Sword of Minerva (The Guild Wars Book 10) Mark Wandrey (e novels to read .TXT) 📖

Using the desk as a base, and a pair of tweezers, he began reconstructing it. Partly out of curiosity, and partly out of respect for whoever the hotel employed as housekeepers. When he’d first tested the knife’s edge in New Warsaw, he’d checked both the micron measurement as well as the BESS, or Brubacher Edge Sharpness Scale. A surgical scalpel’s edge was rated 0.3 micron, and 40 BESS. The fusion knife was 0.01 micron, with a BESS of 1. Of course, there wasn’t a BESS of 0, so he wondered if a new assessment was necessary.

The last thing he wanted was a piece of his knife to find its way into someone’s foot or hand. It was sharp enough to migrate or dig itself deeper into a body just from basic muscle movements. He laid each blade fragment on a piece of notebook paper. He found them all except a bit half the size of his pinky fingernail. Luckily it was from the blade’s belly, and not really sharp, so he abandoned the test.

Upon examination, it appeared the blade had developed a stress fracture at the bolster, near the handle. He made a note that future versions needed a guard of some kind. If the knife had jumped back at him instead of rebounding away, he could have lost his hand.

Finally, he examined the edges as best he could. He didn’t have a machine to do a BESS assessment, so he sufficed with the portable microscope he had. The edge hadn’t curled. It wasn’t possible for the carbon-carbon to be turned. It looked like some had simply ablated, and there was tiny pitting in evidence. The edge looked to be only .1 micron, or maybe a BESS of 20. He frowned. The blade had seriously underperformed his expectations.

The bits went into a sample case and was stowed in the toolkit. Maybe further thought would yield an improvement. He’d conceived of the idea when a Marine complained the standard CASPer arm blades had difficulty cutting through Oogar armor. He’d set about making an improvement. While the fusion knives were certainly better, the processes involved in making the two he’d produced suggested a CASPer-sized variant would cost roughly five million credits, each. Not including the vibration device, which was a rather complicated gadget as well. The concept was reduced to the two samples, now just one. Oh, well.

He turned to the armored mailbox with a frown, eyebrows knitted in concentration. He didn’t know what else he had that would work, and was considering waiting for Rick to wake up and having him laze the fucking thing open, when he saw the door was ajar. He pulled it closer and examined the incisions.

The fusion knife had produced edges in the high-carbon steel box which themselves were nearly as sharp as a scalpel. The first hinge had been severed neatly, however the second had caused trouble, as he knew well. He couldn’t see what had done the number on his knife. Despite wanting to, he focused on the box itself. Redonning the heavy, blood-stained gloves, he carefully pulled the door free, pivoting on the still intact lock, and then worked the locking bolt out of its hole, completely removing the door and revealing the contents.

All that rested inside was a key. “You’ve got to be kidding,” Sato said as he fished it out. It looked a little like a hotel room key, with a plastic tab attached to the keyhole. He turned it over in his hand, then flipped the severed box door over and tried it. The keys weren’t compatible. “Well, that’s good,” he said and chuckled. How ironic would it be if the box contained the key to the box?

No, he knew it wouldn’t be something like that. It must be something important, both because of the significance of the memory and the efforts he’d taken to stash it. So he used his pinplants to scan every minute detail of the key and its plastic tab. Fully scanned, he slipped the key into his pocket and began running an analysis.

The key was of a type widely available on Earth, though not in current production. The last time it was produced was 55 years ago. Sato frowned as he double-checked on the AetherNet, confirming the data. The key ID verified that this particular one was likely manufactured between 2030 and 2046. But why would he stash away a key which had been made nearly 100 years ago?

The tag was more difficult. His eyes could just detect faded writing. It took several attempts to discern the words or numbers. Finally, he realized it was written in Japanese. Sakura Maru—22XF.

“Sakura Maru,” he whispered.

The ship looked so big, yet compared to the ones the aliens came and left in, it was actually tiny. Sato reached out and touched the landing leg. It was made of a hundred parts, the metal intricately machined with many cuts to reduce weight. It seemed too fragile to support the ship’s many thousand tons of weight. He tilted his head up and back, following the graceful lines. His heart swelled with pride and the weight of responsibility he would bear.

He blinked as the memory retreated. Another Aethernet search confirmed what he knew he’d find. They needed to go to Japan next.

The work finished, Sato carefully scooped the shards of his defunct fusion knife into the empty mailbox, then set the lid back in place. Using the laser that had failed to cut the hinge, he performed several spotwelds before the laser’s battery gave out. It wouldn’t stop anyone determined to get into the box, but it would stop a casual observation. He took the box outside, found the hotel’s garbage dumpster, and managed to muscle the mailbox over the top and drop it inside. It landed with a resounding booong!

Sato glanced around. Nobody was in sight, so he headed inside. The bandages were