Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 40: Beta-Beta-Pi (Patreon)

There wasn't much real information: we'd lost nearly half the Earth fleet, every ship stationed beneath the wormhole, and both bases, though most of the non-combat personnel had been evacuated.

Only a handful of fighters had survived.

More precisely, only a handful had made it back to Earth before command cut the fleet portals off the network so the enemy couldn't teleport straight onto our heads.

That would have been suicide even for the Stage Eight, but nobody was willing to risk it. Demons could throw more than just a cultivator through a portal. They could throw plenty of other, worse things: poison, a bomb, their own version of a Nail Shrimp.

Not my portal cannons, not Artem's warp-beetles, none of it came in useful. Maybe if humans had spent less time at each other's throats and more focused on the outside enemy, things would have gone differently.

That bastard Jonson wouldn't let me rest even dead.

I nearly got angry, but the anger was counterproductive. Nothing could be changed now; the demons were here, on this side of the wormhole. Given Earth's current position relative to the Sun and the wormhole, along with the average speed of their warp drives, the demons were about two months' travel from us. Two months if they launched today, but something told me they'd fortify their position under the wormhole first, maybe build their own base, and absolutely interrogate their prisoners. However, they could interrogate prisoners on the ships too. But charging straight through after they'd experienced the minefields under the wormhole wasn't remotely sensible, and this invasion had already shown a high degree of rationality.

They'd do it right and prepare thoroughly.

That would buy us a bit more time, though I wasn't sure that made me happy. Not because it gave the demons a better chance. More because I was already tired of waiting for the real fight.

I didn't feel afraid anymore. Even the theory that I'd traded away an endless number of reincarnations for cultivation no longer bothered me. Death wasn't so frightening. Life was more frightening. And, if it came down to it, I didn't want any more reincarnations.

No, I wasn't planning to give up; I'd fight to the end, but if I fell on the battlefield, let this be the last time. This life, and this one before it, though I barely remembered the previous one, I was certain that too had been an endless field of small and large battles, with vanishingly rare stretches of peace.

Or maybe I was just anxious, too afraid to admit it to myself?

I closed the forum. Mindlessly scrolling the feed didn't help; it just drained me.

I looked around and noticed I was the first one the forum had let go back to the real world. The whole room, patrons and staff alike, had frozen, glassy-eyed. Even Bao, across from me.

I picked up my fork, speared the steak, cut off a piece, put it in my mouth, and began chewing slowly, savouring the taste. The flavour, admittedly, wasn't as rich as it had been a minute ago. The juice and texture were still there, but the taste… as though someone had stripped out all the seasoning, or turned my taste receptors' settings down to 50%.

Little by little, the patrons started coming out of the news and surfacing from the network. The man I'd noticed first got up from his table, grabbed the woman's hand, pulling her out of the interface's grip, and nearly ran for the exit after a few words.

The man's sudden movement seemed to trigger a chain reaction. It woke the room: a couple of girls followed his lead at once, then a few more cadets. Everyone surfaced from the interface, but the room split between those who ‘ran’ and those who stayed.

Bao got ready to run too.

"I need to be ready for a call-up," he said, pushing his chair back.

"What's stopping you from being ready here?" I asked him.

He froze, as though he hadn't understood, then looked at me chewing, pulled his chair back in, and wolfed the rest of his steak in under a minute.

"I'm heading back to the Order's main hall. What are you doing?" he asked.

"Probably taking a shower," I said.

Bao raised an eyebrow, his face scrunching up, hinting at certain concerns about my sanity.

"There was no shower in the cell," I reminded him. "And there's no way the demons make it to Earth in that time. We've got at least a day of general panic ahead, where nobody knows what's actually going on. Johansson and Novak will be dragged from meeting to meeting; they won't have time for us."

"Maybe," Bao agreed. "But I'm heading back.

"Take care of yourself," he said, in a tone that sounded like a goodbye.

He left. I finished the steak, drank the rest of the wine, and headed home. I'd nearly made it.

I had about a hundred metres of corridor left when I got an incoming call from Novak. That broke the usual pattern of events, and it could only mean one thing. He was most likely about to shove me into some hellish mess, but it was action, and strangely enough, that lifted my mood.

"What's my assignment going to be?" I asked instead of a greeting.

Novak actually faltered at that, caught off guard.

"Uh… Portal Room 4, twenty minutes," he said. "Can you make it?"

"Easily," I said, turning away from the flat.

"I'll be waiting there," the master said, hanging up.

I took a few steps and froze. Something was holding me in place.

I turned around and went back to my room. On one wall hung Chen's disciple's sword. I wasn't a swordsman, but ever since the last big upheaval, I'd started treating it as a good-luck charm.

