章 115: ED : Chapter 113: Monsters, Gungans, and Assassins, Oh My! IV
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.
...
My explanation must have provided some reassurance, because she flashed me a quick smile of thanks, then turned her full attention back to keeping us headed downwards.
Checking the chronometer a little while later, I was surprised to see only four minutes had passed since we left Otoh Gunga, yet we'd already traveled a little more than six kilometers.
"Ninety kilometers an hour is an absolutely blistering pace underwater. I wonder how the Gungans managed to design a faster submersible than the Mon Cala," I thought. My innate curiosity concerning any sort of novel technology an itch I wanted to scratch in the worst way.
Setting the thought aside with some difficulty, I studied a compilation of sonar returns taken of the environs around Otoh Gunga. Judging by those, it seemed we'd have to slow down in another few kilometers, as we neared the tunnels leading to the core. For now, though, the Force seemed to be telling my Padawan the same thing it was telling me.
Go. Faster.
The thrumming coming from the rear of the bongo increased for several seconds, then the sub began trying to shimmy off the line of descent Ahsoka had chosen, as we continued our downward plunge. My apprentice was having none of it, though. She smoothly corrected her course with small, steady nudges to the control-yoke, rather than risk overcorrecting with one big adjustment.
Having been back-seated by Master Koon more than once while hunting the Piloting bead I'd so coveted, I thought I detected something of his favored methodology in his protege's command of the craft.
Filing the thought away to share with the Jedi Master later, I couldn't help but be pleased with how my student was handling the situation. This was obviously the easiest leg of the journey we were on, but Ahsoka's earlier anxiety seemed nowhere in evidence, now that she was actually behind the wheel, so to speak.
Seeing the readings indicated we were only a little more than fifteen hundred meters from the bottom, I realized it was time I started doing my part. Dropping into a light trance-state, I carefully opened myself to the nearest possibilities we could act to realize.
What looked like a tunnel twenty-five degrees to port and five hundred meters down was actually an unusually deep overhang in the rock formations jutting upward from the bed of the sea-sized lake. When that possibility abruptly ended in a blackness that was total, I thought that was a rather eloquent way for the Force to communicate, "Not that one, you ninny."
Thirty-plus degrees to starboard was a bit more promising, but the vague impression of increasingly jarring impacts from above sounded a lot like the irregular striking of a snare drum in the Force. Not just overt danger, then, but some kind of negative knock-on result, assuming we took that tunnel.
Forty degrees starboard, after covering most of the five hundred meters remaining until we hit bottom, the vision in my head opened up into a veritable flip-book of shifting possibilities. Bingo.
Communicating this development to Ahsoka in a quick, clipped tone, I felt the bongo shudder slightly, as she sawed on the yoke to get us lined up.
Easing off on the engine output to avoid spreading us along one side of the tunnel or the other. The passage through the dark rock shelf ran in an odd "C" that had been rotated forty-five degrees counterclockwise, so we were forced to creep along at 8-10Kph for several minutes, before the far end of the "C" deposited us in a tunnel so straight as we nosed up and straightened out, it could have been mistaken for a sapient-fashioned thoroughfare.
The walls of the tunnel here appeared to be made of several different types of rock, but all of them were worn smooth as glass, and looked polished almost to a mirror sheen in the little light the canopy-shields cast on our surroundings. It wasn't hard to determine the flow of water was rushing our way, because Ahsoka had to keep backing off on the speed without a noticeable decrease in our rate of progress.
For the first time since she'd actually begun piloting the bongo, I felt a strong spike of unease from my Padawan. Without taking her eyes from the canopy rendering of our environs, she murmured her concerns with the tension clear in her voice, "Master, if this tunnel was to come to a dead end abruptly, I wouldn't be able to stop us from crashing. The water-flow pushing us is fluctuating between eighteen and twenty Kph, so..."
"That's not going to happen, Ahsoka. For decisions this sequential, with a very limited number of possible variables, precognition lets me see the results of taking each of the paths open to us for a couple hundred meters with a very high degree of accuracy.
When you're a bit further along in your understanding of the Sense fundamentals, I'll teach you how to use precognition and the enhancement of your short-term memory together, so you can plot out prediction-chains.
It's an extremely niche skill, but immensely useful in situations like this, where you're seeking to process an extremely large number of very similar possibilities for the immediate future, so you can actually utilize your predictions to best effect. Hard to starboard NOW, please," I finished with confidence.
Once the bongo had straightened out after the sudden turn, the canopy rendering showed we'd just entered our first large cavern.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were all too far away for the sensors wired into the submersible's canopy to compile readings for visual rendering, but it only took Ahsoka a few seconds to find the right control to send out an active sonar ping. The return was quickly displayed on the canopy as ghostly outlines tagged with distance-to-object figures.
Figures which revealed the nearest wall was on our port side, more than twenty-four hundred meters away, the "floor" almost nineteen hundred meters below us, and the "ceiling" simply too distant for the sonar to garner an accurate return.
Studying those figures, I looked deep into our immediate future for the presence of any unwanted kaiju in our path. Finding, to my great relief, that the largest inhabitants of this cavern appeared to be odd turtle-like creatures perhaps half the size of our sub.
The speeder-sized shellbacks seemed to be exclusively bottom-dwelling creatures, because each one I saw in visions of descending to the hug the bottom of the cavern was performing a slight variation on the mouth-continually-open-and-ready-to-snap-shut hunting method I remembered snapping turtles using in another time and place.
These dull blue and gray shellbacks had bioluminescent tongue-tips to aid them in their hunting of curious fish, but they seemed harmless enough to us. Especially since we never came close enough to physically see any of the creatures.
"You're going to want to angle to port gradually, and slow down, Ahsoka. The tunnel mouth we're looking for isn't much wider than the bongo to begin with, but it will widen quite a bit within a few sub-lengths," I reported in a matter-of-fact tone.
My series of accurate predictions seemed to have aroused Padme's curiosity, but she didn't voice her interest. Probably out of a concern that she'd distract me.
Guiding the submersible as I'd requested, Ahsoka suddenly spoke up. The tension clear in her voice, as she admitted, "I'm trying to remember what you said, Master. About fear not being real and all. I just feel like I could slam us into a rock face any second now."
"I know this isn't easy, Ahsoka. I promise you, though, we wouldn't be doing this if there was any real chance of my not being able to easily find a navigable path through the core. Avoiding hazards to navigation is the easy part, believe me," I replied in what I hoped was a reassuring manner.
My young apprentice didn't say anything else, but I didn't know if that was because she'd been at least partially reassured, or if she was just unwilling to make any more uncomfortable admissions right now. Not for the first time, I found myself thinking how frustrating it was, when other people had the kind of shields I relied on so heavily.
Another few directions given, and several more short tunnels or cracks in rock formations later, we found ourselves in a cavern so immense, it seemed we were floating in the blackness of deep space. Ahsoka was already reaching for the pad that would have sent out an active sonar ping, when my hand flashed over to grasp her wrist without warning.
"Not a good idea, Padawan. There are at least two Opee Sea Killers maneuvering far enough below us, neither has seen the light of our canopy. One of them is several meters larger than the other, so right now, they're engaged in a rousing game of Will the Smaller Opee Get Eaten.
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.
...
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