by Kevin Hearne
The man bowed and departed without a word, accepting both the order and the good wishes. It was just as well that he didn’t try to speak, for Fayet had already turned his attention back to us and pointed at R2-D2, who had followed us in. “Can I transfer coordinates and other data to your droid?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“Does this droid interact with anyone besides you?”
“He occasionally interacts with other members of the Alliance,” I said. “But mostly he’s my personal astromech.”
“It’s good to have a minion, isn’t it?”
Artoo bleeped something and the tone did not fail to communicate his annoyance with such a demeaning label. Fayet Kelen paused, considering the droid, then looked at me. “You should make sure to lavish him with compliments for his service.”
“Oh, I do. He’s the finest droid in the galaxy.”
Fayet nodded, satisfied, ignoring Artoo’s blat of disgust. “Are you returning to the Alliance after leaving here, or traveling straight to Fex?”
“Straight to Fex,” Nakari answered.
“Good. After the mission is complete I want all of the data I’m about to give you erased from the droid’s memory, agreed?”
“Sure,” I said. I could simply have Artoo make his own observations and record them for the Alliance’s benefit should we want to use the moon as a base. We’d erase everything he gave us but would have our own data to use afterward.
“Excellent.” He picked up a datapad from his desk and stabbed at it rapidly with a thick finger. “Droid! I am uploading the encrypted mission files to our system for your access. They will be accessible for fifteen minutes and you may connect to any socket on your way out. Filename Fexian, download using the password Violet, and decrypt the files using the key Skywalker. Acknowledge!”
Artoo chirped an affirmative as Kelen’s first assistant returned with almost comically tiny cups of caf, barely half a swallow, resting on porcelain saucers on a round tray. We all paused to drink and return the cups to the saucers, thanking the assistant for bringing them before she withdrew.
“And now, my daughter,” Fayet said, stepping forward and placing his massive hands on either side of Nakari’s face, “go and return to me safely. You are my pride and my world, and my love for you is as vast as the dune sea outside our city walls. You know this, do you not?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He nodded, satisfied. “Good.” He dropped his hands but then waggled a finger at her. “Now, this moon is an extremely dangerous place. Do not step outside your ship without your armor. Review the files I have given you carefully on the way.”
“I will.” She lunged forward and pecked him on the cheek. “I know you’re busy and you have to go.” She embraced him briefly and stepped back. “Thanks for seeing us.”
“Always.” His eyes flicked to me, then he thundered, “And you! Pilot!”
“Yes?”
“Exercise prudence on your journey. You will not show off. Let your skills commend themselves by your judicious use of them.”
“Understood, sir.”
“And stop grinning at me!”
I did my best to master my expression and said, “Yes, sir.”
“Come on, Luke, he’s late for a meeting,” Nakari said, tugging at my sleeve and leading me to the door. Her father was already shouting for another minion before we could make our exit.
Artoo paused in Fayet Kelen’s reception area, where a data-port in the wall allowed him to download the pertinent files for the mission. The tall, lean gentleman who had a son at university was waiting for us at the ship with three black cargo cases. “Two armor units and some stun sticks, as ordered,” he said. “I’d practice somersaulting in the armor if I were you.”
“Why?” Nakari asked.
“I’m assuming Mr. Kelen shared our survey files with you. Watch the holo of what you’re hunting and you’ll see what I mean.” With that cryptic comment, he wished us a safe journey and departed, but not before I noticed his brief shudder.
“Well, my curiosity is piqued,” I said.
“Mine, too. Why would we need somersaults and stun sticks? Why can’t we just set our blasters to stun?”
“My guess is that we’re not going to have a chance to deal with whatever they are from a distance. That would explain the armor and hand-to-hand weapons.”
Nakari frowned. “Yeah, I figured, but I don’t understand why we can’t ensure that we have plenty of distance before we engage.”
“Should make for interesting in-flight entertainment.”
Artoo decrypted the Fexian file and used the coordinates therein to plot a route as we left the atmosphere of Pasher. I asked him to plot a safe trip into a well-known Core system before trying to navigate the Deep Core. When making a dangerous jump like that it was always best to pause, confirm your position among the stars, and recalculate using the latest possible data.
“I liked your dad,” I said as we waited for the first jump.
Nakari searched my face to see if I was being serious or merely polite. “He’s a bit eccentric.”
“Yeah, but it seems like it’s in a good way.”
“Not everyone views his yelling as a good thing.”
“He tempers it with tenderness, though. Unless that’s an act?”