I had plenty of room in my spatial pocket, so I tossed it in there, and only then ran to Portal Room 4. Novak was already waiting when I walked briskly through the door. Kate, Artem, and Doc Bulsara stood beside him, but no Zola. And a whole crowd of people waiting along the wall, letting the other travellers through ahead of them.

The moment they spotted me, Novak nodded to an unfamiliar cadet in a brown jumpsuit, the standard uniform of a Yellow Pine staff member, and he approached the portal technician to take his tablet. He activated the portal himself.

"What's going on?" I asked Novak.

He pointed at the black membrane. "Get in. The explanations are on the other side."

I stepped into the portal among the first, and almost immediately felt a noticeable shift in gravity. Either they were using a different artificial gravity system here, or this wasn't Verdis. I bet on the latter, though we stood in a blank tunnel, its walls giving off Earth Qi. Either the tunnel was newly dug, or it was riddled with formations that could turn the walls into liquid stone in a fraction of a second. And it was long enough that even Lightning wouldn't have made it out in that fraction of a second.

It took us a few minutes to get through the tunnel, and along the way I passed several more pockets of assorted qi that probably meant other kinds of traps, plus a few high-tech scanners. Wherever we were, they clearly took security seriously here.

I would have asked Novak, but the tunnel was narrow, and all the new arrivals went single file. My chance to ask only came once we came out of the tunnel into a hall, where they scanned us again. This time, armoured guards with handheld scanners. Lots of black and yellow, which made me think it was a joint venture of Black Lotus and Yellow Pine.

"So what was that, back there?" I asked Novak, once I'd caught up to him. "And what is this place?"

"Welcome to Beta-Beta-Pi," said Novak. "Where exactly that is, you don't need to know. Honestly, only one person knows where this place is."

"You?" I tried to guess.

"No," Novak said. "That person can't leave the base, precisely so we can be certain the demons never learn its location. I'm far too serious a weapon to be kept here. And on the other side, the technician ran a special protocol that'll wipe all records of our movement."

"Is this an ark?" I asked.

"No, it's a secured military base," said Novak. "Access is restricted to fourth-stage personnel and above."

I picked up on the nuance immediately. Stage Four made consciousness transfer impossible so that the demons couldn't infiltrate this place. But it also meant this place was off-limits to Zola and all the former thinhorns.

After the scanners, the new arrivals split up, but every single one headed toward the lifts, the hall's central feature. Tunnels branched off in every direction.

I stayed with Novak, Artem, and Kate. Bulsara didn't come with us. From the looks of it, he was leading a different group.

Novak pressed the call button on a lift.

"They let you out a while ago?" Artem asked, as though he were holding a grudge against me. Probably over the Order's investigation.

"A few minutes before the demons broke through the defences," Novak answered for me.

"Well," Artem said, still displeased. "Here I'll be your boss, so try not to rip off anyone's jaw or kill anyone."

"You say that like I made an effort for that to happen!"

"Make an effort so it doesn't happen again!" he ordered.

At that moment, the lift arrived, the doors opened, and Novak stepped inside, already handing out orders. "Children, don't fight. Kate, you're with me, you two — have fun."

"Could you fill me in a bit more?" I asked.

"Evacuation portals," said Novak, "and the portal cannon. Both projects are being transferred here, in full, with whatever personnel you need. You've got two weeks to complete both."

"Two weeks?" I repeated. "Is that a joke?"

"That's reality, Jake."

"But the wormhole's been breached," I said. "I get the evacuation portals, but the cannons…"

"You don't win a war by running away," said Novak.

"That's not what I mean. I just can't picture where they'd actually be useful."

"In orbit," said Artem. "When the demons arrive, we're going to have thousands of unattached first- and second-stage cultivators who are nothing much on their own, but together, we can squeeze enough striking power out of them. On top of that, we have thousands of cultivators who can't leave their current posts but still want to contribute."

The hall with the tunnels, unless I'd been misled somehow, was on the lowest floor. Novak left the lift first; we stepped out higher up and walked straight into a row of laboratory bays with transparent partitions. Literally in the second one, at a holographic workbench, I recognised a colleague.

"Pascal?" He didn't notice me, completely absorbed in his work.

"Had him transferred here last night," said Artem. "Had to fight Delgado for him. Get to work. Priority is completion speed and stability. Active operating time doesn't matter for the portals. And it will be ten seconds for the cannon."

His voice finally stopped ringing with displeasure and shifted into work mode. Artem clapped me on the shoulder and turned to leave.

"Wait!" I remembered. "Are we going back to Black Lotus at some point? I ordered new armour from Alan."

"Alan Kalum?" He is the base's head repair crew chief. Workshop two floors down. Artem wagged a finger at me. "You'll deal with the armour once you're finished with the portals!"

Artem turned and walked off.