Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 36: The Art of Provocation (Patreon)

We met in Artem's office, and I needed a temporary pass to get in. Plus, they'd confiscated my pendant with the spatial pocket, and without it I felt naked. At least the security and secrecy in his department were far better than in ours.

Artem's office was just as meticulously tidy as the man himself. His empty desk doubled as a holographic station, and he was lazily waving his hands over it when I walked in. Even with my temporary clearance, the desk looked empty to me.

"Sit," said Artem, not taking his eyes off some component he was assembling other parts onto. "I'll show you what needs doing," he said, switching to a tablet, still glancing back at the desk.

He turned the tablet's screen towards me. On it rotated a volumetric model of a beetle, covered in iron.

"Doesn't look much like a stealth surveillance drone," I said, taking the tablet in my hands. "This thing practically screams 'look at me.' Are those jet engines?" I couldn't make sense of it, so I peered at the size specifications. "Six and a half metres?" That was the length.

I raised surprised eyes at Artem.

"What, that's not much considering I want to bolt a warp drive onto it," he said, ignoring my silent question.

"Warp isn't portals," I noted. "Adjacent field, but not mine."

"You're the one who asked for this meeting. I'm just taking advantage of the moment."

"Fine," I said. "What's the project's goal? Is it a combat drone? I see shields, but no weapons."

"Classified," said Artem without blinking.

I zoomed in on the shell. Shields. Lots of shields, layered so tightly on top of each other that it was no longer economically sensible for an ordinary combat drone.

"I specialise in portals, not drone-building," I said. "But even I can see this is overkill. Why would a beetle need this many shields?"

I thought about it. Lately, everything classified had revolved around the same thing: demons and the wormhole.

"Sturdy shields," I said, watching his expression. "But they seem insufficient to survive a nuclear blast."

Artem's eyebrows twitched, barely noticeably.

"Depends on the distance. Besides, beetles handle radiation pretty well."

"They'll still die within a few hours," I said. "Kamikaze?"

"Classified," said Artem.

"Did Novak task you with working on wormhole defence?"

This time Artem didn't blink and gave nothing away to suggest I'd guessed correctly, but I had no doubts left.

"I'm developing a portal cannon project. Literally portals you can fire group techniques through. Our shields will be sturdier. And the master didn't tell me to keep it secret."

"How's it going?" Artem asked.

"Pretty well. A colleague helped a lot. Pascal, you know him? If it matters, he serviced the Jumper's warp drive."

"He's got several black marks from Security on him."

"As far as I know, the master personally vouched for him."

Artem nodded, mentally filing away the information, then decided to open up.

"The drone is meant to carry a nuclear charge, literally in its claws, through the wormhole, and detonate it on the other side, close to the megagate structure. I don't think they're capable of localising a blast from that side. And if we find a reliable way to disable their gates, they'll have to switch to a gateship…"

"Which is guaranteed to fly into a minefield," I finished for him. "I thought you were planning to destabilise the wormhole itself with a warp field."

"That's my backup plan. So a stable field isn't needed there. It's just that these things are turning out too slow. A whole battle could happen before they reach the target."

"Then why drones at all? It just complicates things. Wouldn't it be better to develop some kind of warp torpedo?"

"You think no one's working on that question?" Artem asked, reasonably enough.

I nodded, took the tablet, and without bothering to invent anything, showed him an archived schematic I knew for certain the Federation had handed to the Earthlings, because it was a defective design. Or rather, a design showing how not to do it. The engine was miniature, but it, along with the ship, was torn to shreds within seconds of launch. That fit perfectly with Artem's concept, those few seconds were enough for him, but the engine was still too large.

"I don't know how you'd fit that into a beetle. Then again, I don't understand why you need the beetle itself, when you could just use metal," I said, handing back the tablet.

"Electronics are vulnerable to electromagnetic waves and require reliable shielding, whereas beetles come equipped with adaptive analogue AI based on biotechnology," said Artem, reviewing the data. He frowned, unable to work it out at a glance despite all his genius. "Right, I've got what I needed. What did you want?"

"I need equipment for covert surveillance," I said. "Compact, unobtrusive, and preferably something that won't trip standard security detectors."

Artem set the tablet aside and looked at me with the expression usually reserved for an interesting puzzle.

"Did someone authorise this?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Novak?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Technically, Delgado gave permission."

"Technically?" he frowned.

"Oh, don't sulk. We've pulled off so many not-even-grey but downright black schemes under Novak by now that playing the innocent is a bit late."

Artem tilted his head, thought it over, and nodded.

"Damn it. But I need details, so I know what you actually need."

"You heard about that idiot whose jaw I exploded?" I demonstrated a hook.

"Probably the whole academy's heard about him. I actually know him personally, by the way."

