“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.”
Experimentat
ion 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.
“Cargo areas first, agreed?”
“Yeah.”
We approached the portside cargo bay and Nakari sent remote codes to call down the freight elevator. It descended flawlessly and without any bodies on it, which was encouraging. The platform had a rudimentary console connected to the rest of the ship, and Nakari punched in codes to light up the interior. Hydraulics whined as we rose together, though we didn’t see much at first beyond the glow panels and cargo hooks in the ceiling. Might there be a Fexian skullborer perching up there even now, invisible to our eyes?
“Stun sticks ready?” she asked.
“Ready.”
The clanking of our boots on the deck sounded muffled and far away, like someone else was walking elsewhere in the ship.
A pallet of crates shrouded in tarpaulin hunched in one forward corner as the elevator stopped, but farther aft along the right wall a line of specimen crates with thick, clear glass was stacked three high, like one might see in a pet merchant’s stall. I doubted these held any promise of a nurturing relationship.
“Check the crates first, leave nothing behind us,” Nakari said.
The crates underneath the tarp turned out to be bulk food supplies—mostly protein sludge mixtures.
“It’s our diet for the near future,” I said, “nothing more.”
“Okay, let’s head aft.” There was an airtight hatch back there leading to a machine shop, bathrooms, and the galley, and from there to the other cargo bay on the opposite side; or we could go forward through the common area and living quarters to see what waited for us on the bridge. As we drew closer, most of the specimen crates were empty and inactive, save for ten closest to the hatch. We clumped our way forward to get a better look and saw that five of them in the middle row contained Fexian skullborers lying on their sides—unconscious for sure, since we could see them, but more likely dead.
“You know, this makes me wonder,” Nakari said. “How do you keep a Fexian skullborer alive in captivity? Does anybody sell brain chow on the market?”
“I’m sure butchers would be able to supply nerf brains or something like that,” I said.
“Ugh.”
“The skullborers might find them delicious.”
“Uh-oh, Luke. Look at this.”
“What?”
Nakari pointed at the top five containers closest to the aft exit of the cargo bay. The thick polymer glass in these—much like our visors—had been cut through in narrow arcs with uneven edges. The units were still functioning in that the glow panels in the lids, calibrated to mimic the UV light and radiation from Sha Qarot’s star, remained on and warm. But the containers, clearly occupied at one time, no longer held any residents.
“I bet the glass is all over the floor, but I don’t want to look down or I might join it,” Nakari said. I thought the debris might be more like chunks than shards; the glass was quite thick and might in fact be a clear polycarbonate.
“That means we have five skullborers loose in the ship?”
“Maybe. If we’re lucky, they just snuck out past us real quiet and invisible when we lowered the freight elevator.”
“Not sure if we’re that lucky.”
“Nope. But I wonder why only the top five escaped and not these five below them.”
“Maybe one figured out it could bore through the glass and the others saw what it did and copied it.”
“Okay, that’s plausible. The ones below wouldn’t have seen anything except maybe the glass falling.”
“Or the ones in the bottom cages might have already been dead.”
“True. I actually hope that was the case. Because whether the five on top followed a leader or acted independently, that implies a level of intelligence I’d rather not face. Let’s press on. We need to find the crew—there were six of them. Maybe they’ll respond to a shipwide announcement.” She stepped forward to the aft hatch leading to the rest of the freighter, which we noticed was partially open. It had tried to close automatically and failed, prevented from doing so by the booted right foot of … someone.
“Oh, no,” Nakari said.
“That means they got into the rest of the ship.”
“That it does. But maybe someone’s locked away somewhere.” Using the console pad on the wall by the hatch, she toggled the comm. “Harvester, this is a rescue crew sent by Kelen Biolabs. We are in the port cargo bay. If anyone is alive, please respond.” She lifted her finger away, and we waited for a reply. Nothing. She repeated the message and we waited again in vain. “All right, we press on,” she said to me, pushing the button to open the hatch and then bracing herself against the hatch edge so that she could look down without being pulled off balance. I did the same on the other side of the hatch.
A Cerean lay facedown in a standard Kelen Biolabs uniform—bareheaded, in other words—with two holes in the back of his conical skull, one for e
ach of his two brains.
“They weren’t wearing armor,” I said. “They thought they were safe on the ship with the skullborers locked away.”
“Wonder how long he’s been here,” Nakari said.
“Same as the others,” I replied.
“How do you mean?”
“This ship never took off, but it’s still functional. The skullborers either killed everyone or isolated them from the bridge. Otherwise you can bet it wouldn’t still be sitting here like this.”
Nakari’s lips pressed together into a thin line through her visor. “Okay. We go from room to room together, clearing each and locking it behind us.”
“Can they bore through the hatches?”
“That would be excellent intel to have right now. We’ll see. Let’s check all the way aft first. Maybe someone made it into an escape pod.”
I stepped past her into the next chamber, an all-purpose area that had some scientific equipment set up. It had a bathroom and a galley; both were unoccupied. The armor that the crew should have been wearing was piled in a corner next to the bathroom, and the infrared goggles that would have allowed the crew to see the creatures—and wouldn’t fit our helmets—were stowed in a box underneath a table. In the center of the back wall was a pair of doors that led to the engineering area and the escape pods.
A rudimentary machine shop was incorporated in the engineering area, and it had been thrashed by someone desperate for any kind of weapon—and that someone was dead, facedown like the Cerean, but with a wrench within centimeters of his right hand. Nakari gasped when she saw the body.
“I know him. Knew him.”
“Was he the pilot?”
“No, a scientist. I was on a collection crew with him once.”
“I don’t see any blood on the wrench,” I said. “Though I don’t know what skullborer blood looks like. Impossible to tell if he scored a hit with it or not.”
“If he wasn’t already holding it and the skullborer landed on his unprotected head, he probably wouldn’t have had time enough, considering how fast they drilled through armor.”