章 116: ED : Chapter 114: Monsters, Gungans, and Assassins, Oh My! V
" You press that button though, and our circumstances change to include a not-insignificant possibility we either get swallowed whole, or the pursuing Opee does enough damage to the bongo, that we end up choosing between being crushed by the pressure quickly, or drowning a little more slowly."
I explained in a low voice. Releasing her hand as soon as I was done, I waited for her to say something.
...
"Should I slow down, ascend, or..." Ahsoka trailed off. The near-whisper she was speaking in made it seem like she was afraid the sea monsters presently playing hide-and-seek in the darkness below might hear us.
"Just maintain our current speed and heading. Sizable chunks of jetsam get flushed through these openings by strong currents all the time, so as long as they don't get close enough to see the force-field's light, and we don't make any novel sounds or inconstant movements, we're just another semi-buoyant piece of the environment floating on by. For such a large life-form, Opees are incredibly dimwitted.
They are, however, absolutely relentless, once they identify a possible meal. They'll even rush straight into the path of one of their four natural predators, rather than break off a pursuit," The instructions I provided were delivered in a clinical manner I hoped would downplay the danger we were in, and Padme seemed to sense this.
"Anakin's not wrong. When I was a bit younger than you are, Ahsoka, my father arranged for me to accompany a group of marine biologists who were headed out to study the ecosystem of an underwater valley about three kilometers offshore.
We came upon the buoyant carcass of a Sando Aqua Monster, and watched at least a dozen Opees rise to feed on the immense corpse. This was despite the fact the last five of them to do so were plucked from the water by circling Titavians within seconds of becoming visible at the surface.
I don't know about the first two or three before the remaining giant birds actually began to circle overhead, but the last three Opees must have been able to see what happened to each of their predecessors, as quickly as the next to be snatched up arrived. Among Naboo sailors, 'Dumb as a hungry Opee' is a serious enough insult to be considered fighting words," Padme spoke up from behind us, in a similarly lecturing tone.
Nothing more was said for a while, as the submersible continued its steady progress through the total blackness all around us, but when an immense, deeply pitted rock face covered in blue-green bioluminescent algae loomed out of the darkness directly ahead of us, there were distinctly audible sighs of relief, as the natural illumination revealed a crevice maybe a third of a kilometer wide.
Checking the chronometer, as we finally traveled to the end of the glowing crevice and into a tunnel where the bone-white stone around us all had an odd clockwise-spiral indentation in its surface, I saw that we'd already traveled an amazing two hundred and two kilometers in fifty-three minutes. Thinking the figure had to be wrong, I double checked with Ahsoka.
Looking at me in astonishment, she quickly exclaimed, "That's what I was talking about, before! Several times now, while we've been traveling through a long straight passageway, the water reached speeds upward of ninety or a hundred Kph, with us already going a little faster than ninety Kph. At that kind of speed, no one's reflexes are good enough to avoid a sudden collision, if something cropped up in our path. You told me 'This is the easy part,' so I thought you at least knew what was bothering me, Master!"
Sharp, clanging, clamorous notes in the Force were banging all about Ahsoka's presence in the Force, now. They would have made it obvious to all but the youngest Initiates that my apprentice was angry, near to the point of being furious, and she wasn't even trying to rein those feelings in.
"Ahsoka, you need to calm down, now. I'm sorry I let myself get too caught up with the future to remain sufficiently mindful of the present, but I wasn't trying to deceive you. I simply didn't foresee any obstacles along any part of the path we took. Speaking of which, our next turnoff is coming up in about six hundred meters, approximately ten degrees to port, now"
My apology was a sincere one, and I hated having to interrupt it to give another order, but it was obvious the circumstances were taking a toll on my Padawan. I'd failed to recognize how serious her anxiety and frustration were becoming, but rather than focus uselessly on that detail, I turned my attention to helping her recover her equilibrium.
"We're nearly halfway to the Solleu river. Do you want me to take over piloting for now? If you want a break, just say the word," I tried in a quiet, gentle tone. The angry glare I received in response wasn't very encouraging, but I still shouldn't have been surprised by her reply.
