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

The Japanese word Himitsu translated to secrecy, while Saisho was first, or beginning. It didn’t make any sense. No more than calling him Proctor. What did he teach? Teachers weren’t usually pursued by killer opSha across the galaxy. The functioning Peacekeeper was a chilling part of the puzzle. They dated back to the First Republic; enforcer bots made by the Dusman to pacify planets they wanted to keep. Ancient accounts suggested they would be activated and dropped from orbit to do the Dusman’s will. Powerful and brutal, they were one step less than what Raknar were capable of. There were thousands scattered around on former battlefields. Nobody had ever managed to make them work. Sato had never seen one before now.

He was eventually taken into a room that looked like it had once been a medical bay. The first real feelings of fear began to creep up his spine. The Peacekeeper pushed him onto an examination table, where automatic restraints popped out to secure all four limbs, and one closed around his neck. They were none too gentle, and for a moment he feared it would strangle him. The restraint cutting off his oxygen abated a tiny amount. Not enough to make it easy to breathe, just enough to make it possible.

The Peacekeeper retracted its tentacles with a snickt! and retreated into a corner, where it waited silently. The opSha also waited by the door. Sato wondered what they were waiting for. In a moment he had his answer. The portal hissed open and admitted a solitary Flatar. Sato blinked in surprise as the opSha bowed his head in respect.

“At last,” the Flatar said in its tiny voice. It floated over and deftly caught the edge of the table, looking down into Sato’s face with its beady black eyes. Whiskers twitched as it examined him. Up close, the resemblance to a terrestrial chipmunk lessened. The eyes weren’t of an earthly type, the set of the mouth was…strange. Its ears were set at an odd angle. It looked, for lack of a better word, sinister. “Welcome home, Proctor.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sato said.

The Flatar looked at the opSha, who replied, “He is acting as if he has amnesia. His mesh is deactivated, somehow. The initial probe by the Peacekeeper failed to reactivate them.”

“Indeed, he is a Proctor. He’s trained in the arts of deceit and subterfuge.”

“There is reason to believe he doesn’t remember,” the opSha said.

“Oh? What makes you think that?”

“He blundered into our trap with ridiculous ease. Though this base wasn’t here when he left on his last mission, it wasn’t nearly as complex a cover as we’ve used in other situations.” The Flatar glared at the opSha. “Shinjitsu, I meant no disrespect.” He lowered his head onto his chest.

Shinjitsu, Sato thought. Truth, veracity, or even reality. But it’s also a martial art involving a sword. The Flatar floated over to a shelf Sato hadn’t noticed. Velcroed to the shelf was Sato’s equipment. The Flatar examined the gear for a moment.

“No disrespect,” Sato said, then laughed. The Flatar’s head spun around. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning up for a Tortantula or something?”

The Flatar turned, and its lips quivered, showing a tiny flash of bright white teeth.

Ooh, he’s pissed.

The Flatar, or Shinjitsu—whatever it was—got itself under visible control. It looked back at the opSha. “Prepare a detailed deconstruction of his brain.”

“That will destroy him,” the opSha said.

“Only if he resists.” He looked back at Sato. “So the choice is yours, Proctor. Either tell us what you’ve been doing the last 40 years, or we’ll peel your brain like an okfu fruit.”

Sato glared at the Flatar only centimeters from his face, pronouncing each word of his reply as if he were talking to a misbehaving child. “I. Don’t. Remember. Anything!”

“Fine,” the Flatar snapped and kicked off with its short rear legs. “Have it your way.” And it was gone.

“What’s involved in this deconstruction?” he asked the opSha. The simian alien merely smiled and followed the Flatar out. The Peacekeeper remained, an unmoving object. It could have been as seemingly dead as all the other Peacekeepers in the galaxy, except for the blue glowing vision band.

* * * * *

Chapter Eight

 Rick woke in total blackness. For a second, he thought he was in space, then what sensor data he had confirmed there was atmosphere; he was just blind. He popped his helmet open, and it rotated up away from his face. He was in the same room he last remembered entering with Sato. The air was full of floating debris, it smelled like ozone, and he was slowly spinning in place. Most of the lights looked like they were burned out, and the wiring was melted, accounting for the smell.

“Something zapped me,” he surmised. “But what the fuck is up with my pinplants?” They were supposed to be impossible to damage, short of his death. There were no menus in his head. He could feel the armor, still, but only just, via a series of direct connections he’d never really explored. His pinplants had handled communications between him and the armor, running some systems automatically, and allowing him to make detailed commands without having to know the technical aspects. Without his pinplants…

He messed with the interface for a few moments, long enough to confirm that the pinplants simply weren’t responding.

“I thought I was fully integrated into the armor,” he’d said to Sato while the man had fixed his severed armor leg.

“You are, sort of. It’s best to avoid direct control of the armor.”

“Why?”

“Your pinplants handle much of the command interpretation from your mind to the suit. A direct interface could possibly cause some neural damage.”

“That doesn’t encourage me,” Rick had replied.

“Which is why you have the pinplant interface.”

Of course, Sato