Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 53: The Bait (Patreon)

I decided to leave quietly.

A hasty retreat would certainly have dispelled whatever doubts were left, not that I had many left. All those demons playing dead would have come straight after me. Better to play along: a scout who'd found nothing and was moving on.

I forced myself to turn away from the left half of the broken ship and switched my scanner to the right one, exposing my back to the bulk of the demons.

Not my smartest decision. I'd already scanned that wreck. I could pretend I was doing it again because the heat from the breach was giving the scanner more trouble. The heat was obviously the source of the radiation, and the demons, though they used it as cover, didn't want to crawl into the inferno.

I needed to get out of my own inferno too. The scanner glitched, and the readings jumped about, but I didn't need accurate data. I wasn't even looking at it, just sweeping the scanner around to look like someone who needed accurate data.

My back was burning. I could almost physically feel two dozen pairs of eyes staring at me between the shoulder blades. Perhaps not directly, perhaps through cameras the radiation hadn't melted, perhaps some other way…

Right, that's enough! I'd almost put the scanner away when a metallic clang of big debris hitting the scrap heap in front of me made me flinch. The scanner in my hand jerked and showed two bodies behind several layers of metal. Bodies that shouldn't have been there. I'd already scanned this spot. What's more, these two bodies were moving.

The interference didn't allow a smooth picture, but there was a noticeable difference between the frames I managed to catch. The pair were making their way between the wreckage almost at a crawl: slowly and carefully, from cover to cover.

Fuck!

The pressure between my shoulder blades turned into the point of a dagger. Were they about to attack?

Wait, no, these two were moving away from the ship. This was a different pair, unconnected to the ones lying around on the right. Or were they trying to distract me?

The pair threw down boards toothed like saw blades and opened the throttle. The jets roared, and the demons flew off, keeping low, right above the wreckage. Away from the ship, at exactly the moment I was looking at them.

They couldn't have known where I was looking. A hundred metres separated us, and at least two solid metal plates stood between us. They were luring me away from here.

I felt the pressure between my shoulder blades ease. But I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen anything. No, I'd already been frozen for a good two seconds with my scanner pointed on them, and only a deaf man would have missed the roar of those jets.

The demons wanted me to chase the bait? Fine, I'd chase it.

I put the scanner away and went after the fugitives using Monkey. Not too fast. I didn't think this pair were wounded weaklings. Most likely, once they'd lured me far enough away, their job was to eliminate me. We'd see about that.

I used Monkey without the Stroll until the radiation background dropped and comms came back. In that time, the demons had pulled away from me, but they'd come under the drones' surveillance.

And what did they decide to do… They slowed down. The bastards clearly wanted me to catch up.

I finally took out my board. We were still too close to the wreck where the rest of their team was hiding, so they wouldn't start a fight here. They obviously needed more time for what they were about there; otherwise they'd have taken me out on the spot.

A portal? Were they setting up a transit point in there?

I couldn't see any other option.

Perhaps the portal was already running, and they were in the middle of building up forces? These two ahead might be part of an elite landing party.

"Zola, Hale?" I called to the team, checking the comms.

"Here," they both answered clearly.

"Zola, request an orbital strike on the wreck. The demons have set up a transit point under cover of the radiation. They played dead when I scanned them. Target: the less 'hot' half."

"Understood."

"Hale, two markers on boards. Don't attack! They're trying to lead me away and finish me off out there. Let's assume they're not wounded and are, in theory, stronger than me. Your job is to get ahead of them unseen and set up a trap."

"On our way! Do you think they'll keep flying in a straight line?" Hale asked. "If they start weaving, we won't have time to regroup. Voss definitely won't have time to put up any fortifications."

"They're setting the course. The only thing I can control is my speed, but if I go any slower, they'll realise I'm playing them. What happens then is hard to predict."

On the map, five green markers arced around the zone of 'hot' wreckage. The red markers moved ahead, keeping a kilometre's distance. I stayed as low as they did, hiding behind crater rims and mountains of scrap. So somehow they could see me.

Only me? Or the team as well?

The green markers were moving twice as fast. They overtook me, but not the pair of ‘fugitives’.

"Jake, the fleet's asking for visual confirmation," Zola said, sounding lost.

"They're what?"

"Apparently they've got a hell of a lot of requests and not many free ships, so they're prioritising."

"Where are all those requests coming from? We were among the first back!" I barked.

But there were still the schools. There had to be cultivators left in them.

"Threaten them with Novak's name. Tell them I'll have to call in my master if they don't blow that scrap heap to pieces."

What had I been thinking about before?

About surveillance… I put my board back in my pocket and went on in the same direction with Monkey, but backwards, looking behind me for any sign of being watched.

