Heir to the Jedi (9 page)

“It’s not strange, it’s waking up!” Nakari said. “Run, idiot!”

Hafner’s fingers probed at the bone, and it moved again. “Look at this. The bone inside that runs along the snout actually rotates in a full circle. Must be an extraordinary socket and musculature system at the base of the skull, and that feeding tube must retract far up inside for it to be allowed such free movement.”

His fingers clutched around the end of the snout. “Down here there is a ring of bone, near the orifice. Yes, it is a ring indeed. I wonder if …”

He squeezed and pulled down against the skin of the snout—and unveiled a horror. It was a rotary blade of teeth, pointed down and insulated by its angle from cutting the inside of the creature’s snout. But they could cut through a helmet—and then a skull—just fine. The teeth were discolored but otherwise undamaged.

“This is incredible,” Hafner mumbled. “They use these teeth and a rotary motion to drill through the skulls of their prey, damaging the brain, and then when their victims fall down, they insert their feeding tubes and … well. Feed. What must they be made of, to penetrate through these helmets like they did? Some sort of crystalline coating to the teeth, perhaps, as hard as diamond?”

The picture was rocked as a weight fell down upon Hafner’s head. “Oh! I have one on me!
Harvester
, come quickly! I’m stunning myself and the beast!” We saw him pick up the blaster on
the ground, heard the stun blast, and then the cam view slipped down and sideways as Hafner hit the forest floor. The picture was replaced by Fayet Kelen.

“Unfortunately, the
Harvester
did not arrive in time to save Hafner. Before it could arrive, the beasts had all woken, finished their meals, and departed. The
Harvester
crew did not land, but rather extracted the bodies with cables and claws. They stunned the bodies to make sure none of the beasts was hitching a ride into the ship, and then left the system to report back to me.

“The brains had been completely removed from the victims. The Bith, Priban, had also been poisoned. Those spines contain a toxin. They were otherwise untouched, but their deaths have revealed the most stunning biotech find in a good long while. A poisonous, adaptive creature with a natural drill mechanism capable of penetrating most armors and perhaps fooling weapons scanners? The potential from this single species alone is worth millions of credits, never mind all the other species on Fex.

“For now we are calling these creatures Fexian skullborers. I sent another crew, the one you are going to find, with upgraded armor and infrared goggles to spy the creatures when they are in camouflage. The armor you have is even better than theirs but cannot accommodate the goggles. Do not leave your ship without the armor on. Stun anything you bring into the ship to make sure no skullborers are hiding on it in camouflage. If you can bring back any skullborers, dead or alive, my bounty will be great. At minimum I need confirmation that the crew is dead or alive and a report on the condition of their ship, the
Harvester
. That ship was fitted with a remote-activated beacon. If it has not been obliterated, it should broadcast a signal in response to the codes I am including in this file. I’m also including other stills and reports for your review. Good luck and safe hunting.”

The holo winked out and Nakari looked at me. “Hey, Luke.”

“Yes?”

“I know that it’s really early and we haven’t even made it into
the system yet, but I’m going to gently suggest that the Alliance does not try to establish a base on that moon.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a good call.”

“Now we know what the stun sticks are for. They make perfect sense.”

“Did the second collection crew have them, I wonder?”

“Maybe that’s in the rest of the information he included.”

“Maybe. We should review all that.” I called out, “Artoo, can you give us everything else Nakari’s father included in that file?”

INCOMING,
came the reply. We got a toxicity report that indicated the Bith would have fallen stone dead of heart failure if the skullborer hadn’t penetrated his brain first—so slapping at them was not an option. There were some speculative reports on the skullborer’s skeleton and the composition of the drilling teeth. The helmets worn by the first crew were about an eight on the hardness scale, so the teeth were at minimum a nine and possibly a ten, considering the speed at which they had bored through the material. Our helmets were now nine point five on the hardness scale, including the visor, while the rest of the armor was standard, albeit insulated from stun blasts. Since stunning had proven to be effective, recommended tactics suggested immediate application of the stun stick if attacked.

