Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 23: Little Backup (Patreon)

So, Earth's fleet and the demon fleet were, for now, just playing tug-of-war, or maybe chess — repositioning pieces, preparing positions, neither side yet daring to knock the other off the board with one decisive blow.

That gave us a bit more time. But now that time no longer worked exclusively in Earth's favour, it worked for both sides at once, and there was no telling who'd make better use of it.

The most advantageous scenario for us, overall, wasn't to win the preparation race, but to have the demons dive headfirst into a ready-made trap, believing they'd caught us off guard. But that wasn't something to bank on any more.

Earth was preparing for something, some countermeasures were being taken. Not for nothing had Novak been so busy this whole time.

I should spend my own time wisely too.

While I lay in the infirmary, staring at the ceiling and listening for any feeling in my ‘switched-off’ leg, I thought a lot.

Portals work through precise data. Coordinates, frequencies, calibrating the spatial membrane for a specific point in space. All of that can be studied, recorded, repeated by following instructions. That's exactly why any technician, without a shred of talent for Space, could assemble a portal from a ready-made kit of parts, following a diagram step by step.

Space techniques work through the cultivator's own intuitive control and will, through forms not formulas. Anyone capable of assembling a perfect portal wouldn't perform a single teleportation technique, no matter how many diagrams you showed them, because there simply isn't a ready recipe here that can be read and repeated. And besides Space itself as the lead qi, you also need Gravity and Vacuum. Not a lot, but cultivators who possess all three simply don't occur in nature.

Except, perhaps, eighth-stage cultivators, about whom a heap of various rumours circulated in the Ka Federation.

Logical ones, if I'm honest. The youngest Eight was nine hundred. After that many years, even the least developed qi's intuitive understanding for a given cultivator should equal the top-level understanding of a second- or third-stage cultivator. Again, going by rumours.

But talent didn't give you academic understanding. An Eight couldn't assemble a portal without proper education. Someone as talented as Bao looked at me like a deer in headlights whenever the conversation moved away from breaking through armour and locking down an opponent, toward using Gravity to stabilise a portal.

Sure, he could charge a battery — that was the extent of it.

I could explain in detail exactly how my foot had ended up fused with the sole of my trainer. I could even write out the formula and run a simulation with AI.

The skin on my leg didn't grow back any faster for that.

Theoretically, it should have been worse. I should have lost the foot entirely. What saved me was the Anchor Point. That same drop, bought for insane money, had already justified the purchase for the second time. It helped stabilise my physical body and separate it from the trainer as much as was possible in that situation.

And it happened automatically. If I trained that ability, I'd significantly cut the chance of injuries in the future. Though it would cost me a lot of skin along the way, especially off my fingertips.

At least I still had the training algorithm from Black Hole.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean I could start training right away. The reason was mundane. My blood still carried remnants of deformed flesh particles — not enough to pose a real threat to my health, but enough that every active use of Space triggered a dull, dragging pain that shot from my foot all the way to my core.

I'm not Kate, and I'm no fan of masochism at all.

It would, of course, be nice to turn that very pain into a combat technique. Make it hurt the enemy the same way. But there were two problems straight off. I already had a similar trick, mixing materials, softening the boundary between solid and liquid, the same thing I'd shown Rene when I explained why he'd lost. A trick, not a technique, but a fairly destructive and effective one.

The second problem was getting the opponent to use Space after inflicting the injury. Unless they relied heavily on a spatial pocket, that wasn't happening. So, while active training remained off the table, and my brain still craved something to occupy itself with, I turned to an old idea I'd been putting off since my Federation days.

Emergency mini-portals. Like the ones that let us leave the Federate research base when they cut off their own portals. Only less bulky and more reliable, so they wouldn't slice off the legs of whoever was retreating through them, the way it had happened with that prax.

The idea of a mini-portal as an emergency tool, personally mine portal, and nobody else's, reliable, made with proper thought and an adequate margin of durability, wouldn't leave me alone.

How nice it would be to just be able to bail out of whatever next mess Novak shoved me into!

The main thing was that he must never find out I'd have that option, or the messes would instantly get more dangerous!

I could keep one at home as a stationary exit point, and carry the second on me. The size of my pocket allowed for it.

I already had enough knowledge of portal engineering to assemble something like that on my own. The question wasn't whether I could do it, but whether I'd have enough materials, and how to do it so that no one would know.

At the very least I'd need to charge it, and Space alone wouldn't cut it there. I'd need Vacuum and Gravity for stabilisation.

Bao and Zola.

Though Zola didn't seem to have developed that particular qi much, having leaned more into medicine.

First I'd need to assemble the portal itself. And that would leave records...

