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

incident. In the full light of understanding, Sato now realized he’d been the center of a good deal of trouble for the Hussars and Alexis Cromwell, their commander. Okay, so trouble might be an understatement when it concerned the Keesius.

Similar to the Egleesius-class—a relic of the 20,000-year-old war between the Dusman and the Kahraman—it even looked like the Egleesius. They’d found them in 2nd Level Hyperspace, the strange realm that could only be accessed by crashing out of 1st Level Hyperspace. From the moment Sato was first exposed to that new realm, he’d begun to feel himself change.

He hadn’t been satisfied with tinkering on the Keesius, though. He’d had to activate the ship’s computer. This had proven a catastrophic mistake. The Keesius was an ancient doomsday device, and it was targeted straight at the capital world of the Galactic Union, which just so happened to have been the First Republic capital world as well. More than a few brave men and women had died to stop it and rescue him. A short time later, a strange pinplant design had appeared in his mind.

A trip to the Hussars’ pinplant expert, the Wrogul Nemo, and Sato had the new pinplants installed. Then the real fun had begun.

“Are you okay, sir?”

Sato looked over and saw his traveling companion was awake. He could tell from the faint blue glow coming from the suit’s visual sensors. “Fine,” Sato said. “How about you?”

“Still trying to come to grips with it all.”

“I can respect that,” Sato said. How could he not? It wasn’t everyone who got to come back from the dead, months after their death.

“I wonder what happens to me from here?”

“Well, I think that’s up to you. I brought you along for two reasons. One, to help get me out if there were any difficulties. There weren’t any. Two, I needed to get at least one of you away from Nemo.”

“What do you mean, at least one of me?”

Sato stopped short of explaining it. Now wasn’t the time. “A figure of speech.”

“Nemo brought me back from the dead,” Rick said. “That’s what you said. I was resurrected?”

“I never used that word,” Sato said quickly. But what do I really believe? Rick had been a tiny genetic sample retained by Nemo within his body, along with a map of Rick’s neural patterns. Nemo wasn’t completely responsible for bringing Rick back; credit went to the Bregalad. “Nemo’s pet plant grew you.”

“And then Nemo just turned me on? Like a copy of a program?”

Nemo had made it sound just like that. Only, if it were true, what did that say about the uniqueness of a sentient being? Were we nothing more than a collection of electrical impulses? “That’s the way Nemo described it,” Sato said.

“But is that how you feel about it?”

Rick’s voice from the suit’s voder sounded perfectly Human. Sato hadn’t met Rick before his “death” aboard ship as the former Hussars’ marine tried to intercept enemy agents. He didn’t know how Rick had sounded then. He had no doubt the voice was a perfect match. “I guess I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve never died.” Then Sato had a thought. “Do you remember anything?”

“About dying?” Rick asked, his voice sounding almost human in the small space. Sato nodded. “No. The last thing I remember is Nemo putting me under a light anesthesia for my pinplants, then waking up in your lab.”

“Do you want to see the CASPer logs from the mission where you died?”

Rick was quiet for a long time before he answered. “No, sir. At least, not yet.”

Understandable. Rick didn’t say anything else, so Sato went to work on various pieces of equipment he’d brought along. Everything had either been stored in his modified MK7 CASPer, the one he’d used to escape—not the decoy which stayed behind.

Among the tools, parts, and other stuff necessary to live in a metal box surrounded by vacuum for seven days was also a bag full of money. That was the only outright theft he was guilty of. Each Winged Hussars warship had a lockbox in the captain’s cabin. Inside were various documents, sensitive computer documents on chip, several the Hussars’ special homing modules (tiny programs on a chip written by Ghost that allowed one to go to New Warsaw without being able to record the destination), and some cash.

The majority of transactions within the Galactic Union were accomplished via electronic transfer, either from a central bank maintained by the UCX—Union Credit Exchange—or stored on your Yack, a Universal Account Access Card. However, some businesses conducted trade with hard currency as well. It usually took one of two forms: metallic printed credits sometimes called chits, or red diamonds. As red diamonds were among the rarest of gems in the galaxy, each chit also had a small red diamond in its center, from one the size of a grain of sand for the one-credit chit, to an almost one-karat diamond in the 10-million-credit chit. Regardless, the diamond was always less valuable than the credit, for obvious reasons.

When the Crown-class cruiser Citation was effectively destroyed at the battle of Golara, its hulk had been towed back to New Warsaw as scrap. Sato had known exactly where its gutted hulk was stored, and he’d sent a bot on a reconnaissance mission. Within the hulk he’d found the captain’s lockbox, which he’d stashed in his getaway container. There would be things in the box he’d certainly need.

“Guess I might as well find out what I got myself,” he said. The box was 20 centimeters by 20 by 10. Not big, considering the importance of what it contained. Sato had never been privy to the exact contents, though he was knowledgeable of the box’s construction. After all, he’d designed the security.

He carefully took the lock apart, taking extra care to avoid the double-redundant safety micro wires