“I’m taking two of those things with me,” Nakari said. “And if one lands on me, you bash my head with your stunners, too, you hear?”

“Same here,” I said, nodding. “We’ll see what we can salvage from the ship and get out. No walking around underneath the trees.”

“Definitely not.” We fell silent and Nakari bowed her head, obscuring her face behind a curtain of dark curls. It was probably a good time to make a clever quip of some kind, but my mind remained blank, still in shock at what I’d seen. Perhaps that’s all Nakari felt, as well, and in that case there was nothing I could do to fix it. I wondered, though, about her father. What
sort of person would send his child to face such dangers when he could risk someone else? Was he that confident in the new armor? Or was he that confident in Nakari? Judging by her next words, she was thinking much along the same lines.

“Can’t believe he’d send me out to do this,” she said.

“Well, didn’t you tell me you’ve hunted a krayt dragon before? He must figure you’re up to it.”

“Maybe,” she said, and then laughed with equal measures of amusement and rue. “Or maybe he’s more confident in the armor and figures anyone can do it now. You hope it’s one and not the other. Sometimes I think the galaxy might be entirely populated by people with daddy issues.”

“Of one kind or another, probably so,” I agreed.

IT WOULD BE HOURS BEFORE
we made it all the way into the Core, where we could take time to make final calculations prior to making the last jump to Fex. We had time to kill, and Nakari whipped out a couple of frozen nerf steaks from the galley’s freezer.

“Fancy,” I noted.

“Enjoy it now. We’ll be choking down protein sludge after this.” She put me in charge of “all things nerf,” and pointed to a collection of vegetables she had stashed away, which she would be preparing. It was only enough for one meal. Everything else, as she said, would be protein and nutrient rations of one kind or another.

“Why do you bring so little real food?” I asked her.

“Jobs like this one usually don’t give you enough time to prepare it or enjoy it. We’ll be working nonstop and on alert at all times once we hit atmosphere. Food’s just fuel then.”

“Okay, but why not save something for when the job’s through?”

“That feels like celebrating prematurely. And my desire for real food just pushes me to get home as fast as possible.”

It turned out neither of us was particularly skilled in the culinary arts. “You sure can thaw a nerf steak” was about all Nakari could muster as a tribute after taking the first bite of my cooking. She was right: I had thoroughly thawed that nerf, then kept going until I had burned it into a dry, tough piece of leather.

I speared a root on my fork and regarded it doubtfully as it sagged on either end. It should have kept its shape. “Wow. These vegetables are really steamed,” I said.

We eyed each other for a couple of seconds to see if either would take offense, then broke into laughter and said, “Sorry,” at the same time.

After our meal, the armor begged to be tried on. The body was a strong but fairly lightweight insulated mesh, padded and reinforced on the torso and spine, designed to stop kinetic rounds and claws, I supposed. The helmets, by contrast, were almost absurdly heavy and cumbersome. We first had to put on a thick rubber insulation mask that the instructions claimed would shield us from the inevitable use of stun sticks to our own heads. It swept down across our collarbones and across the breadth of our shoulders. Then the helmet was fitted on top of that, so heavy that maintaining balance would be a problem. Any sudden movement forward or backward would tug your body in that direction, as I demonstrated by trying to look down. Nakari threw her head back to laugh at me and fell backward, pawing unsuccessfully at the walls to keep herself upright. We both toggled our comms and laughed at each other.

“Remember that guy on Pasher as we got on board?” I said. “He advised that we practice somersaults in these!”

“No way that’s going to happen!” Nakari said. “He must have been messing with us.”

“Yeah, because I’m not sure I can get up now.”

“What? Whoa. That could be a problem.”

It was a problem, though not an insurmountable one. We managed to regain our feet, but not quickly and not without considerable strain. If we went down on Fex, we would not spring back up again. Running for more than a few steps might be impossible.

