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

or a ghost of the memory. He reached into the pouch he was wearing that contained the various bits and pieces of his quest, withdrawing the tube he took off the dead opSha. “This is called a mission tube,” he said and held it up. He closed his eyes and thought about the incoming comms. His fingers moved of their own accord, finding a tiny groove on one end of the tube and flipping it. He opened his eyes and saw he’d exposed a tiny universal data port.

It took him a moment to find a connection cable on the bridge. When he did, Sato attached the tube to the cable and linked it with the comms station. “Interface with this connection,” he instructed Dakkar.

“Certainly,” the Wrogul said. A tiny light flashed, indicating the comms console was interfacing with the tube. “We are establishing a connection with the incoming laser.” Dakkar didn’t sound surprised. Of course, the translator never seemed to assign emotions to a Wrogul’s speech. A reply came, text only.

<Cleared to approach. Docking Port #2>

“This is completely wrong,” Rick said. “I thought you said whoever tried to kill or abduct you must have gotten the information out ahead of us. Doesn’t that mean they knew about it here, and that’s why the codes stopped working?”

“We don’t know if it reached here, only that someone—or something—deactivated the codes. This is a pretty backwater location.”

“Maybe Sato exceeded the codes’ credit limit,” Dakkar suggested.

“Or they were only valid for a few weeks,” Sato said. “We simply don’t know.”

Rick looked away and didn’t comment. Sato knew him well enough by now to understand that the man didn’t buy it for a second. He was suspicious as well, but he had to go forward.

The asteroid didn’t seem to have any defenses, and the Insertion Cutter was lightly armed. Much lighter than Vestoon. A trio of lasers wasn’t exactly packing, but at a gigawatt each, it was a decent punch for such a small ship. Likely enough to run-and-gun their way out, anyway. Or at least he hoped.

“If it’s a trap, it’s a poor choice. They would have been better off jumping us at the emergence point, when we were temporarily blind.”

“You have a point,” Rick said. “Let’s make sure the ship is ready to run. I assume if we have weapons charged, it’ll be obvious.”

“Very,” Sato confirmed. “However, we can have power allocated, at the least, and keep the powerplant on high-demand. It might look a little weird, but we are in the troposphere of a gas giant.”

It seemed they had a plan. Vestoon continued its approach to the asteroid.

* * * * *

Chapter Six

Rick watched the approaching asteroid and fought down a growing sense of doom. The rock was in a carefully stabilized orbit. Vestoon’s sensors said it had a little more gravity than you’d expect from a rock of its size, which suggested it was a nickel/iron ore type. Probably mined out eons ago and eventually moved into low orbit around the gas giant for use as a base.

Who would use this as a base in such a place? he wondered silently. It was too small to be a defensive base, yet what would it defend? It was in as low an orbit as was practical. Anything lower would require almost constant thrust to keep it from falling, like the derelict battleship they’d passed. The salvagers were maintaining its orbit at a considerable cost in effort. There must be something valuable there.

There were no obvious weapons, minimal sensors, and only the barest maneuvering capabilities in the form of side thruster pods placed roughly opposite each other. With no signs of a fusion powerplant, this meant they were chemical thrusters. This what—base? This base was expensive and time consuming to keep, and to maintain it on the fringe of nowhere. His paranoia tingled even worse. Sato was walking into the serpent’s jaws, but why—because of a long-lost memory? The echo of memories?

But who was he to talk? Rick was himself nothing more than a ghost of his former self, resurrected by a curious alien octopus with the aid of a semi-sentient plant. Sato had modified his body to fit inside a suit of powered armor and brought him along on the quest. At the beginning, he was as damaged as Sato, but Rick had now recalled almost everything. Where vast amounts of his memory had once been lost, now only tiny bits and pieces were missing.

He might be an echo of himself, but he was a functionally complete echo. Sato was an empty shell. He appeared to only be who he was, formed from some years ago out of nothing. His mind had been destroyed. Mostly. When pushed, he seemed to tap into old training. Deadly training. Watching him fight the opSha had been educational and a little chilling. Did Sato really want to know who he’d been before whatever had happened?

The proximity alarm sounded, and Sato tapped the override, silencing it. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’ve programmed the docking to be automatic; the asteroid has a properly working computer to supervise. We can be at the airlock when we dock.”

“Good plan,” Rick said. “We don’t want a breaching team to catch us off guard.” He gave Sato’s kit a quick look. The man was in the light combat armor they’d purchased en route and had both weapons. He had a new laser carbine slung cross body, and a Ctech GP-90 pistol in a low-slung thigh holster. The latter, Human manufactured, was a lucky find off Earth. The weapon was solid. Many alien-made slug throwers adapted for Humans just didn’t have good ergonomics.

In addition, Sato had a modular helmet on his belt. A blocky object resembling a breathing mask, it could quickly expand into a snug-fitting helmet. Sealing with the combat armor, it would