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

this arm of the galaxy. Everyone wants to have a Behemoth-class transport come a-calling. They bring passengers, freight, prestige, and most important, credits. You need at least a Class-6 to fit them, and many Maki, who operate the majority of the Behemoths, don’t like anything smaller than a Class-9. Too crowded.”

“I still don’t get it.”

Sato pointed at the map. “This system has no reason for a stargate. I can understand why the Cartography Guild left one, say a Class-3 or even a Class-4, because it takes years of preparation to decommission a stargate. You don’t want someone coming through with an old map and finding themselves with no way to leave. Even so, this Class-9 should have been moved a long time ago.”

“So it was left there on purpose,” Rick said, a half question.

“It would seem.” Sato rubbed his chin as he stared at the Tri-V.

“You know what we need?” Rick asked.

“Hmm?”

“A good old mystery to keep things interesting.”

Sato looked at him in confusion, then Rick winked, and they laughed out loud. Mysteries were the only thing they had in profusion.

* * *

“Rick, can you come down to the engineering shop?”

“Sure, be right there.”

Sato looked at his project for another moment and nodded in approval. It had taken weeks of work in their long trip across the galaxy. They could have come directly and reached the core region in only a few jumps—and pointed an arrow right at themselves. Whoever had ‘loaned’ him those codes, not to mention the source of the opSha killers, would be looking for him. Likely their next encounter wouldn’t be as benign. News of the event had accelerated ahead of them. He had to assume they’d be waiting and know where he was going.

“What’s up?” Rick asked as he floated in.

“Time to finish fixing your leg,” Sato said and gestured to the mini-manufactory.

“I thought you’d forgotten all about me,” Rick said, and wrapped his arm around a protruding pipe.

“No, but I didn’t have the time or the advanced alloys until now.” He pointed. “I’ll need your leg.” Rick held it out from his body. “You can release it yourself.”

“How do I do that?”

“Access your internal mechanical controls file. Autonomous function. Extremities. There’s a subfile for each one.”

“Wow,” Rick said. “I should spend more time looking around in my own head.”

“Did you find the release?” Sato asked. With a click, Rick’s leg detached at the hip. “I didn’t need it all, but okay.”

“Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t play with myself.”

“Ha,” Sato said and quickly disassembled the lower limb. An array of newly manufactured parts already floated around the space, and he began the reassembly process. “I’ve been thinking about losing this leg. Shouldn’t have been that easy.”

“It was a 20mm round,” Rick said. “Not exactly light weapons.”

“No, but your offensive capabilities far outstrip your defenses.”

“Not sure what you can do about that. You said my armor is about as tough as you can make it.”

“For metals and composites, yes.” Sato closed up the leg and pushed it back toward Rick, who caught it. After orienting it properly, he fitted it in place. A moment later it reintegrated with a series of snaps and pops. “You should be back to 100 percent.”

“Armor status says 102, actually.”

Sato smiled. “Maybe I made it too smart.”

“I’m pretty happy with it. You wouldn’t have mentioned defensive capabilities if you didn’t have an idea.”

Sato picked a component out of an equipment bay and held it out to Rick. “You know what this is?”

“Nope.”

“This is a shield generator. I picked this up at that last stop. The account bounced, so I paid cash. Almost a million.”

“Doesn’t leave us much.”

“I’m aware.”

“I didn’t think shields cost all that much.”

“They don’t, for normal-sized ones. This is about a tenth the size.”

“So a tenth the power?”

“No, about a quarter the power. I picked up a couple tricks from things we brought back from 2nd Level Hyperspace.” Sato turned the component over in his hand. It was expensive because he’d had it made, and as he didn’t want the technology getting into the wild, he’d insisted on renting the manufactory and doing it all himself. It didn’t take long, but the manufactory owner was not pleased.

“Open panel 9B, if you please. Same file group, torso.”

“It’s requesting a confirmation.”

“Yeah, it exposes your biological bits. You want to make sure you only do it in a real safe place.”

Rick nodded and his abdominal panel clicked loose. Sato opened it, and then moved aside the memory metal musculature to expose some of the suit’s inner workings.

Fitting the living part of Rick into the Æsir had required a good amount of compromise. There needed to be enough of him to support biological function, of course. Arms and legs weren’t required; neither was most of his digestive tract. Sato had optimized his food use ability, and that provided the room in the abdomen for power systems. The stuff below was mostly still there, including pelvis and other goodies.

Sato removed a redundant protein storage unit, capping the leads, and let it float away.

“It just told me I need to eat more.”

“Sorry, had to make room.” Next he found the secondary main power connector. It was tricky to access. Ideally he’d want to power the Æsir completely down, but Rick wasn’t just a project. The man inside had saved his life several times. So he grunted and wiggled his fingers until he felt the connector.

“This feels funky,” Rick said. “You’d think having someone dig around in your guts would hurt.”

“If you hadn’t released the panel, this would have been relayed to your brain as serious pain,” Sato explained. “Got it.” He gently pulled the plug into view. The T wasn’t very long; if he pulled too hard,