Star Wars, page 18
It was impossible to approach the Maw, and nothing could escape it. All of which, in a sideways sort of way, made sense to Bell.
Which was why, now, he was at the controls of the tiny two-seater submersible the Queen Xiri kept in a launch deck below the waterline. The crew used the vehicle for occasional repair jobs and exploration missions while far out at sea.
“Not too much to it,” Captain Okoro said. “You Jedi are good pilots, right?”
“Some of us,” Bell said, thinking of Loden Greatstorm and another Jedi named Indeera Stokes, and a flight above a world called Elphrona, where he’d seen them both do things with Vectors—the Order’s fighter craft—he’d have sworn were impossible.
“Right, well, it’s like flying, but through water instead of air. Throttle, tilt, yaw, all that. The main difference is buoyancy control. You always need to keep an eye on your ballast. And no blasters. Just the single harpoon gun, and I wouldn’t rely on it. Hasn’t been fired in an age. You get in trouble down there, best to try to get away. Don’t see you winning a stand-up fight.”
Okoro stopped speaking, and they both looked off in the same direction, where a sound could be heard, a low, deep rumble, vibrating even through the hull.
“Come on,” the captain said. “Let’s go above. Maybe you’ll rethink this folly.”
On deck, in the direction of the rumble, was a dark, churning cloud, low to the water. Bell and Okoro joined Gorge and Nelly, who were already at the rail, staring toward the ominous sight on the horizon.
“The Maw of Shareen,” said Okoro. “They say the sound is the lady grinding her teeth.”
“Who is Shareen, anyway?” Bell asked, and at the question, all three sailors and even Ny-no, the droid, made signs to ward off evil.
“You’re in enough trouble, Bell Zettifar,” said Nelly. “Don’t go inviting more.”
Captain Okoro put his hand on Bell’s shoulder.
“You sure you want to do this, Bell? You’re a good crewman. We’d all rather you didn’t put yourself in such a dangerous predicament, Jedi or no.”
“I have to,” Bell said.
“Aye,” the captain said, and left it at that.
Down Bell went, into the depths, leaving the Queen Xiri behind on the surface. The Maw of Shareen loomed ahead—a deep, churning cone vanishing into infinity below, lit from within by swirling phosphorescence. He throttled back, trying to think of how he could approach. The little submersible was already vibrating in the churning currents, even a kilometer out.
A shadow flitted across the sub’s canopy, backlit by the light from the Maw; Bell couldn’t catch any details, but it was large and lithe—a predator shape. He tightened his hands on the controls, but he wasn’t overly concerned. The thing was big, but his sub was bigger, and in his experience creatures didn’t go after prey larger than themselves. The only exception, really, was—
Four more shadows slipped past, just at the corner of his eye.
Pack hunters, Bell thought.
Something slammed into the sub from below, and the instruments on its console flickered before stabilizing. The hull groaned in protest.
As if signaled by the first attack, the rest of the pack dove in, butting bone-browed skulls against the sub, trying to crack it like an egg. The brightness of the Maw made it impossible for Bell to make out details—other than teeth. He could see the teeth. In the darkness, the teeth glowed red.
The instruments flickered again, and the console went dark. A popping, creaking sound from the hull as its panels took another hit.
More of the things had surrounded the sub, summoned by the activity, Bell thought, and the cabin was growing darker, the light from the Maw eclipsed by the churning, grinding shadows trying to get inside, get at him. He could see by the—
By the shine of their teeth, he thought, increasingly horrified.
He pulled his control sticks back and to the left, hoping to put the craft into an ascending spin that might shake off some of the beasts, hoping that the controls would respond, hoping he could make it back to the Queen Xiri alive to rethink his clearly idiotic plan.
A maw is a huge, gnashing mouth, he thought. What, exactly, did you expect?