"I don't want a break. What I want is to know there's some kind of method to this madness. You aren't exactly inspiring a lot of trust. Not when you don't know something as basic as our current speed while doing all the navigating, Master," There was more than a bit of bite to the young woman's snarkiness, but I thought it was fairly justified, so I simply nodded.
"I overlooked something, Padawan, but there were exactly zero seconds I wasn't watching our possible immediate futures. Call me out on my mistakes by all means, whenever we're not in public, at least, but I advise you to think long, think hard, then think again, apprentice mine, before you so much as sidle up next to accusing me of ever being derelict in my duty to keep you whole and alive," If there was a little bit of bite to my reply, well, I thought that was fairly justified too.
Looking like she'd been shocked out of her snit by the very first hint of temper she'd seen from me, Ahsoka let out a long sigh, paused for an even longer moment, then quietly apologized, "I'm sorry about letting my feelings run away with me, Master. It's hard to believe I'm already making such a mess of things."
Listening to her miserable sigh, it was hard not to notice she was flushing that odd shade of off-mauve Togruta did when embarrassed or self-conscious.
"Twenty degrees to starboard, then start bringing the nose up, until I signal you to level off, please," I calmly ordered, as if we weren't in the middle of a serious exchange. Seeing that she'd complied with my directives a few seconds later, I checked our speed, found we were once more traveling well over a hundred and seventy-five kilometers per hour, then let the moment stretch out a bit further.
When my apprentice's self-consciousness started to increase again, I broke my silence, "You're not wrong about the dangers of allowing one negative emotion to begin feeding into another, Ahsoka. Especially when you let matters reach the point those feelings are all but stopping you from considering the decisions you're making critically. Down that steep, easy to find descent lays one of the quickest paths to the Dark Side."
"As for making a mess of things, I believe your performance so far has been exceptional. We aren't even into day three of your apprenticeship yet, and you're already making real contributions to more than one important mission. You're going to make mistakes, of course, but that's partly what this time in your life is for. Not simply to learn how to be a Jedi Knight, but learning how not to be one.'
Sensing my Padawan was struggling to divide her attention between an important conversation and her piloting, I moved on quickly, and as kindly as I could manage, "We'll talk about all of that later. Right now, you haven't wrecked anything, but our attention needs to be on helping the Gungans and Naboo. All right?"
Without turning from the rendering in front of her, my apprentice nodded a bit hesitantly, but she did seem somewhat relieved, so I was willing to call that a win.
Until the wall of the thirty-to-thirty-five-meter-wide tunnel we were currently in suddenly dissolved like fast running wax, as a huge and formless Thing oozed into the tunnel like half-frozen sludge.
Caught completely off-guard by something that hadn't even been obliquely hinted at by my foresight, it was only the fact I'd been using the Force to accelerate my thought processes in tandem with precognition that kept me from gaping uselessly as that immense Thing abruptly thrashed to an awful sort of life. Forcing its way further into our passageway, and through a wall I knew for a fact was at least a hundred meters thick.
"Roll left and dive!" I barked after only the briefest hesitation. It was good to see that quick reflexes and excellent training had caused Ahsoka to anticipate the first part of my order, yet frustrating that her bias toward starfighter piloting had nudged her to ascend in an attempt to open the distance between her and the hostile now on her six-o'-clock due to our continuing forward motion. Her correction was quick, but not quick enough to serve.
The mental exertion on my part bled over into equally great strain on my body, but the results of that exertion were immediate. Despite the intervening distance, and the way water altered sounds generated within it, the whump behind us was clearly audible.
The real event, however, was the sudden incandescent flash to our rear. One so bright, it revealed every detail of both walls, floor, and the ceiling of our passageway. A moment more, and a roar I could only call cataclysmic rocked the bongo, as if a giant had taken the submersible in hand, shook it violently up and down, then flung it away in furious disgust.
Another passage-shaking, rock-dislodging vocalization ignored the fact we were thousands of feet underwater. The enormous monstrosity making its roaring heard as clearly as if its outburst had been made in the open air.
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