Heir to the Jedi (11 page)

“Ahh!” Dropping her blaster, she clutched her injured hand to her chest. “Why did they attack my hands?”

I rolled over and levered myself up to a standing position. “They’re smart, just like you thought. Problem solvers. They saw us kill the other three using things in our hands. So they attack the hands to disable you, and then they can get to what they really want.”

“Oh. Oh, you’re right! These things are at least semi-sentient. We shouldn’t be messing around with them. Except this last one who’s only stunned. Would you mind?”

I considered simply dropping it outside the ship, but it wouldn’t do to have it lingering around where it could attack us again when we had to return to the
Jewel
. I shot it, and that made five dead skullborers to match up with five empty cages. “At least you’re already in the medical bay,” I said. “Let’s see if we can patch you up.”

The skullborer had chewed through her glove like tissue and had sawn through the web of tendons in the back of her hand, though it didn’t break any of the bones; Nakari had blasted it to
jelly before it could drill so far. It was impossible for her to make a fist now. I slapped a bacta patch on it, gave her something for the pain, and let the automated medical system continue from there. She’d need a true surgeon to repair the damage, but the system could keep her stable and free of infection.

“I’m going to check the rest of the ship, just in case,” I told her. “We should still have one crew member left, right?”

Nakari nodded, biting her lower lip. The pain medication probably hadn’t kicked in yet and her adrenaline was wearing off.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I told her. “I want to see if I can get the ship fired up, too.”

“I don’t know how you can see anything,” she said, breathing quickly. “Between that chewed-up spot in the visor and the burn, it’s a wonder you’re not blind.”

“I’ll be careful. I’m taking two sticks with me just in case.”

Nakari requested that I give her one of hers, and only when she felt sufficiently armed did she lie back on the table to let the medical program run. She quizzed me on the codes for the doors before I exited.

Though my theories would probably be laughable to anyone with a better knowledge of biology, I wondered if the skullborers might get smarter depending on what they ate. Would the prions and neurons of their meals accrete somehow and improve their thinking? If such a thing were possible, maybe eating the double brain of a Cerean would explain how their tactics adapted and improved—because they
had
been pursuing a tactical strategy by going after Nakari’s hands. And come to think of it, when they attacked my face, the way that one of them landed on top of the other was clever, too—I couldn’t get to the one on the bottom using the stun sticks, and they hadn’t seen the blasters get used yet, so they wouldn’t have been able to account for that. But that possibility raised other questions. The one that landed on the other’s back would have necessarily been
punctured by the first one’s spines, so if that had been planned it had been a planned sacrifice. Could they even see each other while camouflaged? Maybe that one–two business had been a complete accident. The two that attacked Nakari had obviously coordinated their attack, though, which made me wonder how they communicated. We had heard no vocalizations from them until we caused them pain.

The simplest explanation—and far more likely than the idea that they could get smarter by eating brains—was that the skullborers were at least semi-sentient, maybe even sentient to begin with. But between them killing the first two collection crews and me and Nakari killing them back, we had never had time to puzzle out their status.

All of my questions were better answered by Kelen Biolabs, and I was more than ready to drop the entire mess into their lap. I tapped the code into the datapad that would unlock the hatch to the living quarters. No bodies awaited me in the hallway, but I had to step over the fallen body of the human female outside the door to enter it. All the quarters were closed, and I punched in the override for each one, finding the first two on either side empty albeit with signs of recent occupation—papers on desks, half-empty cups of caf, tossed linens, and a carelessly discarded pair of underwear in one case. I found the sixth and final member of the
Harvester
’s crew behind the third hatch on the left. He was a human male, curled up on his bunk, most likely dead, his lips cracked and dry and his skin gone pale. Though his skull was still intact, he hadn’t responded to Nakari’s shipwide calls when he had the requisite equipment to do so—I checked. The console by the door still worked.

Perhaps he had locked himself in here once he realized the skullborers were loose on the ship and knew that he couldn’t venture outside the room without his armor. Several empty water bulbs lay strewn about the floor, but I saw no food packets. Who knew the last time he’d had a drink or something to
eat. He’d chosen to die of thirst rather than have his brain sucked up a feeding tube—an understandable decision.

I saw an old-fashioned handwritten diary open on his desk, which would no doubt illuminate his last days. Just to make sure, I knelt beside him and leaned forward until my visor was right next to his open mouth and nose. After a couple of seconds, the glass unmistakably fogged. He still breathed! He had to be near death, though. I had to get him to the medical bay immediately.

Turning off the stun stick in my left hand, I placed it on his desk and then tried to prod him awake with a few finger jabs. He didn’t respond, so I turned off the other stun stick and put it down, threw him awkwardly over my left shoulder, then grabbed a stun stick in my right hand before returning to the medical bay.

“Nakari, I found someone,” I said as I entered. A pair of robot arms suspended from the ceiling was wrapping up her left hand in a thick protective shroud of bandages.

“Still alive?” she asked.

“Yeah, but he’s in bad shape.”

“Well, it’s finished with me anyway,” she said, her words languorous and mellow. The medication must have kicked in. She waved at the medical apparatus hanging above her with her damaged hand. “It can’t do the surgery required for something like this. These things are meant to keep you alive, and mending tendons isn’t on their list of vital services.”

She rose from the examination bed to make room, and I slid the man onto it. “Know him, too?” I asked once she could see his face.

“No.” She shook her head. “But I’m sure my father will be glad to get him back.”

“Mind looking after him?” I said. “I’d like to clear the rest of the ship.”