The sub moved, its engine responding, its planes grinding, and Bell felt it begin to ascend, turn. The instruments came on again, briefly, and Bell saw that his depth was reducing, his speed increasing, before they went dark again. The creatures didn’t seem to care. They continued to bash their skulls against his craft—Bell thought he heard a crack and imagined the canopy venting open, seawater pouring in, the dark, sinuous shapes slithering in just after, gnawing and slashing at him.
Bell forced himself into calm. He could not surrender to fear.
Pack hunters—what do they hunt? What do they eat, here, just off the Maw?
(you), came the thought, but he pushed it down.
Things pulled toward the vortex, that’s what they eat, he thought. Easy pickings—the currents bring their food right to them. But they can’t get too close to the Maw, or it’ll—
Bell did two things, very quickly. First he triggered the submarine’s harpoon gun, hoping against hope its mechanism wasn’t too damaged to fire. It wasn’t. A blast of bubbles from just below the canopy, and suddenly the zone ahead of the sub was clear. A speared, wriggling beast was visible in the Maw’s light, caught on a line extending from Bell’s craft.
Then Bell did the second thing: he shoved his control sticks forward, willing the sub ahead with every bit of power its engines had left, offering whatever support he could through the Force.
The sub zoomed through the sea, headed straight at the Maw. He felt the whirlpool’s currents take hold, and then the first of the beasts slipped away, followed quickly by more, then all.
I was right—too dangerous for them close to the vortex.
Bell yanked back on the control sticks, and the sub began to shake, its engines straining to free the craft from the Maw’s pull. The vibrations increased, accompanied by a burning whine that grew in intensity.
And too dangerous for me, Bell thought.
He eased off on the throttle and set the craft to neutral buoyancy. Sometimes fighting would get you killed, Jedi or not.
In a moment of dubious mercy, the sub’s instrument panel came back online. The readouts provided Bell with little more than an opportunity to watch the sub’s depth meter spiral relentlessly down as the ship began to spin in increasingly tight loops around the glowing, pulsing vortex that was the Maw of Shareen.
Bell reached out to the Force, trying to use it to hold the juddering, shaking craft together, even to guide it through the currents, seeking the most natural path down. There was a way to navigate the Maw smoothly—not to fight its strength but to use it, to let the nature of the vortex merge with the submarine’s desire to glide easily through the water, to simply fall.
I know how to fall, Bell thought. Loden taught me.
He went where the Maw wanted him to go. Down, around, down, around, down, down, down . . .
Then quiet, the roar of the Maw left behind. The submarine possessed exterior lights, and when Bell tapped the control to activate them, he saw that the currents had spit him out into a great undersea cavern. Below him, scattered across the seafloor, he could see shipwrecks of all types, all ages, suggesting the Maw had been hungry for a very long time.
Beyond that, faint. . .a presence.
Bell’s eyes widened. He reactivated the submarine’s controls, pushing it forward as quickly as he dared. At the far end of the cavern he could see an opening. He entered, following a passage up until he surfaced in a bright chamber filled with glowing plants and seaweed and mosses, a space filled with light.
After a quick check of his instruments to ensure the atmosphere was breathable—it was, presumably thanks to the plant life all around—Bell cautiously cracked the sub’s canopy. He stood breathing in the damp, vegetative smell of the cavern and peering out into the light.
There was a roar, so loud Bell thought it shook the cavern. Then he heard a splash and looked. Suddenly, climbing out of the water, dripping, his fur patchy in spots where he’d ripped it out to make the little talismans—the messages that had in time found their way to the surface, a desperate bid that had almost no chance of success, but this being, this inexhaustible wellspring of hope and optimism had never given up—Burryaga was there. Alive. Soaked, stinking of fish, distressingly skinny, but alive, babbling words in Shyriiwook that Bell couldn’t understand, other than his own name, said over and over again.
“Bell.”
They rested on rocks that passed for seats, and Burryaga gave Bell a meal made of the food he had available to him—raw fish, raw crabs, and seaweed, plus water that tasted of minerals and life, collected from the mosses on the walls, the sea salt leached from it by some process of the organism itself.
