Free Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne Page A

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, thinnersnout, 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 tothe 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.