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

of the designs they purchased. Whatever the reason, that means we’re safe leaving our Wrogul friend in his food-induced coma.” Dakkar floated on the surface of his tank, lazily paddling through the water and toying with a dismembered crab claw.

Rick glanced around and at the Wrogul, then nodded. “You were expecting this?”

“I suspected an alien-centric hotel would be like this. Glad I was right.”

“Okay, we need to head out?”

“Yeah, the museum opens in two hours,” he agreed.

After taking a few minutes to once again be certain their Wrogul charge couldn’t easily make good an escape—relatively confident—Sato donned his old uniform, once again bereft of insignia, and the pair left the hotel. The MinSha were gone, but a solitary purple ursine Oogar towered over them by the door, using an improbably small slate, and roaring his annoyance at whatever he was reading.

Staying off public transportation, though it was extensive and cheap in Tokyo, they took a flyer instead, now that they didn’t have the bulky, heavy support module. Robotic, like the hotel, it took them up into the carefully controlled traffic patterns.

Tokyo had more flyers of all types by population than any other state on the planet. They’d also largely stayed out of the merc war of occupation because there were so few Japanese mercs and they made an official statement of neutrality. This was chafing relations with other states, who held more loyalty to the mercs who’d kept the planet fed than to a government that only treated them as a cash machine. The end result was even more traffic than before the war, as proportionally more commerce shifted to the Tokyo Starport.

“I hope we’re not at a higher risk being here,” Rick said.

“Probably some,” Sato admitted, “but this is where I need to be.” He had the key in his hand and was turning it over and over. “After I’m done, we’re in a good position to go wherever we want from here, too.”

Rick sat quietly as the turbojet-powered flyer carried them onward. Sato examined the cab’s controls. The robotic vehicle was capable of independent flight and was currently following specific control from a ground-based traffic control computer. Various status indicators explained how it was operating at the moment.

The flyer was Human manufactured. Sato had seen more than enough such machines to know they weren’t made by aliens. However, there were clearly a lot of alien-manufactured components. He knew this because Earth manufacturing had never reached the point of being independent of alien component suppliers for any meaningful quantities. Out in the galaxy, somewhere, existed manufacturing bases vast enough to fuel the many thousands of races. Most date back to the Dusman, he thought. Once again, a bit of information bubbled up from his screwed-up memory. He deeply wished he could know just what he knew. Not to mention why a trip to 2nd Level Hyperspace had begun to cause this info to float up from the depths of his damaged memory.

His fantasizing about disassembling the flyer was interrupted as it beeped to notify passengers it was descending toward the requested destination. Sato looked out the transparent side bubble of the canopy at the museum complex approaching below them. The dome over the outdoor exhibits was partially translucent, so he could only see vaguely ship-like shapes.

Beyond the museum in the near distance was Tokyo Starport. Dozens of starships squatted in their landing bunkers. Several were warships. A fat orbital transfer ship lumbered into the sky and side slipped into an ascent corridor. A moment later the launch laser fired into the ship’s booster engine, ablating the material and generating thrust. The ship climbed, quickly accelerating into the early morning sky.

The flyer dropped below the level of the dome, blocking his view of the starport, as the fans increased power, bringing them to a smooth landing at the designated zone.

The Museum of Aeronautical and Space Sciences had once been in Narita, which was annexed when the airport became Japan’s starport. The Japanese, never one for lawlessness (in their opinion), and firmly against personal firearm ownership, had created the startown on the opposite side of the starport. A high perimeter fence and careful security checkpoints kept anything from spilling out into the sanguine countryside. The museum had once been on starport property, but only briefly.

Once they exited the flyer and it had leaped back into the sky, the pair looked up the long rise of stairs to the modern concrete building. The main doors were flanked on either side by a pair of old-style chemical rockets. On the right was a Lambda rocket and launcher, the first used by Japan in the 1960s. The left was an H-IIB. The Lambda was only a dozen meters tall, transporter included, while the H-IIB towered over it at 56 meters.

“We didn’t study the Japanese space program,” Rick noted as he looked at the rockets.

“Japan didn’t go big into space,” Sato said. “We were making progress just before First Contact, though. We’d even sent a sample return mission to an asteroid.” He walked toward the entrance. “The H-II family was manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.”

“Didn’t they help develop the CASPer?”

“Actually they did it all, at least the Mk 1 through Mk 3, before things kinda fell apart. I never found out what happened, something about an internal political thing at MHI.” Sato shook his head. “We’re an overly proud people when it comes to technological developments. The only thing we would never take credit for is failing. Eventually when internal squabbling stalled the development, Cartwright bought out MHI and formed Binnig. The rest is history.”

Inside they paid 1,000 ¥ each to a robot kiosk. Sato plunked a 1 credit chit into the machine, curious what it would do. It dutifully provided change in yen. He gave a little smile, proud of his people. They walked through the doors into the museum proper.

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