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

his autochef sushi with a grunt. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good, either. He was hungry, so the food was suitable fuel. He ate it without complaint.

As he consumed the fake sushi, he went over train and shuttle schedules. He knew where he needed to go now and was hoping the next stop would open up some memories, help him reconnect with who he’d been, or at least give him some closure. He wasn’t too picky. He was, however, a little jealous of Rick managing to reconnect his own regrown neurons.

The feelings of jealousy were an artifact of who he’d been before the new pinplants were installed by Nemo. A selfish, self-centered jerk, as he’d been reminded by Kleena after Sato’s doomsday device incident. While Sato now understood his older self, he wasn’t proud of it. Back during his time with the Hussars, he’d had no personal friends. He hadn’t really thought about it back then. In retrospect, it made sense.

These thoughts brought him around to Rick. When he’d ‘recruited’ the former marine, Sato had thought he was doing the man a favor. As part of his introspective phase, he wondered if Rick was grateful or resentful of being resurrected as an Æsir? He remembered a line from an old 20th century movie. “The dead only know one thing; it is better to be alive.”

The little autochef-operated café where he’d gotten his food had a long glass frontage next to the taxi and auto-pickup. The area was quiet within minutes of the train dropping them off. So, when a flyer swooped in for a landing, it immediately caught Sato’s eye. Rick climbed out, obvious in his long, flowing dark robe, the hood pulled up high.

He’d only been gone 72 minutes. Had he even gone to visit his mother as he’d said he was going to? Sato had gotten a glimpse of the flyer Rick had left in, and it was different than the one he’d returned in. The former marine had gone somewhere.

Rick spotted Sato and came into the terminal, then the diner. “Ready to go?” he asked as he sat at the booth.

“There’s a train heading out in 20 minutes,” Sato said, cocking his head. “Are you sure—”

“Yes,” Rick cut in. “Positive. I’m done here.”

“Okay,” Sato said and got up. “Let’s go, then.”

Just like he said, 20 minutes later, they watched Dakkar’s module being moved onto a train by bots after they’d bought their own tickets. The new train was almost indistinguishable from the last one, except it appeared to have more freight cars. Just like the previous train, it also departed exactly on time, and accelerated to 450kph on their northward trip.

This leg was short with two more stops, the first in Fort Wayne, then in Toledo, Ohio. Then they were in Michigan and approaching Romulus, the end of their trip. The trip was over only an hour after boarding again.

“I have our tickets from the skyport,” Sato told Rick after using a kiosk just off the train. Detroit had possessed a starport, briefly. Internal politics in the USA had caused squabbling over the ownership of starports. The other two operating starports were in Florida and Washington DC. Another was under construction in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Since Detroit’s former starport had orbital infrastructure, it was relabeled skyport, more or less one step above an airport.

“How soon before we leave?”

“We have four hours here in Ann Arbor; should be long enough.”

“So you still want to go through with it?” Rick asked.

“I think we should,” Sato said. Rick nodded as the bot came up with Dakkar’s module. “Grab a flyer and let’s get this done.”

Because of the module, they had to get an extra-large flyer, which took a few minutes. Rick and Sato both agreed, they didn’t want to leave Dakkar behind at this point. The flyer took them to an address in Ann Harbor that Sato had gotten from the Aethernet. It was a modest house in a nice neighborhood.

They’d left the rain in Indiana behind, though the weather was cooler. When the flyer deposited them in front of the residence, Sato could see his breath in the evening air. He checked his chronometer; the time was just after 20:00 local. Not too late. Rick picked up the module and their well-traveled duffel bag and followed him up the sidewalk to the front door.

On the cab ride, Sato had changed back into a Winged Hussars uniform, including his unit patch for the Geek Squad. He’d left the name off, though. At the door, he pressed the notification bell. The sound of it was barely audible through the door. He wasn’t sure whether he hoped she was there or not.

“Just a minute!” a feminine voice answered. Sato gave a little sigh. A second later, the door opened to reveal a woman dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with a baby on her hip. “Hello?” she asked, looking at Sato with a confused expression. Then she focused on his uniform. “Oh!”

“Mrs. Lea O’Connell?”

“Yes,” she said tentatively.

“I served in the Winged Hussars, ma’am,” he said.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said, and reached to close the door.

Sato took the picture with her writing out of his pocket and held it up. She stopped with the door halfway closed. “I wanted to give this to you.”

“Where did you get that?” she whispered.

“It was in the secure safe aboard Citation.” He took out the torn ticket. “Along with this. It survived the ship’s destruction.”

She looked at the ticket, shook her head once, and began to collapse. Sato was caught completely off guard. Luckily Rick’s enhanced reflexes and speed kicked in. He deftly slid around Sato and caught the grief-stricken woman and her now-screaming child just before they hit the tiled entryway floor.

Sato pushed the door open and looked back at Rick. “Take her inside,”