Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 33: Rank and File (Patreon)

I didn't send my refusal as a message, but I didn't beat around the bush either. The next morning I dropped by to see Delgado.

"You've finally made your decision," she said, understanding at once.

I didn't even bother sitting down, in case the conversation turned out to be a short one, and chose a direct, polite way of putting it.

"Thank you for the trust and the offer, but I'm afraid I have to decline."

Delgado didn't look surprised. She nodded, as if she'd expected exactly that answer and had already worked out her countermeasures.

"Sit down, please," she said. "Honestly, I'd hoped for a different answer."

I obeyed.

"Because of the staff shortage?"

"Because of the bureaucracy. Your current post is going to need reviewing. Jonson set it up on a whim, back when he just needed a body for his conflict with the praxi. Formally, it was never a structural post within the division, just a convenient label a former head dreamed up back when he could afford to. I've got to be more careful with resources."

And, something tells me, a demotion also happens to make a fine bit of leverage, however you look at it.

"If you're turning down the permanent staff position," Delgado said, "I don't see the point in keeping a made-up post alive purely for your sake. You'll go back to being a rank-and-file technician."

I wouldn't be able to slip away from work whenever I felt like it anymore, and they'd start pulling me in far more often.

I looked Delgado in the eye, trying to work out her master plan, if there was one.

She took it as an unspoken question and answered: "A leadership position, even a small one, needs to give the division something back: stability, long-term planning, the commitment of someone who's going to stay here for the long haul. You've just told me straight out that you don't see yourself here for long."

"Honestly, I don't see any of us here for long," I admitted.

Delgado leaned back in her chair.

"You think we're going to lose?"

"I think surviving is going to be hard."

Delgado nodded seriously. "So the trap under the wormhole won't hold them?"

"Don't take this as serious intel," I asked, with a smile and a shake of my head at the same time. "It's more my own personal gut feeling."

Delgado all but scanned me with her eyes, nodded seriously, and went back to the previous topic. "Either way, neither I nor the division will be able to count on you at the critical moment."

I had to nod. She was completely right about that. If Novak gave the order, I'd relocate under the wormhole without a second thought. Though I was hoping he had other plans for me. Whatever I might be studying, out in actual physical space, I was a fairly mediocre fighter.

"How's this going to affect my duties?" I asked.

The portal-gun work Novak had handed me was about to get harder either way.

"Not much," Delgado said. "The bonuses go, the right to make independent decisions about the praxi goes, meaning your official status as their supervisor goes. The slightly broader access to documents the post gave you goes too.

"The duties themselves don't change. Someone still has to keep an eye on your praxi at the practical level, and until there's a better candidate, that's still going to be you, just without the official title. The evac portal work stays yours too."

"So," I slowly put the picture together, "my job gets harder for less pay."

"Exactly," Delgado nodded, without a shred of sympathy or apology. "Unless you've changed your mind."

I could have backed out of the evac portal development, she couldn't have forced me, but it was in my own interest to keep at it.

"No," I shook my head.

"Final decision?"

"Final," I confirmed.

Delgado frowned, gave me a few seconds, then reached for her tablet. A few taps and a document appeared on the screen that I couldn't read from that angle. A couple more taps and the tablet's screen went black, marking the downgrade of my access.

"Congratulations," Delgado said. "You're a rank-and-file technician now."

I was just then looking over the confirmation message with an attached document that had landed in my inbox.

I stood up.

"How do I split the work between the praxi and Pascal?"

"The same way you did before," Delgado said.

Before, I'd been their boss. But since she was putting it that way, if any problems came up, I'd be pointing straight back at her decision.

"Thank you."

Delgado looked up, surprised, and I added quickly, so she wouldn't get the wrong idea about how I meant to use her own words against her: "For the lack of fresh manipulation, and for being straight with me," I added.

"That saved me time and nerves," she said, looking down at the now-black tablet, clearly already moving on to the next item on her list.

I quickly drew up my own list too, first tracking down the praxi and letting them know I was no longer their boss, though not quite a colleague either, since the higher-ups still wanted me keeping an eye on them. Plus I'd have work on another project, so nothing was actually going to change in how we split our duties.

Despite what Delgado said about stripping away all my perks, I tried to hang onto as many as I could. Which meant the praxi handled the routine work, and I only got called in for the interesting cases.

While the praxi were still trying to work out what that meant, before they could start asking any awkward questions, I made a swift exit to Pascal's lab.

He already knew.

"Demoted, really?"

"Technically, I demoted myself," I clarified, dropping into the free chair by the holo-station he was working at. "They offered me the black jumpsuit," I nodded at the outfit under Pascal's coat. "I turned it down."

"Why?" Pascal didn't get it.

"Because one way or another, when everything goes to hell, I'm going to be right in the epicentre, and I won't be able to do my actual job."

Pascal just raised his eyebrows, not sure what to say.

"Hell's going to be under the wormhole," he pointed out.

I shook my head.

"All my modest experience is screaming that hell's going to be everywhere."

"Then why the hell are we even bothering with these portals?" he asked, philosophically. "If there's no safe place to evacuate to, what's the point of them?"

