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

girl wasn’t dead,” Rick said as evenly as he could. “She didn’t need to be brought back.”

“She was blind from a head injury some time ago. I fixed it.”

“Did you ask her?” Rick asked.

“Why?”

Rick turned his head and speared Sato with a glare. “Give me one good reason not to leave that thing here now and just get on with whatever you want to do here?” The Wrogul looked at both men but didn’t say anything in its defense.

“Why are you here?” Sato asked the bud. “Really, no hinting about a trip to Azure or anything.”

The Wrogul looked at Sato for a long time, its mantle rhythmically pumping oxygenated water through its gills. “Nemo knew you were on a voyage of discovery. The pinplants he installed for you aren’t a new design, they’re the same ones he removed from your brain many years ago.”

“What?” Sato asked. The words all made sense, but the statements didn’t.

The bud paused again, though not as long this time. “I’m here because he thought you’d need him, but he couldn’t leave. As soon as the pinplants were replaced, you started remembering things, correct?” Sato nodded. “That’s why you’re here. I’m predicting a 99% probability we’re on Earth because that’s where your story starts.”

Rick looked from the Wrogul to Sato and back. In a way, it was good to hear his suspicions about Sato’s mental health were valid. The pinplants were the key, so it would seem. “Why don’t you remove the pinplants?” he suggested.

“No,” they both said at the same time, though the bud’s words were delayed by a fraction of a second by their translators.

“Then what do we do?” he insisted.

“Continue on,” Sato said. “All of us.” Rick cursed and went out the door into the afternoon heat.

* * *

“He’s upset with me,” the bud said.

“Well, you basically reminded him he’s just a meat sack, and then questioned his religion.”

“Religion is questionable,” the bud replied, again deadpan.

“So are you,” Sato said. If Wrogul had eyelids, it would probably be blinking them at him in confusion. It was amusing enough to make him laugh. “You hungry, bud of a friend?”

“Yes, are those huge crustaceans for me?”

“Lobsters,” Sato said, “and yes. They aren’t too big?”

“Not at all. One at a time, please?”

Sato nodded and picked up one of the bags. The lobster was maybe 40 centimeters from head to tail. Its large claws were bound closed with rubber bands. He carefully opened the bag and upended the contents into the Wrogul’s tank. There were a couple of small bluish colored lights at the bottom of the support tank. Sato could just see the lobster settle at the bottom and begin examining its new surroundings.

The Wrogul slid off the side and fully into the water. As soon as it began diving, the lobster sensed a predator and tried to flee. There was nowhere to go. Nemo’s bud seized the crustacea and pulled it into a many-tentacled embrace. Even through the water Sato heard cracking shell and could see some discoloration enter the environment.

Whatever filtration system kept the water clean quickly pulled the pollution away, along with little bits of cracked shell, an antenna, a bunch of legs, etc. “Adios,” Sato said to the departed lobster. The bud surfaced a few seconds later.

“The other too, please?”

Sato nodded and sent lobster #2, which was a little bigger, to the same fate as the first one. It took the Wrogul a little longer to finish that one off before surfacing.

“What about the shells?”

“The support unit can handle them.”

“Not in my design,” Sato said, his eyes narrowing.

“No, Nemo improved them.”

“I can’t keep calling you Nemo’s bud,” Sato said.

“You don’t have to. I finished reading the books, and I’ve picked the name Dakkar.”

Something tickled at the back of Sato’s mind, but it didn’t form into a complete thought or memory, so he accessed the Aethernet. Dakkar had a number of entries, from a region in the African nation of Senegal, some 21st century fiction, to a number of musical references. However, the oldest reference was certainly the one the Wrogul meant.

“The secret identity of Captain Nemo?” Sato asked.

“Precisely. Prince Dakkar was an East Indian prince Captain Nemo used as an alias.”

“So Nemo comes from you? Doesn’t seem right.”

“I was going for book order,” Dakkar said. “Dakkar appeared in Mysterious Island, which was a crossover sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

“Oh, I see.”

“It has an interesting feel, Dakkar, in my language. I think Nemo would approve.”

“That’s your name,” Sato said with a shrug. He came back to the tank with the little package of seaweed. It had thawed in the intervening time. “Is this okay?”

“I cannot translate the language,” Dakkar said.

Sato rendered the Japanese into Wrogul for him.

“I’ll try it,” was the pronouncement.

Sato opened the package and held it at water level. Dakkar used a tentacle to pluck a piece and take it underwater to his mouth parts. There was a delay, as he sampled it for his liking.

“It is obviously old and has been frozen; however, the nutrients are welcome. Please put it in the water, but not with the plastic?”

“Sure,” Sato said and dumped it in.

Dakkar continued to perch on the edge of the tank, plucking pieces of seaweed from the surface of the water where it floated, and regarded Sato. “What does religion do for you?”

“Me personally? I don’t really have any religion,” Sato said. I don’t think I do, anyway. Did I before? He tried thinking about the pinplants he had now. Nothing.

“No, for Humans. Religion, and the dispute over it, has caused incalculable death among your species.”

“Not just our species,” Sato cautioned him. “Many species. The Zuul are deeply religious; they fought a war of reconciliation thousands