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

and ran, a feeling of dread had been building inside him. A pair of the security guards who’d been stalking him were at the final checkpoint. They yelled and pointed as he pelted directly at them. He laughed as he jumped over them, the checkpoint, and the line of people waiting to get in.

* * *

Sato stepped out of the museum exit into the early morning weather. It was somewhat cold, and a light drizzle fell—typical Tokyo spring weather. The cloth-wrapped artifact in his pocket weighed heavily on him. He hadn’t wanted to get at something more in recent memory. It was exciting and annoying at the same time.

There was a short line of people waiting to purchase tickets and enter the museum. They were all chatting among themselves and hoping the line would move quicker so they could get out of the rain. He was a little surprised there wasn’t a covered waiting area. There was a small overhang of the building just to the left side of the main entrance. At least some people were staying out of the rain. Only these weren’t people, they were monkeys?

The same isolated part of his brain that had led him to Earth, then the mailbox, and now to the museum screamed an alarm so shrill, he shuddered. The monkeys were opSha. Recognition of the rarely seen race had already begun when the alarm was sounded. It momentarily confused him. The opSha weren’t a merc race. They were better known as chemists, and often worked for whatever guild paid for their service. But in another life, in another way, on another world, they were much more.

At the same instant he saw them and recognized the threat, they leaped into action, racing toward him in a half-jumping gait that covered a startling amount of ground quite quickly. There were four of them, and they would be on him in seconds.

For part of that time, Sato froze in indecision. He began to reach for the laser pistol Rick had provided him before remembering he didn’t have it. Next was running. He was in much better shape after spending days on Earth under full gravity. Regardless, the opSha were too damned quick. There was no way he would get away.

A shudder ran through his body, and he felt himself speaking. “They should have sent someone else,” he hissed.

“End of the road, Proctor!” the lead opSha snarled.

“Come learn from me, monkey!” What? Who said that? Everything went blank as the opSha leaped.

* * *

Rick had completely missed Sato dealing with the four punks in Houston. After all, he’d just ridden an exploding garbage truck. By the time Rick came around from the explosive stunning, Sato was standing while the other four men weren’t.

Rick blasted through the museum exit—regrettably causing both glass doors to explode from the impact—and scanned the area to create a battlespace. The behavior of the opSha inside had made him certain trouble was afoot. It seemed Sato drew trouble the way sugar drew bees.

Four opSha were mere meters from Sato, attacking in a wave of blurred motion. Rick armed a laser and brought it up, targeted the lead alien, and fired. At the same instant, someone slammed into him from behind. The weight and momentum weren’t enough to knock him over, but it was enough for his shot to miss, causing it to go high.

Cursing, he left Sato to deal with the opSha himself. He figured if the slightly built scientist could tackle four brutish thugs singlehanded, he could handle four non-combatant opSha. His sensors allowed him to designate multiple targets, so he set the computer to automatically track and record Sato and turned his attention to his own problem.

His attacker was one of the two guards he’d jumped over a moment earlier. He’d gambled that the two would be too surprised to act quickly. Looked like he’d lost the bet. The man was trying to put him into a Full Nelson. Were he not augmented, it would have been a potentially dangerous situation. A well-executed Full Nelson performed by a person with sufficient leverage and strength was difficult to defeat. At least, without doing serious injury to your attacker. This guy was either a wrestler or had training.

Considering the suit his body was merged with, Rick wasn’t impressed with the attempt to restrain him. The man had only managed to begin applying the hold, because Rick’s arms weren’t at his side. Despite the attacker applying as much force as he could, he hadn’t succeeded in forcing Rick’s arms up so much as a centimeter. “Let go,” he said aloud.

“You are under arrest,” the man said.

“I don’t think so,” Rick said.

The guard doubled his efforts and managed to move Rick’s arms a millimeter. “What are you?” he demanded. Rick just shook his head and moved his arms downward. He did it smoothly, though not overly fast. He didn’t want to rip the man’s hands off. “Gahh!” the security guard screamed as he tried his best to hold the move and failed.

His arms lowered, Rick dipped a shoulder and rammed an elbow backward into the guard’s solar plexus.

“Ooof!” the man grunted, falling to his knees as he gasped for breath.

Rick had just begun to activate the recall of sensor logs on Sato when the other guard performed a decent knee tackle on him from behind. Like the other man’s attempt at a bull-rush followed by a submission hold, the force of his impact was insufficient to succeed in taking him down. It did distract him again.

Sato was in the midst of a tangle of limbs and tails, four opSha and the scientist spinning in an orgy of violence. Rick really wanted to watch the tableau, but the second guard had drawn a metallic truncheon and was beating on Rick’s head from behind.

“I don’t want to hurt any of you,” Rick