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

As he floated, slowly spinning and considering what to do, he heard a sound. He could only see any one place for a second as it rotated by. What he saw was a pair of bots floating into the room. It took him a second to recognize them. They were maintenance bots, like you would commonly see in space stations. He’d first seen this type on Karma Station, working inside the ship docks. They were used to cut up damaged sections of starships for repairs.

They’re here to chop me up!

The revelation made the decision of what to do for him. He felt for the interface between the armor and his mind, sensing how it worked, and then embraced it fully.

His body and the mechanicals of the suit had always been linked, though he’d never been fully aware of it. Interfacing was a function of the pinplants. While this partnership was not a fully shared feature, the pinplants were there to modify and interpret commands from his mind. Thus, he’d never felt any difference between his arms and legs, and the suit’s limbs, though his resurrected body had no flesh and bone appendages of their own.

The command was effectively an override to the suit. “Bypass pinplant interface.”

<Verify Command—Yes / No>

“Yes.”

His mind exploded with the raw data from the Æsir’s own computers, and he reeled. There were a million inputs cascading into his visual cortex, as well as other parts of his mind, which controlled everything from motor reflex to autonomous functions. It was like being dipped in acid during a heavy metal concert. His screaming voice echoed in the smoky space. Everything deployed, activated, lit, fired, flexed, or did whatever it was designed to do.

It felt like it went on for hours before Rick saw something flash in his mind.

<REBOOTING>

Just as suddenly as the horror had begun, it ended. Rick blinked and looked around; his former casual spin was now a wildly dizzying gyration. He used his body’s thrusters to arrest the movement and stabilize himself relative to the room. He concentrated on slowing his breathing, then on steadying his body’s energy flow.

“Oh, shit,” he said. His EM perception showed there were two flickering energy readings nearby. He turned in space without thinking about it, examining the room. It was still full of smoke and ozone, and now it also contained a halo of floating bot chucks. The walls were scored with laser fire. Based on his energy levels, he must have fired both arm lasers while spasming.

His pinplant interface came online. Rick instantly triggered a diagnostic. The pinplants had suffered damage; the interface between them and the Æsir were out. He could use them to diagnose the suit, just not to control anything. Sato’s words about not taking direct control echoed in his mind, along with ‘neurological damage.’

“Well, shit,” he said.

After floating for another moment, he turned and flew back toward the corridor he’d come in through. It didn’t take any more conscious thought than would be required to breathe. His every action was fused to the armor. Whatever the issue was, he was sure Sato could fix it. First, he had to find the scientist. Someone had come in after he’d been stunned and taken him away. Simple fix.

At the first intersection, a trio of the same bots were coming down the hallway. Rick lasered them as easily as he’d point to an item on a store shelf. Gesture, and they were gone. He flew over to the ruined bots and assessed the remains. He was hungry for energy. One of the three had a surviving hybrid energy cell. He extracted it and mated the power coupling to an external adapter on his left thigh. A tiny sigh escaped his mouth; the feeling of the power flowing into him had an almost sexually euphoric edge. He felt his cheeks getting hot as he sucked the battery dry.

Ninety-seven percent; that’s a lot better. He removed the drained battery and let it float away, flying back along the course they’d taken to get to the center. After maneuvering around corridors, slowing at each intersection, he finally thought about Dakkar. Where was the Wrogul?

He thought back to the last time he’d remembered seeing the cephalopod, and realized it was just as they were leaving the airlock. Had the slippery alien found a hidden entrance and was now sneaking around?

He’d wanted to avoid using the pinplant comms in case their enemy could use them as well. Sato had said they were perfectly secure, but he’d also said this operation wasn’t very risky. Rick should have known better.

<Sato, Dakkar, respond. Do either of you hear me?> There was no response. That worried him a little. While the Wrogul could just be ignoring him, Sato wouldn’t. That meant the scientist was either unconscious, dead, or too far away to receive. Their ‘rush in and see what happens’ plan was looking worse and worse under the glaring light of reality.

He’d almost reached the airlock they’d come in through when he blundered around a corner into an entire squad of opSha in light combat armor. They all yelled and tried to arrest their forward momentum, only succeeding in either flying right past him, or bumping into him.

Rick grabbed the pair who’d collided with him and crushed their necks. It made a rather satisfying crunching sound, like a handful of walnuts. They weren’t dead; it would take a few moments for their bodies to realize it was over.

Two of the others had enough presence of mind to fire on him with handheld laser weapons. The armor sloughed the beams off as if they were flashlights. However, to Rick, it felt like a cat scratching his skin.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled in surprise. The thigh holster popped open without conscious thought, and he snatched up the