“Did they even test these before giving them to us?” I wondered aloud, steadying myself against the walls of the passageway.

“We should try out the stun sticks,” Nakari suggested.

“Agreed. If we can’t take a hit now, think of what kind of mess we’ll be in on the surface of Fex. We’ll wind up like that first crew and maybe the second, too.”

“Who goes first?”

“Go ahead and try it on me,” I said. “It’s only fair. I ruined the nerf steaks.”

“Very well, they shall be avenged.” She staggered over to the case of stun sticks and pulled out two, flipping them both on. The air around them rippled for a moment with an energy field and then settled. Lurching toward me and grinning through her visor, Nakari reached out with her right hand and thwacked me on the pate, which I could feel but hardly hear inside the helmet.

Her voice crackled through the comm. “Anything?”

“I’m not unconscious, so that’s good,” I said.

“Copy that. Double strike incoming.” Both sticks pounded on the top of my helmet, but I felt only the indications of a soft impact. She wasn’t striking hard and shouldn’t have to.

“No effect,” I said, encouraged. “Try the sides and the visor, too.”

Experimentation continued and we discovered that the visors were not as well shielded. The stun stick didn’t knock me out, but I did feel a shock, jerk away involuntarily, and then topple backward from the weight of the helmet.

“Okay, good to know,” I said.

“Good to know they work, that’s for sure,” Nakari said as she helped me up. “I’m going to have a ton of notes on these suits for my father, but I think they should keep us alive long enough to stun anything that lands on us.”

We had enough empty hours ahead that some rack time was not only feasible but advisable, so we took advantage and asked Artoo to wake us when he was ready to jump into the Deep Core. He did so, and after we guzzled some black, bitter instant caf that succeeded in clearing our heads while savaging our taste buds, I annoyed him by asking to triple-check his coordinates with the
Desert Jewel
’s nav computer. It took him less than ten seconds, but he sounded affronted.

“Sorry, Artoo, but I’ve never jumped into the Deep Core before. It’s crowded in there and things move fast and this isn’t a well-established route yet, so I think an abundance of caution is warranted.” That seemed to mollify him, and I let him take us in for the jump. It was only fifteen minutes until the white lines of the stars collapsed into pinpoints again and we were in the Sha Qarot system, a red sun and a black planet crisscrossed with a web of crazed orange faults. Fex appeared from orbit to be a serene contrast to the angry planet, a cool soft plum scoop of ice cream. The whole system was beautiful from orbit, and since we were in the Deep Core the sky was thick with stars. I reminded Artoo to take holos for the benefit of the Alliance, even though we wouldn’t use Fex as a base. Maybe the orbit itself would be useful. I wanted to remember it regardless; we were among the first ever to see Sha Qarot and Fex in person.

Nakari sent the signal to activate the
Harvester
’s beacon, and we set a course for it as soon as our sensors picked it up. While the
Jewel
took us in on autopilot, we climbed into our bulky armor but decided to leave the helmets until it was time to open the air lock.

We followed the beacon signal down to a plain of lavender
grasses on the edge of a forest, a canopy of leaves like purple cotton perched on toothpicks. The
Harvester
rested there, seemingly undamaged from the outside.

“So far, so good,” Nakari said, landing the
Desert Jewel
on the far side, putting the
Harvester
between us and the forest. “Nothing can drop down on us going from ship to ship.”

Scans revealed life-forms inside, but not enough to make up the entire crew of the
Harvester
. Attempts to raise them via comm failed, so we had no choice but to investigate in person. Swathed in our armor and practically teetering from the weight on our necks and shoulders, we set armored boots on the surface of Fex and trudged toward the ship, stun sticks in each hand and blasters on hips. Artoo burbled something that might have been an admonition to be careful as the ramp closed behind us. The
Harvester
was a Corellian XS-800 light freighter with entry allowed from the ground via a ventral air lock situated behind the cockpit and in front of the living quarters, and also via two loading elevators to the cargo areas nestled on either side of the ship.