Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 15: Gains and Losses (Patreon)

The incident review took another hour.

Johansson wasn't a technician himself, but he'd brought along a technically qualified expert. Oh, and Johansson himself was a Five now. I congratulated him on the upgrade, even though I was nearly a year late with it.

It felt like the whole world had taken a step forward these past three years, while Rene alone had been dragging his feet.

The Order's experts worked methodically and tediously, like people who'd done this hundreds of times: recording the equipment's state, pulling readings off the tablet, separately packing the deformed panel and the fuse block into shielded containers.

Shako was led out immediately, not before they'd stripped him of his token with the spatial pocket and his belt with the buckle bearing the defensive formation.

I was briefly questioned. Johansson already knew all of it, but this time everything was done officially, on record, and it took under an hour. My first working day at the Portal Division ended early.

The head of the division was tied up, so I let myself off the hook, spending the rest of the working hours in the sand hall and the greenhouse.

I set aside a bit of time to check the forum, Rene's auction page in particular, it was overflowing with messages.

Not the most sober decision, apparently, but it had turned out to be a great one, so I decided not to interfere, sometimes that's the best call.

The auction itself was supposed to close at 17:00, but Rene didn't call me until eight.

"I'm bloody wrecked!" he complained.

"Sold a lot?" I asked him.

"Everything!" he said, sounding both outraged and wounded.

"Wow!" I praised him.

"Your share's fifty-seven million, three hundred sixty-two thousand."

"Wow!" I repeated, twice as enthusiastically.

I'd been counting on a profit, even a doubled one, but the goods had been worth maybe twenty million total. Rene had nearly tripled that sum.

"So your cut comes out to…" I started calculating.

"I already took mine out," he said.

Ah, right… this was Rene, that had been dumb of me to forget. Which meant he really had tripled it.

"Add yourself another million as a bonus," I said.

"Very generous of you. When are you swinging by to pick up the money?"

"What do you mean, swing by? Rene, are you starting that again?!"

"I'm just joking!" he said. "Transferring it now, but not dropping by my place after all this would be a real dick move."

"Knowing you made several million off me in a single day will settle my conscience just fine," I said. "And you might want to pay some attention to this constant hunt for profit. Purely as a matter of self-awareness. You must have a fairly greedy aura!"

"Thirsty, more like," he said. "Sounds more poetic."

"If you say so," I didn't bother arguing and thanked him sincerely. "Thank you. You solved all my financial problems in a single day."

I was out of the red, and now I could upgrade my techniques to the fourth stage and start proper training.

The six techniques that made up the core of my arsenal, I upgraded the moment the money hit my account. The Monkey, the Eastern variant, both mental techniques, Double Cycle, Chain Punch, Hook, and Cutting Hook. All red as a tomato, and it cost me around three million, twice what it would've cost in points, but points were only handed out for work done for the school, and I'd only just started. Besides, there'd be plenty else to spend money on. I might swap out my ultimate technique later, once I'd properly settled into the fourth stage.

Separately, I'd need to ask Novak to track down a fourth-stage Scythe Punch for me. I'd stumbled across it by accident in the Challenger's library, on the far side of the wormhole, and even though it didn't quite meet my overall ‘red’ standard, it fit into my arsenal perfectly. I hadn't found it available for open purchase, but the fleet should have one.

Alternatively, I could try upgrading it myself. I'd have to do that with Chainsaw Punch anyway. But I was already planning that upgrade ahead of time, meaning to work Space into it, so the projections would fly straight through defensive formations. If it worked, it would be an extraordinarily destructive technique.

The next morning, I showed up at the division at exactly eight, with no idea what to expect from this new day. Back in the Federation, I'd gotten used to the wheels of bureaucracy turning slowly. I'd been hoping I'd get lost somewhere in the process of restoring the management chain and could spend most of my time in the rest area, practising internal cultivation techniques.

No such luck.

The new head of the division had already been appointed the day before, and he hadn't overlooked whoever had been involved in taking down his predecessor.

What's more, it turned out to be the very same joker who'd sent me to the previous boss without mentioning he was a prax.

This time I checked his interface. L. L. Jonson.

He called me into his office about ten minutes after my first cup of morning coffee. Not the same office where the praxi ate lunch.

He was smiling too, same as before, only this time he wasn't bothering to hide it.

"Sullivan," he said instead of a greeting. "Come in, sit down," he gestured to the chair in front of his new desk. "I don't even know how to thank you, you did all of us an enormous favour!"

"And nearly kicked the bucket in the process," I hinted.

I couldn't really judge how big a bastard Shako had been, we hadn't known each other long, but Jonson bore some of the blame for our conflict too. It had all started with that joke of his.

"Maybe, if he hadn't been so angry with me for interrupting his lunch, it wouldn't have gotten so dangerous," I said.

