Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne Page A

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 beenpunctured 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 toeat. 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