Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 49: Stationary Point (Patreon)

The demonic portal's batteries were hidden deep beneath the platform. I couldn't reach them physically, so I used the platform's wiring and formations to build an adapter for our portal. Pascal would have been horrified by the energy-inefficient system I'd cobbled together here. Still, because of the size difference between the demonic and our portals, the charge should last about ten hours of continuous operation.

At least, that was what the field test data told me. Not the most reliable thing, but I had no time for another one. A minute ago, something heavy had hit the ship, and the whole structure had shuddered and groaned with tired metal. For me, it was a reminder not to drag the tests out too long.

In the end, I was sure I'd survive switching the portal on, at least.

"Right!" I said to the team, who were waiting for me to finish tinkering. "Get me one dead one and the one that hasn't croaked yet. He hasn't yet?" I checked with Zola.

"His armour's pumped him full of stimulants, but without a pod and a doctor's intervention, I give him half an hour at most," she said, showing off her expertise.

"More than enough," I said.

"And what do you want a dead one for?" she asked.

"To test the portal. To see whether there are any surges during transit."

Voss silently picked up one of the bodies that had been pulled out of the mass of flesh and took a step towards me.

"Stop!" I ordered, and waved a hand at Hale, who'd been helping me secure the whole contraption. "You step back too."

She stepped back. Only I was left above the portal.

"Opening."

I picked the prisoner's address from the list and confirmed. A black film stretched across the ring, flat and smooth as still water in a well.

Something immediately clicked in the general channel, and the common frequency came to life.

"Prisoner reception point!" a cheerful male voice said. "Congratulations on the first one! Identify yourselves."

"Jake Sullivan. What do you mean, the first one?" I asked, waving Voss over, then pointing at the half-dead one so he'd be brought over too.

Zola slung him over her shoulder herself.

"You're our first! Don't waste time, Sullivan. The ring's limit!" the man reminded me, his voice changing from cheerful to more strained.

"The portal's ours, but it's powered by demonic batteries from their ship, so we have time. I'm more worried about voltage surges in the adapter, so we'll test the setup first by dropping you a dead demon, then the half-dead one."

“Are your portals malfunctioning?”

"No, we're just about to evacuate, and we saw a chance to set up a stationary transit point here for coming back. You can mark it. The portal stays, if it survives the 'rain'."

"Do you have a portal technician with you? Are you sure of his qualifications?" the man on the other side asked cautiously.

"Well, he was one of the people who developed the evac portals," I said.

"What the hell is someone like that doing on a battlefield?!" the technician exclaimed. "Right, drop the corpse."

"Voss," I ordered.

Voss stepped up and dropped the armoured body from his shoulder. The film didn't even ripple, but the corpse's arms and legs splayed out and knocked against the ring one after another before vanishing. The ring itself shook, and one of Hale's welds cracked.

"Careful!" I hissed.

"Sorry," Voss said guiltily.

"Received," the voice said. "What does your technician say?"

I checked the data.

"The portal's stable. Here comes the half-dead one. He'll need a lot of patching up before interrogation," I warned, and gestured for Zola to come over and for Voss to help her so the body's arms and legs didn't bang against the ring. "Catch your present."

"Received. Is that everything?"

"Unless you're interested in corpses. We've got three more like the first one here."

"Send them all."

Well then. The plan to take the dead with us quietly died. I didn't much regret it.

"Two to a body, carefully," I ordered, and the team quickly moved the bodies across, though one way or another we went over the forty-nine seconds.

"I can see your portal is working properly. I'll add it to the register as stationary. Good work, Sullivan. Good luck!"

"Thanks!" I cut the connection, and the film vanished. "Hale, fix the welds, and let's get out of here."

While Hale patched up the welds, we finished with the trophies. Kon had fished out most of them. After that, she looked as if…

Why 'as if'? She really had bathed in blood. She'd been the one who wasn't afraid to dive in for the goods, so she was completely red, while Mardal, Voss, and Zola were only red up to their waists and elbows.

We'd managed to fish out two pendants and one ring. Two heavy straight swords with broad blades, clearly identical copies, and one curved sword, similar to the one the demon by the shuttle had fought with. The curved sword had a formation inscribed on it, as did a spear, but the most valuable item turned out to be a coil of red vine with small thorns. Mind you, no Wood cultivator was among us, and the rest of the trophies suited only Kon.

Something else might have been in the lake of flesh, but the drumming of debris raining down on the ship's hull didn't inspire any further searching.

As soon as Hale had finished with the weld, I activated the evacuation address, and one after another we jumped into the portal.

The lighting and gravity changed instantly. We fell onto the floor of a windowless stone box, lit by lamps that were far too bright. The portal we'd come through was on the ceiling, between the lamps. Two portals, a small one and a full-sized one, were on opposite walls, along with powerful Earth formations on the walls between them and cameras with scanners in every corner.

They were ready to seal us in stone forever, but the scanners and interfaces confirmed we were friendly. At the same time, they confirmed we were relatively intact, so they activated the small portal for us and told us not to linger.

The new transit hit my legs even harder. Gravity rose to the most comfortable level possible. And it was real.

