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

“Nanites didn’t help?”

“They can’t regrow charred skin. The grafts saved him, but…” Sato shrugged. He grinned wryly. “Wanna see?”

“Fuck, no,” the woman said and made a rude gesture. “Take off, I’m trying to make a deal.”

Rick and Sato pushed away from the pair. The Cochkala said he would like to see the burns, but they were already moving away quickly.

“The cover story seems sufficient,” Rick said through the spacesuit speaker.

“No reason it wouldn’t,” Sato said. “However, I’m going to shelve that take a look bit. We can’t have someone call us on that one.” Rick gave a noncommittal grunt as they moved along. Sato considered as they moved. Maybe he could do something about that…

He’d half suspected it was Karma Station by the size of the cargo bay. True, it could equally have been Piquaw or even Sulaadar, though the latter was less likely as it was a long jump from New Warsaw. Karma was a good bet, and the most common staging area for non-warships coming from and going to New Warsaw. Warships were ordered to take multiple routes, thus reducing the chance of someone trying to set an ambush or tracking them home.

“We staying here for a while?” Rick asked.

“Just until I find us transport,” Sato explained.

“You mind if I look around, sir?”

Sato glanced at him for a moment, staring at the spacesuit’s reflective dome bubble. He had no idea what Rick’s mental state really was. However, he also didn’t control his travel companion. He could find him if he needed to, and vice versa. “Sure, let’s just get a room while I make arrangements, then you can go do whatever you want.” Rick’s suit nodded, and they headed for the nearest glideway up to the gravity decks.

* * * * *

Chapter Two

Rick walked along the third ring main promenade of Karma Station, remembering memories he knew weren’t really his. To him, he’d last been here only a little over a year ago, shortly after leaving Earth aboard Coronado. His first mercenary company, Mickey Finn, had been forced to let him go from their cadre company when work had dried up. Broke and with nowhere to go, he’d signed aboard the free trader Coronado in exchange for passage to Karma.

Everything had gone fine for the first part of the trip. He’d earned his keep by helping aboard ship in any way possible, including learning to move cargo. They’d visited Mars and the Jovian system of planets before eventually taking the stargate out-system. They visited the 82 Eridani system and traded with New Mecca, then on to Karma. It was upon arriving in Karma that his life went sideways.

Coronado had been ambushed by pirates. Pushtal—huge felinoids resembling Bengal tigers that were once a merc race like Humans—now mainly made their living doing whatever shit jobs they could find or just stealing stuff. They’d ambushed Coronado just after she’d appeared in Karma’s emergence point as she was coasting toward the station.

The assault came via stealth. Carefully docking with the nearly unarmed merchant ship, the felines had intended to take the ship by surprise and have their way with the occupants and cargo. Rick had realized what was happening and mounted a one-man defense. He’d defeated the boarding party, only to suffer a horrendous head wound from a laser weapon.

Captain Holland, Coronado’s master, had Rick treated with medical nanites. They saved his life, but couldn’t fix all the damage. Rick had been left with partial amnesia from the trauma, as well as having lost the ability to feel most emotions. He landed on Karma Station alive, yet missing a big part of who he was.

From there, he’d signed on with the Winged Hussars as a private in their shipboard marine force. He’d felt a glimmer of happiness through the fog of the injury. Then he’d met Nemo, the Hussars’ Wrogul surgeon, who handled all their pinplant work…and the next thing he remembered was waking up staring at Sato.

I was dead, he thought as he walked the familiar promenade. He’d spent two weeks on the station. He and Sato had rented a room in the same hotel, as a matter of fact. It catered to Humans and other races with similar biological requirements, which apparently totaled 113 other races. I was killed in a boarding action. Sato had recordings from the other boarding members, relayed back from the CASPers to Pegasus. They’d gone to recover possible intel, but it had been a trap, costing his entire squad their lives. Including my girlfriend.

The last part was a bigger surprise than finding out he was…what? Not a clone, certainly, not if he understood the process. But he wasn’t the original. “There’s no biological difference between you and the original,” Sato had explained. “No scientific method known could tell the difference.” Rick had been regrown, cell by cell, complements of a semi-sentient plant species known as Bregalad.

“Nemo has several he uses as sort of assistants in his lab work,” Sato said. “They can manipulate biological matter like a child does building blocks. No, I don’t know how or why, but Nemo used them to make a copy of you.”

It was Rick’s brain injury, apparently. Sometime later, after Rick had been with the Hussars for a time, he’d gone to Nemo for therapy. The Wrogul could perform what Humans might call psychic surgery. Two of their tentacles could, in essence, reach through flesh and bone to manipulate a body’s internal organs. It was this talent that made the Wrogul the galaxy’s preeminent pinplant doctors. Only Rick had died before Nemo could finish fixing the damage, and Nemo didn’t like leaving things undone. Thus, he’d made a new Rick, a copy taken from a sample extracted during Rick’s pinplant procedure.

“The Wrogul are exotics,” Sato said. “Exotic species in the galaxy are a minority