Unless I came up with some research project I could write it all off against.

The best lie is a half-truth.

I wasn't going to invent some completely new, unrelated pretext. Instead, I decided to go right down the middle: develop an official project for single-use emergency portals for raid groups — compact, cheap, disposable, for emergency evacuation of the wounded or those cut off from the main force. The cover story explained everything I actually needed to do: materials, testing, I could even manage without Bao and Zola by scrounging Vacuum and Gravity batteries from the division itself. And any deviation from official specifications — well, no specifications existed yet. If a couple of ‘test samples’ turned out significantly more expensive than the technical brief called for, that could always be chalked up to a development error or an interim version, unsuitable for mass production.

With a finished plan a few pages long, I headed to Delgado.

She listened to me in silence, scrolling through the presentation on her tablet with that same expression of professional composure she greeted everything with in that position.

"Not a bad idea," she said finally. "Except such a project already exists. You should take more interest in your colleagues' work."

I blinked.

"One of the research groups has been developing something very similar for over a year now," Delgado explained, scrolling through something on her tablet, until she finally turned the screen towards me. "Slowly, though. Few enthusiasts, few qualified specialists. Want to join?"

The question caught me so off guard that I didn't find an answer right away.

On one hand — this ruined my whole plan. Joining someone else's project meant working under someone else's oversight, reporting to someone besides myself. I wouldn't get a personal, unnoticed, unaccountable-to-anyone mini-portal in my pocket that way.

On the other hand — why not? Someone else's groundwork, someone else's budget, someone else's responsibility, and it had already been running long enough not to look too suspicious. Whereas turning down such a logical offer would look suspicious in itself. Why would a technically competent candidate refuse a ready-made team and resources just to reinvent the wheel alone?

"Could I look over the project materials first?" I asked, picking the safest of all possible answers. "I want to understand how much my vision overlaps with what's already been planned and done, before taking anything on."

Delgado thought for a moment.

"Sensible," she decided finally. "I'll send you access to the documentation. But you'd better go take a look on site as well. And preferably without any praxi. Let's keep this project in human company."

I didn't know whether that was some kind of hint or a test. I just nodded. I had no plans involving praxi.

The moment I gave the documentation my attention, one name jumped out at me — N. S. Pascal.

The same Pascal who'd flown with us on the Jumper?

That suddenly made the decision much simpler. If the project was run by someone I'd already survived months of flight in a tin can with, plus the delicate business of discovering demonic betrayal, the risk of surprises seemed much lower than if it turned out to be a stranger.

Besides, Pascal had already had a certain level of qualification back then, more than three years ago.

I decided not to wait until tomorrow and dropped by before the shift even ended.

The lab turned out to be more modest than I'd imagined — a few open workstations, two benches with a disassembled mini-portal prototype, and Pascal, sitting with his back to the entrance, focused on sketching something on a holographic screen.

"Didn't expect to see a familiar face here," I said instead of a greeting.

He turned around.

"Sullivan? You’re here?"

"I've been here a while," I said.

Even on the Jumper he'd been a bit of a hermit, but surely the whole business with Shako, and then Jonson, couldn't have passed him by.

"I mean this lab."

"Ah! Interesting project. Thinking of joining."

"That's good!" Pascal brightened. "We could use someone with your qualifications."

"Mine?" I asked. "Why exactly is my qualification matters so much? You were a solid specialist back when I was still learning the basics."

"You studied in the Federation."

"And you didn't?" I asked.

Sending him there had seemed like the logical decision.

"Sery," he said, shrugging. "Formally, I was never charged with anything. I knew nothing about him being a demon, and everyone acknowledged that. But the simple fact that I'd been one of his assistants put a mark on me. When you lot were sent off, I was still under investigation."

"That's a shame," I said. "They definitely wasted a lot of potential."

"Ah," Pascal waved it off. "Your master put in a word for me, confirmed my role in the whole Jumper business. Thanks to that I avoided the harshest checks, the access restrictions, and the ostracism Sery's older students went through."

He fell silent for a moment, looking off somewhere past me.

"Some of them can't find work at all now."

"I thought the fleet took everyone," I said.

"And shoves them into the arse end of the world," Pascal added. "I landed on my feet pretty comfortably, though. Minimal work and my own little project. Even if this project is three enthusiasts running on a coffee budget."

I looked over the portals on the benches.

"You know," I said, "these things look far too much like the ones that took off the prax's legs. It's the same project, isn't it? Except the military dropped it, and you didn't."

"Yep," Pascal agreed. "But I can assure you, it doesn't take off legs any more."

"To be honest, I drew my own inspiration from that very story," I admitted.