Earth.

I was standing on a wide platform in the centre of an enormous hall, under a ceiling lost somewhere high above in even white light. Rows of identical platforms stretched around us, dozens, maybe hundreds, each with a glowing number above it. Small portals shimmered with black films on some of them. Two people in grimy armour tumbled out of one, supporting a third. Another pair jumped out of a different one.

I flipped up my faceplate and breathed in unfiltered air.

People were bustling between the platforms. Lots of people. Technicians in yellow overalls, though it wasn't the shade Yellow Pine used. It was the greenish-yellow that was standard for all technical workers on Earth.

A young female technician with a tablet met us. She came up to our platform, probably to register our arrival, looked up, opened her mouth, and froze. Her gaze was glued to Kon, her gauntlets slowly dripping blood onto the platform's white floor.

The girl closed her mouth and stepped back.

"It's not mine," Kon explained.

The girl stared at Kon for another second, then blinked, as though someone had flipped a switch inside her, and finally lowered her eyes to her tablet. Her fingers raced across the screen. Something blinked briefly in the corner of my interface, and a moment later new order messages appeared. Meanwhile, she started talking.

"Arrival registered. Everyone is to go through a general cleaning and technical inspection of their armour. Geotags are in your personal messages. A temporary rest area has been assigned to you. You're not tied to it; you can use all the facilities of the complex, but be ready to report to the portal hall at a moment's notice."

She looked up at me and quickly lowered her eyes to the tablet again.

"Sullivan, your scanner recorded elevated radiation levels. Decontamination first, then general cleaning and inspection. The geotag…"

"Is in the message," I finished for her. "What inspection? This is Federation armour. Do you have a specialist here?" I asked.

If the armour had been made on Earth, the background reading wouldn't just have been elevated. It would already be glowing like a reactor, so I was glad I hadn't worn Alan's new set on this mission.

The girl looked me over again and started tapping on her tablet again. A message dropped into my inbox, cancelling the previous order.

"Trophies," she went on. "Anything you don't keep for yourselves can be handed in at the collection point. They'll value it, enter it into the register, and credit your personal account in proportion to your role in the squad. Anything you keep doesn't have to be registered."

Just let them try to make it mandatory. Cultivators were some of the greediest and most paranoid people in the world. This wasn't a single operation they could control. Over the course of a long war, it would bring nothing but trouble.

"I should remind you, it's only the first day. There'll be plenty more trophies, and your pockets aren't unlimited. Free some up while you can."

Now that was a subtler and far more sensible approach to emptying our pockets. I'd bet they'd pay us the bare minimum for the trophies, but they had a point. Pockets weren't bottomless.

"Good luck," the girl said, pointing to an archway leading into a corridor, where one of the tags in my interface pointed.

"What's known about the overall situation?" I asked.

The girl shook her head.

"Above my pay grade, sir. If you find any officers or senior administrators…" she hinted.

I thanked her, and we headed for the archways leading out of the hall, but as we got closer, it became clear that the tags were directing the team and me into different archways. The team exchanged glances and grew anxious.

Worried about the trophies, of course.

"We'll meet in the assigned rest area after the technical procedures," I said. "We'll sort out the trophies."

The technical procedures took almost an hour. Decontamination was like a car wash: I was first sprayed with foam from head to toe, then rinsed off with high-pressure jets. Unlike a car wash, though, it was repeated about five times in a row, and afterwards the armour smelt of mint.

I wouldn't have minded a shower with some fruity gel myself after that, but five cultivators were waiting for me in the assigned rest area, their greed stoking their eagerness to divide the spoils. I didn't want to disappoint them, in case they decided to divide the goods without me.

All of mine, by the way, were now wearing identical green jumpsuits after their showers. And more than half of the demons' goods turned out to be field rations and fancier food: bars, briquettes, tins, and sealed pouches. Next came water, and in third place in the ranking of demonic hoarding came alcohol. We each took a few bottles, judging how upmarket the drink was by eye, from the shape of the bottle and the label.

Zola raked the ampoules, injectors, and pills in for herself.

The two pockets the demons left behind in the overturned shuttle each held a spare set of armour. In theory, we could have used them, but at the very least the horns would have to be sawn off the helmets, not to mention the general fitting.

Weapons: swords, swords, and a small pile of spikes. On the one hand, it looked like a feast for Kon, but she couldn't find anything that suited her style better than the sword she already had, so she settled on the spikes. They were consumables.

The most valuable things, with practical value here and now, turned out to be the pockets themselves. Unfortunately, only the first three rings had a decent capacity, over two hundred litres each. The rest were much more modest.

The pendants were small-capacity junk, and the rings didn't suit everyone. With my Fist, a ring on my finger would be a liability. Mardal would have a problem with Palm, and Voss didn't want to risk it because of Lightning. Zola might have been able to wear one despite her mix, but she had extremely precisely fitted gloves that a ring wouldn't fit under, so Hale and Kon each took one. We decided to hand in the rest.

I loaded the team up with that, then decided to take a shower and find someone to explain the current tactical situation to me afterwards.