The walk back across the ocean floor to the Hrakrt Station airlock Seth had originally departed from seemed much longer than his journey to the Star Map from the station. Seth had left Kono and Sami with the promise of sending a Republic search crew down to the station now that the threat of the crazed Selkath and giant firaxa had been dealt with. Kono, upset over the destruction of the kolto harvester, had simply told him to go to hell. Sami had been a bit kinder, accepting his offer to send help with gratitude and sending him off with well wishes.
Oddly enough, as he tiptoed slowly across the ocean floor in the cumbersome suit, Seth's main train of thought circled around the return to the Ebon Hawk. He was eager, for some reason he couldn't explain, to regale the adventure the team had had through the Hrakrt Station to Carth. The thought of the captain's approval over Seth's actions during the battle with Calo Nord and singlehandedly carrying out the mission's objective put a pep in Seth's steps, despite how hindered those steps were by the water surrounding him.
It was only when he was about a hundred yards out from the airlock separating him from Mission, Canderous and Bastila that Seth became acutely aware of the alarm beeping at him from his suit. He frowned a bit, pausing in his movement to activate the heads-up display across the inside of his helmet. Seth allowed green eyes to scan the statistics spanning the display carefully, not fully understanding everything that he was seeing. He stopped his scanning when he read the alert written in aurebesh underneath the pressure gauge – "outside anomaly."
The number printed just inside the pressure gauge display was decreasing at a rate far too quick for Seth's comfort, and he glanced down at his torso to see the area of anomaly the suit's detection systems had pointed out.
A piece of shrapnel was lodged in the right side of his suit, likely debris from the exploding kolto harvester, and from what little range of vision Seth had with his helmet as he looked down at himself, small streams of air bubbles were escaping from the breach in the suit.
It was depressurizing. Quickly. And Seth would not only succumb to the waters around him but the crushing pressure of the deep sea if he didn't either fix it or get inside quickly.
Looking down at the cumbersome gloves of his hands, he knew fixing it was most definitely not an option. And he had to leave the shrapnel in there to avoid opening a bigger hole for the air to escape from.
So he trudged on, as quickly as he could, to the airlock ahead of him. Knowing time was of the essence, he began to use the Force to propel himself through the water. Fifty yards away. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten.
He prepared to send the water propelling him forward once again when a wave from his previous leap through the ocean hit him sidelong, wrenching the piece of shrapnel from its place lodged in the torso of his suit. Air immediately rushed out in a stream of bubbles.
Panic overcame Seth as he tried and failed several times to propel himself forward with the Force. Blindly, he held tightly to the fear that was overcoming him and sputtered onward even as the pressure of his suit declined rapidly.
By the time he'd reached the outer door of the airlock, his suit was blasting warning messages and beeping incessantly. He opened it with the Force, not bothering to look for the controls, and slammed it tightly behind him. Frantically, he looked around for the depressurization sequence for the airlock so that he could get out of his depressurizing suit as soon as possible.
The water pressure was mounting, and he couldn't find the controls to initiate the sequence anywhere, panic overriding his logic in the situation. He saw the visor of his helmet crack across the front, just in front of his face, and fear hit. He was so close. Bastila was just on the other side of this door. Canderous was.
Mission was.
He reached for the door, pounding weakly and searching frantically for any controls that would either vent the water from the room or open the door completely, to no avail. The crack across his helmet grew, and he could hear it expanding like the sound of nails on a chalkboard.
Then the plasteel shattered, and water rushed through the gaping hole in Seth's suit.
Bastila had actually been winning by a set when she stood suddenly and scattered the Pazaak cards across the floor. Mission glanced down at her hand and potential inevitable defeat with relief, as the Jedi had clearly quit the game.
The twi'lek stood, popping a few joints in her back as she did so. "Looks like you got the hang of it, good game Bas-"
"Shh!" the lady Jedi said harshly, looking intently at the airlock. Mission was about to retort with an irritated response when she noticed Bastila's slim fingers clutching subconsciously at her heart, and a chill gripped the young twi'lek's spine.
"Is it Seth?" she asked, attempting to hide the break in her voice.
"I sense… I sense incredible fear," Bastila said, tight lipped as she reached out in the Force with eyes closed and arm extended.
The words were like an icy dagger to Mission's heart. Seth was fearless, dangerously so. Which made the level of fear Bastila described a serious concern. Mission felt her heartbeat speed up, beads of nervous sweat forming along her lekku and sticking in the humid atmosphere of the station. "Dammit!" she shouted, throwing her cards across the floor in frustration. "We shouldn't have let him go out there alone!"