They ate, not speaking, both taking time to consider all that had happened to them. At last, Bell asked his friend a question.
“The last time I saw you, Burryaga, you were a thousand kilometers above this planet, fighting a rathtar aboard a space station that was falling apart around you. How did you survive? How did you get down here?”
Burryaga turned his head. He stared into the pool of seawater at the cavern’s entrance, clearly seeing a place much more distant.
The Wookiee shook his great furred head, once.
“All right, Burry,” Bell said. “I don’t need to know. All that matters is that you are here.”
Bell stood and reached inside his tunic. He removed a long, slim, heavy object and tossed it to his friend. Burryaga caught it one-handed, as if it weighed nothing at all.
He hooted softly in amazement, giving Bell a wide-eyed look.
“Thank Elzar Mann,” Bell said. “He’s the reason it didn’t burn up with Starlight Beacon.”
Burryaga ignited his lightsaber, and the cavern filled with bright-blue light. The Wookiee gave his saber a few hesitant swings, then spun it in great carving arcs of increasing speed, flipping it from hand to hand, roaring with joy, clearly relishing an experience he’d never expected to have again.
He deactivated the saber and swept Bell up in another hug, his huge arms almost crushing the poor Jedi.
“I know, Burry,” Bell said, patting his friend’s back, knowing a tear or two was probably getting soaked up by the Wookiee’s fur and not caring at all. “I know.”
Burryaga released Bell and stepped back. He waded into the grotto pool and climbed aboard the submarine, ostentatiously placing himself in the pilot’s seat. He growled a single short phrase. Bell’s Shyriiwook was still a work in progress, but these words were unmistakable.
“Let’s go home,” Burryaga said.
You didn’t fail, Bell thought, believing the words for the first time since Loden Greatstorm’s death.
You didn’t fail.
The guards have no idea we’re here. Why would they? They don’t care about us, don’t consider us a threat. No one ever has. Poor little Enami—tiny, unassuming, with arms no thicker than reeds and fur the color of muddy water.
We never used to be this desperate, this hungry. Then they came. The Hutts. With their rancors and dreadcruisers. They don’t belong here, but they made Ena theirs, nonetheless. They make everything theirs.
“We need to move,” Hoi hisses in my ear. “They’ll find us if we don’t.”
He’s always been braver than me, my brother. He’s younger, only fourteen orbits to my seventeen, but he has a fire that burns in his otherwise empty belly. I glance at him, seeing our father in both his broad features and the speckles of his fur. Grief threatens to overwhelm me, but there’s no time. He’s right, even as he prompts me again: “Kian!”
I glance back at the Nikto guards gathered around the brazier, warming their scaled hands against the flames. They are laughing, sharing a joke in the language of their people, oblivious to the two Enami watching and waiting in the shadow of a nearby tent.
But Hoi has waited long enough. He moves, skirting around the temporary structure, making for the large dreadcruiser that sits at the edge of the camp.
I want to shout after him, but it’s too late. It would only alert the guards. They’d be on us before Hoi made it to the cruiser, blaster rifles no longer slung casually between reptilian shoulder blades but firing. Killing, like they killed before.
I chase after my brother. What else can I do? Wait to see him mowed down in front of me? Yes, Hoi’s impatient. Yes, he’s stubborn, but he knows what’s at stake. Not that long ago, Ena was free. Ena was. . .plentiful? No, not always. Sometimes harvests were poor, but there was always enough. No one went hungry. The elders made sure of that.
But now the elders are dead, and their successors are scared. We all are. Everything happened so fast. Just two cycles ago we were free. And now. . .now we are this.
I make too much noise as I scamper around the tent after Hoi. The guards are bound to hear me over the crackle of the fire. My feet sound like ganari stampeding through the gully, even though I took Hoi’s advice and left my shoes in the village.