“Absolutely, you do that,” she replied, and plopped herself
into a chair resting against the wall. She didn’t look entirely lucid, so I programmed the autodoc to begin its work on the man before I left him.

The remaining cabins were empty and the bridge was pristine. I wasn’t attacked at any point, so I thumbed the shipwide comm and said, “Nakari, the ship is clear, at least without scanning. I will start up the engines and run preflight, then come back through with a scanner to make doubly sure.” She acknowledged, and then the work began. The
Harvester
was okay on fuel and all systems were nominal, except for the profound lack of a crew at the moment. I dragged all the victims into the holding area between the galley and the bathroom, where their unused armor was, then returned briefly to the
Desert Jewel
to fetch a small life-form scanner to scan the
Harvester
thoroughly. It was truly clear, so I asked Nakari what she’d like to do next. “How are we getting this ship out of here?”

“Link it to the
Desert Jewel
’s nav, and you fly us all back to Pasher. I’ll stay on board in case this guy wakes up and try to clean up some of this mess.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Yeah. We better get paid
really
well for this.”

FAYET KELEN WAITED
for us on our assigned landing pad when we arrived on Pasher—waited on Nakari and the
Harvester
, anyway, along with a small throng of his employees. Artoo and I joined them once we’d secured the
Desert Jewel
.

Nakari had evidently given her father a quick summary of events, because as I stepped up to join them, he boomed, “Pilot! Well met and welcome. I am told you distinguished yourself on Fex.” That might have been stretching the account a bit far since I had accomplished little beyond my own survival, but his eyes dropped to Artoo and he continued before I could reply. “Your droid has erased all the data provided earlier?”

“Artoo, please delete the files Mr. Kelen gave us.” The droid beeped an acknowledgment and Kelen chuckled.

“Good, good. But forgive me if I would like some stronger assurance that my interests are protected.” His sausage fingers fished a datachip out of his tunic pocket, and he handed it to
me. “I had this prepared for your arrival. It will confirm the erasure of all files I gave you in your droid’s memory and erase any that accidentally remain, nothing more.”

Refusing to run the chip would only invite suspicion when I had already promised to erase everything, so I inserted it and Artoo ran the program, spitting it back out in a few seconds. Nakari winked at me, however, indicating that perhaps she had her own backup of the Fexian coordinates stored somewhere.

“Excellent,” Kelen said. His hand danced about on his personal datapad and he said, “I am depositing a goodly sum into an escrow account, which your droid may access and distribute to you both, and I thank you for returning my ship, my crew both living and deceased, and alien life that will delight my scientists.”

Sensing that he was about to turn his attention elsewhere and dismiss us, Nakari said, “Daddy. Don’t send anyone else there until you read my full report. Those things could be sentient. And even if you ignore that, you have to upgrade the armor’s mobility.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I will digest all you have written before acting further. My primary concern now is that you see a surgeon about that hand. See where my minions come? Go with them.”

“What?” An ambulance coasted to a stop near the ship and two earnest medics hopped out, asking Fayet Kelen who was hurt.

“Take my daughter to the finest surgeon posthaste and bill it to me. Go!”

“Daddy, wait! What about Luke?”

“Fear not, your pilot will be allowed to rest in comfort until you are ready to depart.”

“Don’t leave without me, Luke!” she called over her shoulder as the paramedics led her to the ambulance.

“I won’t,” I said, though I wondered if she would be able to
accompany me on the mission to smuggle the Givin off Denon. She’d be fine eventually, but I doubted she would be 100 percent anytime soon. Admiral Ackbar had given us some slack time in our operation window, but not much.

Fayet Kelen turned to me, his mouth quirked upward in a fond grin. “She will not be long, pilot. You will see. If she is not bandaged and ready to leave in the morning, I will be very surprised.” His fingers massaged his datapad again as he spoke. “In the meantime, please stay the evening in Pasher’s finest hotel at my expense. I am summoning an escort to take you there. Have your droid search for the file
Skywalker
, encryption key
Jewel Pilot
, and you will find the funds I spoke of, which you may then transfer wherever you please. Thank you for your service to me and my daughter. May the stars keep you safe.”

Before I could reply, he turned and strode with impressive speed to the workers unloading the cargo bay of the
Harvester
, bawling out orders and leaving me with my mouth open.

R2-D2 spat out a stream of digital hoots that I imagined to be a wry comment.

“Looks like we get a night off from the war, Artoo. Don’t tell Threepio, okay? We’ll never hear the end of it.”

The hotel was indeed quite a luxurious affair, but once I tried out the bed I didn’t find much use for its other amenities. The mattress was so comfortable and I was so exhausted that I fell asleep in my clothes, and Artoo had to wake me in the morning. It didn’t bother me to miss out on the excess and splendor, though; a good night’s sleep at that point was the height of luxury to me.

A message from Nakari waited for me at the front desk: “Hurry up. I’m waiting at the ship.”

“Come on, Artoo, we have weapons to buy.” The money Fayet Kelen had paid us was quite an impressive sum. We’d need all of it for upgrades to the
Desert Jewel
, but the prospect of custom
surprises was excitement enough for me: The Alliance rarely had the funds or the will to do anything unusual.

Nakari’s left hand, encased in a thin protective sheath full of bacta, waved at me from the ship’s loading ramp. “Those must have been some sweet dreams,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah, I feel rested. How about you?”

“High on meds and days away from getting back full use of my hand, but otherwise functional and happy to be here.”

“Can you still fire your rifle?”

“Maybe not so well on the run. But sniping from a fixed position where I can use my elbow for support should be fine.”