“No, he’s genuinely sweet. If anything, the yelling is an act.”
“Why does he do it?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I have a collection of theories.”
“Have you tested any of these theories?”
“I can’t test them because he won’t be honest or even answer me if I ask him. I did ask him, you know. ‘Why do you yell at your minions, Daddy? And why do you call them minions? Isn’t that kind of disrespectful?’ ”
“What did he say?”
She imitated his voice again and grimaced. “ ‘Think about it, daughter!’ And so I did and still do. I cultivate my theories and let them grow for a while—if you’ll allow me a farming metaphor—and see which ones flourish in the light of day and which ones wither.”
“Which of them flourishes the most right now?”
“Oh, no, you won’t get answers that easily. Think about it, pilot!”
I smiled. “Okay, fair enough.”
“The best answer, however, is that there are many different viable alternatives. More than one solution to a problem. What’s your dad like?”
I gave a tiny shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never met him. He was a Jedi Knight in the Clone Wars and a good pilot, and that’s all I know.”
“Your dad was a Jedi? How did that happen?”
“The way it usually happens, I would imagine.”
“But he was a good pilot, eh? Like father, like son?”
Shrugging, I said, “I guess so.”
“I’m sorry if I stepped on an exposed nerve there.”
“Oh!” I realized that my expression must have given her the wrong impression. “No, don’t worry, it’s not you or the question itself. It’s just the uncertainty that bothers me. I’d like to think that he was a good guy, but since I’ll never meet him all I can do is set him on a pedestal and layer on the wishful thinking. He might have had all the charm of a bantha.”
Nakari nodded and changed the subject abruptly, which suggested to me that she didn’t want to exchange tales about our mothers next. “Let’s take a look at those files if they’re ready.”
“All right.” I flipped on the ship’s comm and asked Artoo if he had everything decrypted and spooled up for viewing.
JUMPING NOW. HOLO NEXT, his reply read. The stars blurred and streaked past the cockpit as we jumped into hyperspace, and then a blue holoimage of Fayet Kelen sprang up in front of us. Nakari hadn’t been kidding about her holoprojector being low-end.
“Behold, my minions!” he boomed. He’d obviously recorded this before he knew Nakari and I would be taking on the assignment. “You are traveling to Fex, which might be the richest new disc
overy for biotech in decades. The red sun of the system has given rise to an unusual purple landscape ranging from pale lavenders to deep violets. High silica and mineral content in the soils have resulted in some fascinating crystal structures that another division may exploit, but we are concerned with how those conditions have manifested themselves in the wildlife. Many of the herbivores, for example, have extraordinary crystalline spikes or horns growing around their heads, or, like a tortoise, have the ability to withdraw their heads into a highly armored body cavity.” A series of stills began to flash in the holo in place of Fayet, though he kept narrating. The creatures all had heavy, nightmarish heads of spines and other protuberances and long bodies with tails to balance out the weight. “This tendency for natural armor often goes midway down the back but does not apply to limbs or the lower torso. Bellies are unprotected. We even found this head-and-shoulder armor on display among the predators, which we thought highly curious. What environmental threat on Fex posed such a danger to heads that herbivores and carnivores alike evolved these extreme defenses? We hypothesized that there must exist some sort of arboreal or even aerial apex predator that attacked the head of anything it came across, and thus our first collection crew was sent out with armor suits, as well—but not nearly as strong as that which you currently have. That first crew, unfortunately, discovered why such headgear is necessary. Three were scouting and collecting development leads on the moon while their ship, the Harvester, orbited above. I will now play back a vid of their deaths, which they themselves recorded from their helmets.”
“Um,” I said, “are we going to see a decapitation?”
“I don’t know,” Nakari whispered.
The holo shifted to helmet footage of a Bith in full armor walking through the Fexian forest. He wore a giant helmet to cover his fleshy, bulbous head, and when he turned briefly to check on his partners, his black eyes could be seen through his faceplate. He was leading the person with the cam and talking about what he was seeing, his alien speech overdubbed with a monotone translation in Basic that conveyed none of the excitement—and later panic—that he obviously felt. Our view switched to his feed, presumably, since the Bith disappeared and we saw nothing but the forest ahead and the quality of the sound changed from a comm crackle to a muffled internal echo like one often hears in the confines of a helmet.
“The crystalline flowers we’ve seen are valuable just as they are for the jewelry trade, before we put them under a microscope for medical use,” he said. “And—” An impact to his head shook the cam. “Auggh! Chobb’s knob! What was that?”