"Only don't tell me he's actually a decent man," I said warily.

"Oh, no! Absolute shit through and through!" Artem nodded.

"Excellent!" I exhaled. "I need to catch that piece of shit red-handed when he tries to ruin my life."

"You'll need something long-lived." Artem nodded. "And who's going to make sure there's no drone on the official security camera footage? If Delgado only gave permission 'technically,' the Order might have some serious questions."

"I'm not planning to do this in the lab." I shook my head. "As Delgado said, he's too smart to do anything on camera. I'll create the perfect opportunity for him out in the field. We'll run a field test. I just need to arrange it and make it dangerous enough for something to go wrong. Then give him the chance to make that 'something wrong' happen and get it on video."

"So you don't actually have a concrete plan yet," said Artem.

"It has to be something he clearly disagrees with. First I need to have a proper falling-out with him and call him an incompetent idiot who doesn't understand the subject a few times. Hit his professional pride and play off that."

"Knowing Johnson, that shouldn't be too hard," Artem agreed. "But I still need a location. Different types of beetles live in different regions of Verdis."

"Does it definitely have to be beetles?" I asked him. "Isn't there anything else with better resolution? I need details, not just the fact that he approached the equipment."

"Just for you, I'll fit them with electronic eyes."

"Even the drones Novak used had poor eyesight."

"But they lived long. Electronic eyes quickly burn out their nervous system and mess with the AI controller. That'll take time, so let me know in a day or two. And now I'll get back to my kamikazes before the master eats me alive."

I stood up, understanding this was the end of the conversation.

"Is he pushing you?" I asked.

"Literally had a talk right before you got here. Not pushing you, is he?"

"No."

It seemed the Great One was less confident in my project, so I had to complete it and hand it over. I might as well use that as an excuse to pick a fight and provoke Johnson.

That's exactly what I got to work on the next day. I brought Pascal in on it too, and I dutifully asked Delgado for permission like a good boy, I just didn't mention any of it to Johnson. What I told him, in fact, was that I didn't give a shit about either him or Delgado, since this project was something Novak needed and he'd cover for me.

Johnson naturally ran off to snitch to Delgado, where he found out she'd given permission on the condition that this be the last day of work on the cannon, after which we'd go back to the evacuation version of the portal.

I honestly kept that promise. Novak was surprised by how quickly it was done, and Johnson was simply furious, and I did everything in my power to keep him in that state. Angry people make mistakes.

I never thought deliberately annoying someone would be so hard and take so much effort. It was especially difficult finding an excuse to call Johnson incompetent, because he actually did understand something. His contribution alone was what let us add a full five seconds to the activity window.

On top of that, I was slowly turning into the project's chief arsehole, and even Pascal was gradually starting to stop talking to me.

I, on the other hand, had a problem-dilemma of my own. When you've spent your whole life being taught to make something work, it's very hard to do the opposite. Making the portal have an obviously dangerous flaw was easy enough, but what good would that do? Johnson wouldn't even have to do anything then. I couldn't accuse him of knowing about a flaw and failing to fix it.

I needed to make the technology sit right on the edge, safe, but easily tipped over into dangerous, and that required not just knowledge but a kind of genius I didn't possess.

In the end, I managed to latch onto something he'd said about the membrane's stability. By reducing the Vacuum and Gravity supply, we could gain a few extra seconds, but it was dangerous. The film could literally be ripped right out of its frame by the slightest fluctuation. And in the split second it took the portal to collapse, it behaved rather like my combat discs, cutting into reality itself. Good practice dictated avoiding such danger. And that was exactly the kind of structural detail one shouldn't skimp on.

But at the Black Lotus we'd been taught a trick precisely for such a failure. I'd pulled off something similar during the incident with Shako, when I matched my qi background to that of the room. If I was close enough, I could hold the film stable purely through my own Space and will.

I provoked a few arguments with Johnson on this topic, insisting that we didn't need to burn through so much Vacuum and Gravity. I even built a prototype, making sure Johnson called it a piece of junk. I left three deliberately vulnerable points, where even light interference should reliably destabilise the entire system: the safeties, the Gravity feed channel, and the balancing driver.

I tested the portal three times under lab conditions, on camera. To my surprise, the system turned out to be more stable than I'd expected. All three times it worked perfectly. As if I'd accidentally achieved the very thing Pascal had been demanding of me. It made me doubt the whole point of the setup. I could just finish the work and tell Johnson to go to hell.

What difference did it make whether he hated me, if our paths would never cross again?

Only the fourth test produced an unstable fluctuation, which I suppressed with my will, and that tipped the scales back towards seeing the plan through.

I picked a time and place for a proper stress test and let Artem know. I also asked him to keep an eye on the beetles himself, or assign someone else to do it, so my full attention could stay on the portal without being split.