Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne

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. Whatsort 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