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

The Horsemen’s attempt to take out Peepo failed in a major way. Alexis Cromwell was killed, and Jim Cartwright’s Raknar surrendered in Sao Paulo. Took me a while to get that news, because it was being suppressed for some reason.”

“Jim Cartwright?” Rick asked. He’d been reduced to moving the support module a meter, setting it down, hopping a step, picking it again, and repeating. They’d just settled it in the bathroom, next to the tub, when Rick stopped and stared at Sato. “Jim Cartwright?”

“Yeah, the kid who inherited Cartwright’s Cavaliers? Fat guy, likes ponies and Raknar?”

Rick’s glowing blue eyes stared at Sato for a long moment, then he turned and hopped back into the main room without a word.

“Okay,” Sato said, watching his travel companion leave without another word. “Guess he doesn’t like fat kids?” Sato shrugged and activated the module via pinplants. With a click, the top slid open to reveal the blue eyes of Dakkar staring at him. A kaleidoscope of scintillating colors erupted as Dakar spoke.

“I was getting bored,” the Wrogul said. “Can you set up a comm link in here so I can talk?”

“Sure,” Sato said. “It’s actually built in, but I think Nemo turned it off so I wouldn’t know you’d been hidden away.”

Sato finished his download of the current situation of the war. It might be aimed against humanity, but its scope was wider. An attempt to alienate and isolate Earth. He wanted to know about the colonies. Very little information was available on the Aethernet, and he dared not try to access the GalNet directly. Besides the woman who seemed to know him, he had no clue who else might be after them. Gleaning what he could, it looked like all the major colonies had been occupied, though it seemed the Horsemen had rallied Human mercs and taken the three biggest back, then dealt Peepo a major defeat before returning to Earth and losing badly.

He filled the bathtub with lukewarm water, removed a hose from the support module, and dropped its weighted end into the tub. A hum announced the module beginning its cleaning cycle. The tub’s water began to turn a slightly murky color. The module had many days before it needed cleaning, but considering how they kept getting themselves into trouble, Sato decided to take advantage of any moments of peace, no matter how brief they turned out to be.

Dakkar slithered over the side to the floor with a plop. Being cephalopods, the Wrogul had no bones. Out of water, they looked like melted piles of plastic. The young Wrogul moved across the floor with its suckers, employing a writhing motion, and explored the sink’s plumbing.

“I’ve never been on Earth,” Dakkar said. “It’s not much like New Warsaw, but a little like Azure.”

“Azure is a Human colony, so it stands to reason.” Sato remembered the warm brackish waters of Azure and its rich sunlight. There was a small bay near the hospital where some of his first memories were. The water was only a meter deep, and the Wrogul loved to venture out to hunt the planet’s various shellfish. “The atmosphere is a little thinner here, and the gravity similar.”

“I would like to swim in the ocean.”

“We’ll see if we can arrange that,” Sato said. The module beeped; it was done filtering. He drained the tub, then refilled it. “You can swim in the tub if you want.”

“That would be enjoyable,” Dakkar flashed in reply. “The module is becoming boring.”

“I can imagine,” Sato said as he watched the alien rhythmically slither across the floor, up the side of the porcelain tub, and into the water. Even on land, their movements had a certain curious grace to them.

Dakkar swam around the tub. Sato noticed the bud was a good ten percent bigger than when they’d first found it. Young Wrogul grew quickly, probably a survival mechanism from their home world. He recalled that they didn’t know where they were from, part of the mystery of the Wrogul their Human friends on Azure were studying. Somewhere in the back of his mind an elusive fact danced. Something about the Wrogul?

Dakkar zipped around the tub on powerful jets of water. He found the stream coming in and played with it using a pair of his tentacles. Colors flashed. “Do you know where we’re going yet?”

“Like I told Nemo, no. I just know I’m going in the right direction.”

“Good enough for me,” Dakkar said. “But I’ve decided. When you’re finished, I would like to return to Azure.”

Sato nodded, then thought for a second before speaking. “Dakkar, I don’t know if Azure is still there. The war…”

“As Nemo, I knew it was. Nemo had access to some of the intel from the captain of the Ulfberht, which was damaged at Golara. The Hussars gained a lot of intel in Golara, and among it was all the Human colonies being attacked. Nemo found the list in Captain Espa’s brain.”

Sato closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Nemo had never understood the concept of personal privacy or space. He’d known about the Wrogul’s propensity to help itself to whatever it might come across in a brain he might be working on.

“Dakkar, you need to consider something. It isn’t right to rummage through the brain of someone you’re treating.”

“Nemo never understood these feelings of yours.”

“I’m aware of that,” Sato replied.

“I think I understand better now.”

Sato had been looking at the Wrogul’s support module, accessing the programming as he spoke with Dakkar. At the little Wrogul’s words, Sato’s head spun around in surprise. “What? Why?” He knew it couldn’t be anything he’d said. Nothing he’d ever said to Nemo had had the slightest influence on the alien’s behavior.

“It was the young Human female, Nina Gutierrez. When I was working on her cerebellum, I had access to her current thoughts at the time.”