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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.

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. Nominally, 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 minisub'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,"