"Different places can be safe at different times," I said, and picked up the tablet, then thought better of it and put it back down, deciding the holo-station would work better. "May I?" I asked.

"Be my guest," Pascal allowed.

I swept his project aside and opened a new one. Activating Thousand Sparks and Parallelisation, I kept talking while I started sketching out a schematic for the portal-gun at the same time.

"I talked to my master yesterday, and he opened up the real picture to me a bit. An idea came up during the conversation that fits our concept pretty well. What's more, we've already got more active duration than we actually need. That, along with the batteries, could be cut in half. But the difference between the receiving side and the entry side would end up fairly significant. The receiving side would be single-use, while the entry side would be reusable, thanks to swappable components."

I finished a rough draft and presented it to Pascal.

Pascal grunted and peered at it.

"What is this abomination? What's with the strange shield layout? And you said the receiving side would be single-use. For an evac portal, that makes no sense."

"Because it's not an evac portal," I said. "It's a gun barrel."

Pascal looked at me like I was an idiot, then his face went slack and his eyes locked onto the schematic.

"Instead of evacuating cultivators from a danger zone, we're handing them an ultimate weapon capable of wiping out the threat itself! But that would need high-ranked cultivators on standing duty on the entry side at all times. And it'd cost a fortune! Besides, how would you even aim it?"

"Uh... interesting addition to the idea, but no, this is meant to reinforce the wormhole's defences."

"So it'd just be hanging out there in space?" Pascal clarified.

"Yes."

"Then single-use guns would be impractical," he pushed me aside and took over the work himself, expanding both the batteries and the length of the housing.

"The shot destabilises the membrane," I reminded him.

"And that'll wreck the ring," Pascal confirmed. "And you're proposing to swap it out on the entry side? Also not very practical. If we move all the projectors outside the frame and leave nothing but the safety mechanisms inside it, the ring loses most of its value, the swappable component becomes cheap and compact. You could load a whole stack of them into both the entry and exit unit and add an automatic replacement system."

Pascal presented me with a reworked version, and it was miles, miles better!

"Are you sure the projectors won't burn out in a layout like that?"

"No," he admitted. "That's worth calculating."

Which is exactly what we spent the next hour doing, checking calculations and diving deep into the formulas. The abomination got reworked three times over, and together we settled on a reliability rating of 70–75%. Meaning the gun would «misfire» roughly one time in four, but projectors would hold.

On the entry side, behind the portal, it was better to have either a very long tunnel or open space. And it was best to stick to Point and Blade techniques, so the qi stayed tethered to a physical object. Well, Finger might work decently too, since its energy focuses itself into a beam on its own. Everything else, especially my beloved Fist, I'd be wary of. Could end up with a nice big boom right on the spot.

Pascal and I had drifted pretty far from our original goal, but we'd worked productively, riding the inspiration, and it had put us both in a great mood. Right up until someone came along and spoiled it.

We were so absorbed in the work that we missed our guest arriving.

"Having a productive time, are we," said a familiar voice.

I turned round and saw Jonson.

The jaw I'd shattered was back to its normal size and natural colour. He was talking without a speech impediment now, too. The teeth had all lined back up properly.

"You here on business, or just here to gloat, in the finest traditions of a cheap villain?" I asked.

"So I'm the villain now?" he asked, genuinely indignant.

I spread my hands. "You didn't come here to gloat?"

"You being a low technician now, Sullivan, that's just karma."

"Same as you losing your jaw," I said. "If you hadn't been messing around with frame-ups, you'd still have your old one."

"Seems to me you two are the ones messing around," Jonson said, stepping closer to the holo-station and pointing at the device projections. "This doesn't look like evac portals to me."

I turned back to the table and opened up the security settings. The members-only flag was switched on. Jonson shouldn't have been able to see what we'd sketched out here.

"Oh," he said, "I decided to join the project too. Heard you two were having trouble and needed a hand."

Which meant it was too late to hide the hologram, he already had access to all the project's data. Setting it up as part of the official project had been my biggest mistake.

"Strange," Pascal said. "You used to think this project was a waste of time."

Jonson raised a smug finger and wagged it, then pointed it at the two of us. "I thought you two were wasting your time. I never thought the project itself was a waste."

"Don't feed me that," I said. "I only joined the project after you got removed, under Delgado's leadership. Speaking of her, how did she agree to this?"

"Fairly easily, actually. No fuss at all. She needed someone to keep you two on your toes and stop you wandering off onto side projects before you'd hit your main goal."

Shouldn’t have thanked that bitch this morning. Though, that was just emotions talking.

I switched the hologram back to the one Pascal had been working on before I arrived.

"Then get involved. We were trying to extend the active duration. What's your take?"

"That you're not my boss. In fact, I outrank you now."

"Not on this project," Pascal said. "I'm the boss here. And you either make yourself useful, or you get out."

Jonson's eyebrows shot up. He clearly hadn't expected that from Pascal.

"You're forgetting yourself, kid."

"If you don't like something here, you're always free to leave the project," Pascal said, jabbing firmly at the hologram. "This project isn't a place for your personal vendetta."