Sword of Minerva (The Guild Wars Book 10) by Mark Wandrey (great books for teens TXT) 📕

a cover, warm to the touch. Sato took the cover off and found it full of steaming tamales.

“Holy crap,” Sato said and scooped up one of the tamales. In a second, he had it unwrapped and was eating with his fingers. It was hot, filled with succulent meat, and spicy almost to the point of intolerance. In short, delicious.

Rick handed him a canteen, which proved to be full of black tea sweetened with honey. Sato was eating his third tamale before he realized Rick had started the truck, and they were trundling down the road again.

“What happened to the soldiers?” he asked around a mouthful of food.

“They didn’t need the food any longer.”

“You didn’t kill them, did you?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Sato swallowed, then shook his head. “Not really,” he said.

Rick nodded and fished out one of the last tamales. His helmet opened, and he ate mechanically. Sato finished off the last of the food without comment. He occasionally looked at Rick and wondered what he’d done. Truthfully, he didn’t want to know. All that mattered was they were back on the road. His stomach full, he soon fell asleep.

* * *

When Rick walked into the brightly lighted guard post, the two men instantly realized he was something other than a truck driver working into the evening.

“W-what are you?” one demanded in Spanish.

“You don’t want to know,” Rick said. One of the two moved toward a pair of rifles on a wall-mounted rack. Rick drew his main sidearm in a blur, pointing it at the man. “This can end one of two ways,” he said. “Is your job worth your life?” Instantly they both put their hands in the air. “That’s what I thought. Sit over there.” He gestured at the room’s only table, situated near the door and opposite a pair of bunks. Clearly the outpost was only manned by two men at a time.

They both quickly complied, and Rick found handcuffs to secure them to the table. It wouldn’t hold them for long, but it wouldn’t need to. Once their already minimal threat was reduced to basically zero, he searched the room. They had a radio, which he disabled, and a small safe holding a pair of pistols and some money. He didn’t need either, so he left them. In a small stove he found their dinner, a dish of tamales that were warmed and ready to eat. Those he did help himself to, in addition to a thermos of tea. A refrigerator held more tamales, as well as some additional food, so he wasn’t leaving them with nothing. He took the food and headed for the door.

“Who are you?” one of the men asked.

“What are you?” the other added.

“The answer to both questions is, you really don’t want to know. I’m sure you want to report this. It would be a mistake.” Without another word, Rick left them.

He didn’t know why he didn’t tell Sato about not harming the men. Clearly his benefactor was nervous about him. Maybe Rick liked it that way? On the surface it was a little cruel. Sato was a simple man, with seemingly two-dimensional motivations. Except where they found themselves, of course. The strange woman following them on the maglev was disturbing and suggested Taiki Sato was more than met the eye on several levels. She’d said she knew him years ago, but Sato acted like he didn’t know her.

It appeared they were both suffering from a loss of memory, or Sato was a more accomplished liar than he appeared on the surface. Rick considered all of this as he drove the twisting mountain roads in near total darkness. Between the vision enhancements of the Æsir armor and his pinplant-multiplied response speeds, he was using at most 5% of his brain power to operate the truck. He was more concerned about their diminishing fuel reserves than he was about driving off the road in the middle of the night.

He compared the road he was driving to the maps from the Aethernet and turned at the next crossroads. About midnight they reached the outskirts of Esquipulas. A Puma gas station was closed, but he could see it had a cash reception machine, so he pulled in and parked. Sato hadn’t moved, even as he stopped the truck, so he climbed out and gave the pump a look.

It wasn’t set up to take credits, of course. In fact, it would only accept Guatemalan quetzals. He pulled out the wad of various currency they had and found a single 5-quetzal coin, not even enough for a liter of diesel.

Rick sighed and examined the machine in detail. It was an unremarkable model with a wireless programming feature. It took him less than a second to reprogram the machine to think a credit chit was a valid quetzal denomination. He slipped in four one-credit coins, after which the reader said he had a balance of 200 quetzal.

Rick pumped diesel until the balance was zero, replaced the hose, and reversed the programming. Whoever emptied the coin slot would find his credits and make a real profit off the fuel. The 25 liters he’d put in wasn’t a lot. Not even a quarter of a tank for the truck. Considering the ‘low fuel’ warning had come on just after crossing the border, it was an improvement, if a nominal one.

He drove the truck through Esquipulas without any notice. A vehicle or two were moving about on unknown purposes, just like his own. Another gas station on the far side of town tempted him. Ultimately, Rick passed without stopping again. He decided it was better to get out of town before someone began to wonder what a moving truck from San Salvador was doing in nowhere Guatemala.

The armor automatically monitored his physical condition, he noted as it added some stimulants to his system. He’d been