• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

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 tractorbeam 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 bluewhite 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