Sword of Minerva (The Guild Wars Book 10) by Mark Wandrey (good books to read for teens txt) 📗

His position was completely unstable. He spun like crazy. He didn’t care. He caught another pair, one in each hand, and smashed their heads together with a satisfying crunch. He released them, and they floated away, spewing blood and brains. One of the opSha landed on his back, and he felt a knife scrape across his neck, searching for a weakness in the armor. It kinda tickled.

He laughed out loud, grabbed its hand, and crushed it to pulp until the knife handle shattered. The surviving opSha fled—or tried to. Rick didn’t let them. He stabilized his flight, brought both lasers online, and killed every one of them within view. He was getting the hang of the natural weapon interface instead of pinplant control. Point and kill. Nice.

The salvaged Peacekeeper battery was depleted, and he released it as he floated toward the door out of the compartment. A heavy laser beam skittered off the dome of his helmet. “Ouch, fuck!” He snarled and reversed course. Poking a hand around the corner, he used the simple thermal sensors there to see what it was. A squad of opSha had a crew-served laser set up, like the kind he’d seen once in the Winged Hussars. In fact, he’d had an arm severed by one in his CASPer. If they’d been a little more patient, waiting until his entire head was out, they could have done him serious injury.

“Too hasty,” he called out.

“To entropy with you!” a tiny voice called back.

Rick searched the room for something useful. Maybe a heavy steel plate to use? He was about to take the wall section he’d cut, when he saw something much better. He maneuvered the heavy crate to just inside the doorway and attached a short power cable he’d found to one of the crate’s securing points. Next he opened the crate and set about preparing. A moment later, he had the lid back on and was ready.

Moving quickly, he secured the power cable to a handhold inside the door, pulled the crate back inside as far as he could, moved it away as far as the cable would allow, braced his legs against a wall, and pushed the crate as hard as he could.

The crate rocketed away from him, and the cable kept it from simply bouncing around the room full of dead opSha and gore. The cable acted as a pivot point, spinning the crate around a 270-degree arc, out into the hallway and toward the heavy laser. Rick used a tiny low power laser pulse to sever the cable just as the crate was aimed down the hallway, setting it loose.

It wasn’t perfect; the crate did rebound a bit, but it was still propelled directly at the enemy and at a good clip. He’d guessed on the timing, but to be safe, he went back the way he’d come. Being concussed twice today was quite enough.

Laser fire erupted from the enemy, aimed at the crate, naturally. They hit it on the third shot, and Rick heard them scream as the crate shattered and the dozens of grenades it held were scattered like seeds in the wind. The screams were cut off as the grenade he’d set on a 20-second fuse detonated, setting off all the rest. The blast was quite spectacular and rang the station like a bell.

“Now we’re cookin’!” Rick laughed. A secondary explosion went off, much bigger than the first, and the room shuddered and deformed. “Maybe I got a little carried away?” A wave of super-chilled hydrogen flushed though, and was ignited, turning everything into a flaming nightmare.

* * *

Every time Sato had gone into combat mode before, he’d blacked out. As the fight began, he finally understood. The training and conditioning that let him fight was compartmentalized within a section of his Mesh. It somehow linked in with his body’s own learning, creating a bridge between muscle memory and mental conditioning. It was like synergistic lightning in a bottle.

The opSha fighters moved in what looked like slow motion to him. He shot five of them before they’d moved a meter or cleared weapons from holsters. He marveled at having to wait for the GP-90’s bolt to finish cycling before firing again. His actions were faster than the gun’s bolt.

All the opSha armed with guns were killed in a second; the rest came at him drawing blades or reaching with their bare hands. He got two more before they were within arm’s reach, and he clubbed one’s skull open with the gun. Seven sets of hands clawed at him.

The danger was getting covered in opSha. The biggest risk was if they could isolate his arms or get a blade on his neck. He disarmed the first opSha, appropriating his little blade, and used it against him. Sato got his first cut only a few seconds into the battle when a blade scored across his right forearm as he stabbed one through its eye, and the second, moments later, penetrated his left bicep.

Sato had learned to compartmentalize pain early in his training, taking note of the wound and any reduction in ability. Neither injury was dangerous nor debilitating, so he didn’t change his fighting style.

A blade going for his neck was deflected, cutting his ear and scoring along his skull. He opened the attacker from crotch to neck. Another knife punched a wound into Sato’s abdomen. The pain was deep, back in his stomach, which meant it might have found intestines. He clenched his core muscles, trapping the blade. The alien looked triumphant until it realized it couldn’t pull the blade out. Sato used the edge of his left hand to crush its esophagus.

One of them came at his face. Sato clubbed it aside, but the alien bounced off the wall and came back immediately. The blade it carried punched into Sato’s left kidney. A gasp of