Was it a drone, or a live but unseen observer following me? Our drones, whose course and task I'd adjusted a little, hadn't seen anything like that. However, that might be the cheap AI fault.

"Command has accepted the request," Zola came back on the air. "The target's in the queue. The nearest ship is busy cutting up a large piece of wreckage. It'll take the job as soon as it's done."

"Will they at least warn us about the strike so we don't get caught in it? A nuclear strike?"

"Um…" Zola had clearly switched channels to check. "A kinetic, non-nuclear round. They'll warn us."

"We're almost in position, boss," Hale said. "I can see two convenient ridges of scrap. They run parallel, like a corridor, and the demons are flying into it. Even if they fly higher, there's plenty of cover. Kon and I will set down on opposite ridges and attack when they fly into the corridor or over it."

The feeling of being watched didn't go away, but I had to prioritise more important matters. I stopped jumping backwards and got back on my board.

Mental techniques to the max, discs… Better not to skimp this time. It would be the Trouble Generators.

"Don't get into close combat!" I ordered, sending the Generators into a tight orbit around me.

"We'll set down at the far end of the ridges and attack the moment they arrive. Inertia should carry them a little further, closer to the middle of the corridor."

"Mardal, don't go picking fights!" I said. "Pair up with Voss. Once the girls attack, Voss covers you, and you use your ultimate."

The pair of demons flew into the corridor, hiding between the ridges, or pretending to hide so they wouldn't know about the drones tracking them. Perhaps they couldn't see our drones any more than I could see theirs?

I put my board away and closed half the distance with a few steps of God's Stroll. I nearly lost the Generators on the way. Warping space for movement while simultaneously keeping the heavy rings in flight around me with Double Cycle turned out to be no simple task. I had to tighten the rings' orbit as far as it would go, until they were almost brushing my shoulders, and widen the spatial warp on the move.

For some reason, I'd never thought to practise this combination before. The technique threw me out higher and closer to my starting point than I'd expected, but I took the next step with the variables already accounted for and came out two hundred metres from the pair.

They were closer to the middle of the corridor when Hale's red beam punched through one of the boards from below and severed the demon's left foot an instant before the board exploded. With nothing left to stand on, the demon went tumbling down, spinning chaotically through the air like a rag doll.

On the one hand, Hale had wasted her ultimate; on the other, by firing at the board, she'd kept the demon from sensing the strike coming, guaranteed a hit and bypassed his armour's protective formations.

It was a clever tactical move. Hale clearly had both talent and brains.

Kon's spike went through the second board less explosively. Some fragments flew off it, and it began to fall, but its rider was no longer on it. The demon had leapt off a split second earlier. He slid through the air as if across ice and landed softly on the crest of the nearer ridge. A bright red spear appeared in his hand, with a head as wide and long as the blade of a short sword.

He was standing with his back to me. I activated the Generators, making them produce a pair of Space Discs, and monkeyed to close to attack range just as the footless demon reached the scrap. With a loud clang, he slammed into the ship's deformed armour plating and began to slide down, but pulled a dagger from his spatial pocket and drove it into the plating to catch himself.

Mardal shot up from a pit beneath the ridge, launched by a boulder Voss had obviously sent up. In flight, a few dozen metres above his upraised arms, a pair of three-metre burning palms bloomed.

In mid-air, Mardal pushed off the boulder with jets of fire from his boots, flew a few extra metres, and brought his arms down.

Normally, the palm projections closed together, trapping the target between them. Mardal slammed them down onto the demon instead, pinning him against the metal. The protective formations flared and went out; the palms overlapped and passed through the body and the metal beneath it like a ghost. Only the demon's armour turned charred black, while the scrap beneath him heated up and went white, leaving a hot imprint of two overlapping palms, in the middle of which the black metal armour was stuck like a squashed fly.

Mardal landed on the demon's chest, making the armour buckle and press even deeper into the hot metal. He laid his hand on the helmet between the horns, whose tips glowed even hotter than the metal around them.

Red gold flared, and I was sure he'd cooked that demon's brain.

The dead demon's partner raised his spear to throw, aiming at Mardal's back, and I hurled the Space Discs at his.

He spun round suddenly and parried one with his spear. The micro-portals destabilised and flew apart, but I seemed to have chipped a good chunk off the blade of his weapon. That enraged the demon.

He screamed at me, and with that furious scream, my foot almost lost its footing on the air. My heart filled with needles; hot needles crawled up into my throat and clamped it in a vicious grip.

My Hook went wide, I was surprised the technique had come off at all, and I hadn't lost control of the Generators circling me. I had to leap back out of range of his aura to regain my balance. Both physical and mental.

"Stage Five!" I barked over comms.

How were we supposed to survive this?