“We need to move like ghosts,” he told me, but any moment now we will be ghosts. The Nikto will hear us, and there will be firing and shooting and shouts and screams. Not all the guards have rifles. Some have blades, heavy axes that would slice through us like the wind through an open door. I’ve seen what those axes can do; we all did, the first time the Hutts brought down a ganari on the plain. There was no respect, no honor for the animal that would provide meat and leather—only avarice and greed.
The guards laughed then, even as the ganari’s antlers were torn unceremoniously from their roots as trophies.
I nearly change my mind as I duck behind the second tent, nearly race out of the camp. No one would blame me. No one would even know what I’ve done. We didn’t tell anyone what we were planning or where we were headed as the suns dipped beneath the mountains. Hoi made me promise, said it was safer that way. Nothing about this is safe, but I keep running, head low, the empty sacks slapping against my back. What if the guards hear them? The pounding of my feet is bad enough, but the sacks, surely those will give us away.
Hoi reaches the last tent before the dreadcruiser and stops, crouching low. I slip on churned-up turf as I slide beside him, nearly knocking him over as I bash into his arm. He snarls at me, his gray eyes flashing with anger. Am I trying to get us discovered?
One of the guards—the tallest Nikto of the group, with scales as green as the grass that grew in this meadow not that long ago—looks up from the fire. He glances in our direction, black eyes narrowing as he peers into the gloom. I hold my breath, thinking I might never breathe again, but he shrugs and rejoins the conversation around the pan.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper into Hoi’s ear.
“Then stay here,” he says bluntly. “Give me your bags.”
He holds out his hand, not taking his eyes from the dreadcruiser. It’s a brute of a ship, its keel-like hull pitted and patched in a dozen places, solar sails casting dark shadows in the moonlight.
“Well?”
I shake my head.
“You can keep watch,” he says. “Make sure I’m not disturbed.”
“I need to come with you.”
“Not if you’re going to wimp out at the last moment,” he tells me. “Not if you get us killed.”
“I’m not going to get us killed.”
He doesn’t believe me; his look tells me that, but at least he doesn’t vocalize his doubts, instead turning to the open hatch of the ship. His breath is shallow as he prepares to run, his hand reaching for mine. Our fingers lace together, and we wait, the open space between our hiding place and the dreadcruiser becoming more daunting by the second.
Hoi squeezes my hand and we run. We run fast.
The dreadcruiser is my first starship. I’ve seen them before, from a distance at least. Before Starlight fell, when we were a part of the Republic. Before the Nihil. Before the Hutts.
Not that I’d seen many, of course. It was only the odd freighter, mostly traders looking for new markets, not that Ena had much to offer. Our cousin Ikaya said she saw a Jedi Vector once, streaking across the sky. She described its graceful wings in exquisite detail, how the light glinted from its hull like an extra star in the heavens. It was all we could talk about back then, the Jedi—dreaming of their adventures, real and imagined, safe in the knowledge that they were out there, watching over us.
Ikaya is dead now. Our whole family is dead.
I think we’re going to join them as we race for the hatch, convinced that one of the guards will notice us as we scoot up the ramp. I even close my eyes, expecting to feel the burn of blaster fire against my back as we dive inside the craft, but the bolts never come. Neither is there a welcoming committee in the hold. I imagined more Niktos going about their business, maybe a pig-faced Gamorrean. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had nightmares about those things since the Hutts arrived. The dreams always end the same way, with the Gamorreans squealing and grunting as they drag me from the village, the same way they dragged our father before he was shot.
But the hold is empty, just as Hoi predicted. He’s been here before, albeit not by choice. He was selected to transport food from our stores to the cruiser after the elders were massacred. I tried to go in his place, anything to protect him, but a Gamorrean pushed me aside, the guard’s sluglike master decreeing that I was too weak to be of any use. At least that’s what I assume the warlord said, slime flying from his blubbery lips. None of us speak Huttese. All I could do was watch as Hoi was led away with the others, pushing hovercarts laden with our supplies for the winter. I never thought I’d see him again, but Hoi returned, thank the ancients. Not only that, he came back with a plan.