"That shouldn't have been dangerous at all," Jonson said, wiping the smile off his face. "I'm not going to pretend nothing happened. I sent you there. I knew there were praxi in that room. I knew Shako was in a bad mood, he's always in a bad mood.

"But under a normal supervisor, that shouldn't have ended with someone trying to hurt you. He just hated humans."

"Did you tell the Hall of Order all this?" I asked.

"I did," Jonson nodded. "Everything, start to finish. I got both, a reprimand and his post, because there's no one else to put in it. Except you, or one of the remaining praxi."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Me?"

"Your diploma's excellent, but your work experience, let alone management experience, is basically zero. But we'll fix that quickly enough!" he smiled again. "As part of the job, you're getting subordinates now. You handled Shako well, you've got experience dealing with aliens, so a couple more praxi shouldn't be anything extraordinary for you."

He picked up his tablet and swiped a finger across the screen, sending me a file with the praxi's personnel data. "Formally, they're hired lower-tier technical staff, though their actual qualifications run much higher. They handle secondary testing of working portals after non-critical faults are detected."

One prax was from Storm Peak, the other from Ice Comet.

Jonson went quiet while I looked over the data.

"And did you tell the Order that you don't like praxi either?" I asked him.

The smile on his face flickered false for a second.

"Excuse me?"

"Assigning me as their supervisor is asking for an open conflict."

"I heard you handle conflicts brilliantly," he said, smiling again.

I nodded.

"Usually I come out ahead too, while whoever pushed me into the conflict tends to have worse luck."

"Are you bloody threatening me?" Jonson asked.

"No, of course not, boss! Just reminiscing."

"Good!" he said, the smile gone now. His next words came out hard and commanding. "I've made my decision, and I'm not going to explain myself for it. I'm your boss, so act like it!"

"Yesterday I had a different boss," I reminded him. "And he didn't act very…"

"Get to work."

"Send over the job assignments," I told him.

Jonson sent me the file, I stood up, and gave him a mocking bow.

I didn't like this one. And his smile was fake.

Now an encounter awaited me with the people I was apparently supposed to be managing. They were in the same laboratory. Only this time, no raw steaks. Still a long way to lunch.

Both of them sat at the table, scrolling through something on their tablets. Neither got up when they saw me, though both gave me an unfriendly look with cold, fish-like eyes.

I grabbed a chair, turned it backward, and sat down at the table with my arms folded over the backrest.

"So," I said. "Happy news for all of us, I'm your supervisor now."

The silence thickened and hardened with tension so heavy you could've cut it with a knife.

"I'm not thrilled about it either," I said. "You know the new head of the division?"

The praxi stayed silent.

"If I'm addressing you, you're expected to answer," I explained. "I didn't ask for this job. I'd rather never have laid eyes on you.

"Jonson put me over you specifically because I reported your boss to the Hall of Order yesterday, and the two of you hate me for it. He's waiting for one of you to snap. For one of you to do something stupid, and either I get hurt, or I do to you what I did to Shako. Either way, the division loses two more praxi."

"Jonson's a prick," said Napo, the one from Storm Peak.

"Agreed, though he's got a long way to go to catch up to Shako. Did you know what he was planning to do to me?"

"No," Napo said again.

I shifted my gaze to Daubo, from Ice Comet.

He simply shook his head.

"You're lying, you gits," I said calmly. "You knew, all of you. Might've even helped."

"We didn't…" Napo started.

I raised a hand.

"Know what's going to happen to Shako? He's getting a two-by-two cell. Finally won't have to work for humans he hates anymore. Absolute rest, dream come true. Though I can't guarantee the steak quality. They might switch him to protein paste entirely."

Napo licked his lips, unexpectedly. It looked like an involuntary reaction. Which meant meat was a sore subject for the sharp-toothed lot.

"During our first conversation," I continued, "he told me I was part of the reason he's stuck in this hole. Essentially, he blamed me for not being polite enough to die when I was supposed to."

I looked at them both, one after the other.

"That accusation still nags at me a bit. Would you two happily agree to die, if I asked you to?"

The praxi exchanged a look, clearly doubting my sanity.

"No? What a shame!" I said. "Then I've got a different request for you. Don't be idiots. Don't put yourselves on the line. Do your jobs, same as before, I'm not going to poke through your tablets or hover over your shoulders. Hate me all you want, that's your right, I even understand it."

I stood up and put the chair back where it belonged.

"But if either of you feels like repeating that little portal trick, think first about who exactly benefits from it. Certainly not you. If you survive the attempt, you'll end up in the cell right next to Shako's. And he could've spent few more years just doing his job and eating juicy steaks.

"Cell or laboratory, steaks or protein paste, the choice is yours."