The holo switched back to the original view, where we could see the Bith ducking and shaking his head and slapping at the top of it. Odd how he never actually made contact with his helmet, and his hands came away pricked with blood.
“Gaahh! Something’s on my head! Get it off!”
“What? Where?” The owner of the first helmet cam spoke. “I don’t see anything!”
“Right on top! I think it’s trying to get through! Hurry! Aghk!”
The Bith suddenly ceased moving—or rather, I should say he ceased struggling, for his arms fell limp at his sides and he collapsed face-first to the ground, dead of completely mysterious causes. There was nothing visible attached to his head.
“What in five bloody—” the first speaker began, and then his helmet rocked as well. “Aw, no! No! What is it? Hafner, stun me, quick! Stun my head, and Priban’s, too!” The view swung around to reveal a third member of the party, a green-skinned Duros with wide, terrified red eyes behind his visor.
“What? I don’t understand.” The view switched to the cam of the Duros named Hafner, as he watched the original speaker, a human male, gesturing madly at him. Beyond the human, we could see Priban’s still body on the forest floor.
“Stun me now or I’m just as dead as Priban! Do it!”
Hafner’s cam shook; I guessed he was fumbling for his blaster.
“Hurry! It’s drilling through! Uhk!”
The human’s limbs went slack, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell forward just as the Bith had. Hafner finally got it together, much too late, and shot a stun blast at the unnamed human and at the Bith. Tiny squeals resulted, and the predators lay revealed: small six-legged creatures with spindly limbs that ended in clawed fingers designed to clutch and hold on to prey. Their heads were long snouts with a bulbous skull at the top ringed by eight eyes evenly spaced around it. Their bodies had sharp rigid spines in four rows of four each, presented radially so that anything trying to slap away the creatures would get poked. In each case, the creatures had their snout inserted into a hole in the helmet. Hafner leaned in closer to the human to get a better look.
“Are you seeing this through the feed, Harvester? What is it? I couldn’t see it before. It didn’t appear until it was stunned. That implies conscious control of a very powerful natural camouflage system. It bored right through the helmet! I think you should come pick us up now. We aren’t prepared for this kind of thing.”
Reaching out with the tip of his blaster, Hafner thrust it underneath the creature’s neck and lifted, pulling the flexible snout out of the cavity only to discover that there was another, thinner snout, like a translucent hose, inside of that one, and as it came free, blood and chunks of brain slipped out and plopped wetly onto the helmet.
“I knew it! These things eat brains! That’s why all the animals on this moon are so armored.” Hafner looked up and saw branches overhanging high above. “They must drop down from the trees. If they stay up there, a creature close to the ground probably wouldn’t smell them in time. And you can’t see them unless they’re unconscious. Or dead, I suppose. But how did they …” The cam view returned to the creature. “That feeding tube couldn’t have drilled through the helmets, and the outer snout looks like regular skin over cartilage. I’m going to take a closer look while it’s still stunned and then get out of here. I hope you guys are on your way, Harvester.”
A garbled reply came in. “On our way.”
For the record, scientists scare me a little bit. I think a normal reaction for most people, upon witnessing two colleagues’ brains get eaten by invisible aliens, would not be a calm request for pickup but rather a screaming demand for an air strike to turn the entire surface of the planet to glass. This Hafner should be running away and soiling his armor, not taking a closer look at the brain-slurping alien.
He set his blaster down on the forest floor and Nakari exploded, shouting at the holo, “No! What are you thinking? Don’t put down your weapon, that thing could wake up at any time!”
“We already know this isn’t going to end well,” I said. “Your father said as much.”
Being careful to avoid the spines, Hafner picked up the limp alien form with his gloved hands. “Not heavy. Thin bones but very strong ones,” he said. “And look at the skin. Colors radiate wherever I touch it.” We couldn’t see that in the holo, or at least not clearly. There were hints of color, but the low quality of the projector fed everything through a strong blue filter and subtlety was lost, though we could see variations in the tone next to the points where his fingers applied pressure. “Must be a highly advanced chromatophore system in their skin.” Cradling the creature by its lower extremities in his left hand, he grabbed hold of the snout with his right. The clear feeding tube retracted by reflex on contact. Hafner continued his commentary. “Hmm. The snout looks completely flexible, but that’s not entirely the case. There’s a bone inside it along one edge—wait. It moved to the bottom now. How strange.”
“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.