Bastila held a hand up to silence the girl, eyebrows furrowing over closed eyes as she concentrated on Seth through their bond in the Force. Not a minute later, her eyes snapped open, and her lightsaber was activated and in her hand with a snap-hiss as she leapt across the room to the airlock Seth had departed through nearly an hour earlier. Mission had no clue what she was doing, but she knew it had everything to do with saving Seth. With a sharp intake of breath, Bastila thrust the blade through the metal, melting away at its latch.
"Are you crazy, Princess?" Canderous shouted, making a motion towards the Jedi to pull her away from the door. "You could drown us all!"
Mission stepped in front of the Mandalorian, hands outstretched and pushing against his shoulders to stop him. "Seth's in trouble, Canderous. I don't know what's going on either but you have to trust her!"
"Trust her? How do we know the airlock ain't wide open on the other side!"
Mission could feel hot tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over. "Please, Canderous. Let her help him!"
The Mandalorian hesitated, glancing down at the twi'lek girl standing adamantly in his way, and his expression softened in the slightest of changes. Bastila exhaled heavily, continuing to drag her lightsaber through the latches holding the airlock door in place. "He's just on the other side, Canderous," she said as she continued to cut. "And with a soldier's attention to detail, he wouldn't have left the other side of the airlock wide open."
"If he's in there why did you sense-"
Canderous was cut off by the sound of the airlock's metal door springing free from its hinges, a rush of water sloshing out and filling the room to knee level. Seth fell through, face forward and decked head to toe in bright yellow, floating motionless in the water.
"Seth?" Mission tentatively asked as she edged closer to him. He didn't move.
Bastila pushed past her hastily, sloshing through the water and heaving him up with an arm underneath each armpit. Canderous also rushed forward to grab his legs, and together the Jedi and the Mandalorian lifted Seth up to lay face-up atop one of the crates. Mission couldn't move; she was rooted to the spot as she saw Bastila climb atop the crates and wrench the boy's helmet off, carelessly shoving it away with the Force and pulling open the hardened chest piece of the suit so that only his jacket and t-shirt underneath were revealed. The twi'lek's heart caught in her chest as she saw Bastila ball up her hands and begin compressing Seth's chest.
"Canderous, take over." The Jedi's voice was calm and authoritative, and the Mandalorian wordlessly joined her atop the crates, waited to match her rhythm, and switched places with her. Bastila took a firm hold of either side of Seth's head and tilted his chin toward the ceiling. "Hold compressions," she ordered, and as Canderous stopped, Bastila pinched Seth's nose shut, placed her mouth over his, and breathed. Mission couldn't tell if she was doing anything with the Force to open his airways, but as fearful tears slipped down her cheeks, she prayed that whatever Bastila was doing worked.
The lady Jedi pulled away, ordering Canderous to complete four more compressions before she repeated the process. Twice.
There was a sickening gagging noise as Seth sat up and half-puked a lungful of water with a violent jerk of his body before his head dropped back down and his lungs heaved, gulping in as much oxygen as he could take. Mission dropped to her knees with a sob, relief flooding her body. Her eyes fixated on the exaggerated rise and fall of his chest as he breathed and she held a shaky hand to her mouth.
"Dammit, kid, don't make us do that again," Canderous grunted.
Seth couldn't quite reply, but then Bastila was hugging him and that required no words, because there weren't quite words for the action. Mission would have been shocked had she not been so emotionally drained or traumatized at seeing Seth so close to death.
He put an arm weakly around Bastila's shoulders, and the lady Jedi pulled away, gripping him on either shoulder tightly. "For once I agree with Canderous. Don't ever make us do that again, Seth."
"I won't," he croaked before a fit of coughing cut him off.
"I… I felt your fear," she told him shakily. "Through our bond. And then I felt nothing for just a minute and…"
"And then I felt your fear," Seth finished for her, giving Bastila a gentle smile. "I'm okay. Thanks to you." He glanced at Canderous, before amending, "Thanks to you both."
"Just tell me you got the Star Map before nearly drowning out there," Canderous grunted, and Seth held up a small data disc with a smirk.
"Of course I did," his voice slowly returning to normal and hints of a cocky undertone just barely audible. He whipped out a data disc with a smirk. "Did you ever doubt me?"
Mission wanted to slap him for his chipper response. "Oh, no you don't!" she sloshed forward towards Seth through the water, jabbing a finger at him. "You don't get to make jokes minutes after you fall through that damn airlock half-dead and scare the living–"
She didn't get to finish her rant, but in retrospect she could think of worse ways to be interrupted than by Seth grabbing either side of her face and crushing his lips desperately to hers. For a moment she forgot about the boundaries she had intended to discuss with him within the privacy of the Ebon Hawk's cargo hold once the mission had ended, and she melted into the kiss with a gentle hum against his lips, her hands threading through his wet hair and fingers gently massaging his scalp before he pulled away. He was breathless yet again, though this time in a much more pleasant context.
