort from the salty smells and the cool, solid rock around her. Sitting with bare, crossed legs, using a Jedi calming technique to help herself think clearly, she let her gaze drift across each of her friends.
Jaina, head under the control panel and feet high in the air, checked the wiring of the wavespeeder’s directional controls. Lowbacca tinkered with the navigational computer from above, handing Jaina tools as she asked for them. Tenel Ka felt a pang of loss as she watched her two friends working with such confidence and agility, completely unconscious of how easy it was for them to use either one hand or the other.
Jacen lay stomach down on a ledge beside Tenel Ka, his right hand reaching deep into the water while the fingers of his left teased the surface, trying to lure a glowing amphibious creature close enough to grasp it.
“Hand me that hydrospanner, would you, Lowie?” Jaina said in a muffled voice. “I need to take this access plate off.” Without looking up from his work, the Wookiee plucked the tool from the case behind him with one nimble-fingered hand and passed it to Jaina.
It is so simple with two arms, Tenel Ka thought. As quickly as the jealousy rose within her, she squelched it, chiding herself for being irrational. Even if she still had both hands, she might not have been able to do the things Lowbacca could do with his long, limber arms. He used everything he had, body and mind, to the best of his ability. Just as Jacen and Jaina did.
Just as Tenel Ka always had.
Was she still that same determined person, using her skills and abilities to their fullest, she wondered, or was that person gone now that she had lost her left arm?