Behind them, Canderous rolled his eyes at the display, and Bastila folded her arms but thankfully allowed her relief at Seth's safety to outweigh her disdain for his actions.
"You're going to send me into cardiac arrest one of these days, Seth Erich Avery, I swear it," Mission mumbled against his throat as he placed his chin atop her head.
"I promised you I'd come back so we could talk." She in turn felt the vibration of his voice in his throat as he spoke. "And when I was stuck on the other side of that airlock all I could think about was making good on that promise."
She pulled away from him completely at the mention of their future conversation, giving him a little smile to show that she didn't mean anything malicious by stepping away from his embrace. "Right," she said, glancing nervously at Bastila and Canderous. "Well, we should probably get back up to the surface if we wanna talk anyways. And analyze the data from that map and get the hell off this planet."
"Good thought, I've had enough ocean to last a lifetime," Canderous agreed, tossing his heavy repeater over his shoulder in preparation to begin moving again.
"For once, Canderous, I agree," Bastila said with a nod. "Who would have thought I'd be looking forward to traveling to Tatooine, of all places, after this."
When the submersible finally emerged from the waters within the Republic Embassy's submarine bay, the first thing Seth wanted was a towel.
Needless to say, the crowd of Selkath authorities lined up in the doorway to the bay with arms folded and looks that could kill was the absolute last thing he wanted. Drea stood next to them, hands wringing, porcelain face downcast with concern. Seth was the second out of the submersible, behind Bastila, and he laced his fingers with Mission's as he turned to his ex-flame. "Drea, what's going on?" he asked even as the Selkath began to move towards them.
"[Lay down your weapons,]" their leader commanded in the indigenous language, and Seth complied, laying his lightsaber on the ground and motioning for the others to comply. Both Mission and Canderous hesitated, disgusted at the idea of turning over their blasters to the Selkath, but eventually both guns clattered to the durasteel floor.
"They detected explosions down there," Drea called to him. "Seth, they think you did something to the kolto!" Her voice quivered a bit, and he knew they were in trouble if it had Drea riled up like she was.
"Whoa, whoa," Seth held a hand up in a gesture of defense against the advancing Selkath. "We didn't do anything to the kolto down there. In fact, not to seem all high and mighty about it, but I think we saved–"
The leader of the Selkath was upon him now, and tore his hand from Mission's to bind both of them behind his back. "[Silence!]" the amphibian ordered, and Seth shut right up. "[Your actions are to be discussed in trial.]"
"Trial?" Mission grunted, straining against the Selkath binding her wrists behind her back. "You're going to put us through a Force-damned trial?!"
"Cowardly little…" Canderous trailed off as he mumbled.
Bastila leaned over to Seth, giving no resistance as she placed her hands above her head for the Selkath to cuff. "We need to alert the Ebon Hawk," she told him, voice low. "The rest of the crew needs to know what's going on."
He nodded as the Selkath began to march the crew out of the Embassy. "Drea!" Seth called as he passed her, and she jogged next to them to keep up with the brisk pace the Selkath had them moving at. "I need you to do me a favor, okay?" his voice was tender and gentle, a reminder of what their relationship had once held.
She nodded fervently. "Yeah, anything."
"Find the Ebon Hawk's docking bay. Ask for Carth Onasi. Tell him what's going on, okay? Can you do that for me?" She nodded again, and the group stopped for a brief moment as they waited for the blast doors separating the Republic Embassy from the rest of Ahto City to open. Drea took the chance to press her lips gently against Seth's cheek.
"Good luck," she whispered. And then the doors opened, and she was off.
A/N: Again, thank you so much to everyone who's stuck with this story and the inconsistent updates. I'm so grateful for all of you. Sometimes I wish I'd just majored in English so that writing could be at the forefront of my life, but unfortunately that's just not the case. That being said, with how much Sweet Sixteen means to me, I've been wanting to make sure the entirety of the work is up to par with my writing. If you didn't know, I've basically been writing in both directions - advancing the plot with chapters like these as well as rewriting earlier chapters starting with chapter one all the way through Dantooine. As of November 2015, the first three chapters have completely been rewritten, with minor plot points being touched up and replaced and with more continuity in Seth's backstory. I'll post an update in a future chapter when hopefully the whole beginning has been rewritten, and at that point I'd even suggest rereading to see the changes made. Thank you all again for your continued support for Sweet Sixteen - I wouldn't be able to do it without you all!